The Kite Runner (25 page)

I tried to take a breath and couldn’t. I tried to blink and couldn’t.

The moment felt surreal—no, not surreal,
absurd
—it had knocked the breath out of me, brought the world around me to a standstill. My face was burning. What was the old saying
about the bad penny? My past was like that, always turning up. His name rose from the deep and I didn’t want to say it, as
if uttering it might conjure him. But he was already here, in the flesh, sitting less than ten feet from me, after all these
years. His name escaped my lips: “Assef.”

“Amir jan.”

“What are you doing here?” I said, knowing how utterly foolish the question sounded, yet unable to think of anything else
to say.

“Me?” Assef arched an eyebrow. “I’m in my element. The question is what are you doing here?”

“I already told you,” I said. My voice was trembling. I wished it wouldn’t do that, wished my flesh wasn’t shrinking against
my bones.

“The boy?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’ll pay you for him,” I said. “I can have money wired.”

“Money?” Assef said. He tittered. “Have you ever heard of Rocking-ham? Western Australia, a slice of heaven. You should see
it, miles and miles of beach. Green water, blue skies. My parents live there, in a beachfront villa. There’s a golf course
behind the villa and a little lake. Father plays golf every day. Mother, she prefers tennis—Father says she has a wicked backhand.
They own an Afghan restaurant and two jewelry stores; both businesses are doing spectacularly.” He plucked a red grape. Put
it, lovingly, in Sohrab’s mouth. “So if I need money, I’ll have
them
wire it to me.” He kissed the side of Sohrab’s neck. The boy flinched a little, closed his eyes again. “Besides, I didn’t
fight the
Shorawi
for money. Didn’t join the Taliban for money either. Do you want to know why I joined them?”

My lips had gone dry. I licked them and found my tongue had dried too.

“Are you thirsty?” Assef said, smirking.

“No.”

“I think you’re thirsty.”

“I’m fine,” I said. The truth was, the room felt too hot suddenly—sweat was bursting from my pores, prickling my skin. And
was this really happening? Was I really sitting across from Assef?

“As you wish,” he said. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, how I joined the Taliban. Well, as you may remember, I wasn’t much of
a religious type. But one day I had an epiphany. I had it in jail. Do you want to hear?”

I said nothing.

“Good. I’ll tell you,” he said. “I spent some time in jail, at Poleh-Charkhi, just after Babrak Karmal took over in 1980.
I ended up there one night, when a group of
Parchami
soldiers marched into our house and ordered my father and me at gunpoint to follow them. The bastards didn’t give a reason,
and they wouldn’t answer my mother’s questions. Not that it was a mystery; everyone knew the communists had no class. They
came from poor families with no name. The same dogs who weren’t fit to lick my shoes before the
Shorawi
came were now ordering me at gunpoint,
Parchami
flag on their lapels, making their little point about the fall of the bourgeoisie and acting like they were the ones with
class. It was happening all over: Round up the rich, throw them in jail, make an example for the comrades.

“Anyway, we were crammed in groups of six in these tiny cells each the size of a refrigerator. Every night the commandant,
a half-Hazara, half-Uzbek thing who smelled like a rotting donkey, would have one of the prisoners dragged out of the cell
and he’d beat him until sweat poured from his fat face. Then he’d light a cigarette, crack his joints, and leave. The next
night, he’d pick someone else. One night, he picked me. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. I’d been peeing blood for three
days. Kidney stones. And if you’ve never had one, believe me when I say it’s the worst imaginable pain. My mother used to
get them too, and I remember she told me once she’d rather give birth than pass a kidney stone. Anyway, what could I do? They
dragged me out and he started kicking me. He had knee-high boots with steel toes that he wore every night for his little kicking
game, and he used them on me. I was screaming and screaming and he kept kicking me and then, suddenly, he kicked me on the
left kidney and the stone passed. Just like that! Oh, the relief!” Assef laughed. “And I yelled
‘
Allah-u-
akbar’
and he kicked me even harder and I started laughing. He got mad and hit me harder, and the harder he kicked me, the harder
I laughed. They threw me back in the cell laughing. I kept laughing and laughing because suddenly I knew that had been a message
from God: He was on
my
side. He wanted me to live for a reason.

