Page 366 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 355

everyone in it is either dead or dying. It’s just you and me now.
Just you and me.
“I can’t give you that,” I said.
“I wish you hadn’t—”
“Please don’t say that.”
“—wish you hadn’t ...I wish you had left me in the water.”
“Don’t ever say that, Sohrab,” I said, leaning forward. “I can’t
bear to hear you talk like that.” I touched his shoulder and he
flinched. Drew away. I dropped my hand, remembering ruefully
how in the last days before I’d broken my promise to him he had
finally become at ease with my touch. “Sohrab, I can’t give you
your old life back, I wish to God I could. But I can take you with
me. That was what I was coming in the bathroom to tell you. You
have a visa to go to America, to live with me and my wife. It’s true.
I promise.”
He sighed through his nose and closed his eyes. I wished I
hadn’t said those last two words. “You know, I’ve done a lot of
things I regret in my life,” I said, “and maybe none more than
going back on the promise I made you. But that will never happen
again, and I am so very profoundly sorry. I ask for your bakhshesh,
your forgiveness. Can you do that? Can you forgive me? Can you
believe me?” I dropped my voice. “Will you come with me?”
As I waited for his reply, my mind flashed back to a winter day
from long ago, Hassan and I sitting on the snow beneath a leafless
sour cherry tree. I had played a cruel game with Hassan that day,
toyed with him, asked him if he would chew dirt to prove his loy-
alty to me. Now I was the one under the microscope, the one who
had to prove my worthiness. I deserved this.
Sohrab rolled to his side, his back to me. He didn’t say anything
for a long time. And then, just as I thought he might have drifted to
sleep, he said with a croak, “I am so khasta.” So very tired.