“I want you to stop harassing me. I want you to go away,” I snapped. I wished he would give it right back to me, break the door open and tell me off--it would have made things easier, better. But he didn’t do anything like that, and when I opened the door minutes later, he wasn’t there. I fell on my bed, buried my head under the pillow, and cried.
HASSAN MILLED ABOUT the periphery of my life after that. I made sure our paths crossed as little as possible, planned my day that way. Because when he was around, the oxygen seeped out of the room. My chest tightened and I couldn’t draw enough air; I’d stand there, gasping in my own little airless bubble of atmosphere. But even when he wasn’t around, he was. He was there in the hand-washed and ironed clothes on the cane-seat chair, in the warm slippers left outside my door, in the wood already burning in the stove when I came down for breakfast. Everywhere I turned, I saw signs of his loyalty, his goddamn unwavering loyalty.
Early that spring, a few days before the new school year started, Baba and I were planting tulips in the garden. Most of the snow had melted and the hills in the north were already dotted with patches of green grass. It was a cool, gray morning, and Baba was squatting next to me, digging the soil and planting the bulbs I handed to him. He was telling me how most people thought it was better to plant tulips in the fall and how that wasn’t true, when I came right out and said it. “Baba, have you ever thought about get ting new servants?”
He dropped the tulip bulb and buried the trowel in the dirt. Took off his gardening gloves. I’d startled him. “Chi? What did you say?”
“I was just wondering, that’s all.”
“Why would I ever want to do that?” Baba said curtly.
“You wouldn’t, I guess. It was just a question,” I said, my voice fading to a murmur. I was already sorry I’d said it.
“Is this about you and Hassan? I know there’s something going on between you two, but whatever it is, you have to deal with it, not me. I’m staying out of it.”
“I’m sorry, Baba.”
He put on his gloves again. “I grew up with Ali,” he said through clenched teeth. “My father took him in, he loved Ali like his own son. Forty years Ali’s been with my family. Forty goddamn years. And you think I’m just going to throw him out?” He turned to me now, his face as red as a tulip. “I’ve never laid a hand on you, Amir, but you ever say that again...” He looked away, shaking his head. “You bring me shame. And Hassan... Hassan’s not going anywhere, do you understand?”
I looked down and picked up a fistful of cool soil. Let it pour between my fingers.
“I said, Do you understand?” Baba roared.
I flinched. “Yes, Baba.”