THE  KITE   RUNNER     by  KHALED  HOSSEINI         Published  2003     Afghan  Mellat  Online  Library   www.afghan-­‐mellat.org.uk _December  2001_   I  became  what  I  am  today  at  the  age  of  twelve,  on  a  frigid  overcast  day  in  the   winter  of  1975.  I  remember  the  precise  moment,  crouching  behind  a  crumbling   mud  wall,  peeking  into  the  alley  near  the  frozen  creek.  That  was  a  long  time  ago,   but  it's  wrong  what  they  say  about  the  past,  I've  learned,  about  how  you  can  bury   it.  Because  the  past  claws  its  way  out.  Looking  back  now,  I  realize  I  have  been   peeking  into  that  deserted  alley  for  the  last  twenty-­‐six  years.       One  day  last  summer,  my  friend  Rahim  Khan  called  from  Pakistan.  He   asked  me  to  come  see  him.  Standing  in  the  kitchen  with  the  receiver  to  my  ear,  I   knew  it  wasn't  just  Rahim  Khan  on  the  line.  It  was  my  past  of  unatoned**  sins.   After  I  hung  up,  I  went  for  a  walk  along  Spreckels  Lake  on  the  northern  edge  of   Golden  Gate  Park.  The  early-­‐afternoon  sun  sparkled  on  the  water  where  dozens   of  miniature  boats  sailed,  propelled  by  a  crisp  breeze.  Then  I  glanced  up  and  saw   a  pair  of  kites,  red  with  long  blue  tails,  soaring  in  the  sky.  They  danced  high   above  the  trees  on  the  west  end  of  the  park,  over  the  windmills,  floating  side  by   side  like  a  pair  of  eyes  looking  down  on  San  Francisco,  the  city  I  now  call  home.   And  suddenly  Hassan's  voice  whispered  in  my  head:  _For  you,  a  thousand  times   over._  Hassan  the  harelipped  kite  runner.       I  sat  on  a  park  bench  near  a  willow  tree.  I  thought  about  something  Rahim   Khan  said  just  before  he  hung  up,  almost  as  an  after  thought.  _There  is  a  way  to   be  good  again._  I  looked  up  at  those  twin  kites.  I  thought  about  Hassan.  Thought   about  Baba.  Ali.  Kabul.  I  thought  of  the  life  I  had  lived  until  the  winter  of  1975   came  and  changed  everything.  And  made  me  what  I  am  today.             TWO         When  we  were  children,  Hassan  and  I  used  to  climb  the  poplar  trees  in  the   driveway  of  my  father's  house  and  annoy  our  neighbors  by  reflecting  sunlight   into  their  homes  with  a  shard  of  mirror.  We  would  sit  across  from  each  other  on   a  pair  of  high  branches,  our  naked  feet  dangling,  our  trouser  pockets  filled  with dried  mulberries  and  walnuts.  We  took  turns  with  the  mirror  as  we  ate   mulberries,  pelted  each  other  with  them,  giggling,  laughing;  I  can  still  see  Hassan   up  on  that  tree,  sunlight  flickering  through  the  leaves  on  his  almost  perfectly   round  face,  a  face  like  a  Chinese  doll  chiseled  from  hardwood:  his  flat,  broad  nose   and  slanting,  narrow  eyes  like  bamboo  leaves,  eyes  that  looked,  depending  on   the  light,  gold,  green,  even  sapphire  I  can  still  see  his  tiny  low-­‐set  ears  and  that   pointed  stub  of  a  chin,  a  meaty  appendage  that  looked  like  it  was  added  as  a   mere  afterthought.  And  the  cleft  lip,  just  left  of  midline,  where  the  Chinese  doll   maker's  instrument  may  have  slipped;  or  perhaps  he  had  simply  grown  tired  and   careless.       Sometimes,  up  in  those  trees,  I  talked  Hassan  into  firing  walnuts  with  his   slingshot  at  the  neighbor's  one-­‐eyed  German  shepherd.  Hassan  never  wanted  to,   but  if  I  asked,  _really_  asked,  he  wouldn't  deny  me.  