TheKiteRunnerChapter12读书笔记
(年底事⼉多啦，所以能花在这上⾯的时间也随之减少。表⿊体字为我阅读时查阅的单词。最后的单词总结不是全部，⽽是选择了觉得值得⼀看或者记忆的单词。)
In Afghanistan, yelda is the first night of the month of Jadi, the first night of winter, and the longest night of the year. As was the tradition, Hassan and I ud to stay up late, our feet tucked under the kursi, while Ali tosd apple skin into the stove and told us ancient tales of sultans and thieves to pass that longest of nights. It was from Ali that I learned the lore of yelda, that bedeviled moths flung themlves at candle flames, and wolves climbed mountains looking for the sun. Ali swore that if you ate watermelon the night of yelda, you wouldn’t get thirsty the coming summer.
tormented lovers kept vigil, enduring the
When I was older, I read in my poetry books that yelda was the starless night tormented
endless dark, waiting for the sun to ri and bring with it their loved one. After I met Soraya Taheri, every night of the week became a yelda for me. And when Sunday mornings came, I ro from bed, Soraya Taheri’s brown-eyed face already in my head. In Baba’s bus, I counted the miles until I’d e he
r sitting barefoot, arranging cardboard boxes of yellowed encyclopedias, her heels white against the asphalt, silver bracelets jingling around her slender wrists. I’d think of the shadow
Swap Meet Princess. The her hair cast on the ground when it slid off her back and hung down like a velvet curtain. Soraya. Swap Meet Princess morning sun to my yelda.
I invented excus to stroll down the aisle—which Baba acknowledged with a playful smirk—and pass the Taheris’ stand. I
perpetually dresd in his shiny overpresd gray suit, and he would wave back. Sometimes he’d would wave at the general, perpetually
get up from his director’s chair and we’d make small talk about my writing, the war, the day’s bargains. And I’d have to
paperback. The general and I would say our
will my eyes not to peel away
peel away, not to wander to where Soraya sat reading a paperback
slouch as I walked away.私人教练培训健身教练学校
good-byes and I’d try not to slouch
Sometimes she sat alone, the general off to some other row to socialize, and I would walk by, pretending not to know her, but
portly middle-aged woman with pale skin and dyed red hair. I promid mylf that I dying to. Sometimes she was there with a portly
would talk to her before the summer was over, but schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of
dil, to winter swept in and wakened Baba’s joints, baby leaves sprouted
sprouted once more, and I still hadn’t had the heart, the dil
专升本要什么条件even look her in the eye.
The spring quarter ended in late May 1985. I aced all of my general education class, which was a minor miracle given how
I’d sit in lectures and think of the soft hook of Soraya’s no.
sweltering Sunday that summer, Baba and I were at the flea market, sitting at our booth, fanning our faces with Then, one sweltering
newspapers. Despite the sun bearing down like a branding iron
全国英语能力竞赛branding iron, the market was crowded that day and sales had been strong —it was only 12:30 but we’d already made $160. I got up, stretched, and asked Baba if he wanted a Coke. He said he’d love one.
“Be careful, Amir,” he said as I began to walk.
“Of what, Baba?”
ahmaq, so don’t play stupid with me.”
“I am not an ahmaq
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Remember this,” Baba said, pointing at me, “The man is a Pashtun to the root. He has nang and namoos.” Nang. Namoos.
chastity of a wife. Or a daughter.
Honor and pride. The tenetshka
tenets of Pashtun men. Especially when it came to the chastity
“I’m only going to get us drinks.”
“Just don’t embarrass me, that’s all I ask.”
“I won’t. God, Baba.”
Baba lit a cigarette and started fanning himlf again.
I walked toward the concession booth initially, then turned left at the T-shirt stand—where, for $5, you could have the face of Jesus, Elvis, Jim Morrison, or all three, presd on a white nylon T-shirt. Mariachi music played overhead, and I smelled pickles and grilled meat.
mango-on-a-stick. She was alone, reading.
kiosk lling mango-on-a-stick
spotted the Taheris’ gray van two rows from ours, next to a kiosk
I spotted
bun. I meant to White ankle-length summer dress today. Open-toed sandals. Hair pulled back and crowned with a tulip-shaped bun
复旦附中官网simply walk by again and I thought I had, except suddenly I was standing at the edge of the Taheris’ white tablecloth, staring at Soraya across curling irons and old neckties. She looked up.
mozahem, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Salaam,” I said. “I’m sorry to be mozahem
“Salaam.”
“Is General Sahib here today?” I said. My ears were burning. I couldn’t bring mylf to look her in the eye.
“He went that way,” she said. Pointed to her right. The bracelet slipped down to her elbow, silver against olive.
“Will you tell him I stopped by to pay my respects?” I said.
英语名句
“I will.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Oh, and my name is Amir. In ca you need to know. So you can tell him. That I stopped by. To... pay my respects.”
“Yes.”
I shifted on my feet, cleared my throat. “I’ll go now. Sorry to have disturbed you.”
“Nay, you didn’t,” she said.
“Oh. Good.” I tipped my head and gave her a half smile. “I’ll go now.” Hadn’t I already said that? “Khoda hafez.”“Khoda hafez.”
I began to walk. Stopped and turned. I said it before I had a chance to lo my nerve: “Can I ask what you’re reading?”
blinked.
