بخش 2

Something roared like thunder. The earth shook a little and we heard the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire. We sprung to our feet and raced out of the living room. We found Ali hobbling frantically across the foyer.

“Father! What’s that sound?” Hassan yelped, his hands outstretched toward Ali. Ali wrapped his arms around us. A white light flashed, lit the sky in silver. It flashed again and was followed by a rapid staccato of gunfire.

“They’re hunting ducks,” Ali said in a hoarse voice. “They hunt ducks at night, you know. Don’t be afraid.”

They weren’ t shooting ducks after all. As it turned out, they hadn’t shot much of anything that night of July 17, 1973. Kabul awoke the next morning to find that the monarchy was a thing of the past. The king, Zahir Shah, was away in Italy. In his absence, his cousin Daoud Khan had ended the king’s forty-year reign with a bloodless coup.

I remember Hassan and I crouching that next morning outside my father’s study, as Baba and Rahim Khan sipped black tea and listened to breaking news of the coup on Radio Kabul.

“Amir agha?” Hassan whispered. “What?” “What’s a ‘republic’?” I shrugged. “I don’t know.” On Baba’s radio, they were saying that word, “republic,” over and over again. “Amir agha?” “What?” “Does ‘republic’ mean Father and I will have to move away?” I smiled. “Bas, you donkey. No one’s sending you away.” “Amir agha?” “What?” “Do you want to go climb our tree?” My smile broadened. That was another thing about Hassan.

He always knew when to say the right thing—the news on the radio was getting pretty boring. We burst through the front gates and headed for the hill.

We crossed the residential street and were trekking through a barren patch of rough land that led to the hill when, suddenly, a rock struck Hassan in the back. We whirled around and my heart dropped. Assef and two of his friends, Wali and Kamal, were approaching us.

Assef was the son of one of my father’s friends, Mahmood, an airline pilot. His family lived a few streets south of our home, in a posh, high-walled compound with palm trees. If you were a kid living in the Wazir Akbar Khan section of Kabul, you knew about Assef and his famous stainless-steel brass knuckles, hopefully not through personal experience. Born to a German mother and Afghan father, the blond, blue-eyed Assef towered over the other kids. His well-earned reputation for savagery preceded him on the streets. Some of the boys in Wazir Akbar Khan had nicknamed him Assef Goshkhor, or Assef “the Ear Eater.” Of course, none of them dared utter it to his face unless they wished to suffer the same fate as the poor kid who had unwittingly inspired that nickname when he had fought Assef over a kite and ended up fishing his right ear from a muddy gutter. Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: “sociopath.” He was walking toward us, hands on his hips, his sneakers kicking up little puffs of dust.

“Good morning, kunis!” Assef exclaimed. “Fag,” that was another of his favorite insults. Hassan retreated behind me as the three older boys closed in. They stood before us, three tall boys dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Towering over us all, Assef crossed his thick arms on his chest, a savage sort of grin on his lips. He tipped his chin to Hassan. “Hey, Flat-Nose,” he said. “How is Babalu?”

Hassan said nothing and crept another step behind me.

“Have you heard the news, boys?” Assef said, his grin never faltering. “The king is gone. Good riddance. Long live the president! My father knows Daoud Khan, did you know that, Amir?”

“So does my father,” I said. In reality, I had no idea if that was true or not.

“Well, Daoud Khan dined at our house last year,” Assef went on. “How do you like that, Amir?”

I wondered if anyone would hear us scream in this remote patch of land. Baba’s house was a good kilometer away. I wished we’d stayed at the house.

“Do you know what I will tell Daoud Khan the next time he comes to our house for dinner?” Assef said. “I’m going to have a little chat with him, man to man, mard to mard. Tell him what I told my mother. About Hitler. Now, there was a leader. A great leader. A man with vision. I’ll tell Daoud Khan to remember that if they had let Hitler finish what he had started, the world be a better place now.”

“Baba says Hitler was crazy, that he ordered a lot of innocent people killed,” I heard myself say before I could clamp a hand on my mouth.

Assef snickered. “He sounds like my mother, and she’s German; she should know better. His blue eyes flicked to Hassan. “Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans, not this Flat-Nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood.”