Hassan  never  denied  me   anything.  And  he  was  deadly  with  his  slingshot.  Hassan's  father,  Ali,  used  to  catch   us  and  get  mad,  or  as  mad  as  someone  as  gentle  as  Ali  could  ever  get.  He  would   wag  his  finger  and  wave  us  down  from  the  tree.  He  would  take  the  mirror  and   tell  us  what  his  mother  had  told  him,  that  the  devil  shone  mirrors  too,  shone   them  to  distract  Muslims  during  prayer.  "And  he  laughs  while  he  does  it,"  he   always  added,  scowling  at  his  son.       "Yes,  Father,"  Hassan  would  mumble,  looking  down  at  his  feet.  But  he   never  told  on  me.  Never  told  that  the  mirror,  like  shooting  walnuts  at  the   neighbor's  dog,  was  always  my  idea.       The  poplar  trees  lined  the  redbrick  driveway,  which  led  to  a  pair  of   wrought-­‐iron  gates.  They  in  turn  opened  into  an  extension  of  the  driveway  into   my  father's  estate.  The  house  sat  on  the  left  side  of  the  brick  path,  the  backyard   at  the  end  of  it.       Everyone  agreed  that  my  father,  my  Baba,  had  built  the  most  beautiful   house  in  the  Wazir  Akbar  Khan  district,  a  new  and  affluent  neighborhood  in  the   northern  part  of  Kabul.  Some  thought  it  was  the  prettiest  house  in  all  of  Kabul.  A   broad  entryway  flanked  by  rosebushes  led  to  the  sprawling  house  of  marble   floors  and  wide  windows.  Intricate  mosaic  tiles,  handpicked  by  Baba  in  Isfahan,   covered  the  floors  of  the  four  bathrooms.  Gold-­‐stitched  tapestries,  which  Baba   had  bought  in  Calcutta,  lined  the  walls;  a  crystal  chandelier  hung  from  the   vaulted  ceiling.       Upstairs  was  my  bedroom,  Baba's  room,  and  his  study,  also  known  as  "the   smoking  room,"  which  perpetually  smelled  of  tobacco  and  cinnamon.  Baba  and   his  friends  reclined  on  black  leather  chairs  there  after  Ali  had  served  dinner. They  stuffed  their  pipes-­‐-­‐except  Baba  always  called  it  "fattening  the  pipe"-­‐-­‐and   discussed  their  favorite  three  topics:  politics,  business,  soccer.  Sometimes  I   asked  Baba  if  I  could  sit  with  them,  but  Baba  would  stand  in  the  doorway.  "Go  on,   now,"  he'd  say.  "This  is  grown-­‐ups'  time.  Why  don't  you  go  read  one  of  those   books  of  yours?"  He'd  close  the  door,  leave  me  to  wonder  why  it  was  always   grown-­‐ups'  time  with  him.  I'd  sit  by  the  door,  knees  drawn  to  my  chest.   Sometimes  I  sat  there  for  an  hour,  sometimes  two,  listening  to  their  laughter,   their  chatter.       The  living  room  downstairs  had  a  curved  wall  with  custom  built  cabinets.   Inside  sat  framed  family  pictures:  an  old,  grainy  photo  of  my  grandfather  and   King  Nadir  Shah  taken  in  1931,  two  years  before  the  king's  assassination;  they   are  standing  over  a  dead  deer,  dressed  in  knee-­‐high  boots,  rifles  slung  over  their   shoulders.  There  was  a  picture  of  my  parents'  wedding  night,  Baba  dashing  in  his   black  suit  and  my  mother  a  smiling  young  princess  in  white.  Here  was  Baba  and   his  best  friend  and  business  partner,  Rahim  Khan,  standing  outside  our  house,   neither  one  smiling-­‐-­‐I  am  a  baby  in  that  photograph  and  Baba  is  holding  me,   looking  tired  and  grim.  I'm  in  his  arms,  but  it's  Rahim  Khan's  pinky  my  fingers   are  curled  around.       