Intricate mosaic tiles, handpicked by Baba in Isfahan, covered the floors of the four bathrooms. A broad entryway flanked by rosebushes led to the sprawling house of marble floors and wide windows. Some thought it was the prettiest house in all of Kabul. 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. The house sat on the left side of the brick path, the backyard at the end of it. They in turn opened into an extension of the driveway into my father's estate. The poplar trees lined the redbrick driveway, which led to a pair of wrought-‐iron gates. Never told that the mirror, like shooting walnuts at the neighbor's dog, was always my idea. \"Yes, Father,\" Hassan would mumble, looking down at his feet. \"And he laughs while he does it,\" he always added, scowling at his son. 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. He would wag his finger and wave us down from the tree. Hassan's father, Ali, used to catch us and get mad, or as mad as someone as gentle as Ali could ever get. Hassan never wanted to, but if I asked, _really_ asked, he wouldn't deny me. Sometimes, up in those trees, I talked Hassan into firing walnuts with his slingshot at the neighbor's one-‐eyed German shepherd. 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. 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. We would sit across from each other on a pair of high branches, our naked feet dangling, our trouser pockets filled withĭried mulberries and walnuts. 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. I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came and changed everything. _There is a way to be good again._ I looked up at those twin kites. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an after thought. I sat on a park bench near a willow tree. And suddenly Hassan's voice whispered in my head: _For you, a thousand times over._ Hassan the harelipped kite runner. 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. Then I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring in the sky. The early-‐afternoon sun sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp breeze. After I hung up, I went for a walk along Spreckels Lake on the northern edge of Golden Gate Park. Standing in the kitchen with the receiver to my ear, I knew it wasn't just Rahim Khan on the line. One day last summer, my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-‐six years. 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. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. THE KITE RUNNER by KHALED HOSSEINI Published 2003 Afghan Mellat Online Library _December 2001_ I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.
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