“This Hazara boy.”
“Yes.”
“What does he mean to you?”
“His father meant a lot to me. He is the man in the photo. He’s dead now.”
Wahid blinked. “He was a friend of yours?”
My instinct was to say yes, as if, on some deep level, I too wanted to protect Baba’s secret. But there had been enough lies already. “He was my half-brother.” I swallowed. Added, “My illegitimate half brother.” I turned the teacup. Toyed with the handle.
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You’re not prying,” I said.“What will you do with him?”“Take him back to Peshawar. There are people there who will take care of him.”
Wahid handed the photo back and rested his thick hand on my shoulder. “You are an honorable man, Amir agha. A true Afghan.”I cringed inside.
“I am proud to have you in our home tonight,” Wahid said. I thanked him and chanced a glance over to Farid. He was looking down now, playing with the frayed edges of the straw mat.
A SHORT WHILE LATER, Maryam and her mother brought two steaming bowls of vegetable shorwa and two loaves of bread. “I’m sorry we can’t offer you meat,” Wahid said. “Only the Taliban can afford meat now.”
“This looks wonderful,” I said. It did too. I offered some to him, to the kids, but Wahid said the family had eaten before we arrived. Farid and I rolled up our sleeves, dipped our bread in the shorwa, and ate with our hands. As I ate, I noticed Wahid’s boys, all three thin with dirtcaked faces and short-cropped brown hair under their skullcaps, stealing furtive glances at my digital wristwatch. The youngest whispered something in his brother’s ear. The brother nodded, didn’t take his eyes off my watch. The oldest of the boys--I guessed his age at about twelve--rocked back and forth, his gaze glued to my wrist. After dinner, after I’d washed my hands with the water Maryam poured from a clay pot, I asked for Wahid’s permission to give his boys a hadia, a gift. He said no, but, when I insisted, he reluctantly agreed. I unsnapped the wristwatch and gave it to the youngest of the three boys. He muttered a sheepish “Tashakor.”
“It tells you the time in any city in the world,” I told him. The boys nodded politely, passing the watch between them, taking turns trying it on. But they lost interest and, soon, the watch sat abandoned on the straw mat.