殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(114)

“Oh.” He slurped his tea and didn’t ask more; Rahim Khan had always been one of the most instinctive people I’d ever met. I told him a lot about Baba, his job, the flea market, and how, at the end, he’d died happy. I told him about my schooling, my books--four published novels to my credit now. He smiled at this, said he had never had any doubt. I told him I had written short stories in the leather-bound notebook he’d given me, but he didn’t remember the notebook.
The conversation inevitably turned to the Taliban.
“Is it as bad as I hear?” I said.
“Nay, it’s worse. Much worse,” he said.

“They don’t let you be human.” He pointed to a scar above his right eye cutting a crooked path through his bushy eyebrow. “I was at a soccer game in Ghazi Stadium in 1998. Kabul against Mazar-i-Sharif, I think, and by the way the players weren’t allowed to wear shorts. Indecent exposure, I guess.” He gave a tired laugh. “Anyway, Kabul scored a goal and the man next to me cheered loudly. Suddenly this young bearded fellow who was patrolling the aisles, eighteen years old at most by the look of him, he walked up to me and struck me on the forehead with the butt of his Kalashnikov. ‘Do that again and I’ll cut out your tongue, you old donkey!’ he said.” Rahim Khan rubbed the scar with a gnarled finger. “I was old enough to be his grandfather and I was sitting there, blood gushing down my face, apologizing to that son of a dog.”
I poured him more tea. Rahim Khan talked some more. Much of it I knew already, some not. He told me that, as arranged between Baba and him, he had lived in Baba’s house since 1981--this I knew about. Baba had “sold” the house to Rahim Khan shortly before he and I fled Kabul. The way Baba had seen it those days, Afghanistan’s troubles were only a temporary interruption of our way of life--the days of parties at the Wazir Akbar Khan house and picnics in Paghman would surely return. So he’d given the house to Rahim Khan to keep watch over until that day.
Rahim Khan told me how, when the Northern Alliance took over Kabul between 1992 and 1996, different factions claimed different parts of Kabul. “If you went from the Shar-e-Nau section to Kerteh-Parwan to buy a carpet, you risked getting shot by a sniper or getting blown up by a rocket--if you got past all the checkpoints, that was. You practically needed a visa to go from one neighborhood to the other. So people just stayed put, prayed the next rocket wouldn’t hit their home.” He told me how people knocked holes in the walls of their homes so they could bypass the dangerous streets and would move down the block from hole to hole. In other parts, people moved about in underground tunnels.
“Why didn’t you leave?” I said.
“Kabul was my home. It still is.” He snickered. “Remember the street that went from your house to the Qishla, the military bar racks next to Istiqial School?”
“Yes.” It was the shortcut to school. I remembered the day Hassan and I crossed it and the soldiers had teased Hassan about his mother. Hassan had cried in the cinema later, and I’d put an arm around him.
“When the Taliban rolled in and kicked the Alliance out of Kabul, I actually danced on that street,” Rahim Khan said. “And, believe me, I wasn’t alone. People were celebrating at _Chaman_, at Deh-Mazang, greeting the Taliban in the streets, climbing their tanks and posing for pictures with them. People were so tired of the constant fighting, tired of the rockets, the gunfire, the explosions, tired of watching Gulbuddin and his cohorts firing on any thing that moved. The Alliance did more damage to Kabul than the Shorawi. They destroyed your father’s orphanage, did you know that?”
“Why?” I said. “Why would they destroy an orphanage?” I remembered sitting behind Baba the day they opened the orphanage. The wind had knocked off his caracul hat and everyone had laughed, then stood and clapped when he’d delivered his speech. And now it was just another pile of rubble. All the money Baba had spent, all those nights he’d sweated over the blueprints, all the visits to the construction site to make sure every brick, every beam, and every block was laid just right...
“Collateral damage,” Rahim Khan said. “You don’t want to know, Amir jan, what it was like sifting through the rubble of that orphanage. There were body parts of children...”
“So when the Taliban came...”

