Sohrab's smile

After nearly a year of utter silence following his suicide attempt in an Islamabad hotel bathroom, Sohrab finally smiles—a tiny, lopsided, barely-there smile—when Amir flies a kite with him at a Fremont park in March 2002, marking the first fragile thaw in his profound trauma and the beginning of a possible healing.

The Context of Silence

Sohrab had not spoken a single word for almost a year after his suicide attempt. He had slit his wrists in the bathtub of the Islamabad hotel room after Amir, breaking a promise, told him he might have to stay in an orphanage for a while. Rescued and brought to America, Sohrab lived with Amir and Soraya in their San Francisco home, but he did not so much live with them as occupy space. He walked as if afraid to leave footprints, moved as if not to stir the air around him, and mostly slept. His silence was not the self-imposed quiet of conviction but the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under. He had told Amir in the hospital, in a hoarse whisper, that he was tired of everything and wanted his old life back—his parents, his grandmother Sasa, Rahim Khan, their house in Kabul. That old life was gone, and Sohrab had retreated into a world where no one could reach him.

The Kite-Flying Moment

On a cool, rainy Sunday in March 2002, Amir took Soraya, Khala Jamila, and Sohrab to a gathering of Afghans at Lake Elizabeth Park in Fremont to celebrate the Afghan New Year. The rain stopped by three o'clock, and a cool breeze blew through the park. Amir saw a man selling kites from a stand and bought a yellow seh-parcha. He tested the glass-coated string the way he and Hassan used to, by holding it between his thumb and forefinger and pulling it until it drew blood. He walked to where Sohrab was standing, leaning against a garbage pail, arms crossed on his chest, looking up at the sky. Amir told him about the old lift-and-dive trick, Hassan's favorite, and asked if he wanted to help fly the kite. Sohrab said nothing. Amir ran, let the kite lift, and felt the old instincts rush back. Then he felt a presence next to him: Sohrab had followed. When Amir held the string out, Sohrab's hand lifted from his pocket, hesitated, and took it. The glassy, vacant look in his eyes was gone; his face was a little flushed, his eyes suddenly alert, awake, alive.

The Smile

A green kite closed in, and Amir executed the old lift-and-dive perfectly, cutting the opponent's line. Behind them, people cheered. Amir looked down at Sohrab. One corner of his mouth had curled up just so—a smile. Lopsided. Hardly there. But there. Amir blinked and the smile was gone, but it had been there. He had seen it. He asked Sohrab if he wanted him to run that kite for him. Sohrab's Adam's apple rose and fell as he swallowed. The wind lifted his hair. Amir thought he saw him nod. Then Amir heard himself say, "For you, a thousand times over," and he turned and ran, a grown man running with a swarm of screaming children, a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on his lips.

Significance and Aftermath

The smile was only a tiny thing—a leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. It did not make everything all right. It did not make anything all right. But it was the first flake melting in the spring, the first sign that Sohrab's profound trauma might, over time, begin to heal. The smile echoed the smile of the lamb that Amir had seen in the alley in 1975, the look of acceptance on the sheep's face before the mullah slit its throat on Eid Al-Adha. It also echoed the smile of Hassan emerging from his mother's womb, incapable of hurting anyone. For Amir, who had spent his entire adult life haunted by his cowardice in that alley, Sohrab's smile was a moment of grace—a sign that the cycle of betrayal and suffering might finally be breaking, and that redemption, however fragile, was possible.