The  curved  wall  led  into  the  dining  room,  at  the  center  of  which  was  a   mahogany  table  that  could  easily  sit  thirty  guests-­‐-­‐and,  given  my  father's  taste   for  extravagant  parties,  it  did  just  that  almost  every  week.  On  the  other  end  of   the  dining  room  was  a  tall  marble  fireplace,  always  lit  by  the  orange  glow  of  a  fire   in  the  wintertime.       A  large  sliding  glass  door  opened  into  a  semicircular  terrace  that   overlooked  two  acres  of  backyard  and  rows  of  cherry  trees.  Baba  and  Ali  had   planted  a  small  vegetable  garden  along  the  eastern  wall:  tomatoes,  mint,   peppers,  and  a  row  of  corn  that  never  really  took.  Hassan  and  I  used  to  call  it  "the   Wall  of  Ailing  Corn."       On  the  south  end  of  the  garden,  in  the  shadows  of  a  loquat  tree,  was  the   servants'  home,  a  modest  little  mud  hut  where  Hassan  lived  with  his  father.       It  was  there,  in  that  little  shack,  that  Hassan  was  born  in  the  winter  of   1964,  just  one  year  after  my  mother  died  giving  birth  to  me.       In  the  eighteen  years  that  I  lived  in  that  house,  I  stepped  into  Hassan  and   Ali's  quarters  only  a  handful  of  times.  When  the  sun  dropped  low  behind  the  hills   and  we  were  done  playing  for  the  day,  Hassan  and  I  parted  ways.  I  went  past  the rosebushes  to  Baba's  mansion,  Hassan  to  the  mud  shack  where  he  had  been   born,  where  he'd  lived  his  entire  life.  I  remember  it  was  spare,  clean,  dimly  lit  by   a  pair  of  kerosene  lamps.  There  were  two  mattresses  on  opposite  sides  of  the   room,  a  worn  Herati  rug  with  frayed  edges  in  between,  a  three-­‐legged  stool,  and   a  wooden  table  in  the  corner  where  Hassan  did  his  drawings.  The  walls  stood   bare,  save  for  a  single  tapestry  with  sewn-­‐in  beads  forming  the  words  _Allah-­‐u-­‐ akbar_.  Baba  had  bought  it  for  Ali  on  one  of  his  trips  to  Mashad.       It  was  in  that  small  shack  that  Hassan's  mother,  Sanaubar,  gave  birth  to   him  one  cold  winter  day  in  1964.  While  my  mother  hemorrhaged  to  death  during   childbirth,  Hassan  lost  his  less  than  a  week  after  he  was  born.  Lost  her  to  a  fate   most  Afghans  considered  far  worse  than  death:  She  ran  off  with  a  clan  of   traveling  singers  and  dancers.       Hassan  never  talked  about  his  mother,  as  if  she'd  never  existed.  I  always   wondered  if  he  dreamed  about  her,  about  what  she  looked  like,  where  she  was.  I   wondered  if  he  longed  to  meet  her.  Did  he  ache  for  her,  the  way  I  ached  for  the   mother  I  had  never  met?  One  day,  we  were  walking  from  my  father's  house  to   Cinema  Zainab  for  a  new  Iranian  movie,  taking  the  shortcut  through  the  military   barracks  near  Istiqlal  Middle  School-­‐-­‐Baba  had  forbidden  us  to  take  that   shortcut,  but  he  was  in  Pakistan  with  Rahim  Khan  at  the  time.  We  hopped  the   fence  that  surrounded  the  barracks,  skipped  over  a  little  creek,  and  broke  into   the  open  dirt  field  where  old,  abandoned  tanks  collected  dust.  A  group  of  soldiers   huddled  in  the  shade  of  one  of  those  tanks,  smoking  cigarettes  and  playing  cards.   One  of  them  saw  us,  elbowed  the  guy  next  to  him,  and  called  Hassan.       "Hey,  you!"  he  said.  "I  know  you."       We  had  never  seen  him  before.  He  was  a  squatly  man  with  a  shaved  head   and  black  stubble  on  his  face.  