Page 290 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 279

of us dancing to an old Afghan song, round and round, everyone
watching and clapping, the world a blur of flowers, dresses, tuxe-
dos, and smiling faces.
The Talib was saying something.
“Pardon?”
“I said would you like to see him? Would you like to see my
boy?” His upper lip curled up in a sneer when he said those last
two words.
“Yes.”
The guard left the room. I heard the creak of a door swinging
open. Heard the guard say something in Pashtu, in a hard voice.
Then, footfalls, and the jingle of bells with each step. It reminded
me of the Monkey Man Hassan and I used to chase down in Shar-
e-Nau. We used to pay him a rupia of our allowance for a dance.
The bell around his monkey’s neck had made that same jingling
sound.
Then the door opened and the guard walked in. He carried a
stereo—a boom box—on his shoulder. Behind him, a boy dressed
in a loose, sapphire blue pirhan-tumban followed.
The resemblance was breathtaking. Disorienting. Rahim
Khan’s Polaroid hadn’t done justice to it.
The boy had his father’s round moon face, his pointy stub of a
chin, his twisted, seashell ears, and the same slight frame. It was
the Chinese doll face of my childhood, the face peering above
fanned-out playing cards all those winter days, the face behind the
mosquito net when we slept on the roof of my father’s house in
the summer. His head was shaved, his eyes darkened with mas-
cara, and his cheeks glowed with an unnatural red. When he
stopped in the middle of the room, the bells strapped around his
anklets stopped jingling.