Sweat drips down my forehead and follows the curves of my cheekbones as it slides into the creases of skin below my eyelids. I imagine it must look like I am crying, but in truth, it has been a very long time since I have shed real tears. Something jabs the small of my back, but I pay it no mind, letting my thoughts slip away to a place where darkness is not simply the absence of light, but the absence of being. I long for that place, and I sense that it is not far. Perhaps only around the next corner…
I have long since given up keeping track of the time; whether we have been on the road for hours or days, months or even a year makes little difference. As the bodies around me shift and moan, complaining about the smell and crying to God for salvation, I rejoice in the disorienting aroma of the gas fumes. For just a little while I am able to enjoy a feeling of detachment from my body, a cocktail of hunger and dehydration spiriting my mind away from the present. I am suddenly hovering like a dragonfly above the slack-muscled young man who I recognize as Kamal. I was Kamal once, but that was a long time ago.
Assef. Tall and fair, he was my idol, the model of the perfect Pashtun boy that every Afghani father wanted for his own. Khoshteep and strong, he was everything I knew I could never be. It wasn't that I was ignorant; I knew that he could be cruel, and I had learned to read the signs in his body language in time to prevent myself from being the target of his legendary anger. Rather, it was because I knew that I ingratiated myself into his inner circle, secured my place as his right-hand man and soaked up the respect that naturally fell to me from mere association.
When we were younger, I used to get Assef and Wali into the movies for free. Father owned the theatre in Kabul, and had encouraged me on multiple occasions to invite my friends to the latest Western. Never once did I suspect that Assef was taking advantage of me, clapping me on the back with his right hand and holding out the left hand palm up, waiting for me to reciprocate. After all, isn't that what friends do, trade favors with one another? And we were friends. Of that I was certain.
Mother used to worry about the boys that I hung around with. "Bachem," she would say, watching me lace up my boots on the threshold as she leaned against the door frame, her arms embracing her slight torso. "A man's friends are like a mirror to his soul. By looking at them, you can see the innermost desires of his heart." I would laugh at her, scoffing off the maternal wisdom she was so careful to impart in these rare moments. Kissing her cheek and running out into the streets beyond our gate, I pushed her words as far from my thoughts as I could because, deep inside, I knew that she was right.
Waking with a start, I can tell by the way my heart is pounding and the way my temples are throbbing that I have slept fitfully. Whether I am truly awake is uncertain; the darkness in this tight, enclosed place makes it impossible to discern my surroundings from the nebulous chasm of my dormant mind. I wonder if this is what death feels like. A wave of nausea ripples in my gut and I groan aloud, calling for my Ammi, forgetting that she, like so many others, has gone to be with Allah, another victim of the insurrection.
Allah. Is there really such a thing?
In my darkest moments I would turn on the God of my fathers, cursing him for allowing what happened that winter morning to take place. Sometimes I wonder whether things might have turned out differently if I could have caught that kite first. If only I had been a better kite runner.
Assef never passed up an opportunity to confront Amir when their paths crossed. Amir was easy prey, small and awkward. I pitied his father, the great Toophan agha, for having such a kunis for a son. Hassan, however, was different. Amir's Hazara servant: though I would never admit it, not even to myself, I always admired him in a secret way. Easily the best kite runner in all of Kabul, what Hassan lacked in a formal education he more than made up for in his persistence to learn. As I became more and more aware of my own shortcomings, realizing as I neared my adolescence that I would never be the sort of son my Father wanted, my jealousy of Hassan grew to spite, and I took pride in knowing that no matter how badly I might fail in life, my future would always be brighter than his. Though I could never stop myself from wincing at every insult that Assef would hurl—each "flat nose" and "donkey"—still I was grateful for the ego-boosting degradation that I thought could never fall on me. After all, he was only a Hazara. At least, that was what Assef always said. And it was always better to agree with Assef, no matter how wrong he could be.
In the far corner of the jolting truck I vaguely discern a splash of indigo piercing the darkness. I remember my own watch, and have a sudden inclination to see the glow of its hands against my wrist, but the moment passes, and I immerse myself once again in the ebbing tide-pools of Lethe.
The crunch of newly-fallen snow beneath heavy-soled boots echoes off the stands that line the bazaar. There are few customers today; everyone is watching the tournament. We—Assef, Wali and I—do not bother with the trivialities of the sport itself. It is the last kite we are after, and by the determination in Assef's step, I know that he means to get it. There are no other kids around, and I wonder how he can be so confident as to where to go. As he quickens his pace, Wali and I do the same, and we are soon jogging through the alleyways of Wazir Akbar Khan. Far from home, I keep my gaze straight ahead. The shacks that line the street have big, gaping holes where mud has been washed away in the summer rains and where the brick has crumbled away from years of disrepair, and I cannot help but think how much they resemble hollow, empty eye sockets above the gaping doorways that look ready to swallow me if I wander too close.
A few meters behind us I can hear a crowd of kite-runners pounding through the slush in the opposite direction. I call out to Assef, tell him that we're going the wrong way but he silences me with a jerk of his head. "No," he hissed, the beginnings of a smirk playing on his lips, "we're just right." Peering ahead, I catch only a glimpse of Hassan, his pants billowing in the frosty mid-morning wind as he steps towards an open alleyway, drawing his hands from his pockets and lifting them towards the sky. Above him I see the last kite as it makes it final descent.