The  way  he  grinned  at  us,  leered,  scared  me.  "Just   keep  walking,"  I  muttered  to  Hassan.       "You!  The  Hazara!  Look  at  me  when  I'm  talking  to  you!"  the  soldier   barked.  He  handed  his  cigarette  to  the  guy  next  to  him,  made  a  circle  with  the   thumb  and  index  finger  of  one  hand.  Poked  the  middle  finger  of  his  other  hand   through  the  circle.  Poked  it  in  and  out.  In  and  out.  "I  knew  your  mother,  did  you   know  that?  I  knew  her  real  good.  I  took  her  from  behind  by  that  creek  over   there."       The  soldiers  laughed.  One  of  them  made  a  squealing  sound.  I  told  Hassan   to  keep  walking,  keep  walking. "What  a  tight  little  sugary  cunt  she  had!"  the  soldier  was  saying,  shaking   hands  with  the  others,  grinning.  Later,  in  the  dark,  after  the  movie  had  started,  I   heard  Hassan  next  to  me,  croaking.  Tears  were  sliding  down  his  cheeks.  I   reached  across  my  seat,  slung  my  arm  around  him,  pulled  him  close.  He  rested   his  head  on  my  shoulder.  "He  took  you  for  someone  else,"  I  whispered.  "He  took   you  for  someone  else."       I'm  told  no  one  was  really  surprised  when  Sanaubar  eloped.  People  _had_   raised  their  eyebrows  when  Ali,  a  man  who  had  memorized  the  Koran,  married   Sanaubar,  a  woman  nineteen  years  younger,  a  beautiful  but  notoriously   unscrupulous  woman  who  lived  up  to  her  dishonorable  reputation.  Like  Ali,  she   was  a  Shi'a  Muslim  and  an  ethnic  Hazara.  She  was  also  his  first  cousin  and   therefore  a  natural  choice  for  a  spouse.  But  beyond  those  similarities,  Ali  and   Sanaubar  had  little  in  common,  least  of  all  their  respective  appearances.  While   Sanaubar's  brilliant  green  eyes  and  impish  face  had,  rumor  has  it,  tempted   countless  men  into  sin,  Ali  had  a  congenital  paralysis  of  his  lower  facial  muscles,   a  condition  that  rendered  him  unable  to  smile  and  left  him  perpetually  grim-­‐ faced.  It  was  an  odd  thing  to  see  the  stone-­‐faced  Ali  happy,  or  sad,  because  only   his  slanted  brown  eyes  glinted  with  a  smile  or  welled  with  sorrow.  People  say   that  eyes  are  windows  to  the  soul.  Never  was  that  more  true  than  with  Ali,  who   could  only  reveal  himself  through  his  eyes.       I  have  heard  that  Sanaubar's  suggestive  stride  and  oscillating  hips  sent   men  to  reveries  of  infidelity.  But  polio  had  left  Ali  with  a  twisted,  atrophied  right   leg  that  was  sallow  skin  over  bone  with  little  in  between  except  a  paper-­‐thin   layer  of  muscle.  I  remember  one  day,  when  I  was  eight,  Ali  was  taking  me  to  the   bazaar  to  buy  some  _naan_.  I  was  walking  behind  him,  humming,  trying  to   imitate  his  walk.  I  watched  him  swing  his  scraggy  leg  in  a  sweeping  arc,  watched   his  whole  body  tilt  impossibly  to  the  right  every  time  he  planted  that  foot.  It   seemed  a  minor  miracle  he  didn't  tip  over  with  each  step.  When  I  tried  it,  I   almost  fell  into  the  gutter.  That  got  me  giggling.  Ali  turned  around,  caught  me   aping  him.  He  didn't  say  anything.  Not  then,  not  ever.  He  just  kept  walking.       Ali's  face  and  his  walk  frightened  some  of  the  younger  children  in  the   neighborhood.  But  the  real  trouble  was  with  the  older  kids.  They  chased  him  on   the  street,  and  mocked  him  when  he  hobbled  by.  Some  had  taken  to  calling  him   _Babalu_,  or  Boogeyman.       "Hey,  Babalu,  who  did  you  eat  today?"  they  barked  to  a  chorus  of  laughter.   "Who  did  you  eat,  you  flat-­‐nosed  Babalu?" They  called  him  "flat-­‐nosed"  because  of  Ali  and  Hassan's  characteristic   Hazara  Mongoloid  features.  For  years,  that  was  all  I  knew  about  the  Hazaras,  that   they  were  Mogul  descendants,  and  that  they  looked  a  little  like  Chinese  people.   School  text  books  barely  mentioned  them  and  referred  to  their  ancestry  only  in   passing.  Then  one  day,  I  was  in  Baba's  study,  looking  through  his  stuff,  when  I   found  one  of  my  mother's  old  history  books.  It  was  written  by  an  Iranian  named   Khorami.  I  blew  the  dust  off  it,  sneaked  it  into  bed  with  me  that  night,  and  was   stunned  to  find  an  entire  chapter  on  Hazara  history.  An  entire  chapter  dedicated   to  Hassan's  people!  In  it,  I  read  that  my  people,  the  Pashtuns,  had  persecuted  and   oppressed  the  Hazaras.  It  said  the  Hazaras  had  tried  to  rise  against  the  Pashtuns   in  the  nineteenth  century,  but  the  Pashtuns  had  "quelled  them  with  unspeakable   violence."  The  book  said  that  my  people  had  killed  the  Hazaras,  driven  them  from   their  lands,  burned  their  homes,  and  sold  their  women.  The  book  said  part  of  the   reason  Pashtuns  had  oppressed  the  Hazaras  was  that  Pashtuns  were  Sunni   Muslims,  while  Hazaras  were  Shi'a.  The  book  said  a  lot  of  things  I  didn't  know,   things  my  teachers  hadn't  mentioned.  Things  Baba  hadn't  mentioned  either.  It   also  said  some  things  I  did  know,  like  that  people  called  Hazaras  _mice-­‐eating,   flat-­‐nosed,  load-­‐carrying  donkeys_.  I  had  heard  some  of  the  kids  in  the   neighborhood  yell  those  names  to  Hassan.       The  following  week,  after  class,  I  showed  the  book  to  my  teacher  and   pointed  to  the  chapter  on  the  Hazaras.  He  skimmed  through  a  couple  of  pages,   snickered,  handed  the  book  back.  "That's  the  one  thing  Shi'a  people  do  well,"  he   said,  picking  up  his  papers,  "passing  themselves  as  martyrs."  He  wrinkled  his   nose  when  he  said  the  word  Shi'a,  like  it  was  some  kind  of  disease.       But  despite  sharing  ethnic  heritage  and  family  blood,  Sanaubar  joined  the   neighborhood  kids  in  taunting  Ali.  I  have  heard  that  she  made  no  secret  of  her   disdain  for  his  appearance.       "This  is  a  husband?"  she  would  sneer.  "I  have  seen  old  donkeys  better   suited  to  be  a  husband."       In  the  end,  most  people  suspected  the  marriage  had  been  an  arrangement   of  sorts  between  Ali  and  his  uncle,  Sanaubar's  father.  They  said  Ali  had  married   his  cousin  to  help  restore  some  honor  to  his  uncle's  blemished  name,  even   though  Ali,  who  had  been  orphaned  at  the  age  of  five,  had  no  worldly  possessions   or  inheritance  to  speak  of.       Ali  never  retaliated  against  any  of  his  tormentors,  I  suppose  partly   because  he  could  never  catch  them  with  that  twisted  leg  dragging  behind  him.   But  mostly  because  Ali  was  immune  to  the  insults  of  his  assailants;  he  had  found his  joy,  his  antidote,  the  moment  Sanaubar  had  given  birth  to  Hassan.  It  had  been   a  simple  enough  affair.  No  obstetricians,  no  anesthesiologists,  no  fancy   monitoring  devices.  Just  Sanaubar  lying  on  a  stained,  naked  mattress  with  Ali   and  a  midwife  helping  her.  