追风筝的人是真实的吗 残忍而美丽的情谊:The Kite Runner 追风筝的人(71)

残忍而美丽的情谊:The Kite Runner 追风筝的人(71)  

March 1981 A young woman sat across from us. She was dressed in an olive green dress with a black shawl wrapped tightly around her face against the night chill. She burst into prayer every time the truck jerked or stumbled into a pothole
her “Bismillah!” peaking with each of the truck’s shudders and jolts. Her husband
a burly man in baggy pants and sky blue turban
cradled an infant in one arm and thumbed prayer beads with his free hand. His lips moved in silent prayer. There were others
in all about a dozen
including Baba and me
sitting with our suitcases beeen our legs
cramped with these strangers in the tarpaulin-covered cab of an old Russian truck.
My innards had been roiling since we’d left Kabul just after o in the morning. Baba never said so
but I knew he saw my car sickness as yet another of my array of weakness--I saw it on his embarrassed face the couple of times my stomach had clenched so badly I had moaned. When the burly guy with the beads--the praying woman’s husband--asked if I was going to get sick
I said I might. Baba looked away. The man lifted his corner of the tarpaulin cover and rapped on the driver’s window
asked him to stop. But the driver
Karim
a scrawny dark-skinned man with hawk-boned features and a pencil-thin mustache
shook his head.
“We are too close to Kabul
” he shot back. “Tell him to have a strong stomach.”
Baba grumbled something under his breath. I wanted to tell him I was sorry
but suddenly I was salivating
the back of my throat tasting bile. I turned around
lifted the tarpaulin
and threw up over the side of the moving truck. Behind me
Baba was apologizing to the other passengers. As if car sickness was a crime. As if you weren’t supposed to get sick when you were eighteen. I threw up o more times before Karim agreed to stop
mostly so I wouldn’t stink up his vehicle
the instrument of his livelihood. Karim was a people smuggler--it was a pretty lucrative business then
driving people out of Shorawi-occupied Kabul to the relative safety of Pakistan. He was taking us to Jalalabad
about 170 kilometers southeast of Kabul
where his brother
Toor
who had a bigger truck with a second convoy of refugees
was waiting to drive us across the Khyber Pass and into Peshawar.
We were a few kilometers west of Mahipar Falls when Karim pulled to the side of the road. Mahipar--which means “Flying Fish”--was a high summit with a precipitous drop overlooking the hydro plant the Germans had built for Afghanistan back in 1967. Baba and I had driven over the summit countless times on our way to Jalalabad
the city of cypress trees and sugarcane fields where Afghans vacationed in the winter.
I hopped down the back of the truck and lurched to the dusty embankment on the side of the road. My mouth filled with saliva
a sign of the retching that was yet to e. I stumbled to the edge of the cliff overlooking the deep valley that was shrouded in dark ness. I stooped
hands on my kneecaps
and waited for the bile. Somewhere
a branch snapped
an owl hooted. The wind
soft and cold
clicked through tree branches and stirred the bushes that sprinkled the slope. And from below
the faint sound of water tumbling through the valley.
Standing on the shoulder of the road
I thought of the way we’d left the house where I’d lived my entire life
as if we were going out for a bite: dishes smeared with kofta piled in the kitchen sink; laundry in the wicker basket in the foyer; beds unmade; Baba’s business suits hanging in the closet. Tapestries still hung on the walls of the living room and my mother’s books still crowded the shelves in Baba’s study. The signs of our elopement were subtle: My parents’ wedding picture was gone
as was the grainy photograph of my grandfather and King Nader Shah standing over the dead deer. A few items of clothing were missing from the closets. The leather-bound notebook Rahim Khan had given me five years earlier was gone.
In the morning
Jalaluddin--our seventh servant in five years--would probably think we’d gone out for a stroll or a drive. We hadn’t told him. You couldn’t trust anyone in Kabul any more--for a fee or under threat
people told on each other
neighbor on neighbor
child on parent
brother on brother
servant on master
friend on friend. I thought of the singer Ahmad Zahir
who had played the accordion at my thirteenth birthday. He had gone for a drive with some friends
and someone had later found his body on the side of the road
a bullet in the back of his head. The rafiqs
the rades
were everywhere and they’d split Kabul into o groups: those who eavesdropped and those who didn’t. The tricky part was that no one knew who belonged to which. A casual remark to the tailor while getting fitted for a suit might land you in the dungeons of Poleh-charkhi. Complain about the curfew to the butcher and next thing you knew
you were behind bars staring at the muzzle end of a Kalashnikov. Even at the dinner table
in the privacy of their home
people had to speak in a calculated manner--the rafiqs were in the classrooms too; they’d taught children to spy on their parents
what to listen for
whom to tell.
What was I doing on this road in the middle of the night? I should have been in bed
under my blanket
a book with dog-eared pages at my side. This had to be a dream. Had to be. Tomorrow morning
I’d wake up
peek out the window: No grim-faced Russian soldiers patrolling the sidewalks
no tanks rolling up and down the streets of my city
their turrets swiveling like accusing fingers
no rubble
no curfews
no Russian Army Personnel Carriers weaving through the bazaars. Then
behind me
I heard Baba and Karim discussing the arrangement in Jalalabad over a smoke. Karim was reassuring Baba that his brother had a big truck of “excellent and first-class quality
” and that the trek to Peshawar would be very routine. “He could take you there with his eyes closed
” Karim said. I overheard him telling Baba how he and his brother knew the Russian and Afghan soldiers who worked the checkpoints
how they had set up a “mutually profitable” arrangement. This was no dream. As if on cue
a MiG suddenly screamed past overhead. Karim tossed his cigarette and produced a hand gun from his waist. Pointing it to the sky and making shooting gestures
he spat and cursed at the MiG.
I wondered where Hassan was. Then the inevitable. I vomited on a tangle of weeds
my retching and groaning drowned in the deafening roar of the MiG. WE PULLED UP to the checkpoint at Mahipar enty minutes later. Our driver let the truck idle and hopped down to greet the approaching voices. Feet crushed gravel. Words were exchanged
brief and hushed. A flick of a lighter. “Spasseba.”
Another flick of the lighter. Someone laughed
a shrill cackling sound that made me jump. Baba’s hand clamped down on my thigh. The laughing man broke into song
a slurring
off-key rendition of an old Afghan wedding song
delivered with a thick Russian accent:
Ahesta boro
Mah-e-man
ahesta boro.(Go slowly
my lovely moon
go slowly.)