“You know, I ran into that commandant on the battlefield a few years later—funny how God works. I found him in a trench just
outside Meymanah, bleeding from a piece of shrapnel in his chest. He was still wearing those same boots. I asked him if he
remembered me. He said no. I told him the same thing I just told you, that I never forget a face. Then I shot him in the balls.
I’ve been on a mission since.”

“What mission is that?” I heard myself say. “Stoning adulterers? Raping children? Flogging women for wearing high heels? Massacring
Hazaras? All in the name of Islam?” The words spilled suddenly and unexpectedly, came out before I could yank the leash. I
wished I could take them back. Swallow them. But they were out. I had crossed a line, and whatever little hope I had of getting
out alive had vanished with those words.

A look of surprise passed across Assef ’s face, briefly, and disappeared. “I see this may turn out to be enjoyable after all,”
he said, snickering. “But there are things traitors like you don’t understand.”

“Like what?”

Assef ’s brow twitched. “Like pride in your people, your customs, your language. Afghanistan is like a beautiful mansion littered
with garbage, and someone has to take out the garbage.”

“That’s what you were doing in Mazar, going door-to-door? Taking out the garbage?”

“Precisely.”

“In the west, they have an expression for that,” I said. “They call it ethnic cleansing.”

“Do they?” Assef ’s face brightened. “Ethnic cleansing. I like it. I like the sound of it.”

“All I want is the boy.”

“Ethnic cleansing,” Assef murmured, tasting the words.

“I want the boy,” I said again. Sohrab’s eyes flicked to me. They were slaughter sheep’s eyes. They even had the mascara—I
remembered how, on the day of
Eid
of
qorban,
the mullah in our backyard used to apply mascara to the eyes of the sheep and feed it a cube of sugar before slicing its throat.
I thought I saw pleading in Sohrab’s eyes.

“Tell me why,” Assef said. He pinched Sohrab’s earlobe between his teeth. Let go. Sweat beads rolled down his brow.

“That’s my business.”

“What do you want to do with him?” he said. Then a coy smile. “Or
to
him.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said.

“How would you know? Have you tried it?”

“I want to take him to a better place.”

“Tell me why.”

“That’s my business,” I said. I didn’t know what had emboldened me to be so curt, maybe the fact that I thought I was going
to die anyway.

“I wonder,” Assef said. “I wonder why you’ve come all this way, Amir, come all this way for a Hazara? Why are you here? Why
are you
really
here?”

“I have my reasons,” I said.

“Very well then,” Assef said, sneering. He shoved Sohrab in the back, pushed him right into the table. Sohrab’s hips struck
the table, knocking it upside down and spilling the grapes. He fell on them, face first, and stained his shirt purple with
grape juice. The table’s legs, crossing through the ring of brass balls, were now pointing to the ceiling.

“Take him, then,” Assef said. I helped Sohrab to his feet, swatted the bits of crushed grape that had stuck to his pants like
barnacles to a pier.

“Go, take him,” Assef said, pointing to the door.

I took Sohrab’s hand. It was small, the skin dry and calloused. His fingers moved, laced themselves with mine. I saw Sohrab
in that Polaroid again, the way his arm was wrapped around Hassan’s leg, his head resting against his father’s hip. They’d
both been smiling. The bells jingled as we crossed the room.

We made it as far as the door.

“Of course,” Assef said behind us, “I didn’t say you could take him for free.”

I turned. “What do you want?”

“You have to earn him.”

“What do you want?”

“We have some unfinished business, you and I,” Assef said. “You remember, don’t you?”

He needn’t have worried. I would never forget the day after Daoud Khan overthrew the king. My entire adult life, whenever
I heard Daoud Khan’s name, what I saw was Hassan with his slingshot pointed at Assef ’s face, Hassan saying that they’d have
to start calling him One-Eyed Assef instead of Assef
Goshkhor
. I remember how envious I’d been of Hassan’s bravery. Assef had backed down, promised that in the end he’d get us both. He’d
kept that promise with Hassan. Now it was my turn.

“All right,” I said, not knowing what else there was to say. I wasn’t about to beg; that would have only sweetened the moment
for him.

Assef called the guards back into the room. “I want you to listen to me,” he said to them. “In a moment, I’m going to close
the door. Then he and I are going to finish an old bit of business. No matter what you hear, don’t come in! Do you hear me?
Don’t come in!”