He reached for something from the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll ask the president to do what the king didn’t have the quwat to do. To rid Afghanistan of all the dirty, kasseef Hazaras.”

I saw with a sinking heart what he had fished out of his pocket. Of course. His stainless-steel brass knuckles. Assef’s voice dripped with disgust. “How can you talk to him? Play with him. How can you call him your friend?” But he’s not my friend! I almost blurted. He’s my servant! Had I really thought that? Of course I hadn’t. I hadn’t. I treated Hassan well, just like a friend, better even, more like a brother. But if so, then why did I play with Hassan only when no one else was around?

Assef slipped on the brass knuckles. Gave me an icy look. “You’re part of the problem, Amir. If idiots like you and your father didn’t take these people in, we’d be rid of them by now. You’re a disgrace to Afghanistan.” I looked in his crazy eyes and saw that he meant it. He really meant to hurt me. Assef raised his fist and came for me.

There was a flurry of rapid movement behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hassan bend down and stand up quickly. Assef’s eyes flicked to something behind me and widened with surprise. I saw that same look of astonishment on Kamal and Wali’s faces as they too saw what had happened behind me.

I turned and came face to face with Hassan’s slingshot. In the cup was a rock the size of a walnut. Hassan held the slingshot pointed directly at Assef’s face.

“Please leave us alone, Agha,” Hassan said in a flat tone. He’d referred to Assef as “Agha,” and I wondered briefly what it must be like to live with such an ingrained sense of one’s place in a hierarchy.

Assef smiled. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but there are three of us and two of you.”

Hassan shrugged. “You are right, Agha. But perhaps you didn’t notice that I’m the one holding the slingshot. If you make a move, they’ll have to change your nickname from Assef ‘the Ear Eater’ to ‘One-Eyed Assef,’ because I have this rock pointed at your left eye.” He said this so flatly that even I had to strain to hear the fear that I knew hid under that calm voice.

Assef’s mouth twitched. He searched Hassan’s face intently. What he found in it must have convinced him of the seriousness of Hassan’s intentions, because he lowered his fist.

“You should know something about me, Hazara,” Assef said gravely. “I’m a very patient person. This doesn’t end today, believe me.” He turned to me. “This isn’t the end for you either, Amir. Someday, I’ll make you face me one on one.” Assef retreated a step. His disciples followed. I watched them walk down the hill and disappear behind a wall.

Neither one of us said much of anything as we walked home in trepidation, certain that Assef and his friends would ambush us every time we turned a corner. They didn’t and that should have comforted us a little. But it didn’t. Not at all.

For the next couple of years, the words economic development and reform danced on a lot of lips in Kabul. The constitutional monarchy had been abolished, replaced by a republic, led by a president of the republic. A sense of rejuvenation and purpose swept across the land. People spoke of women’s rights and modern technology. And for the most part, even though a new leader lived in Arg— the royal palace in Kabul—life went on as before.

Early that following winter of 1974, Hassan and I were playing in the yard one day, building a snow fort, when Ali called him in. “Hassan, Agha sahib wants to talk to you!” He was standing by the front door, dressed in white, hands tucked under his armpits, breath puffing from his mouth.

Hassan and I exchanged a smile. We’d been waiting for his call all day: It was Hassan’s birthday.

Baba never missed Hassan’s birthday. For a while, he used to ask Hassan what he wanted, but he gave up doing that because Hassan was always too modest to actually suggest a present. So every winter Baba picked something out himself. He bought him a Japanese toy truck one year, an electric locomotive and train track set another year.

We took off our gloves and removed our snow-laden boots at the front door. When we stepped into the foyer, we found Baba sitting by the wood-burning cast-iron stove with a short, balding Indian man dressed in a brown suit and red tie.

Baba smiled coyly, “Hassan meet your birthday present.”

Hassan and I traded blank looks. There was no gift-wrapped box in sight. No bag. No toy. The Indian man in the brown suit smiled and offered Hassan his hand. “I am Dr. Kumar,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He spoke Farsi with a thick, rolling Hindi accent.

