Page 250 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 239

turns trying it on. But they lost interest and, soon, the watch sat
abandoned on the straw mat.

“You could have told me,” Farid said later. The two of us
were lying next to each other on the straw mats Wahid’s wife had
spread for us.
“Told you what?”
“Why you’ve come to Afghanistan.” His voice had lost the
rough edge I’d heard in it since the moment I had met him.
“You didn’t ask,” I said.
“You should have told me.”
“You didn’t ask.”
He rolled to face me. Curled his arm under his head. “Maybe
I will help you find this boy.”
“Thank you, Farid,” I said.
“It was wrong of me to assume.”
I sighed. “Don’t worry. You were more right than you know.”

His hands are tied behind him with roughly woven
rope cutting through the flesh of his wrists. He is blindfolded with
black cloth. He is kneeling on the street, on the edge of a gutter
filled with still water, his head drooping between his shoulders. His
knees roll on the hard ground and bleed through his pants as he
rocks in prayer. It is late afternoon and his long shadow sways back
and forth on the gravel. He is muttering something under his
breath. I step closer. A thousand times over, he mutters. For you a
thousand times over. Back and forth he rocks. He lifts his face. I see
a faint scar above his upper lip.
We are not alone.