Page 229 - The Kite Runner

218 Khaled Hosseini

I have been dreaming a lot lately, Amir agha. Some of them
are nightmares, like hanged corpses rotting in soccer fields
with bloodred grass. I wake up from those short of breath
and sweaty. Mostly, though, I dream of good things, and
praise Allah for that. I dream that Rahim Khan sahib will
be well. I dream that my son will grow up to be a good per-
son, a free person, and an important person. I dream that
lawla flowers will bloom in the streets of Kabul again and
rubab music will play in the samovar houses and kites will
fly in the skies. And I dream that someday you will return
to Kabul to revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you
will find an old faithful friend waiting for you.
May Allah be with you always.
Hassan

I read the letter twice. I folded the note and looked at the pho-
tograph for another minute. I pocketed both. “How is he?” I
asked.
“That letter was written six months ago, a few days before I
left for Peshawar,” Rahim Khan said. “I took the Polaroid the day
before I left. A month after I arrived in Peshawar, I received a tele-
phone call from one of my neighbors in Kabul. He told me this
story: Soon after I took my leave, a rumor spread that a Hazara
family was living alone in the big house in Wazir Akbar Khan, or
so the Taliban claim. A pair of Talib officials came to investigate
and interrogated Hassan. They accused him of lying when Hassan
told them he was living with me even though many of the neigh-
bors, including the one who called me, supported Hassan’s story.
The Talibs said he was a liar and a thief like all Hazaras and
ordered him to get his family out of the house by sundown. Has-