“Salaam alaykum,” Hassan said uncertainly. Baba met Hassan’s wary—and puzzled—eyes. “I have summoned Dr. Kumar from New Delhi. Dr. Kumar is a plastic surgeon.”

“Do you know what that is?” the Indian man—Dr. Kumar— said.

Hassan shook his head. He looked to me for help but I shrugged. All I knew was that you went to a surgeon to fix you when you had appendicitis.

“Well,” Dr. Kumar said, “my job is to fix things on people’s bodies. Sometimes their faces.”

“Oh,” Hassan said. He looked from Dr. Kumar to Baba to Ali. His hand touched his upper lip. “It’s an unusual present, I know,” Baba said. “And probably not what you had in mind, but this present will last you forever.”

“Oh,” Hassan said. He licked his lips. Cleared his throat. “Agha sahib, will it …will it—”

“Nothing doing,” Dr. Kumar intervened, smiling kindly. “It will not hurt you one bit. In fact, I will give you a medicine and you will not remember a thing.”

“Happy birthday” baba said. I smiled along with every body but wished I too had some kind of scar that would beget Baba’s sympathy. It wasn’t fair. Hassan hadn’t done anything to earn Baba’s affections; he’d just been born with that stupid harelip.

The surgery went well. We were all a little shocked when they first removed the bandages, but kept our smiles on just as Dr. Kumar had instructed us. It wasn’t easy, because Hassan’s upper lip was a grotesque mesh of swollen, raw tissue. I expected Has-san to cry with horror when the nurse handed him the mirror. Ali held his hand as Hassan took a long, thoughtful look into it. He muttered something I didn’t understand. I put my ear to his mouth. He whispered it again.

“Tashakor.” Thank you.

Then his lips twisted, and, that time, I knew just what he was doing. He was smiling. Just as he had, emerging from his mother’s womb.

The swelling subsided, and the wound healed with time. Soon, it was just a pink jagged line running up from his lip. By the following winter, it was only a faint scar. Which was ironic. Because that was the winter that Hassan stopped smiling.

Winter was every kid’s favorite season in Kabul, at least those whose fathers could afford to buy a good iron stove. The reason was simple: They shut down school for the icy season. Winter to me was the end of long division and naming the capital of Bulgaria, and the start of three months of playing cards by the stove with Hassan, free Russian movies on Tuesday mornings at Cinema Park, sweet turnip qurma over rice for lunch after a morning of building snowmen.

And kites, of course. Flying kites. And running them.

Every winter, districts in Kabul held a kite-fighting tournament. And if you were a boy living in Kabul, the day of the tournament was undeniably the highlight of the cold season. I never slept the night before the tournament. I felt like a soldier trying to sleep in the trenches the night before a major battle. And that wasn’t so far off. In Kabul, fighting kites was a little like going to war.

As with any war, you had to ready yourself for battle. For a while, Hassan and I used to build our own kites. We saved our weekly allowances in the fall and when the winds of winter began to blow and snow fell in chunks, we went to the bazaar and bought bamboo, glue, string, and paper. We spent hours every day shaving bamboo for the center and cross spars, cutting the thin tissue paper which made for easy dipping and recovery. And then, of course, we had to make our own string, or tar. If the kite was the gun, then tar, the glass-coated cutting line, was the bullet in the chamber. We’d go out in the yard and feed up to five hundred feet of string through a mixture of ground glass and glue. We’d then hang the line between the trees, leave it to dry. The next day, we’d wind the battle-ready line around a wooden spool. By the time the snow melted and the rains of spring swept in, every boy in Kabul bore telltale horizontal gashes on his fingers from a whole winter of fighting kites. The cuts stung and didn’t heal for a couple of weeks, but I didn’t mind. They were reminders of a beloved season that had once again passed too quickly.

But it quickly became apparent that Hassan and I were better kite fighters than kite makers. So Baba started taking us to Saifo’s to buy our kites. Saifo was a nearly blind old man who was a moochi by profession—a shoe repairman. But he was also the city’s most famous kite maker, working out of a tiny hovel on Jadeh Maywand. Baba would buy us each three identical kites and spools of glass string. If I changed my mind and asked for a bigger and fancier kite, Baba would buy it for me—but then he’d buy it for Hassan too. Sometimes I wished he wouldn’t do that. Wished he’d let me be the favorite.

