THE KITE RUNNER Chapter 4 - 7

My page 76 may not be the same asy yours. There are many different publications of this book. Please quote me a line and chapter from where you are examining the text and I should be able to find it.

"Hassan's not going anywhere,"Babas napped. He dug a new whole with the trowel, striking the dirt harder than he had to. “He’s staying right here with us, where he belongs. This is his home and we're his family. Don't you ever ask me that question again" "I won't, Baba. I'm sorry." We planted the rest of the tulips in silence. I was relieved when school started that next week. Students with new notebooks and sharpened pencils in hand ambled about the courtyard, kicking up dust, chatting in groups, waiting for the class captains' whistles. Baba drove down the dirt lane that led to the entrance. The school was an old two-story building with broken windows and dim, cobblestone hallways, patches of its original dull yellow paint still showing between sloughing chunks of plaster. Most of the boys walked to school, and Baba's black Mustang drew more than one envious look. I should have been beaming with pride when he dropped me off—the old me would have—but all I could muster was a mild form of embarrassment. That and emptiness. Baba drove away without saying good-bye. I bypassed the customary comparing of kite-fighting scars and stood in line. The bell rang and we marched to our assigned class, filed in in pairs. I sat in the back row. As the Farsi teacher handed out our textbooks, I prayed for a heavy load of homework. School gave me an excuse to stay in my room for long hours. And, for a while, it took my mind off what had happened that winter, what I had let happen. For a few weeks, I preoccupied myself with gravity and momentum, atoms and cells, the Anglo-Afghan wars, instead of thinking about Hassan and what had happened to him. But, always, my mind returned to the alley. To Hassan's brown corduroy pants lying on the bricks. To the droplets of blood staining the snow dark red, almost black. One sluggish, hazy afternoon early that summer, I asked Hassan to go up the hill with me. Told him I wanted to read him a new story I'd written. He was hanging clothes to dry in the yard and I saw his eagerness in the harried way he finished the job.