The Kite Runner (34 page)

Despite her reassurances, looking in the mirror and seeing the thing that insisted it was my face left me a little breathless. It looked like someone had stuck an air pump nozzle under my skin and had pumped away. My eyes were puffy and blue. The worst of it was my mouth, a grotesque blob of purple and red, all bruise and stitches. I tried to smile and a bolt of pain ripped through my lips. I wouldn't be doing that for a while. There were stitches across my left cheek, just under the chin, on the forehead just below the hairline.

The old guy with the leg cast said something in Urdu. I gave him a shrug and shook my head. He pointed to his face, patted it, and grinned a wide, toothless grin. "Very good," he said in English. "Inshallah."

"Thank you," I whispered.

Farid and Sohrab came in just as I put the mirror away. Sohrab took his seat on the stool, rested his head on the bed's side rail.

"You know, the sooner we get you out of here the better," Farid said.

"Dr. Faruqi says—"-

"I don't mean the hospital. I mean Peshawar."

"Why?"

"I don't think you'll be safe here for long," Farid said. He lowered his voice. "The Taliban have friends here. They will start looking for you."

"I think they already may have," I murmured. I thought suddenly of the bearded man who'd wandered into the room and just stood there staring at me.

Farid leaned in. "As soon as you can walk, I'll take you to Islamabad. Not entirely safe there either, no place in Pakistan is, but it's better than here. At least it will buy you some time."

"Farid Jan, this can't be safe for you either. Maybe you shouldn't be seen with me. You have a family to take care of."

Farid made a waving gesture. "My boys are young, but they are very shrewd. They know how to take care of their mothers and sisters." He smiled. "Besides, I didn't say I'd do it for free."

"I wouldn't let you if you offered," I said. I forgot I couldn't smile and tried. A tiny streak of blood trickled down my chin. "Can I ask you for one more favor?"

"For you a thousand times over," Farid said.

And, just like that, I was crying. I hitched gusts of air, tears gushing down my cheeks, stinging the raw flesh of my lips.

"What's the matter?" Farid said, alarmed.

I buried my face in one hand and held up the other. I knew the whole room was watching me. After, I felt tired, hollow. "I'm sorry," I said. Sohrab was looking at me with a frown creasing his brow.

When I could talk again, I told Farid what I needed. "Rahim Khan said they live here in Peshawar."

"Maybe you should write down their names," Farid said, eyeing me cautiously, as if wondering what might set me off next. I scribbled their names on a scrap of paper towel. "John and Betty Caldwell."

Farid pocketed the folded piece of paper. "I will look for them as soon as I can," he said. He turned to Sohrab. "As for you, I'll pick you up this evening. Don't tire Amir agha too much."

But Sohrab had wandered to the window, where a half-dozen pigeons strutted back and forth on the sill, pecking at wood and scraps of old bread.

IN THE MIDDLE DRAWER of the dresser beside my bed, I had found an old
National Geographic
magazine, a chewed-up pencil, a comb with missing teeth, and what I was reaching for now, sweat pouring down my face from the effort: a deck of cards. I had counted them earlier and, surprisingly, found the deck complete. I asked Sohrab if he wanted to play. I didn't expect him to answer, let alone play. He'd been quiet since we had fled Kabul.

But he turned from the window and said, "The only game I know is panjpar."

"I feel sorry for you already, because I am a grand master at panjpar. World renowned."

He took his seat on the stool next to me. I dealt him his five cards. "When your father and I were your age, we used to play this game. Especially in the winter, when it snowed and we couldn't go outside. We used to play until the sun went down."

He played me a card and picked one up from the pile. I stole looks at him as he pondered his cards. He was his father in so many ways: the way he fanned out his cards with both hands, the way he squinted while reading them, the way he rarely looked a person in the eye. 

We played in silence. I won the first game, let him win the next one, and lost the next five fair and square. "You're as good as your father, maybe even better," I said, after my last loss. "I used to beat him sometimes, but I think he let me win." I paused before saying, "Your father and I were nursed by the same woman."

"I know."

"What... what did he tell you about us?"

"That you were the best friend he ever had," he said.

