The Kite Runner Page 0,124

water over the sides.

"You're going to be great," I said.

"Oh, I almost forgot! I called Kaka Sharif."

I remembered him reciting a poem at our nika from a scrap of hotel stationery paper. His son had held the Koran over our heads as Soraya and I had walked toward the stage, smiling at the flashing cameras. "What did he say?"

"Well, he's going to stir the pot for us. He'll call some of his INS buddies," she said.

"That's really great news," I said. "I can't wait for you to see Sohrab."

"I can't wait to see you," she said.

I hung up smiling.

Sohrab emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later. He had barely said a dozen words since the meeting with Raymond Andrews and my attempts at conversation had only met with a nod or a monosyllabic reply. He climbed into bed, pulled the blanket to his chin. Within minutes, he was snoring.

I wiped a circle on the fogged-up mirror and shaved with one of the hotel's old-fashioned razors, the type that opened and you slid the blade in. Then I took my own bath, lay there until the steaming hot water turned cold and my skin shriveled up. I lay there drifting, wondering, imagining... OMAR FAISAL WAS CHUBBY, dark, had dimpled cheeks, black button eyes, and an affable, gap-toothed smile. His thinning gray hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore a brown corduroy suit with leather elbow patches and carried a worn, overstuffed briefcase. The handle was missing, so he clutched the briefcase to his chest. He was the sort of fellow who started a lot of sentences with a laugh and an unnecessary apology, like I'm sorry, I'll be there at five. Laugh. When I had called him, he had insisted on coming out to meet us. "I'm sorry, the cabbies in this town are sharks," he said in perfect English, without a trace of an accent. "They smell a foreigner, they triple their fares."

He pushed through the door, all smiles and apologies, wheezing a little and sweating. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief and opened his briefcase, rummaged in it for a notepad and apologized for the sheets of paper that spilled on the bed. Sitting crosslegged on his bed, Sohrab kept one eye on the muted television, the other on the harried lawyer. I had told him in the morning that Faisal would be coming and he had nodded, almost asked some thing, and had just gone on watching a show with talking animals.

"Here we are," Faisal said, flipping open a yellow legal notepad. "I hope my children take after their mother when it comes to organization. I'm sorry, probably not the sort of thing you want to hear from your prospective lawyer, heh?" He laughed.

"Well, Raymond Andrews thinks highly of you."

"Mr. Andrews. Yes, yes. Decent fellow. Actually, he rang me and told me about you."

"He did?"

"Oh yes."

"So you're familiar with my situation."

Faisal dabbed at the sweat beads above his lips. "I'm familiar with the version of the situation you gave Mr. Andrews," he said. His cheeks dimpled with a coy smile. He turned to Sohrab. "This must be the young man who's causing all the trouble," he said in Farsi.

"This is Sohrab," I said. "Sohrab, this is Mr. Faisal, the lawyer I told you about."

Sohrab slid down the side of his bed and shook hands with Omar Faisal. "Salaam alaykum," he said in a low voice.

"Alaykum salaam, Sohrab," Faisal said. "Did you know you are named after a great warrior?"

Sohrab nodded. Climbed back onto his bed and lay on his side to watch TV.

"I didn't know you spoke Farsi so well," I said in English. "Did you grow up in Kabul?"

"No, I was born in Karachi. But I did live in Kabul for a number of years. Shar-e-Nau, near the Haji Yaghoub Mosque," Faisal said. "I grew up in Berkeley, actually. My father opened a music store there in the late sixties. Free love, headbands, tiedyed shirts, you name it." He leaned forward. "I was at Woodstock."

"Groovy," I said, and Faisal laughed so hard he started sweating all over again. "Anyway," I continued, "what I told Mr. Andrews was pretty much it, save for a thing or two. Or maybe three. I'll give you the uncensored version."

He licked a finger and flipped to a blank page, uncapped his pen. "I'd appreciate that, Amir. And why don't we just keep it in English from here on out?"

"Fine."

I told him everything that had happened. Told him about