Kite Runner Passage 16 (Chapter 20 -- pages 246-248)

Jadeh Maywand had turned into a giant sand castle. The buildings that hadn’t entirely collapsed barely stood, with caved in roofs and walls pierced with rockets shells. Entire blocks had been obliterated to rubble. I saw a bullet- pocked sign half buried at an angle in a heap of debris. It read DRINK COCA CO— . I saw children playing in the ruins of a windowless building amid jagged stumps of brick and stone. Bicycle riders and mule-drawn carts swerved around kids, stray dogs, and piles of debris. A haze of dust hovered over the city and, across the river, a single plume of smoke rose to the sky.

“Where are the trees?” I said.

“People cut them down for firewood in the winter,” Farid said. “The Shorawi cut a lot of them down too.”

“Why?”

“Snipers used to hide in them.”

A sadness came over me. Returning to Kabul was likerunning into an old, forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn’t been good tohim, that he’d become homeless and destitute.

“My father built an orphanage in Shar-e-Kohna, the old city, south of here,” I said.

“I remember it,” Farid said. “It was destroyed a few years ago.

“Can you pull over?” I said. “I want to take a quick walk here.”

Farid parked along the curb on a small backstreet next to a ramshackle, abandoned building with no door. “That used to be a pharmacy,” Farid muttered as we exited the truck. We walked back to Jadeh Maywand and turned right, heading west. “What’s that smell?” I said. Something was making my eyes water.

“Diesel,” Farid replied. “The city’s generators are always going down, so electricity is unreliable, and people use diesel fuel.”

“Diesel. Remember what this street smelled like in the old days?”

Farid smiled. “Kabob.”

“Lamb kabob,” I said.

“Lamb,” Farid said, tasting the word in his mouth. “The only people in Kabul who get to eat lamb now are the Taliban.” He pulled on my sleeve. “Speaking of which...”

A vehicle was approaching us. “Beard Patrol,” Farid murmured.

That was the first time I saw the Taliban. I’d seen them on TV on the Internet,on the cover of magazines, and in newspapers. But here I was now, less than fifty feet from them, telling myself that the sudden taste in my mouth wasn’t unadulterated, naked fear. Telling myself my flesh hadn’t suddenly shrunk against my bones and my heart wasn’t battering. Here they came. In all their glory.

The red Toyota pickup truck idled past us. A handful of stern faced young men sat on their haunches in the cab, Kalashnikovs slung on their shoulders. They all wore beards and black turbans. One of them, a dark-skinnedman in his early twenties with thick, knitted eyebrows twirled a whip in hishand and rhythmically swatted the side of the truck with it. His roaming eyes fell on me. Held my gaze. I’d never felt so naked in my entire life. Then the Talib spat tobacco-stained spittle and looked away. I found I could breathe again. The truck rolled down Jadeh Maywand, leaving in its trail a cloud of dust.

“What is the matter with you?” Farid hissed.

“What?”

“Don’t ever stare at them! Do you understand me? Never!”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said.

“Your friend is quite right, Agha. You might as well poke a rabid dog with a stick,” someone said. This new voice belonged to an old beggar sitting barefoot on the steps of a bullet-scarred building. He wore a threadbare chapan worn to frayed shreds and a dirt-crusted turban. His left eyelid drooped over an empty socket. With an arthritic hand, he pointed to the direction the red truck had gone. “They drive around looking. Looking and hoping that someone will provoke them. Sooner or later, someone always obliges. Then the dogs feast and the day’s boredom is broken at last and everyone says “Allah-u-akbar!” And on those days when no one offends, well, there is always random violence, isn’t there?”

“Keep your eyes on your feet when the Talibs are near,” Farid said.

“Your friend dispenses good advice,” the old beggar chimed in. He barked a wet cough and spat in a soiled handkerchief. “Forgive me, but could you spare a few Afghanis?” he breathed.

“Bas. Let’s go,” Farid said, pulling me by the arm.

I handed the old man a hundred thousand Afghanis, or the equivalent of about three dollars. When he leaned forward to take the money, his stench—like sour milk and feet that hadn’t been washed in weeks—flooded my nostrils and made my gorge rise. He hurriedly slipped the money in his waist, his lone eye darting side to side. “A world of thanks for your benevolence, Agha sahib.”