英文名著精讲:The Kite Runner 追风筝的人(4)

      12岁的阿富汗富家少爷阿米尔与仆人哈桑情同手足。然而，在一场风筝比赛后，发生了一件悲惨不堪的事，阿米尔为自己的懦弱感到自责和痛苦，逼走了哈桑，不久，自己也跟随父亲逃往美国。

      成年后的阿米尔始终无法原谅自己当年对哈桑的背叛。为了赎罪，阿米尔再度踏上暌违二十多年的故乡，希望能为不幸的好友尽最后一点心力，却发现一个惊天谎言，儿时的噩梦再度重演，阿米尔该如何抉择？小说如此残忍而又美丽，作者以温暖细腻的笔法勾勒人性的本质与救赎，读来令人荡气回肠。

      In the eighteen years that I lived in that house, I stepped into Hassan and Ali's quarters only a handful of times. When the sun dropped low behind the hills and we were done playing for the day, Hassan and I parted ways. I went past the rosebushes to Baba's mansion, Hassan to the mud shack where he had been born, where he'd lived his entire life. I remember it was spare, clean, dimly lit by a pair of kerosene lamps. There were two mattresses on opposite sides of the room, a worn Herati rug with frayed edges in between, a three-legged stool, and a wooden table in the corner where Hassan did his drawings. The walls stood bare, save for a single tapestry with sewn-in beads forming the words "Allah-u-akbar". Baba had bought it for Ali on one of his trips to Mashad.

      It was in that small shack that Hassan's mother, Sanaubar, gave birth to him one cold winter day in 1964. While my mother hemorrhaged to death during childbirth, Hassan lost his less than a week after he was born. Lost her to a fate most Afghans considered far worse than death: She ran off with a clan of traveling singers and dancers.

      Hassan never talked about his mother, as if she'd never existed. I always wondered if he dreamed about her, about what she looked like, where she was. I wondered if he longed to meet her. Did he ache for her, the way I ached for the mother I had never met? One day, we were walking from my father's house to Cinema Zainab for a new Iranian movie, taking the shortcut through the military barracks near Istiqlal Middle School—Baba had forbidden us to take that shortcut, but he was in Pakistan with Rahim Khan at the time. We hopped the fence that surrounded the barracks, skipped over a little creek, and broke into the open dirt field where old, abandoned tanks collected dust. A group of soldiers huddled in the shade of one of those tanks, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. One of them saw us, elbowed the guy next to him, and called Hassan.

      "Hey, you!" he said. "I know you."

      We had never seen him before. He was a squatly man with a shaved head and black stubble on his face. The way he grinned at us, leered, scared me. "Just keep walking," I muttered to Hassan.

      "You! The Hazara! Look at me when I'm talking to you!" the soldier barked. He handed his cigarette to the guy next to him, made a circle with the thumb and index finger of one hand. Poked the middle finger of his other hand through the circle. Poked it in and out. In and out. "I knew your mother, did you know that? I knew her real good. I took her from behind by that creek over there."

      The soldiers laughed. One of them made a squealing sound. I told Hassan to keep walking, keep walking.

      "What a tight little sugary cunt she had!" the soldier was saying, shaking hands with the others, grinning. Later, in the dark, after the movie had started, I heard Hassan next to me, croaking. Tears were sliding down his cheeks. I reached across my seat, slung my arm around him, pulled him close. He rested his head on my shoulder. "He took you for someone else," I whispered. "He took you for someone else."