Page 276 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 265

Grapes! In the early evening, you would have heard azan, the
mueszzin’s call to prayer from the mosque in Shar-e-Nau.
I heard a honk and saw Farid waving at me. It was time to go.

We drove south again, back toward Pashtunistan Square.
We passed several more red pickup trucks with armed, bearded
young men crammed into the cabs. Farid cursed under his breath
every time we passed one.
I paid for a room at a small hotel near Pashtunistan Square.
Three little girls dressed in identical black dresses and white
scarves clung to the slight, bespectacled man behind the counter.
He charged me $75, an unthinkable price given the run-down
appearance of the place, but I didn’t mind. Exploitation to finance
a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids
was another.
There was no hot running water and the cracked toilet didn’t
flush. Just a single steel-frame bed with a worn mattress, a ragged
blanket, and a wooden chair in the corner. The window overlook-
ing the square had broken, hadn’t been replaced. As I lowered my
suitcase, I noticed a dried bloodstain on the wall behind the bed.
I gave Farid some money and he went out to get food. He
returned with four sizzling skewers of kabob, fresh naan, and a
bowl of white rice. We sat on the bed and all but devoured the
food. There was one thing that hadn’t changed in Kabul after all:
The kabob was as succulent and delicious as I remembered.
That night, I took the bed and Farid lay on the floor, wrapped
himself with an extra blanket for which the hotel owner charged
me an additional fee. No light came into the room except for the
moonbeams streaming through the broken window. Farid said the
owner had told him that Kabul had been without electricity for