殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(105)

Later that night, after Soraya fell asleep--wine always made her sleepy--I stood on the balcony and breathed in the cool summer air. I thought of Rahim Khan and the little note of support he had written me after he’d read my first story. And I thought of Hassan. Some day, _Inshallah_, you will be a great writer, he had said once, and people all over the world will read your stories. There was so much goodness in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved any of it.
The novel was released in the summer of that following year, 1989, and the publisher sent me on a five-city book tour. I became a minor celebrity in the Afghan community. That was the year that the Shorawi completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. It should have been a time of glory for Afghans. Instead, the war raged on, this time between Afghans, the Mujahedin, against the Soviet puppet government of Najibullah, and Afghan refugees kept flocking to Pakistan. That was the year that the cold war ended, the year the Berlin Wall came down. It was the year of Tiananmen Square. In the midst of it all, Afghanistan was forgotten. And General Taheri, whose hopes had stirred awake after the Soviets pulled out, went back to winding his pocket watch.
That was also the year that Soraya and I began trying to have a child.
THE IDEA OF FATHERHOOD unleashed a swirl of emotions in me. I found it frightening, invigorating, daunting, and exhilarating all at the same time. What sort of father would I make, I wondered. I wanted to be just like Baba and I wanted to be nothing like him.
But a year passed and nothing happened. With each cycle of blood, Soraya grew more frustrated, more impatient, more irritable. By then, Khala Jamila’s initially subtle hints had become overt, as in “Kho dega!” So! “When am I going to sing alahoo for my little nawasa?” The general, ever the Pashtun, never made any queries--doing so meant alluding to a sexual act between his daughter and a man, even if the man in question had been married to her for over four years. But his eyes perked up when Khala Jamila teased us about a baby.

等到夜闌人靜，索拉雅入睡——酒精總是讓她睡意蒙嚨——之後，我站在陽臺，吸着冰涼的夏夜空氣。我想起拉辛汗，還有那鼓勵我寫作的字條，那是他讀了我寫的第一個故事之後寫下的。我想起哈桑。總有一天，奉安拉之名，你會成爲了不起的作家。他曾經說。全世界的人都會讀你的故事。我生命中有過這麼多美好的事情，這麼多幸福的事情，我尋思自己究竟哪點配得上這些。
傀儡政權之間的鬥爭。阿富汗難民依舊如潮水般涌向巴基斯坦。就在那一年，冷戰結束，柏林牆倒塌。在所有這些之中，阿富汗被人遺忘。而塔赫裏將軍，俄國人撤軍曾讓他燃起希望，又開始給他的懷錶上發條了。
也就是在那一年，我和索拉雅打算生個孩子。
想到自己要當父親，我心中像打翻了五味瓶。我又害怕又開心，又沮喪又興奮。我在想，自己會成爲什麼樣的父親呢？我既想成爲爸爸那樣的父親，又希望自己一點都不像他。
但一年過去了，什麼都沒發生。隨着月經一次次如期而至，索拉雅越來越沮喪，越來越焦躁，越來越煩惱。等到那時，原先只是旁敲側擊的雅米拉阿姨也變得不耐煩了。“好啦！我什麼時候能給我的孫子唱搖籃曲啊？”將軍永遠不失普什圖人風範，從來不過問——提起這些問題，意味着試探他女兒和一個男人的性生活，儘管這個男人跟他女兒結婚已經超過四年之久。但每當雅米拉阿姨問起孩子，讓我們難爲情的時候，他總是眼睛一亮。