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“I hear you can read them, too.”
Since this wasn’t a question, Poya said nothing.
“That’s actually quite amazing,” Mr. White said.
Again, not a question. Poya stayed mum. The silence lengthened, filled only with the hum of tires on asphalt and the rise and fall of girls’ voices drifting up from the back cargo bay.
Mr. White flicked a quick sidelong glance. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you learn all those languages?”
“I like to read. Baba has many movies.”
“And television shows from other countries, I’ll bet.”
Another non-question. Poya waited.
“And this is how you learned? From movies and television? Books?”
“Yes.” Poya waited, but Mr. White didn’t ask another question, which was a relief.
This Mr. White was quite the puzzle. He was American, that much was clear, although with a hint of some other accent. NotDownton Abbey- British, but close. He didn’t quite dress like an American either, at least not the tourists and journalists who’d come to Kabul in the Before Times. Instead of jeans and a tee, Mr. White wore traditional men’s dress: a salwar kameez, as well as a beige and black shemagh looped around his neck. A lumpy dark brownpakoolperched atop his head, though the cap was flattened, stained, and a little threadbare as if he’d used it for apillow or to cushion his bottom on a rock. There was dirt in the creases of his neck. He and his clothes were dusty and stained with sweat, as if he had gone a long time in the high desert without a bath.
In a way…Poya could feel his brain inching up to the realization… didn’t Baba’s clothes sometimes smell exactly like this after he came back from one of his trips?
If that’s true, maybe Mr. White and Baba spend a lot of time together in the same place.
That could explain how they knew one another. Butwhywere they friends?
“What game did you want to play?” Poya asked. Although he wondered if, perhaps, they were alreadyplaying at some game whose rules he’d yet to discover.
“A thinking game,” Mr. White said. “If you were stranded on a desert island, what threebooks would you bring?”
For a split second, Poya wondered if Mr. White had readA Thousand Splendid Suns.The book had never been translated into Pashto or Farsi. This was odd considering that the book was all about what happened to two Afghan women during the civil war after the Communists left. On the other hand, maybe that was exactly why an Afghan couldn’t read the book if he or she didn’t know English. No point in dissing men or giving women uppity ideas, after all.
Anyway, the father inSunshad a very large library, just like Baba. Bad things predictably happened to the family because this was, after all, about Afghanistan. Literally the hour before the Taliban swept into Kabul in 1996, the father in the story told his daughter about a game where a person listed the fivebooks he would most want to take. Poya didn’t quite recall if this was for a desert island or whether the girl ever picked any books. He thought not because, a few pages later, a rocket hit the house reducing it to rubble and the library to cinders and made the girlan orphan. Oh, and pregnant, too, though the girl didn’t know that yet.
Poya asked, “Do the books have to be in English?”
“For simplicity’s sake, yes. Unlike you, I’m not a polyglot.”
That made the choice a little easier, but only because German usedsomany words to describe what English could in one or two. “If the books are short, can I bring four instead of three?”
“You drive a hard bargain.” He thought about it and nodded. “Deal. But they mustallbe relatively short. Say, less than two hundred pages.”
It was the best he could hope for. “Fahrenheit 451,Anne Frank.” He thought. “A Wrinkle in Time.” Sifting through his remaining options he said, “The first edition ofHarry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”
To his credit, Mr. White didn’t laugh. “First edition, eh? That was specific. I thought those Harry Potter books are enormous.”
“Not all. The first edition is only twenty pages over the limit.”
“Okay, brownie points for knowing that. Now,” he said, “tell me why you chose those particular books.”
“I like451,” Poya said, “because I sometimes do the same thing.”
“Do what?”
“Memorize books.”
“Why?”