Page 238 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 227

A way to end the cycle.
With a little boy. An orphan. Hassan’s son. Somewhere in
Kabul.

On the rickshaw ride back to Rahim Khan’s apartment, I
remembered Baba saying that my problem was that someone had
always done my fighting for me. I was thirty-eight now. My hair
was receding and streaked with gray, and lately I’d traced little
crow’s-feet etched around the corners of my eyes. I was older now,
but maybe not yet too old to start doing my own fighting. Baba
had lied about a lot of things as it turned out but he hadn’t lied
about that.
I looked at the round face in the Polaroid again, the way the
sun fell on it. My brother’s face. Hassan had loved me once, loved
me in a way that no one ever had or ever would again. He was
gone now, but a little part of him lived on. It was in Kabul.
Waiting.

I found Rahim Khan praying namaz in a corner of the
room. He was just a dark silhouette bowing eastward against a
bloodred sky. I waited for him to finish.
Then I told him I was going to Kabul. Told him to call the
Caldwells in the morning.
“I’ll pray for you, Amir jan,” he said.