The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Read Free Book Online Page B

a smile. We’d been waiting for his call all day: It was Hassan’s birthday. “What is it, Father, do you know? Will you tell us?” Hassan said. His eyes were gleaming.

    Ali shrugged. “Agha sahib hasn’t discussed it with me.”

    “Come on, Ali, tell us,” I pressed. “Is it a drawing book? Maybe a new pistol?”

    Like Hassan, Ali was incapable of lying. Every year, he pretended not to know what Baba had bought Hassan or me for our birthdays. And every year, his eyes betrayed him and we coaxed the goods out of him. This time, though, it seemed he was telling the truth.

    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.
    The previous year, Baba had surprised Hassan with a leather cowboy hat just like the one Clint Eastwood wore in _The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly_--which had unseated _The Magnificent Seven_ as our favorite Western. That whole winter, Hassan and I took turns wearing the hat, and belted out the film’s famous music as we climbed mounds of snow and shot each other dead.

    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.

    “Hassan,” Baba said, smiling coyly, “meet your birthday present.”

    Hassan and I traded blank looks. There was no gift-wrapped box in sight. No bag. No toy. Just Ali standing behind us, and Baba with this slight Indian fellow who looked a little like a mathematics teacher.

    31
    “The Kite Runner” By Khaled Hosseini
    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. He gave a polite tip of the head, but his eyes sought his father behind him. Ali moved closer and set his hand on Hassan’s shoulder.

    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. I knew this because one of my classmates had died of it the year before and the teacher had told us they had waited too long to take him to a surgeon. We both looked to Ali, but of course with him you could never tell. His face was impassive as ever, though something sober had melted into his eyes.

    “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. “Oh,” he said again.

    “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.”

    “Oh,” Hassan said. He smiled back with relief. A little relief anyway. “I wasn’t scared, Agha sahib, I just...” Hassan might have been fooled, but I wasn’t. I knew that when doctors said it wouldn’t hurt, that’s when you knew you were in trouble. With dread, I remembered my circumcision the year prior. The doctor had given me the same line, reassured me it wouldn’t hurt one bit. But when the numbing medicine wore off later that night, it felt like