Page 358 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 347

azines—an April 1996 issue of Time; a Pakistani newspaper show-
ing the face of a young boy who was hit and killed by a train the
week before; an entertainment magazine with smiling Lollywood
actors on its glossy cover. There is an old woman wearing a jade
green shalwar-kameez and a crocheted shawl nodding off in a
wheelchair across from me. Every once in a while, she stirs awake
and mutters a prayer in Arabic. I wonder tiredly whose prayers will
be heard tonight, hers or mine. I picture Sohrab’s face, the
pointed meaty chin, his small seashell ears, his slanting bamboo-
leaf eyes so much like his father’s. A sorrow as black as the night
outside invades me, and I feel my throat clamping.
I need air.
I get up and open the windows. The air coming through the
screen is musty and hot—it smells of overripe dates and dung. I
force it into my lungs in big heaps, but it doesn’t clear the clamp-
ing feeling in my chest. I drop back on the floor. I pick up the
Time magazine and flip through the pages. But I can’t read, can’t
focus on anything. So I toss it on the table and go back to staring
at the zigzagging pattern of the cracks on the cement floor, at the
cobwebs on the ceiling where the walls meet, at the dead flies lit-
tering the windowsill. Mostly, I stare at the clock on the wall. It’s
just past 4 A.M. and I have been shut out of the room with the
swinging double doors for over five hours now. I still haven’t heard
any news.
The floor beneath me begins to feel like part of my body, and
my breathing is growing heavier, slower. I want to sleep, shut my
eyes and lie my head down on this cold, dusty floor. Drift off.
When I wake up, maybe I will discover that everything I saw in the
hotel bathroom was part of a dream: the water drops dripping
from the faucet and landing with a plink into the bloody bathwa-
ter; the left arm dangling over the side of the tub, the blood-