Page 364 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 353

were children. We’d go up the hill by our house and sit beneath
the pomegranate . . .” I trailed off. Sohrab was looking through the
window again. I forced a smile. “Your father’s favorite was the
story of Rostam and Sohrab and that’s how you got your name, I
know you know that.” I paused, feeling a bit like an idiot. “Any-
way, he said in his letter that it was your favorite too, so I thought
I’d read you some of it. Would you like that?”
Sohrab closed his eyes. Covered them with his arm, the one
with the bruise.
I flipped to the page I had bent in the taxicab. “Here we go,” I
said, wondering for the first time what thoughts had passed
through Hassan’s head when he had finally read the Shahnamah
for himself and discovered that I had deceived him all those times.
I cleared my throat and read. “‘Give ear unto the combat of Sohrab
against Rostam, though it be a tale replete with tears,’” I began. “‘It
came about that on a certain day Rostam rose from his couch and
his mind was filled with forebodings. He bethought him . . .’” I read
him most of chapter 1, up to the part where the young warrior
Sohrab comes to his mother, Tahmineh, the princess of Samen-
gan, and demands to know the identity of his father. I closed the
book. “Do you want me to go on? There are battles coming up,
remember? Sohrab leading his army to the White Castle in Iran?
Should I read on?”
He shook his head slowly. I dropped the book back in the
paper bag. “That’s fine,” I said, encouraged that he had responded
at all. “Maybe we can continue tomorrow. How do you feel?”
Sohrab’s mouth opened and a hoarse sound came out. Dr.
Nawaz had told me that would happen, on account of the breath-
ing tube they had slid through his vocal cords. He licked his lips
and tried again. “Tired.”
“I know. Dr. Nawaz said that was to be expected—”