Page 272 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 261

We find the little turtle behind tangles of sweetbrier
in the yard. We don’t know how it got there and we’re too excited to
care. We paint its shell a bright red, Hassan’s idea, and a good one:
This way, we’ll never lose it in the bushes. We pretend we’re a pair
of daredevil explorers who’ve discovered a giant prehistoric monster
in some distant jungle and we’ve brought it back for the world to
see. We set it down in the wooden wagon Ali built Hassan last win-
ter for his birthday, pretend it’s a giant steel cage. Behold the fire-
breathing monstrosity! We march on the grass and pull the wagon
behind us, around apple and cherry trees, which become skyscrap-
ers soaring into clouds, heads poking out of thousands of windows
to watch the spectacle passing below. We walk over the little semi-
lunar bridge Baba has built near a cluster of fig trees; it becomes a
great suspension bridge joining cities, and the little pond below, a
foamy sea. Fireworks explode above the bridge’s massive pylons and
armed soldiers salute us on both sides as gigantic steel cables shoot
to the sky. The little turtle bouncing around in the cab, we drag the
wagon around the circular redbrick driveway outside the wrought-
iron gates and return the salutes of the world’s leaders as they stand
and applaud. We are Hassan and Amir, famed adventurers and the
world’s greatest explorers, about to receive a medal of honor for our
courageous feat . . .

Gingerly, I walked up the driveway where tufts of weed
now grew between the sun-faded bricks. I stood outside the gates
of my father’s house, feeling like a stranger. I set my hands on the
rusty bars, remembering how I’d run through these same gates
thousands of times as a child, for things that mattered not at all
now and yet had seemed so important then. I peered in.
The driveway extension that led from the gates to the yard,