Page 241 - The Kite Runner

230 Khaled Hosseini

other way around: a rough-woven wool blanket wrapped over a
gray pirhan-tumban and a vest. On his head, he wore a brown
pakol, tilted slightly to one side, like the Tajik hero Ahmad Shah
Massoud—referred to by Tajiks as “the Lion of Panjsher.”
It was Rahim Khan who had introduced me to Farid in
Peshawar. He told me Farid was twenty-nine, though he had the
wary, lined face of a man twenty years older. He was born in
Mazar-i-Sharif and lived there until his father moved the family to
Jalalabad when Farid was ten. At fourteen, he and his father had
joined the jihad against the Shorawi. They had fought in the Pan-
jsher Valley for two years until helicopter gunfire had torn the
older man to pieces. Farid had two wives and five children. “He
used to have seven,” Rahim Khan said with a rueful look, but he’d
lost his two youngest girls a few years earlier in a land mine blast
just outside Jalalabad, the same explosion that had severed toes
from his feet and three fingers from his left hand. After that, he
had moved his wives and children to Peshawar.
“Checkpoint,” Farid grumbled. I slumped a little in my seat,
arms folded across my chest, forgetting for a moment about the
nausea. But I needn’t have worried. Two Pakistani militia
approached our dilapidated Land Cruiser, took a cursory glance
inside, and waved us on.
Farid was first on the list of preparations Rahim Khan and I
made, a list that included exchanging dollars for Kaldar and
Afghani bills, my garment and pakol—ironically, I’d never worn
either when I’d actually lived in Afghanistan—the Polaroid of
Hassan and Sohrab, and, finally, perhaps the most important
item: an artificial beard, black and chest length, Shari’a-
friendly—or at least the Taliban version of Shari’a. Rahim Khan
knew of a fellow in Peshawar who specialized in weaving them,
sometimes for Western journalists who covered the war.