Page 377 - The Kite Runner

366 Khaled Hosseini

“He was, wasn’t he?” I said, smiling, remembering how, soon
after we arrived in the U.S., Baba started grumbling about Ameri-
can flies. He’d sit at the kitchen table with his flyswatter, watch
the flies darting from wall to wall, buzzing here, buzzing there,
harried and rushed. “In this country, even flies are pressed for
time,” he’d groan. How I had laughed. I smiled at the memory now.
By three o’clock, the rain had stopped and the sky was a cur-
dled gray burdened with lumps of clouds. A cool breeze blew
through the park. More families turned up. Afghans greeted each
other, hugged, kissed, exchanged food. Someone lighted coal in a
barbecue and soon the smell of garlic and morgh kabob flooded
my senses. There was music, some new singer I didn’t know, and
the giggling of children. I saw Sohrab, still in his yellow raincoat,
leaning against a garbage pail, staring across the park at the
empty batting cage.
A little while later, as I was chatting with the former surgeon,
who told me he and Baba had been classmates in eighth grade,
Soraya pulled on my sleeve. “Amir, look!”
She was pointing to the sky. A half-dozen kites were flying
high, speckles of bright yellow, red, and green against the gray sky.
“Check it out,” Soraya said, and this time she was pointing to
a guy selling kites from a stand nearby.
“Hold this,” I said. I gave my cup of tea to Soraya. I excused
myself and walked over to the kite stand, my shoes squishing on
the wet grass. I pointed to a yellow seh-parcha. “Sawl-e-nau
mubabrak,” the kite seller said, taking the twenty and handing me
the kite and a wooden spool of glass tar. I thanked him and wished
him a Happy New Year too. I tested the string the way Hassan and
I used to, by holding it between my thumb and forefinger and
pulling it. It reddened with blood and the kite seller smiled. I
smiled back.