Page 285 - The Kite Runner

274 Khaled Hosseini

long dead, buried in the Afghan section of a little cemetery in
Hayward. Just last month, Soraya and I had placed a bouquet of
daisies and freesias beside his headstone. I was on my own.
I stepped out of the car and walked to the tall, wooden front
gates of the house. I rang the bell but no buzz came—still no elec-
tricity—and I had to pound on the doors. A moment later, I heard
terse voices from the other side and a pair of men toting Kalash-
nikovs answered the door.
I glanced at Farid sitting in the car and mouthed, I’ll be back,
not so sure at all that I would be.
The armed men frisked me head to toe, patted my legs, felt my
crotch. One of them said something in Pashtu and they both
chuckled. We stepped through the front gates. The two guards
escorted me across a well-manicured lawn, past a row of gerani-
ums and stubby bushes lined along the wall. An old hand-pump
water well stood at the far end of the yard. I remembered how
Kaka Homayoun’s house in Jalalabad had had a water well like
that—the twins, Fazila and Karima, and I used to drop pebbles in
it, listen for the plink.
We climbed a few steps and entered a large, sparsely deco-
rated house. We crossed the foyer—a large Afghan flag draped one
of the walls—and the men took me upstairs to a room with twin
mint green sofas and a big-screen TV in the far corner. A prayer
rug showing a slightly oblong Mecca was nailed to one of the
walls. The older of the two men motioned toward the sofa with
the barrel of his weapon. I sat down. They left the room.
I crossed my legs. Uncrossed them. Sat with my sweaty
hands on my knees. Did that make me look nervous? I clasped
them together, decided that was worse and just crossed my arms
on my chest. Blood thudded in my temples. I felt utterly alone.
Thoughts were flying around in my head, but I didn’t want to