Page 295 - The Kite Runner

284 Khaled Hosseini

laughed. They threw me back in the cell laughing. I kept laughing
and laughing because suddenly I knew that had been a message
from God: He was on my side. He wanted me to live for a reason.
“You know, I ran into that commandant on the battlefield a
few years later—funny how God works. I found him in a trench
just outside Meymanah, bleeding from a piece of shrapnel in his
chest. He was still wearing those same boots. I asked him if he
remembered me. He said no. I told him the same thing I just told
you, that I never forget a face. Then I shot him in the balls. I’ve
been on a mission since.”
“What mission is that?” I heard myself say. “Stoning adulter-
ers? Raping children? Flogging women for wearing high heels?
Massacring Hazaras? All in the name of Islam?” The words spilled
suddenly and unexpectedly, came out before I could yank the
leash. I wished I could take them back. Swallow them. But they
were out. I had crossed a line, and whatever little hope I had of
getting out alive had vanished with those words.
A look of surprise passed across Assef’s face, briefly, and dis-
appeared. “I see this may turn out to be enjoyable after all,” he
said, snickering. “But there are things traitors like you don’t
understand.”
“Like what?”
Assef’s brow twitched. “Like pride in your people, your cus-
toms, your language. Afghanistan is like a beautiful mansion lit-
tered with garbage, and someone has to take out the garbage.”
“That’s what you were doing in Mazar, going door-to-door?
Taking out the garbage?”
“Precisely.”
“In the west, they have an expression for that,” I said. “They
call it ethnic cleansing.”