I twirled the jack of diamonds in my fingers, flipped it back and forth. "I wasn't such a good friend, I'm afraid," I said. "But I'd like to be your friend. I think I could be a good friend to you. Would that be all right? Would you like that?" I put my hand on his arm, gingerly, but he flinched. He dropped his cards and pushed away on the stool. He walked back to the window. The sky was awash with streaks of red and purple as the sun set on Peshawar. From the street below came a succession of honks and the braying of a donkey, the whistle of a policeman. Sohrab stood in that crimson light, forehead pressed to the glass, fists buried in his armpits.

AISHA HAD A MALE ASSISTANT help me take my first steps that night. I only walked around the room once, one hand clutching the wheeled IV stand, the other clasping the assistant's fore arm. It took me ten minutes to make it back to bed, and, by then, the incision on my stomach throbbed and I'd broken out in a drenching sweat. I lay in bed, gasping, my heart hammering in my ears, thinking how much I missed my wife.

Sohrab and I played panjpar most of the next day, again in silence. And the day after that. We hardly spoke, just played panjpar, me propped in bed, he on the three-legged stool, our routine broken only by my taking a walk around the room, or going to the bathroom down the hall. I had a dream later that night. I dreamed Assef was standing in the doorway of my hospital room, brass ball still in his eye socket. "We're the same, you and I," he was saying. "You nursed with him, but you're my twin."

I TOLD ARMAND early that next day that I was leaving.

"It's still early for discharge," Armand protested. He wasn't dressed in surgical scrubs that day, instead in a button-down navy blue suit and yellow tie. The gel was back in the hair. "You are still in intravenous antibiotics and—"

"I have to go," I said. "I appreciate everything you've done for me, all of you. Really. But I have to leave."

"Where will you go?" Armand said.

"I'd rather not say."

"You can hardly walk."

"I can walk to the end of the hall and back," I said. "I'll b fine." The plan was this: Leave the hospital. Get the money from the safe-deposit box and pay my medical bills. Drive to the orphanage and drop Sohrab off with John and Betty Caldwell Then get a ride to Islamabad and change travel plans. Give myself a few more days to get better. Fly home.

That was the plan, anyway. Until Farid and Sohrab arrived that morning. "Your friends, this John and Betty Caldwell, they aren't in Peshawar," Farid said.

It had taken me ten minutes Just to slip into my pirhan-tumban. My chest, where they'd cut me to insert the chest tube hurt when I raised my arm, and my stomach throbbed every time I leaned over. I was drawing ragged breaths just from the effort of packing a few of my belongings into a brown paper bag. But I'd managed to get ready and was sitting on the edge of the bed when Farid came in with the news. Sohrab sat on the bed next to me.

"Where did they go?" I asked.

Farid shook his head. "You don't understand—"

"Because Rahim Khan said—"

"I went to the U.S. consulate," Farid said, picking up my bag. "There never was a John and Betty Caldwell in Peshawar. According to the people at the consulate, they never existed. Not here in Peshawar, anyhow."

Next to me, Sohrab was flipping through the pages of the old National Geographic.

WE GOT THE MONEY from the bank. The manager, a paunchy man with sweat patches under his arms, kept flashing smiles and telling me that no one in the bank had touched the money.

"Absolutely nobody," he said gravely, swinging his index finger the same way Armand had.

Driving through Peshawar with so much money in a paper bag was a slightly frightening experience. Plus, I suspected every bearded man who stared at me to be a Talib killer, sent by Assef. Two things compounded my fears: There are a lot of bearded men in Peshawar, and everybody stares.

"What do we do with him?" Farid said, walking me slowly from the hospital accounting office back to the car. Sohrab was in the backseat of the Land Cruiser, looking at traffic through the rolled-down window, chin resting on his palms.

"He can't stay in Peshawar," I said, panting.

"Nay, Amir agha, he can't," Farid said. He'd read the question in my words. "I'm sorry. I wish I—"

"That's all right, Farid," I said. I managed a tired smile. "You have mouths to feed." A dog was standing next to the truck now, propped on its rear legs, paws on the truck's door, tail wagging. Sohrab was petting the dog. "I guess he goes to Islamabad for now," I said.

