"While you’re busy knitting sweaters, my dear, I have to deal with the community’s perception of our family. People will ask. They will want to know why there is a Hazara boy living with our daughter. What do I tell them?”
Soraya dropped her spoon. Turned on her father. “You can tell them--”
“It’s okay, Soraya,” I said, taking her hand. “It’s okay. General Sahib is quite right. People will ask.”
“Amir--” she began.
“It’s all right.” I turned to the general. “You see, General Sahib, my father slept with his servant’s wife. She bore him a son named Hassan. Hassan is dead now. That boy sleeping on the couch is Hassan’s son. He’s my nephew. That’s what you tell people when they ask.”
They were all staring at me.
“And one more thing, General Sahib,” I said. “You will never again refer to him as ‘Hazara boy’ in my presence. He has a name and it’s Sohrab.”
No one said anything for the remainder of the meal.
IT WOULD BE ERRONEOUS to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquillity. Quiet is turning down the VOLUME knob on life.Silence is pushing the OFF button. Shutting it down. All of it.Sohrab’s silence wasn’t the self-imposed silence of those with convictions, of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.He didn’t so much live with us as occupy space. And precious little of it. Sometimes, at the market, or in the park, I’d notice how other people hardly seemed to even see him, like he wasn’t there at all. I’d look up from a book and realize Sohrab had entered the room, had sat across from me, and I hadn’t noticed. He walked like he was afraid to leave behind footprints. He moved as if not to stir the air around him. Mostly, he slept.

Soon after the attacks, America bombed Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance moved in, and the Taliban scurried like rats into the caves.
Suddenly, people were standing in grocery store lines and talking about the cities of my childhood, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif. When I was very little, Baba took Hassan and me to Kunduz. Hamid Karzai’s caracul hat and green chapan became famous.
Sohrab sleepwalked through it all.