“哦。”他啜着茶，不再說什麼。在我遇到的人中，拉辛汗總是最能識破人心那個。我向他說了很多爸爸的事情，他的工作，跳蚤市場，還有到了最後，他如何在幸福中溘然長辭。我告訴我上學的事情，我出的書——如今我已經出版了四部小說。他聽了之後微微一笑，說他對此從未懷疑。我跟他說，我在他送我那本皮面筆記本上寫小故事，但他不記得那筆記本。
話題不可避免地轉向塔利班。
“不是我聽到的那麼糟糕吧？”我說。
“不，更糟，糟得多。”他說，
“他們不會把你當人看。”他指着右眼上方的傷疤，彎彎曲曲地穿過他濃密的眉毛。“1998年，我坐在伽茲體育館裏面看足球賽。我記得是喀布爾隊和馬紮裏沙里夫 [MazareSharif，阿富汗西部城市]隊，還記得球員被禁止穿短衣短褲。我猜想那是因爲裸露不合規矩。”他疲憊地笑起來。“反正，喀布爾隊每進一球，坐在我身邊的年輕人就高聲歡呼。突然間，一個留着鬍子的傢伙向我走來，他在通道巡邏，樣子看起來最多十八歲。他用俄製步槍的槍托撞我的額頭。‘再喊我把你的舌頭割下來，你這頭老驢子！’他說。”拉辛汗用骨節嶙峋的手指抹抹傷疤。“我老得可以當他爺爺了，坐在那裏，血流滿面，向那個狗雜碎道歉。”
我給他添茶。拉辛汗說了更多。有些我已經知道，有些則沒聽說過。他告訴我，就像他和爸爸安排好那樣，自1981年起，他住進了爸爸的屋子——這個我知道。爸爸和我離開喀布爾之後不久，就把房子“賣”給拉辛汗。爸爸當時的看法是，阿富汗遇到的麻煩是暫時的，我們被打斷的生活——那些在瓦茲爾?阿克巴?汗區的房子大擺宴席和去帕格曼野炊的時光毫無疑問會重演。所以直到那天，他把房子交給拉辛汗託管。
拉辛汗告訴我，在1992到1996年之間，北方聯盟[Northern alliance，主要由三支非普什圖族的軍事力量於1992年組成，得到美國等西方國家的支持，1996年被塔利班推翻]佔領了喀布爾，不同的派系管轄喀布爾不同的地區。“如果你從沙裏諾區走到卡德帕灣區去買地毯，就算你能通過所有的關卡，也得冒着被狙擊手槍殺或者被火箭炸飛的危險，事情就是這樣。實際上，你從一個城區到另外的城區去，都需要通行證。所以人們留在家裏，祈禱下一枚火箭別擊中他們的房子。”他告訴我，人們如何穿牆鑿壁，在家裏挖出洞來，以便能避開危
險的街道，可以穿過一個又一個的牆洞，在臨近活動。在其他地區，人們還挖起地道。
“你幹嗎不離開呢？”我說。
“喀布爾是我的家園。現在還是。”他冷笑着說，“還記得那條從你家通向獨立中學旁邊那座兵營的路嗎？”
“記得。”那是條通往學校的近路。我記得那天，哈桑和我走過去，那些士兵侮辱哈桑的媽媽。後來哈桑還在電影院裏面哭了，我伸手抱住他。“當塔利班打得聯軍節節敗退、撤離喀布爾時，我真的在那條路上跳起舞來。”拉辛汗說，“還有，相信我，雀躍起舞的不止我一個。人們在夏曼大道、在德馬贊路慶祝，在街道上朝塔利班歡呼，爬上他們的坦克，跟他們一起擺姿勢拍照片。人們厭倦了連年征戰，厭倦了火箭、炮火、爆炸，厭倦了古勒卜丁[Gulbuddin Hekmatyar（1948～）， 1993年至1996年任阿富汗總理]和他的黨羽朝一切會動的東西開槍。聯軍對喀布爾的破壞比俄國佬還厲害。他們毀掉你爸爸的恤孤院，你知道嗎？”
“爲什麼？”我說，“他們幹嗎要毀掉一個恤孤院呢？”我記得恤孤院落成那天，我坐在爸爸後面，風吹落他那頂羔羊皮帽，大家都笑起來，當他講完話，人們紛紛起立鼓掌。而如今它也變成一堆瓦礫了。那些爸爸所花的錢，那些畫藍圖時揮汗如雨的夜晚，那些在工地悉心監工、確保每一塊磚頭、每一根樑子、每一塊石頭都沒擺錯的心血……
“城門失火，殃及池魚罷了，”拉辛汗說，“你不忍知道的，親愛的阿米爾，那在恤孤院的廢墟上搜救的情景，到處是小孩的身體碎片……”
“所以當塔利班剛來的時候……”