I SLEPT THROUGH almost the entire four-hour ride to Islamabad. I dreamed a lot, and most of it I only remember as a hodge podge of images, snippets of visual memory flashing in my head like cards in a Rolodex: Baba marinating lamb for my thirteenth birthday party. Soraya and I making love for the first time, the sun rising in the east, our ears still ringing from the wedding music, her henna-painted hands laced in mine. The time Baba had taken Hassan and me to a strawberry field in Jalalabad—the owner had told us we could eat as much as we wanted to as long as we bought at least four kilos—and how we'd both ended up with bellyaches. How dark, almost black, Hassan's blood had looked on the snow, dropping from the seat of his pants. Blood is a powerful thing, bachem. Khala Jamila patting Soraya's knee and saying, God knows best, maybe it wasn't meant to be. Sleeping on the roof of my father's house. Baba saying that the only sin that mattered was theft. When you tell a lie, you steal a man's right to the truth. Rahim Khan on the phone, telling me there was a way to be good again. A way to be good again...

If Peshawar was the city that reminded me of what Kabul used to be, then Islamabad was the city Kabul could have become someday. The streets were wider than Peshawar's, cleaner, and lined with rows of hibiscus and flame trees. The bazaars were more organized and not nearly as clogged with rickshaws and pedestrians. The architecture was more elegant too, more modern, and I saw parks where roses and jasmine bloomed in the shadows of trees.

Farid found a small hotel on a side street running along the foot of the Margalla Hills. We passed the famous Shah Faisal Mosque on the way there, reputedly the biggest mosque in the world, with its giant concrete girders and soaring minarets. Sohrab perked up at the sight of the mosque, leaned out of the window and looked at it until Farid turned a corner.

THE HOTEL ROOM was a vast improvement over the one in Kabul where Farid and I had stayed. The sheets were clean, the carpet vacuumed, and the bathroom spotless. There was shampoo, soap, razors for shaving, a bathtub, and towels that smelled like lemon. And no bloodstains on the walls. One other thing: a television set sat on the dresser across from the two single beds.

"Look!" I said to Sohrab. I turned it on manually—no remote—and turned the dial. I found a children's show with two fluffy sheep puppets singing in Urdu. Sohrab sat on one of the beds and drew his knees to his chest. Images from the TV reflected in his green eyes as he watched, stone-faced, rocking back and forth. I remembered the time I'd promised Hassan I'd buy his family a color TV when we both grew up.

"I'll get going, Amir agha," Farid said.

"Stay the night," I said. "It's a long drive. Leave tomorrow."

"Tashakor," he said. "But I want to get back tonight. I miss my children." On his way out of the room, he paused in the doorway. "Good-bye, Sohrab jan," he said. He waited for a reply, but Sohrab paid him no attention. Just rocked back and forth, his face lit by the silver glow of the images flickering across the screen.

Outside, I gave him an envelope. When he tore it, his mouth opened.

"I didn't know how to thank you," I said. "You've done so much for me."

"How much is in here?" Farid said, slightly dazed.

"A little over two thousand dollars."

"Two thou—" he began. His lower lip was quivering a little. Later, when he pulled away from the curb, he honked twice and waved. I waved back. I never saw him again.

I returned to the hotel room and found Sohrab lying on the bed, curled up in a big C. His eyes were closed but I couldn't tell if he was sleeping. He had shut off the television. I sat on my bed and grimaced with pain, wiped the cool sweat off my brow. I wondered how much longer it would hurt to get up, sit down, roll over in bed. I wondered when I'd be able to eat solid food. I wondered what I'd do with the wounded little boy lying on the bed, though a part of me already knew.

There was a carafe of water on the dresser. I poured a glass and took two of Armand's pain pills. The water was warm and bitter. I pulled the curtains, eased myself back on the bed, and lay down. I thought my chest would rip open. When the pain dropped a notch and I could breathe again, I pulled the blanket to my chest and waited for Armand's pills to work.

WHEN I WOKE UP, the room was darker. The slice of sky peeking between the curtains was the purple of twilight turning into night. The sheets were soaked and my head pounded. I'd been dreaming again, but I couldn't remember what it had been about.

My heart gave a sick lurch when I looked to Sohrab's bed and found it empty I called his name. The sound of my voice startled me. It was disorienting, sitting in a dark hotel room, thousands of miles from home, my body broken, calling the name of a boy I'd only met a few days ago. I called his name again and heard nothing. I struggled out of bed, checked the bathroom, looked in the narrow hallway outside the room. He was gone.