The kite-fighting tournament was an old winter tradition in Afghanistan. It started early in the morning on the day of the contest and didn’t end until only the winning kite flew in the sky. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.

Except that wasn’t all. The real fun began when a kite was cut. That was where the kite runners came in, those kids who chased the windblown kite drifting through the neighborhoods until it came spiraling down in a field, dropping in someone’s yard, on a tree, or a rooftop. And when a kite runner had his hands on a kite, no one could take it from him. That wasn’t a rule. That was custom.

For kite runners, the most coveted prize was the last fallen kite of a winter tournament. It was a trophy of honor, something to be displayed on a mantle for guests to admire. When the sky cleared of kites and only the final two remained, every kite runner readied himself for the chance to land this prize. Necks craned. Eyes crinkled. Fights broke out. And when the last kite was cut, all hell broke loose.

Over the years, I had seen a lot of guys run kites. But Hassan was by far the greatest kite runner I’d ever seen. I remember one overcast winter day, Hassan and I were running a kite. I was a year older than him, but Hassan ran faster than I did, and I was falling behind.

“Hassan! Wait!” I yelled, my breathing hot and ragged.

He whirled around, motioned with his hand. “This way!” he called before dashing around another corner. I looked up, saw that the direction we were running was opposite to the one the kite was drifting.

“We’re losing it! We’re going the wrong way!” I cried out.

“Trust me!” I heard him call up ahead. I reached the corner and saw we had ended up on a rutted dirt road near Isteqlal Middle School. There was a field on one side where lettuce grew in the summer, and a row of sour cherry trees on the other. I found Hassan sitting cross-legged at the foot of one of the trees, eating from a fistful of dried mulberries.

“What are we doing here?” I panted, my stomach roiling with nausea. “It was going the other way, didn’t you see?”

Hassan popped a mulberry in his mouth. “It’s coming,” he said. I could hardly breathe and he didn’t even sound tired.

“How do you know?” I said.

“I know.”

“How can you know?”

He turned to me. “Would I ever lie to you, Amir agha?”

Suddenly I decided to toy with him a little. “I don’t know. Would you?”

“I’d sooner eat dirt,” he said with a look of indignation.

“Really? You’d eat dirt if I told you to?” I knew I was being cruel, like when I’d taunt him if he didn’t know some big word.

His eyes searched my face for a long time. We sat there, two boys under a sour cherry tree, suddenly looking, really looking, at each other. That’s when it happened again: Hassan’s face changed. Maybe not changed, not really, but suddenly I had the feeling I was looking at two faces, the one I knew, the one that was my first memory, and another, a second face, this one lurking just beneath the surface. I’d seen it happen before—it always shook me up a little. It just appeared, this other face, for a fraction of a moment, long enough to leave me with the unsettling feeling that maybe I’d seen it someplace before. Then Hassan blinked and it was just him again. Just Hassan.

“If you asked, I would,” he finally said, looking right at me. I dropped my eyes. To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say.

“But I wonder,” he added. “Would you ever ask me to do such a thing, Amir agha?” And, just like that, he had thrown at me his own little test. I forced a smile. “Don’t be stupid, Hassan. You know I wouldn’t.”

Hassan returned the smile. Except his didn’t look forced. “I know,” he said. And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

“Here it comes,” Hassan said, pointing to the sky. He rose to his feet and walked a few paces to his left. I looked up, saw the kite plummeting toward us. I heard footfalls, shouts, an approaching melee of kite runners. But they were wasting their time. Because Hassan stood with his arms wide open, smiling, waiting for the kite. And may God—if He exists, that is—strike me blind if the kite didn’t just drop into his outstretched arms.

In the winter of 1975, I saw Hassan run a kite for the last time.

One night that winter, with the big contest only four days away, Baba and I sat in his study in overstuffed leather chairs by the glow of the fireplace. We were sipping tea, talking when he said, casually, “I think maybe you’ll win the tournament this year. What do you think?”

