The Kite Runner: Chapters 20–25

Because when Kabul finally did unroll before us, I was certain, absolutely certain, that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Farid must have seen my stupefied expression; shuttling people back and forth to Kabul, he would have become familiar with that expression on the faces of those who hadn’t seen Kabul for a long time.

Returning to Kabul was like running into an old, forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn’t been good to him, that he'd become homeless and destitute.

The asphalt had split in a lightning-streak pattern, and more tangles of weed sprouted through the fissures.

He charged me $75, an unthinkable price given the run-down appearance of the place, but I didn’t mind. Exploitation to finance a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids was another.

He recited a lengthy prayer from the Koran, his nasal voice undulating through the sudden hush of the stadium’s crowd.

Well, as you may remember, I wasn’t much of a religious type. But one day I had an epiphany.

“The worst laceration was on your upper lip,” Armand said.

You had a right to know. So did Hassan. I know it doesn’t absolve anyone of anything, but the Kabul we lived in in those days was a strange world, one in which some things mattered more than the truth.

So he took it out on you instead—Amir, the socially legitimate half, the half that represented the riches he had inherited and the sin-with-impunity privileges that came with them.

I put my hand on his arm, gingerly, but he flinched.

What had happened in that room with Assef had irrevocably bound us.

I had found the boy in squalid conditions, wasting away in an orphanage.

I cleared my throat and read. ‘“Give ear unto the combat of Sohrab against Rostam, though it be a tale replete with tears,”’ I began.

That was when I learned that, in America, you don’t reveal the ending of the movie, and if you do, you will be scorned and made to apologize profusely for having committed the sin of Spoiling the End.

Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.