She  hadn't  needed  much  help  at  all,  because,  even  in   birth,  Hassan  was  true  to  his  nature:  He  was  incapable  of  hurting  anyone.  A  few   grunts,  a  couple  of  pushes,  and  out  came  Hassan.  Out  he  came  smiling.       As  confided  to  a  neighbor's  servant  by  the  garrulous  midwife,  who  had   then  in  turn  told  anyone  who  would  listen,  Sanaubar  had  taken  one  glance  at  the   baby  in  Ali's  arms,  seen  the  cleft  lip,  and  barked  a  bitter  laughter.       "There,"  she  had  said.  "Now  you  have  your  own  idiot  child  to  do  all  your   smiling  for  you!"  She  had  refused  to  even  hold  Hassan,  and  just  five  days  later,   she  was  gone.       Baba  hired  the  same  nursing  woman  who  had  fed  me  to  nurse  Hassan.  Ali   told  us  she  was  a  blue-­‐eyed  Hazara  woman  from  Bamiyan,  the  city  of  the  giant   Buddha  statues.  "What  a  sweet  singing  voice  she  had,"  he  used  to  say  to  us.       What  did  she  sing,  Hassan  and  I  always  asked,  though  we  already  knew-­‐-­‐ Ali  had  told  us  countless  times.  We  just  wanted  to  hear  Ali  sing.       He'd  clear  his  throat  and  begin:  _On  a  high  mountain  I  stood,  And  cried   the  name  of  Ali,  Lion  of  God  O  Ali,  Lion  of  God,  King  of  Men,  Bring  joy  to  our   sorrowful  hearts._  Then  he  would  remind  us  that  there  was  a  brotherhood   between  people  who  had  fed  from  the  same  breast,  a  kinship  that  not  even  time   could  break.       Hassan  and  I  fed  from  the  same  breasts.  We  took  our  first  steps  on  the   same  lawn  in  the  same  yard.  And,  under  the  same  roof,  we  spoke  our  first  words.       Mine  was  _Baba_.       His  was  _Amir_.  My  name. Looking  back  on  it  now,  I  think  the  foundation  for  what  happened  in  the   winter  of  1975-­‐-­‐and  all  that  followed-­‐-­‐was  already  laid  in  those  first  words.             THREE         Lore  has  it  my  father  once  wrestled  a  black  bear  in  Baluchistan  with  his  bare   hands.  If  the  story  had  been  about  anyone  else,  it  would  have  been  dismissed  as   _laaf_,  that  Afghan  tendency  to  exaggerate-­‐-­‐sadly,  almost  a  national  affliction;  if   someone  bragged  that  his  son  was  a  doctor,  chances  were  the  kid  had  once   passed  a  biology  test  in  high  school.  But  no  one  ever  doubted  the  veracity  of  any   story  about  Baba.  And  if  they  did,  well,  Baba  did  have  those  three  parallel  scars   coursing  a  jagged  path  down  his  back.  I  have  imagined  Baba's  wrestling  match   countless  times,  even  dreamed  about  it.  And  in  those  dreams,  I  can  never  tell   Baba  from  the  bear.       It  was  Rahim  Khan  who  first  referred  to  him  as  what  eventually  became   Baba's  famous  nickname,  _Toophan  agha_,  or  "Mr.  Hurricane."  It  was  an  apt   enough  nickname.  My  father  was  a  force  of  nature,  a  towering  Pashtun  specimen   with  a  thick  beard,  a  wayward  crop  of  curly  brown  hair  as  unruly  as  the  man   himself,  hands  that  looked  capable  of  uprooting  a  willow  tree,  and  a  black  glare   that  would  "drop  the  devil  to  his  knees  begging  for  mercy,"  as  Rahim  Khan  used   to  say.  At  parties,  when  all  six-­‐foot-­‐five  of  him  thundered  into  the  room,  attention   shifted  to  him  like  sunflowers  turning  to  the  sun.       Baba  was  impossible  to  ignore,  even  in  his  sleep.  