I honor chapter two when we were children Hasan and I used to climb the poplar trees in the driveway of my father's house to annoy our neighbor by reflecting sunlight into their homes with the shard of mirror we would sit across from each other on a pair of high branches our naked feet dangling our trouser pockets filled with dried mulberries and walnuts we took turns with the mirror as we ate mulberries pelted each other with them giggling laughing I can still see her son up on that tree sunlight flickering through the leaves on it on his almost perfectly round face a face like a Chinese doll crit chiseled from hardwood his flat broad nose and slanting their eyes like bamboo leaves eyes that looked depending on the light gold green even sapphire I can still see his low set ears and that pointed stub of a chin a media pendant that looked like it was added there as a mere afterthought and the cleft lip just left of midline well the Chinese doll maker's instrument may have slipped perhaps maybe he had simply grown tired careless sometimes up in those trees I talked to his son into firing walnuts with his slingshot to at the neighbors one-eyed German Shepherd I saw never wanted to but if I asked really asked he wouldn't deny me Hasan never denied me anything and he was deadly with this link shot Hassan's father Ali used to catch us and get mad or as mad as someone whose gentlest as Ali could ever get he would wag his finger and wave us down from the tree he would take the mirror and tell us what his mother had told him that the devil Shawn mirrors to shown them to distract Muslims during prayer and he laughs while he does it he always added scowling at his son yes Father Hasan would mumble looking down at his feet but he never told on me never told that to me at the mirror like shooting walnuts at the neighbor's dog was always my idea the poplar trees lined the red brick driveway which led to a pair of wrought iron gates they in turn opened into an extension of the driveway into my father's estate the house side on the left side of the brick path the back yard at the end of it everyone agreed that my father my Baba had built the most beautiful house in the Wazir Akbar Khan district a new and affluent neighborhood in the northern part of Kabul some thought it was the prettiest house in all of Kabul a broad entryway flanked by rose bushes led to the sprawling house of marble floors and why windows and intricate mosaic tiles hand-picked by Baba in istafan with the floors of the floor bathrooms gold stitched tapestries which Bava had bought in Calcutta lined the walls a crystal chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling upstairs of my bedroom Baba's room and his study also known as the smoking room which perpetually spelled of tobacco and cinnamon Baba and his friends reclined on black leather chairs there after Ali had served dinner they stuffed their pipes except I've always called it flattening the pipe and discussed their favorite three topics politics business soccer sometimes I asked Bob if I could sit with them but Baba would tell me in the doorway go on now he'd say this is grown-ups time why don't you go read one of those books of yours he closed the door leave me to wonder why it was always grown-ups time with him I'd sit by the door he's drawn to my chest sometimes I sat there for an hour sometimes to listening to their laughter their chatter the living room downstairs had a curved wall with custom-built cabinets inside set framed family pictures an old grainy photo of my grandmother and King nadir Shah taken in 1931 two years before the Kings assassination they're standing over a dead deer dressed in knee-high boots rifle slung over their shoulders there's a picture of my parents wedding night Baba dashing in his white suit and my mother a smiling young princess in black there was baba and his best friend and business partner Rahim Khan standing outside our house neither one smiling I'm a baby in that photograph and Baba's holding me looking tired and grim I'm in his arms but it's Rahim Khan's pinky finger my my cook my fingers are called around the curved wall led into the dining room at the center of which was a mahogany table that could easily sit 30 guests and given my father's taste for extravagant parties it did just that almost every week on the other end of the dining room was a tall marble fireplace always lit by the orange fire in the wintertime a large sliding glass door opened into a semicircular Terrace that overlooked two acres of backyard and a row of cherry trees Bava and Ollie had planted a small vegetable garden along the eastern wall tomatoes mint pepper and a row of corn that never really took Hassan and I used to call it the wall of alien corn on the south end of the garden in the shadows of the local tree was the servants home a modest little hut where Hassan lived with his father it was there in that little shack that Hassan was born in the winter of 1964 just one year after my mother died giving birth to me in the 18 years that I lived in that house I stepped into Hassan and Ollie's quarters only a handful of times when the Sun dropped low behind the what behind the hills and we were done playing for the day Hassan and I parted ways I went past the rose bushes 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 side of the room a Warren herati rug with frayed edges in between a three-legged stool and a wooden table in the corner were assigned at his drawings the walls stood bare saved for a single tapestry with Sonnen beads forming the words Allah Akbar Baba had bought it for Ali in one of his trips to Mashhad it was in that small Shack that Hassan's mother sanobar gave birth to him one cold winter day in 1964 well my mother hemorrhage to death during childbirth Hassan lost his less than a week after he was born lost it to a fate most Afghans considered far worse than death she ran off with a clan of traveling singers and dancers Shawn never talked about his mother as if she never existed I always wondered if he dreamed about her about what she looked like where she was I wonder 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 for my father's house two cinemas at Zeinab for a new Iranian movie taking the shortcut through the military barracks near Istiklal 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 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 his son hey you he said I know you we had never seen him before he was a squatty man with a shaved head and black stubble on his face the way he grinned at us lead scared me just keep walking I muttered to Hasan 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 know a real good I took it from behind that Creek over there the soldiers left one of them made a squealing sound I