Page 237 - The Kite Runner

226 Khaled Hosseini

And how was I going to reconcile this new image of Baba with the
one that had been imprinted on my mind for so long, that of him
in his old brown suit, hobbling up the Taheris’ driveway to ask for
Soraya’s hand?
Here is another cliché my creative writing teacher would have
scoffed at; like father, like son. But it was true, wasn’t it? As it
turned out, Baba and I were more alike than I’d ever known. We
had both betrayed the people who would have given their lives for
us. And with that came this realization: that Rahim Khan had
summoned me here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba’s too.
Rahim Khan said I’d always been too hard on myself. But I won-
dered. True, I hadn’t made Ali step on the land mine, and I hadn’t
brought the Taliban to the house to shoot Hassan. But I had
driven Hassan and Ali out of the house. Was it too far-fetched to
imagine that things might have turned out differently if I hadn’t?
Maybe Baba would have brought them along to America. Maybe
Hassan would have had a home of his own now, a job, a family, a
life in a country where no one cared that he was a Hazara, where
most people didn’t even know what a Hazara was. Maybe not. But
maybe so.
I can’t go to Kabul, I had said to Rahim Khan. I have a wife in
America, a home, a career, and a family. But how could I pack up
and go back home when my actions may have cost Hassan a
chance at those very same things?
I wished Rahim Khan hadn’t called me. I wished he had let me
live on in my oblivion. But he had called me. And what Rahim
Khan revealed to me changed things. Made me see how my entire
life, long before the winter of 1975, dating back to when that
singing Hazara woman was still nursing me, had been a cycle of
lies, betrayals, and secrets.
There is a way to be good again, he’d said.