I didn’t know what to think. Or what to say. I was a good kite fighter. Actually, a very good one. A few times, I’d even come close to winning the winter tournament. But coming close wasn’t the same as winning, was it? Baba smoked his pipe and talked. I pretended to listen. But I couldn’t listen, not really, because Baba’s casual little comment had planted a seed in my head: the resolution that I would win that winter’s tournament. I was going to win, and I was going to run that last kite. Then I’d bring it home and show it to Baba. Show him once and for all that his son was worthy. And maybe, just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother.

The morning of the tournoment the streets glistened with fresh snow and the sky was a blameless blue. Snow blanketed every rooftop and weighed on the branches of the stunted mulberry trees that lined our street. Overnight, snow had nudged its way into every crack and gutter. I squinted against the blinding white when Hassan and I stepped through the wrought-iron gates. Ali shut the gates behind us. I heard him mutter a prayer under his breath—he always said a prayer when his son left the house.

I had never seen so many people on our street. Kite fighters were huddling with their spool holders, making last-minute preparations. From adjacent streets, I could hear laughter and chatter. I turned my gaze to our rooftop, found Baba and Rahim Khan sitting on a bench, both dressed in wool sweaters, sipping tea. I felt Baba’s glare on me like the heat of a blistering sun. This would be failure on a grand scale, even for me. Hassan lifted our kite, red with yellow borders. He licked his finger and held it up, tested the wind, then ran in its direction. The spool rolled in my hands until Hassan stopped, about fifty feet away. He held the kite high over his head, like an Olympic athlete showing his gold medal. I jerked the string twice, our usual signal, and Hassan tossed the kite.

I took a deep breath, exhaled, and pulled on the string. Within a minute, my kite was rocketing to the sky. At least two dozen kites already hung in the sky, like paper sharks roaming for prey. Within an hour, the number doubled, and red, blue, and yellow kites glided and spun in the sky.

Soon, the cutting started and the first of the defeated kites whirled out of control. They fell from the sky like shooting stars with brilliant, rippling tails, showering the neighborhoods below with prizes for the kite runners. I could hear the runners now, hollering as they ran the streets.

They were coming down all over the place now, the kites, and I was still flying. I was still flying. My eyes kept wandering over to Baba, bundled up in his wool sweater. Was he surprised I had lasted as long as I had?

Up and down the streets, kite runners were returning triumphantly, their captured kites held high. The number of surviving kites dwindled from maybe fifty to a dozen. I was one of them. I’d made it to the last dozen. I knew this part of the tournament would take a while, because the guys who had lasted this long were good—they wouldn’t easily fall into simple traps like the old lift-and-dive, Hassan’s favorite trick.

By three o’clock that afternoon, tufts of clouds had drifted in and the sun had slipped behind them. Shadows started to lengthen. We were down to a half dozen and I was still flying. My legs ached and my neck was stiff. But with each defeated kite, hope grew in my heart, like snow collecting on a wall, one flake at a time.

I didn’t dare look up to the roof. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the sky. I had to concentrate, play it smart. Another fifteen minutes and what had seemed like a laughable dream that morning had suddenly become reality: It was just me and the other guy. The blue kite.

The tension in the air was as taut as the glass string I was tugging with my bloody hands. People were stomping their feet, clapping, whistling, chanting, “Boboresh! Boboresh!” Cut him! Cut him! But all I heard—all I willed myself to hear—was the thudding of blood in my head. All I saw was the blue kite. All I smelled was victory. If Baba was wrong and there was a God like they said in school, then He’d guide the winds and let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I’d cut loose my pain, my longing. I’d endured too much, come too far. And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.

It turned out to be sooner than later. A gust of wind lifted my kite and I took advantage. I fed the string, pulled up. Looped my kite on top of the blue one. I held position.

“You’re almost there, Amir agha! Almost there!” Hassan was panting.

Then the moment came. I closed my eyes and loosened my grip on the string. It sliced my fingers again as the wind dragged it. And then …I didn’t need to hear the crowd’s roar to know. I didn’t need to see either. Hassan was screaming and his arm was wrapped around my neck.

“Bravo! Bravo, Amir agha!”

