Page 236 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 225

Dr. Kumar to fix Hassan’s harelip. Baba never missing Hassan’s
birthday. I remembered the day we were planting tulips, when I
had asked Baba if he’d ever consider getting new servants. Has-
san’s not going anywhere, he’d barked. He’s staying right here with
us, where he belongs. This is his home and we’re his family. He had
wept, wept, when Ali announced he and Hassan were leaving us.
The waiter placed a teacup on the table before me. Where the
table’s legs crossed like an X, there was a ring of brass balls, each
walnut-sized. One of the balls had come unscrewed. I stooped
and tightened it. I wished I could fix my own life as easily. I took a
gulp of the blackest tea I’d had in years and tried to think of
Soraya, of the general and Khala Jamila, of the novel that needed
finishing. I tried to watch the traffic bolting by on the street, the
people milling in and out of the little sweetshops. Tried to listen to
the Qawali music playing on the transistor radio at the next table.
Anything. But I kept seeing Baba on the night of my graduation,
sitting in the Ford he’d just given me, smelling of beer and saying,
I wish Hassan had been with us today.
How could he have lied to me all those years? To Hassan? He
had sat me on his lap when I was little, looked me straight in the
eyes, and said, There is only one sin. And that is theft . . . When you
tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. Hadn’t he said
those words to me? And now, fifteen years after I’d buried him, I
was learning that Baba had been a thief. And a thief of the worst
kind, because the things he’d stolen had been sacred: from me the
right to know I had a brother, from Hassan his identity, and from
Ali his honor. His nang. His namoos.
The questions kept coming at me: How had Baba brought
himself to look Ali in the eye? How had Ali lived in that house,
day in and day out, knowing he had been dishonored by his mas-
ter in the single worst way an Afghan man can be dishonored?