Page 363 - The Kite Runner

352 Khaled Hosseini

on his back, blanket pulled to his chest, face turned to the win-
dow. I thought he was sleeping, but when I scooted a chair up to
his bed his eyelids fluttered and opened. He looked at me, then
looked away. He was so pale, even with all the blood they had
given him, and there was a large purple bruise in the crease of his
right arm.
“How are you?” I said.
He didn’t answer. He was looking through the window at a
fenced-in sandbox and swing set in the hospital garden. There was
an arch-shaped trellis near the playground, in the shadow of a row
of hibiscus trees, a few green vines climbing up the timber lattice.
A handful of kids were playing with buckets and pails in the sand-
box. The sky was a cloudless blue that day, and I saw a tiny jet
leaving behind twin white trails. I turned back to Sohrab. “I spoke
to Dr. Nawaz a few minutes ago and he thinks you’ll be discharged
in a couple of days. That’s good news, nay?”
Again I was met by silence. The Punjabi boy at the other end
of the room stirred in his sleep and moaned something. “I like
your room,” I said, trying not to look at Sohrab’s bandaged wrists.
“It’s bright, and you have a view.” Silence. A few more awkward
minutes passed, and a light sweat formed on my brow, my upper
lip. I pointed to the untouched bowl of green pea aush on his
nightstand, the unused plastic spoon. “You should try to eat some-
thing. Gain your quwat back, your strength. Do you want me to
help you?”
He held my glance, then looked away, his face set like stone.
His eyes were still lightless, I saw, vacant, the way I had found
them when I had pulled him out of the bathtub. I reached into the
paper bag between my feet and took out the used copy of the Shah-
namah I had bought at the Persian bookstore. I turned the cover
so it faced Sohrab. “I used to read this to your father when we