I opened my eyes, saw the blue kite spinning wildly like a tire come loose from a speeding car. I blinked, tried to say something. Nothing came out. Suddenly everything was color and sound, everything was alive and good. I was throwing my free arm around Hassan and we were hopping up and down, both of us laughing, both of us weeping. “You won, Amir agha! You won!” “We won! We won!” was all I could say. Then I saw Baba on our roof. He was standing on the edge, pumping both of his fists. Hollering and clapping. And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last.

But he was doing something now, motioning with his hands in an urgent way. Then I understood. “Hassan, we—”

“I know,” he said, breaking our embrace. “Inshallah, we’ll celebrate later. Right now, I’m going to run that blue kite for you”. He dropped the spool and took off running, the hem of his green chapan dragging in the snow behind him.

“Hassan!” I called. “Come back with it!”

He was already turning the street corner, his rubber boots kicking up snow. He stopped, turned. “For you a thousand times over!” he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner. The next time I saw him smile unabashedly like that was twenty-six years later, in a faded Polaroid photograph.

I began to pull my kite back as people rushed to congratulate me. I shook hands with them, said my thanks, but my mind was on the blue kite.

Soon, I had my kite in hand. I wrapped the loose string that had collected at my feet around the spool, shook a few more hands, and trotted home. When I reached the wrought-iron gates, Ali was waiting on the other side. He stuck his hand through the bars. “Congratulations,” he said.

I gave him my kite and spool, shook his hand. “Tashakor, Ali jan.”

“I was praying for you the whole time.”

“Then keep praying. We’re not done yet.”

I hurried back to the street. I didn’t ask Ali about Baba. I didn’t want to see him yet. In my head, I had it all planned: I’d make a grand entrance, a hero, prized trophy in my bloodied hands. Then the old warrior would walk to the young one, embrace him, acknowledge his worthiness. Vindication. Salvation. Redemption. And then? Well . . . happily ever after, of course. What else?

I ran up and down every street, looking for Hassan. By the time I reached the marketplace, the sun had almost sunk behind the hills and dusk had painted the sky pink and purple. I picked my way through the dwindling crowd, the lame beggars dressed in layers of tattered rags, the vendors with rugs on their shoulders, the cloth merchants and butchers closing shop for the day. I found no sign of Hassan.

I stopped by a dried fruit stand, described Hassan to an old merchant loading his mule with crates of pine seeds and raisins. He eyed me up and down. “What is a boy like you doing here at this time of the day looking for a Hazara?” His glance lingered admiringly on my leather coat and my jeans—cowboy pants, we used to call them. In Afghanistan, owning anything American, especially if it wasn’t secondhand, was a sign of wealth.

“I need to find him, Agha.”

“What is he to you?”

“He’s our servant’s son,” I said.

The old man raised a pepper gray eyebrow. “He is? Lucky Hazara, having such a concerned master”.

He rested an arm on the mule’s back, pointed south. “I think I saw the boy you described running that way. He had a kite in his hand. A blue one.”

“He did?” I said. For you a thousand times over, he’d promised. Good old Hassan. Good old reliable Hassan. He’d kept his promise and run the last kite for me.

“Of course, they’ve probably caught him by now,” the old merchant said, grunting and loading another box on the mule’s back.

“Who?”

“The other boys,” he said. “The ones chasing him. ” He glanced to the sky and sighed. “Now, run along, you’re making me late for namaz.”

But I was already scrambling down the lane.

For the next few minutes, I scoured the bazaar in vain. I had begun to worry that darkness would fall before I found Hassan when I heard voices coming from one of the alleys. I crept close to the mouth of the alley. Held my breath. Peeked around the corner.

Hassan was standing at the blind end of the alley in a defiant stance: fists curled, legs slightly apart. Behind him, sitting on piles of scrap and rubble, was the blue kite. My key to Baba’s heart.

Blocking Hassan’s way out of the alley were three boys, the same three from that day on the hill, when Hassan had saved us with his slingshot. Wali was standing on one side, Kamal on the other, and in the middle, Assef. I felt my body clench up, and something cold rippled up my spine. Assef seemed relaxed, confident. He was twirling his brass knuckles.

