Page 235 - The Kite Runner

EIGHTEEN

The sun had almost set and left the sky swathed in smothers of
purple and red. I walked down the busy, narrow street that led
away from Rahim Khan’s building. The street was a noisy lane in
a maze of alleyways choked with pedestrians, bicycles, and rick-
shaws. Billboards hung at its corners, advertising Coca-Cola and
cigarettes; Lollywood movie posters displayed sultry actresses
dancing with handsome, brown-skinned men in fields of
marigolds.
I walked into a smoky little samovar house and ordered a cup
of tea. I tilted back on the folding chair’s rear legs and rubbed my
face. That feeling of sliding toward a fall was fading. But in its
stead, I felt like a man who awakens in his own house and finds all
the furniture rearranged, so that every familiar nook and cranny
looks foreign now. Disoriented, he has to reevaluate his surround-
ings, reorient himself.
How could I have been so blind? The signs had been there for
me to see all along; they came flying back at me now: Baba hiring