Essentials - I

An excerpt from The Kite Runner. One of the many lessons…

We were upstairs in Baba’s study, the smoking room, when I told him what Mullah Fatiullah Khan had taught us in class. Baba was pouring himself a whiskey from the bar he had built in the corner of the room. He listened, nodded, took a sip from his drink. Then he lowered himself into the leather sofa, put down his drink, and propped me up on his lap. I felt as if I were sitting on a pair of tree trunks. He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose, the air hissing through his mustache for what seemed an eternity I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to hug him or leap from his lap in mortal fear.

“I see you’ve confused what you’re learning in school with actual education,” he said in his thick voice.

“But if what he said is true then does it make you a sinner, Baba?”

“Hmm.” Baba crushed an ice cube between his teeth. “Do you want to know what your father thinks about sin?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” Baba said, “but first understand this and understand it now, Amir: You’ll never learn anything of value from those bearded idiots.”

“You mean Mullah Fatiullah Khan?”

Baba gestured with his glass. The ice clinked. “I mean all of them. Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys.”

I began to giggle. The image of Baba pissing on the beard of any monkey, self-righteous or otherwise, was too much.

“They do nothing but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book written in a tongue they don’t even understand.” He took a sip. “God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.”

“But Mullah Fatiullah Khan seems nice,” I managed between bursts of tittering.

“So did Genghis Khan,” Baba said. “But enough about that. You asked about sin and I want to tell you. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” I said, pressing my lips together. But a chortle escaped through my nose and made a snorting sound. That got me giggling again.

Baba’s stony eyes bore into mine and, just like that, I wasn’t laughing anymore. “I mean to speak to you man to man. Do you think you can handle that for once?”

“Yes, Baba jan,” I muttered, marveling, not for the first time, at how badly Baba could sting me with so few words. We’d had a fleeting good moment--it wasn’t often Baba talked to me, let alone on his lap--and I’d been a fool to waste it.

“Good,” Baba said, but his eyes wondered. “Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?”

“No, Baba jan,” I said, desperately wishing I did. I didn’t want to disappoint him again.
Baba heaved a sigh of impatience. That stung too, because he was not an impatient man.

“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. “You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

I did.

“There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir,” Baba said. “A man who takes what’s not his to take, be it a life or a loaf of naan... I spit on such a man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him. Do you understand?”

I found the idea of Baba clobbering a thief both exhilarating and terribly frightening. “Yes, Baba.”

“If there’s a God out there, then I would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork. Now, hop down. All this talk about sin has made me thirsty again.”