“Where is your slingshot, Hazara?” Assef said, turning the brass knuckles in his hand. “What was it you said? ‘They’ll have to call you One-Eyed Assef.’ That was clever. Really clever. Then again, it’s easy to be clever when you’re holding a loaded weapon.” I felt paralyzed. I watched them close in on the boy I’d grown up with, the boy whose harelipped face had been my first memory.

“But today is your lucky day, Hazara,” Assef said. He had his back to me, but I would have bet he was grinning. “I’m in a mood to forgive. Assef waved a dismissive hand. “Bakhshida. Forgiven. It’s done.” His voice dropped a little. “Of course, nothing is free in this world, and my pardon comes with a small price.” Assef took a step toward Hassan. “Because today, it’s only going to cost you that blue kite.

Even from where I was standing, I could see the fear creeping into Hassan’s eyes, but he shook his head. “Amir agha won the tournament and I ran this kite for him. I ran it fairly. This is his kite.”

“A loyal Hazara. Loyal as a dog,” Assef said.

“But before you sacrifice yourself for him, think about this: Would he do the same for you? Have you ever wondered why he only plays with you when no one else is around? “Amir agha and I are friends,” Hassan said. He looked flushed.

“Friends?” Assef said, laughing. “You pathetic fool! Someday you’ll wake up from your little fantasy and learn just how good of a friend he is. Now, bas! Enough of this. Give us that kite.”

Hassan stooped and picked up a rock.

Assef flinched. He began to take a step back, stopped. “Last chance, Hazara.”

Hassan’s answer was to cock the arm that held the rock.

“Whatever you wish.” Assef unbuttoned his winter coat, took it off, folded it slowly and deliberately. He placed it against the wall.

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t. I just watched. Paralyzed.

Assef motioned with his hand, and the other two boys separated, forming a half circle, trapping Hassan in the alley.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Assef said. “I’m letting you keep the kite, Hazara. I’ll let you keep it so it will always remind you of what I’m about to do.”

Then he charged. A havoc of scrap and rubble littered the alley. Worn bicycle tires, bottles with peeled labels, ripped up magazines, yellowed newspapers, all scattered amid a pile of bricks and slabs of cement. But there were two things amid the garbage that I couldn’t stop looking at: One was the blue kite resting against the wall; the other was Has-san’s brown corduroy pants thrown on a heap of eroded bricks.

Hassan lay with his chest pinned to the ground. Kamal and Wali each gripped an arm, twisted and bent at the elbow so that Hassan’s hands were pressed to his back. Assef knelt behind Hassan, put his hands on Hassan’s hips and lifted his bare buttocks. He kept one hand on Hassan’s back and undid his own belt buckle with his free hand. He unzipped his jeans. Dropped his underwear. He positioned himself behind Hassan.

I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan—the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past—and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run.

In the end, I ran.

I ran because I was a coward. That’s what I made myself believe. Because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay to win Baba. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?

I ran back the way I’d come. Ran back to the all but deserted bazaar. About fifteen minutes later, I heard voices and running footfalls. I crouched behind the cubicle and watched Assef and the other two sprinting by, laughing as they hurried down the deserted lane. I forced myself to wait ten more minutes. I squinted in the dimming light and spotted Hassan walking slowly toward me. He had the blue kite in his hands; that was the first thing I saw. His chapan had mud smudges down the front and his shirt was ripped just below the collar. He stopped. Swayed on his feet like he was going to collapse. Then he steadied himself. Handed me the kite.

“Where were you? I looked for you,” I said. Speaking those words was like chewing on a rock.

Hassan dragged a sleeve across his face, wiped snot and tears. I was grateful for the early-evening shadows that fell on Hassan’s face and concealed mine. I was glad I didn’t have to return his gaze. He began to say something and his voice cracked. He closed his mouth, opened it, and closed it again. I thought he might burst into tears, but, to my relief, he didn’t, and I pretended I hadn’t heard the crack in his voice. Just like I pretended I hadn’t seen the dark stain in the seat of his pants. Or those tiny drops that fell from between his legs and stained the snow black.

“Agha sahib will worry,” was all he said. He turned from me and limped away.