The guards nodded. Looked from Assef to me. “Yes, Agha sahib.”

“When it’s all done, only one of us will walk out of this room alive,” Assef said. “If it’s him, then he’s earned his freedom
and you let him pass, do you understand?”

The older guard shifted on his feet. “But Agha sahib—”

“If it’s him, you let him pass!” Assef screamed. The two men flinched but nodded again. They turned to go. One of them reached
for Sohrab.

“Let him stay,” Assef said. He grinned. “Let him watch. Lessons are good things for boys.”

The guards left. Assef put down his prayer beads. Reached in the breast pocket of his black vest. What he fished out of that
pocket didn’t surprise me one bit: stainless-steel brass knuckles.

HE HAS GEL IN HIS HAIR
and a Clark Gable mustache above his
thick lips. The gel has soaked through the green paper surgical cap, made
a dark stain the shape of Africa. I remember that about him. That, and the
gold Allah chain around his dark neck. He is peering down at me, speaking
rapidly in a language I
don’t
understand, Urdu, I think. My eyes keep
going to his
Adam’s
apple bobbing up and down, up and down, and I want
to ask him how old he is
anyway—
he looks far too young, like an actor
from some foreign soap
opera—
but all I can mutter is,
I think I gave him a good fight. I think I gave him a good fight.

I DON’T KNOW if I gave Assef a good fight. I don’t think I did. How could I have? That was the first time I’d fought anyone.
I had never so much as thrown a punch in my entire life.

My memory of the fight with Assef is amazingly vivid in stretches: I remember Assef turning on the music before slipping on
his brass knuckles. The prayer rug, the one with the oblong, woven Mecca, came loose from the wall at one point and landed
on my head; the dust from it made me sneeze. I remember Assef shoving grapes in my face, his snarl all spit-shining teeth,
his bloodshot eyes rolling. His turban fell at some point, let loose curls of shoulder-length blond hair.

And the end, of course. That, I still see with perfect clarity. I always will.

Mostly, I remember this: His brass knuckles flashing in the afternoon light; how cold they felt with the first few blows and
how quickly they warmed with my blood. Getting thrown against the wall, a nail where a framed picture may have hung once jabbing
at my back. Sohrab screaming. Tabla, harmonium, a
dil-roba.
Getting hurled against the wall. The knuckles shattering my jaw. Choking on my own teeth, swallowing them, thinking about
all the countless hours I’d spent flossing and brushing. Getting hurled against the wall. Lying on the floor, blood from my
split upper lip staining the mauve carpet, pain ripping through my belly, and wondering when I’d be able to breathe again.
The sound of my ribs snapping like the tree branches Hassan and I used to break to swordfight like Sinbad in those old movies.
Sohrab screaming. The side of my face slamming against the corner of the television stand. That snapping sound again, this
time just under my left eye. Music. Sohrab screaming. Fingers grasping my hair, pulling my head back, the twinkle of stainless
steel. Here they come. That snapping sound yet again, now my nose. Biting down in pain, noticing how my teeth didn’t align
like they used to. Getting kicked. Sohrab screaming.

I don’t know at what point I started laughing, but I did. It hurt to laugh, hurt my jaws, my ribs, my throat. But I was laughing
and laughing. And the harder I laughed, the harder he kicked me, punched me, scratched me.

“WHAT’S SO FUNNY?” Assef kept roaring with each blow. His spittle landed in my eye. Sohrab screamed.

“WHAT’S SO FUNNY?” Assef bellowed. Another rib snapped, this time left lower. What was so funny was that, for the first time
since the winter of 1975, I felt at peace. I laughed because I saw that, in some hidden nook in a corner of my mind, I’d even
been looking forward to this. I remembered the day on the hill I had pelted Hassan with pomegranates and tried to provoke
him. He’d just stood there, doing nothing, red juice soaking through his shirt like blood. Then he’d taken the pomegranate
from my hand, crushed it against his forehead.
Are you
satisfied now?
he’d hissed.
Do you feel better?
I hadn’t been happy and I hadn’t felt better, not at all. But I did now. My body was broken—just how badly I wouldn’t find
out until later—but I felt
healed.
Healed at last. I laughed.