Page 373 - The Kite Runner

362 Khaled Hosseini

distance line to Pakistan, Soraya had told me about the things she
was planning for Sohrab. Swimming classes. Soccer. Bowling
league. Now she’d walk past Sohrab’s room and catch a glimpse of
books sitting unopened in the wicker basket, the growth chart
unmarked, the jigsaw puzzle unassembled, each item a reminder
of a life that could have been. A reminder of a dream that was
wilting even as it was budding. But she hadn’t been alone. I’d had
my own dreams for Sohrab.
While Sohrab was silent, the world was not. One Tuesday
morning last September, the Twin Towers came crumbling down
and, overnight, the world changed. The American flag suddenly
appeared everywhere, on the antennae of yellow cabs weaving
around traffic, on the lapels of pedestrians walking the sidewalks
in a steady stream, even on the grimy caps of San Francisco’s pan-
handlers sitting beneath the awnings of small art galleries and
open-fronted shops. One day I passed Edith, the homeless woman
who plays the accordion every day on the corner of Sutter and
Stockton, and spotted an American flag sticker on the accordion
case at her feet.
Soon after the attacks, America bombed Afghanistan, the
Northern Alliance moved in, and the Taliban scurried like rats into
the caves. Suddenly, people were standing in grocery store lines
and talking about the cities of my childhood, Kandahar, Herat,
Mazar-i-Sharif. When I was very little, Baba took Hassan and me
to Kunduz. I don’t remember much about the trip, except sitting
in the shade of an acacia tree with Baba and Hassan, taking turns
sipping fresh watermelon juice from a clay pot and seeing who
could spit the seeds farther. Now Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and
people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for
Kunduz, the Taliban’s last stronghold in the north. That Decem-
ber, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras gathered in Bonn and,