The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini [123]
“I’m starting to forget their faces,” Sohrab said. “Is that bad?”
“No,” I said. “Time does that.” I thought of something. I looked in the front pocket of my coat. Found the Polaroid snapshot of Hassan and Sohrab. “Here,” I said.
He brought the photo to within an inch of his face, turned it so the light from the mosque fell on it. He looked at it for a long time. I thought he might cry, but he didn’t. He just held it in both hands, traced his thumb over its surface. I thought of a line I’d read somewhere, or maybe I’d heard someone say it: There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood. He stretched his hand to give it back to me.
“Keep it,” I said. “It’s yours.”
“Thank you.” He looked at the photo again and stowed it in the pocket of his vest. A horse-drawn cart clip-clopped by in the parking lot. Little bells dangled from the horse’s neck and jingled with each step.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about mosques lately,” Sohrab said.
“You have? What about them?”
He shrugged. “Just thinking about them.” He lifted his face, looked straight at me. Now he was crying, softly, silently. “Can I ask you something, Amir agha?”
“Of course.”
“Will God . . .” he began, and choked a little. “Will God put me in hell for what I did to that man?”
I reached for him and he flinched. I pulled back. “Nay. Of course not,” I said. I wanted to pull him close, hold him, tell him the world had been unkind to him, not the other way around.
His face twisted and strained to stay composed. “Father used to say it’s wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don’t know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.”
“Not always, Sohrab.”
He looked at me questioningly.
“The man who hurt you, I knew him from many years ago,” I said. “I guess you figured that out that from the conversation he and I had. He . . . he tried to hurt me once when I was your age, but your father saved me. Your father was very brave and he was always rescuing me from trouble, standing up for me. So one day the bad man hurt your father instead. He hurt him in a very bad way, and I . . . I couldn’t save your father the way he had saved me.”
“Why did people want to hurt my father?” Sohrab said in a wheezy little voice. “He was never mean to anyone.”
“You’re right. Your father was a good man. But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sohrab jan. That there are bad people in this world, and sometimes bad people stay bad. Sometimes you have to stand up to them. What you did to that man is what I should have done to him all those years ago. You gave him what he deserved, and he deserved even more.”
“Do you think Father is disappointed in me?”
“I know he’s not,” I said. “You saved my life in Kabul. I know he is very proud of you for that.”
He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. It burst a bubble of spittle that had formed on his lips. He buried his face in his hands and wept a long time before he spoke again. “I miss Father, and Mother too,” he croaked. “And I miss Sasa and Rahim Khan sahib. But sometimes I’m glad they’re not . . . they’re not here anymore.”
“Why?” I touched his arm. He drew back.
“Because—” he said, gasping and hitching between sobs, “because I don’t want them to see me . . . I’m so dirty.” He sucked in his breath and let it out in a long, wheezy cry. “I’m so dirty and full of sin.”
“You’re not dirty, Sohrab,” I said.
“Those men—”
“You’re not dirty at all.”
“—they did things . . . the bad man and the other two . . . they did things . . . did things to me.”
“You’re not dirty, and you’re not full of sin.” I touched his arm again and he drew away. I reached again, gently, and pulled him to me. “I won’t hurt you,” I whispered. “I promise.” He resisted a little. Slackened. He let me draw him to me and rested his head on my chest. His little body convulsed in my arms with each sob.
A kinship exists between people who’ve fed from the same breast. Now, as the boy’s pain soaked through my shirt, I saw that a kinship had taken root between us