I sense that something is wrong from the moment that Assef opens his mouth. His tone is far too calm, too jovial. I expect a fight, but it never comes; instead, I sense Assef is toying with Hassan, baiting him for something to come, but what it is I cannot imagine. I feel a twinge of pity for the Hazara boy. Without his slingshot, he has no chance; the odds are against him, and the glint in Assef's eyes look like that of a tiger contemplating the best way to devour its prey. Whatever happens, it will be over quickly.
For years afterwards I used to dream about that day, waking in a cold sweat panting for breath and thanking the Fates that I was alone, that no one could hear my whimpering. What Assef did to Hassan—what we did to Hassan—was horrible, yes, but what haunted me wasn't the act itself. As I held him down, gripping his wrist and pinning his arm against his back, Wali opposite in a similar stance, as Assef turned to us each in turn and offered us the chance to "teach a lesson to a disrespectful donkey", all I could hear were Hassan's words.
"Amir agha and I are friends." Six words, shouted into the winter wind and gone the next. Simple, yet profound. I didn't believe for a moment that Amir would ever back that statement up with his own but at that moment, the truth became insignificant. I realized for the first time what it was that had driven my jealousy towards Hassan, and it had nothing to do with his athletic prowess. We were two halves of a whole in that moment, he and I, both craving love and acceptance from those closest to us. Only, he had found fulfillment for his thirsty soul through his devotion to Amir. Selfish Amir, who could never appreciate the loyalty that Hassan had shown in that alleyway, risking the odds stacked against him all for that stupid, blue kite.
There was something else, too. I couldn't put a finger on it; at least, not until I heard what had at first passed as the hissing of a distant tea-kettle, or the sound of the final, dead leaves of fall scraping across the frozen terrain. From Hassan's lips flowed not the bitter cries for mercy that Assef so desired, or the moaning of a victim who has surrendered himself to his inevitable fate, but the quiet, barely audible words of an ayat, soft and sincere, prayed not for the salvation of his own innocence, but for the forgiveness for his tormentor.
It was then, for the first time, that I became fully aware of the presence of God. Allah. Not as a distant deity who spoke through prophets and watched his creations with passive indifference, but as a real, almighty entity who concerned himself with even the plights of a worthless, hare-lipped Hazara. And it was then that I realized that surely I was damned.
The sound of our laughter as we ran from the alleyway minutes later is as clear in my mind as the smell of the rancid garbage, stagnant ravine water and burnt kabob that wafted on the air that day. It would be the last time I would find occasion to laugh, and even then it was not out of glee. At that moment it was all I could do to keep myself from sobbing. I wanted more than anything to turn to Assef and yell what I was really thinking: "He is ten times the mard you are," I meant to say, and with it, "and a thousand times the mard I will ever be." What came out was a choking sound that just passed as a strangled giggle, and that was enough to suit Assef.
It was around this time that my father's business had begun to go under. His was not the only movie theater in Kabul anymore, and there were rumors of bankruptcy circulating among the neighbors. Assef no longer bothered to come calling anymore, though I sensed he had other motivations than my father's financial situation. Under his influence, the other neighborhood kids avoided me with the vehemence that a passerby on the street shows a leper rotting in the gutter, and though I could not help thinking that it was little more than I deserved, the loneliness became too much for me. It was uncomfortable to remain at home, and after my mother's death, living alone with my father became unbearable. I suppose I went out that morning because I realized I had no where else to turn. God had forsaken me, my own Ammi had fled this world and my father, the only man I could rely on for guidance in this life, was too busy to bother with his somber son, too busy spending our savings in the harems when he should have been investing for a better future. Where else could I turn but to Assef, my comrade in perversion, my brother in sin?
"Kamal," he said, his face twisted by a grin that looked horribly like a jackal's snarl. "It's been a while. Hasn't it, boys?"
I noticed that he had recruited new lackeys since the morning of the kite tournament. Wali now stood in my place at Assef's right hand, smirking at me with his arms crossed in front of his chest, but the two new boys were hardly as confident. They exchanged looks with one another, glancing between Assef and me, back to Assef, and then to Wali when they found no answers in our faces to suit their morbid curiosity. Assef came closer, and I was terrified by the crazed gleam his eyes, usually a pale blue but now the color of a storm-grey sky.
"Afghanistan has changed, my friend," he crooned, so close that I could smell the putrid stench of alcohol and vomit on his hot breath. With his hand squeezing my shoulder and his face inches from my own, he said "How do I know you are not with the Roussi? It has been a while," he repeated. "Perhaps you have turned against your watan."
Trembling beneath the force of his stare I try to run, but I slip on the damp grass and he is on top of me, crushing me so that I cannot breath. "You will have to prove your loyalty, Kamal," Assef hisses in my ear, and I start to scream as he touches me, tearing at my belt buckle and yelling at the other boys and grinning wildly when they run to his aide, hold me down in the mud while he pulls down his own trousers and motions for them to do the same. I am not like Hassan; I have brought this on myself and still I cannot stop screaming. I scream until my throat goes hoarse, and I realize that I have no blue kite of my own to defend.
My chest throbs from want of air as I lie despondent beside my father, staring into the black void that surrounds us. In my last moments of strained consciousness, a warmth envelopes my wasted body like a misting of summer rain and in the distance I hear the words of a lullaby that my mother used to sing to me when I was boy back in Kabul. Only the voice that sings it is not hers, but Hassan's, the gentle voice that beseeched Allah all those years ago as I stood by in silence, watching Assef ravage him.
Aa lalo bacha lalo. Go to sleep, my little moon, in a cradle made of gold and pearls.
As I lose my hold on reality, I wonder if this is what forgiveness feels like.