Page 308 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 297

I wanted to tell him I knew what the word meant; I was a
writer. I went to open my mouth. Forgot about the wires again.
“The worst laceration was on your upper lip,” Armand said.
“The impact had cut your upper lip in two, clean down the mid-
dle. But not to worry, the plastics guys sewed it back together and
they think you will have an excellent result, though there will be a
scar. That is unavoidable.
“There was also an orbital fracture on the left side; that’s the
eye socket bone, and we had to fix that too. The wires in your jaws
will come out in about six weeks,” Armand said. “Until then it’s liq-
uids and shakes. You will lose some weight and you will be talking
like Al Pacino from the first Godfather movie for a little while.” He
laughed. “But you have a job to do today. Do you know what it is?”
I shook my head.
“Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start
feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.” He laughed again.
Later, after Aisha changed the IV tubing and raised the head
of the bed like I’d asked, I thought about what had happened to
me. Ruptured spleen. Broken teeth. Punctured lung. Busted eye
socket. But as I watched a pigeon peck at a bread crumb on the
windowsill, I kept thinking of something else Armand/Dr. Faruqi
had said: The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said,
clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.

Farid and Sohrab came to visit the next day. “Do you know
who we are today? Do you remember?” Farid said, only half-
jokingly. I nodded.
“Al hamdullellah!” he said, beaming. “No more talking non-
sense.”