Page 339 - The Kite Runner

328 Khaled Hosseini

Sohrab smiled shyly. “Thank you very much,” he said in En-
glish. It came out as “Tank you wery match.” It was the only En-
glish he knew, he’d told me, that and “Have a nice day.”
She laughed. “You’re most welcome.” She walked back to her
desk, high heels clicking on the floor.
“Have a nice day,” Sohrab said.

Raymond Andrews was a short fellow with small hands,
nails perfectly trimmed, wedding band on the ring finger. He gave
me a curt little shake; it felt like squeezing a sparrow. Those are
the hands that hold our fates, I thought as Sohrab and I seated our-
selves across from his desk. A Les Misérables poster was nailed to
the wall behind Andrews next to a topographical map of the U.S.
A pot of tomato plants basked in the sun on the windowsill.
“Smoke?” he asked, his voice a deep baritone that was at odds
with his slight stature.
“No thanks,” I said, not caring at all for the way Andrews’s
eyes barely gave Sohrab a glance, or the way he didn’t look at me
when he spoke. He pulled open a desk drawer and lit a cigarette
from a half-empty pack. He also produced a bottle of lotion from
the same drawer. He looked at his tomato plants as he rubbed
lotion into his hands, cigarette dangling from the corner of his
mouth. Then he closed the drawer, put his elbows on the desktop,
and exhaled. “So,” he said, crinkling his gray eyes against the
smoke, “tell me your story.”
I felt like Jean Valjean sitting across from Javert. I reminded
myself that I was on American soil now, that this guy was on my
side, that he got paid for helping people like me. “I want to adopt
this boy, take him back to the States with me,” I said.
“Tell me your story,” he repeated, crushing a flake of ash on