Page 331 - The Kite Runner

320 Khaled Hosseini

“—they did things ...the bad man and the other two ...they
did things ...did things to me.”
“You’re not dirty, and you’re not full of sin.” I touched his arm
again and he drew away. I reached again, gently, and pulled him to
me. “I won’t hurt you,” I whispered. “I promise.” He resisted a lit-
tle. Slackened. He let me draw him to me and rested his head on
my chest. His little body convulsed in my arms with each sob.
A kinship exists between people who’ve fed from the same
breast. Now, as the boy’s pain soaked through my shirt, I saw that
a kinship had taken root between us too. What had happened in
that room with Assef had irrevocably bound us.
I’d been looking for the right time, the right moment, to ask
the question that had been buzzing around in my head and keep-
ing me up at night. I decided the moment was now, right here,
right now, with the bright lights of the house of God shining on us.
“Would you like to come live in America with me and my
wife?”
He didn’t answer. He sobbed into my shirt and I let him.

For a week, neither one of us mentioned what I had asked
him, as if the question hadn’t been posed at all. Then one day,
Sohrab and I took a taxicab to the Daman-e-Koh Viewpoint—or
“the hem of the mountain.” Perched midway up the Margalla
Hills, it gives a panoramic view of Islamabad, its rows of clean,
tree-lined avenues and white houses. The driver told us we could
see the presidential palace from up there. “If it has rained and the
air is clear, you can even see past Rawalpindi,” he said. I saw his
eyes in his rearview mirror, skipping from Sohrab to me, back and
forth, back and forth. I saw my own face too. It wasn’t as swollen