told us on to keep walking keep walking what a tight little sugary country had the soldier was saying shaking hands with the others grinning later in the dark after the movie had started I heard house on 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 I told no one I'm told no one was really surprised when sanobar looked people had raised their eyebrows when Ali a man who had memorized the Quran Marian sanobar a woman 19 years younger a beautiful but notoriously unscrupulous woman who lived up to her dishonorable reputation like Ali suits she was a Shia Muslim and an ethnic Hazara she was also the first cousin and therefore natural choice for a spouse but beyond those similarities Ali and Sunna bar had little in common least of all their respective appearances while Santa bar is brilliant green eyes and impish face head rumor has it tempted countless men to into sin Ali had congenial paralysis of his lower facial muscles a condition that rendered him unable to smile and left him perpetually grimaced it was an odd thing to see the stone-faced ali happy or sad because only his slanted brown eyes glinted with a smile or weld with sorrow people say that eyes are windows to the soul never was that more true than with Ali who could only reveal himself through his eyes I have heard that Santa barrage Estes tried in oscillating hips sent men into reveries of infidelity but polio had left Ali with a twisted a trough atrophied right leg that was sallow skin over bone with little in between except a paper-thin layer of muscle I remember one day when I was 8 Ali taking me to the bazaar to buy some naan I was walking behind him humming trying to imitate his walk I watched him swing his scraggy leg in a sweeping arc watched his whole body tilt impossibly to the right every time he planted that foot it seemed a minor miracle he didn't tip over with each step when I tried I almost fell over into the gutter they got me giggling Ali turned around called me aping him he didn't say anything not then not ever he just kept walking Allie's face and his walk frightened some of the younger children in the neighborhood but the real trouble is with the older kids they chased him on the street and mocked him when he hobbled by some had taken to calling him babalu or boogeyman hey Baba Liu who did that who did you eat today they barked in a chorus of laughter who did you eat you flat nosed babalu they called him flat nose because of Ali and Hassan's characteristic Hazara features for years that was all I knew about those ARS that they were that they were muggle descendants and that they looked a little like Chinese people school textbooks barely mentioned them and referred to their ancestry only in passing then one day I was in Baba's study looking through his stuff when I found one of my mother's old history books it was written by an Iranian named Cora me I blew the dust off of it sneaked it into the bed with me that night and was stunned to find an entire chapter on Hazara history an entire chapter dedicated to Hassan's people in it I read that my people the passions had persecuted and oppressed the Czar's it said that the Hazaras had tried to rise against the passions in the 19th century but the passion said quelled them with unspeakable violence the book said that my people had killed the Hazaras driven them from their lands burned their homes and sold their women the book said that part of the reason passions had oppressed the Hazaras was the passions were Sunni Muslims while Hazara Shia the book said a lot of things I didn't know things my teachers hadn't mentioned things Baba didn't even mention either it also said some things that I did know like that people always called his arse mice eating flat-nosed load-carrying donkeys I had heard some of the kids in the neighborhood y'all those names to his on the following week after class I showed the book to my teacher and pointed to the chapter on the Czar's he skimmed through a couple of pages snickered and handed the book back that's the one thing she if people do well he said picking up his papers passions passing themselves as martyrs he wriggled his nose when he said the word Shia like it was some kind of disease but despite sharing ethnic heritage with family and blood Santa borrow a neighborhood kids and taunting Ali I have heard that she never made no secret of her disdain for his appearance this is a husband she would sneer I have seen old donkeys better suited to be a husband in the end most people suspected the marriage had been an arrangement of sorts between Ali and his uncle Senna bars father they said Ali had married his cousin to help restore some honor to his uncle's blemish name even though Ali who had been orphaned at the age of five had no worldly possessions or inheritance to speak of Ali never retaliated against any of his tormentors I suppose partly because he could never catch them with that twisted leg dragging behind him but mostly because Ali was immune to the insults of his assailants he had found his joy his antidote the moment Santa bar had given birth to his son it had been a simple enough affair no obstetricians no anesthesiologist no fancy monitoring devices just Santa barline on a stained naked mattress with Ali and a midwife helping her she hadn't needed much help at all because even in birth her son was true to his nature he was incapable of hurting anyone a few grunts a couple of pushes and out came Hasan out he came smiling as confided to a neighbor's servant by the careless Midwife who had then in turn told anyone who would listen Senna bar had taken one glance at the baby in Ali's arms seen the cleft lip and barked a bitter laughter there she had said now you have your own idiot child to do all your smiling for she had refused to even hold Hasan on just five days later she was gone Baba hired the same nursing woman who had fed me to nurse us on Ali told us that she was a blue-eyed Hazara woman from Bamiyan the city of the giant Buddha statues would have sweet singing voice she had he used to say to us what did she sing his son and I were always asked though we already knew Ali had told his countless times we just wanted to hear Ali sing he cleared his throat and begin on a high mountain I stood and cried the name of Ali Lion of God Oh Ali Lion of God king of men bring joy to our sorrowful hearts then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breasts a kinship that not even time could break Hasan and I fed from the same breasts we took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard and under the same roof we spoke our first words mine was Baba his was Amir my name looking back at it now I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975 and all that had followed was already laid in those first words