Page 374 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 363

under the watchful eye of the UN, began the process that might
someday end over twenty years of unhappiness in their watan.
Hamid Karzai’s caracul hat and green chapan became famous.
Sohrab sleepwalked through it all.
Soraya and I became involved in Afghan projects, as much out
of a sense of civil duty as the need for something—anything—to
fill the silence upstairs, the silence that sucked everything in like
a black hole. I had never been the active type before, but when a
man named Kabir, a former Afghan ambassador to Sofia, called
and asked if I wanted to help him with a hospital project, I said
yes. The small hospital had stood near the Afghan-Pakistani bor-
der and had a small surgical unit that treated Afghan refugees
with land mine injuries. But it had closed down due to a lack of
funds. I became the project manager, Soraya my comanager. I
spent most of my days in the study, e-mailing people around the
world, applying for grants, organizing fund-raising events. And
telling myself that bringing Sohrab here had been the right thing
to do.
The year ended with Soraya and me on the couch, blanket
spread over our legs, watching Dick Clark on TV. People cheered
and kissed when the silver ball dropped, and confetti whitened
the screen. In our house, the new year began much the same way
the last one had ended. In silence.

Then, four days ago, on a cool rainy day in March 2002,
a small, wondrous thing happened.
I took Soraya, Khala Jamila, and Sohrab to a gathering of
Afghans at Lake Elizabeth Park in Fremont. The general had
finally been summoned to Afghanistan the month before for a
ministry position, and had flown there two weeks earlier—he had
left behind his gray suit and pocket watch. The plan was for Khala