Page 262 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 251

about her happiness. I had just learned more about my mother
from this old man on the street than I ever did from Baba.
Walking back to the truck, neither one of us commented
about what most non-Afghans would have seen as an improbable
coincidence, that a beggar on the street would happen to know my
mother. Because we both knew that in Afghanistan, and particu-
larly in Kabul, such absurdity was commonplace. Baba used to
say, “Take two Afghans who’ve never met, put them in a room for
ten minutes, and they’ll figure out how they’re related.”
We left the old man on the steps of that building. I meant to
take him up on his offer, come back and see if he’d unearthed any
more stories about my mother. But I never saw him again.

We found the new orphanage in the northern part of
Karteh-Seh, along the banks of the dried-up Kabul River. It was a
flat, barracks-style building with splintered walls and windows
boarded with planks of wood. Farid had told me on the way there
that Karteh-Seh had been one of the most war-ravaged neighbor-
hoods in Kabul, and, as we stepped out of the truck, the evidence
was overwhelming. The cratered streets were flanked by little
more than ruins of shelled buildings and abandoned homes. We
passed the rusted skeleton of an overturned car, a TV set with no
screen half-buried in rubble, a wall with the words ZENDA BAD TAL-
IBAN! (Long live the Taliban!) sprayed in black.
A short, thin, balding man with a shaggy gray beard opened
the door. He wore a ragged tweed jacket, a skullcap, and a pair of
eyeglasses with one chipped lens resting on the tip of his nose.
Behind the glasses, tiny eyes like black peas flitted from me to
Farid. “Salaam alaykum,” he said.