The early-afternoon sun sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp breeze. Then I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring in the sky. They danced high above the trees…floating side by side like a pair of eyes looking down on San Francisco, the city I now call home.
One of the yellow-haired tourists slapped the other one on the back. In the distance, across the lake, a truck lumbered around a corner on the hill. Sunlight twinkled in its side-view mirrorWe took strolls in the musty-smelling bazaars of the Shar-e-Nau section of Kabul….We snaked our way among the merchants and the beggars, wandered through narrow alleys cramped with rows of tiny, tightly packed stalls.
There was an old abandoned cemetery atop the hill with rows of unmarked headstones and tangles of brushwood clogging the aisles. Seasons of rain and snow had turned the iron gate rusty and left the cemetery’s low white stone walls in decay.
Sitting cross-legged, sunlight and shadows of pomegranate leaves dancing on his face.
I stepped back and all I saw was rain on the windowpanes like melting silver.
…but time can be a greedy thing – sometimes it steals all the details for itself.
Kids hooted and screamed with each crackle and whoosh.The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras….The book said part of the reason Pashtuns….The book said a lot of things…
Rahim Khan told me Baba had personally funded the entire project, paying for the engineers, plumbers, and laborers, not to mention the city officials whose “mustaches needed oiling.”
