Later that night, after Soraya fell asleep--wine always made her sleepy--I stood on the balcony and breathed in the cool summer air. I thought of Rahim Khan and the little note of support he had written me after he’d read my first story. And I thought of Hassan. Some day, _Inshallah_, you will be a great writer, he had said once, and people all over the world will read your stories. There was so much goodness in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved any of it.

等到夜阑人静，索拉雅入睡——酒精总是让她睡意蒙咙——之后，我站在阳台，吸着冰凉的夏夜空气。我想起拉辛汗，还有那鼓励我写作的字条，那是他读了我写的第一个故事之后写下的。我想起哈桑。总有一天，奉安拉之名，你会成为了不起的作家。他曾经说。全世界的人都会读你的故事。我生命中有过这么多美好的事情，这么多幸福的事情，我寻思自己究竟哪点配得上这些。

The novel was released in the summer of that following year, 1989, and the publisher sent me on a five-city book tour. I became a minor¹ celebrity² in the Afghan community. That was the year that the Shorawi completed their withdrawal³ from Afghanistan. It should have been a time of glory for Afghans. Instead, the war raged on, this time between Afghans, the Mujahedin, against the Soviet⁴ puppet government of Najibullah, and Afghan refugees kept flocking to Pakistan. That was the year that the cold war ended, the year the Berlin Wall came down. It was the year of Tiananmen Square. In the midst of it all, Afghanistan was forgotten. And General Taheri, whose hopes had stirred awake after the Soviets⁵ pulled out, went back to winding⁶ his pocket watch.

傀儡政权之间的斗争。阿富汗难民依旧如潮水般涌向巴基斯坦。就在那一年，冷战结束，柏林墙倒塌。在所有这些之中，阿富汗被人遗忘。而塔赫里将军，俄国人撤军曾让他燃起希望，又开始给他的怀表上发条了。

That was also the year that Soraya and I began trying to have a child. 也就是在那一年，我和索拉雅打算生个孩子。

THE IDEA OF FATHERHOOD unleashed⁷ a swirl⁸ of emotions in me. I found it frightening, invigorating, daunting⁹, and exhilarating all at the same time. What sort of father would I make, I wondered. I wanted to be just like Baba and I wanted to be nothing like him.

想到自己要当父亲，我心中像打翻了五味瓶。我又害怕又开心，又沮丧又兴奋。我在想，自己会成为什么样的父亲呢？我既想成为爸爸那样的父亲，又希望自己一点都不像他。

But a year passed and nothing happened. With each cycle of blood, Soraya grew more frustrated¹⁰, more impatient, more irritable¹¹. By then, Khala Jamila’s initially¹² subtle hints had become overt¹³, as in “Kho dega!” So! “When am I going to sing alahoo for my little nawasa?” The general, ever the Pashtun, never made any queries--doing so meant alluding¹⁴ to a sexual act between his daughter and a man, even if the man in question had been married to her for over four years. But his eyes perked¹⁵ up when Khala Jamila teased us about a baby.

但一年过去了，什么都没发生。随着月经一次次如期而至，索拉雅越来越沮丧，越来越焦躁，越来越烦恼。等到那时，原先只是旁敲侧击的雅米拉阿姨也变得不耐烦了。“好啦！我什么时候能给我的孙子唱摇篮曲啊？”将军永远不失普什图人风范，从来不过问——提起这些问题，意味着试探他女儿和一个男人的性生活，尽管这个男人跟他女儿结婚已经超过四年之久。但每当雅米拉阿姨问起孩子，让我们难为情的时候，他总是眼睛一亮。