I  used  to  bury  cotton   wisps  in  my  ears,  pull  the  blanket  over  my  head,  and  still  the  sounds  of  Baba's   snoring-­‐-­‐so  much  like  a  growling  truck  engine-­‐-­‐penetrated  the  walls.  And  my   room  was  across  the  hall  from  Baba's  bedroom.  How  my  mother  ever  managed   to  sleep  in  the  same  room  as  him  is  a  mystery  to  me.  It's  on  the  long  list  of  things   I  would  have  asked  my  mother  if  I  had  ever  met  her. In  the  late  1960s,  when  I  was  five  or  six,  Baba  decided  to  build  an   orphanage.  I  heard  the  story  through  Rahim  Khan.  He  told  me  Baba  had  drawn   the  blueprints  himself  despite  the  fact  that  he'd  had  no  architectural  experience   at  all.  Skeptics  had  urged  him  to  stop  his  foolishness  and  hire  an  architect.  Of   course,  Baba  refused,  and  everyone  shook  their  heads  in  dismay  at  his  obstinate   ways.  Then  Baba  succeeded  and  everyone  shook  their  heads  in  awe  at  his   triumphant  ways.  Baba  paid  for  the  construction  of  the  two-­‐story  orphanage,  just   off  the  main  strip  of  Jadeh  Maywand  south  of  the  Kabul  River,  with  his  own   money.  Rahim  Khan  told  me  Baba  had  personally  funded  the  entire  project,   paying  for  the  engineers,  electricians,  plumbers,  and  laborers,  not  to  mention  the   city  officials  whose  "mustaches  needed  oiling."       It  took  three  years  to  build  the  orphanage.  I  was  eight  by  then.  I   remember  the  day  before  the  orphanage  opened,  Baba  took  me  to  Ghargha  Lake,   a  few  miles  north  of  Kabul.  He  asked  me  to  fetch  Hassan  too,  but  I  lied  and  told   him  Hassan  had  the  runs.  I  wanted  Baba  all  to  myself.  And  besides,  one  time  at   Ghargha  Lake,  Hassan  and  I  were  skimming  stones  and  Hassan  made  his  stone   skip  eight  times.  The  most  I  managed  was  five.  Baba  was  there,  watching,  and  he   patted  Hassan  on  the  back.  Even  put  his  arm  around  his  shoulder.       We  sat  at  a  picnic  table  on  the  banks  of  the  lake,  just  Baba  and  me,  eating   boiled  eggs  with  _kofta_  sandwiches-­‐-­‐meatballs  and  pickles  wrapped  in  _naan_.       The  water  was  a  deep  blue  and  sunlight  glittered  on  its  looking  glass-­‐clear   surface.  On  Fridays,  the  lake  was  bustling  with  families  out  for  a  day  in  the  sun.   But  it  was  midweek  and  there  was  only  Baba  and  me,  us  and  a  couple  of   longhaired,  bearded  tourists-­‐-­‐"hippies,"  I'd  heard  them  called.  They  were  sitting   on  the  dock,  feet  dangling  in  the  water,  fishing  poles  in  hand.  I  asked  Baba  why   they  grew  their  hair  long,  but  Baba  grunted,  didn't  answer.  He  was  preparing  his   speech  for  the  next  day,  flipping  through  a  havoc  of  handwritten  pages,  making   notes  here  and  there  with  a  pencil.  I  bit  into  my  egg  and  asked  Baba  if  it  was  true   what  a  boy  in  school  had  told  me,  that  if  you  ate  a  piece  of  eggshell,  you'd  have  to   pee  it  out.  Baba  grunted  again.       I  took  a  bite  of  my  sandwich.  One  of  the  yellow-­‐haired  tourists  laughed   and  slapped  the  other  one  on  the  back.  In  the  distance,  across  the  lake,  a  truck   lumbered  around  a  corner  on  the  hill.  Sunlight  twinkled  in  its  side-­‐view  mirror.       "I  think  I  have  _saratan_,"  I  said.  Cancer.  Baba  lifted  his  head  from  the   pages  flapping  in  the  breeze.  Told  me  I  could  get  the  soda  myself,  all  I  had  to  do   was  look  in  the  trunk  of  the  car.