She blinked
I held my breath. Suddenly, I felt the collective eyes of the flea market Afghans shift to us. I imagined a hush falling. Lips
mid ntence. Heads turning. Eyes narrowing with keen interest.
stop-ping
ping in mid ntence
What was this?
whereabouts of Up to that point, our encounter could have been interpreted as a respectful inquiry, one man asking for the whereabouts
mojarad, a single another man. But I’d asked her a question and if she answered, we’d be . . . well, we’d be chatting. Me a mojarad
teetering dangerously on the verge of young man, and she an unwed young woman. One with a history, no less. This was teetering
gossip material, and the best kind of it. Poison tongues would flap. And she would bear the brunt of that poison, not me—I
Wooooy! was fully aware of the Afghan double standard that favored my gender. Not Did you e him chatting with her? but Wooooy
lochak!（中国也何尝不是如此呢）
Did you e how she wouldn’t let him go? What a lochak
By Afghan standards, my question had been bold. With it, I had bared mylf, and left little doubt as to my interest in her. But I was a man, and all I had risked was a bruid ego. Bruis healed. Reputations did not. Would she take my dare?
She turned the book so the cover faced me. Wuthering Heights. “Have you read it?” she said.
pulsating beat of my heart behind my eyes. “It’s a sad story.”
I nodded. I could feel the pulsating
“Sad stories make good books,” （That's how the author wrote books.）she said.
“They do.”
“I heard you write.”
How did she know? I wondered if her father had told her, maybe she had asked him. I immediately dismisd both scenarios as absurd. Fathers and sons could talk freely about women. But no Afghan
girl—no decent and mohtaram Afghan girl, at least—queried her father about a young man. And no father, especially a Pashtun with nang and namoos, would discuss a mojarad with his daughter, not unless the fellow in question was a khastegar, a suitor, who had done the honorable thing and nt his father to knock on the door.
Incredibly, I heard mylf say, “Would you like to read one of my stories?”
“I would like that,” she said. I nd an unea in her now, saw it in the way her eyes began to flick side to side. Maybe checking for the general. I wondered what he would say if he found me speaking for such an inappropriate length of time with his daughter.2013四级
“Maybe I’ll bring you one someday,” I said. I was about to say more when the woman I’d en on occasion with Soraya came walking up the aisle. She was carrying a plastic bag full of fruit. When she saw us, her eyes bounced from Soraya to me and back. She smiled.
“Amir jan, good to e you,” she said, unloading the bag on the tablecloth. Her brow glistened with a sheen
sheen of sweat. Her coiffed like a helmet, glittered in the sunlight—I could e bits of her scalp where the hair had thinned. She had small red hair, coiffed
capped teeth, and little fingers like sausages. A golden Allah rested on her chest, green eyes buried in a cabbage-round face, capped
the chain burrowed under the skin tags and folds of her neck. “I am Jamila, Soraya jan’s mother.”
“Salaam, Khala jan,” I said, embarrasd, as I often was around Afghans, that she knew me and I had no idea who she was.“How is your father?” she said.
“He’s well, thank you.”
“You know, your grandfather, Ghazi Sahib, the judge? Now, his uncle and my grandfather were cousins,” she said. “So you
drooping a little. Her eyes
cap-toothed smile, and I noticed the right side of her mouth drooping
e, we’re related.” She smiled a cap-toothed
moved between Soraya and me again.
I’d asked Baba once why General Taheri’s daughter hadn’t married yet. No suitors, Baba said. No suitable suitors, he
idle talk could prove to a young woman’s prospects of amended. But he wouldn’t say more—Baba knew how lethal idle
amended
marrying well. Afghan men, especially tho from reputable families, were fickle
insinuation
中文翻译英文在线翻译fickle creatures. A whisper here, an insinuation there, and they fled like startled birds. So weddings had come and gone and no one had sung ahesta boro for Soraya, no one had painted her palms with henna, no one had held a Koran over her headdress, and it had been General Taheri who’d danced with her at every wedding.
And now, this woman, this mother, with her heartbreakingly eager, crooked
veiled hope in her eyes. I
crooked smile and the barely veiled
cringed a little at the position of power I’d been granted, and all becau I had won at the genetic lottery that had
cringed
determined my x.
I could never read the thoughts in the general’s eyes, but I knew this much about his wife: If I was going to have an adversary in this—whatever this was—it would not be her.
“Sit down, Amir jan,” she said. “Soraya, get him a chair, bachem. And wash one of tho peaches. They’re sweet and fresh.”
“Nay, thank you,” I said. “I should get going. My father’s waiting.”最伟大100首英文歌
“Oh?” Khanum Taheri said, clearly impresd that I’d done the polite thing and declined the offer. “Then here, at least have this.” She threw a handful of kiwis and a few peaches into a paper bag and insisted I take them. “Carry my Salaam to your father. And come back to e us again.”
“I will. Thank you, Khala jan,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Soraya looking away.
Cokes,” Baba said, taking the bag of peaches from me. He was looking at me in a
“I thought you were getting Cokes
simultaneously rious and playful way. I began to make something up, but he bit into a peach and waved his hand. “Don’t bother, Amir. Just remember what I said.”
dappled sunlight had danced in Soraya’s eyes, and of the delicate hollows above her That night in bed, I thought of the way dappled
collarbone. I replayed our conversation over and over in my head. Had she said I heard you write or I heard you’re a writer?
interminable nights
laborious, interminable
Which was it? I tosd in my sheets and stared at the ceiling, dismayed at the thought of six laborious
of yelda until I saw her again.remember是什么意思
It went on like that for a few weeks. I’d wait until the general went for a stroll, then I’d walk past the Taheris’ stand. If Khanum Taheri was there, she’d offer me tea and a kolcha and we’d chat about Kabul in the old days, the people we knew, arthritis. Undoubtedly, she had noticed that my appearances always coincided with her husband’s abnces, but she her arthritis
let on. “Oh you just misd your Kaka,” she’d say. I actually liked it when Khanum Taheri was there, and not just never let on
amiable ways; Soraya was more relaxed, more talkative with her mother around. As if her prence legitimized becau of her amiable
whatever was happening between us—though certainly not to the same degree that the general’s would have. Khanum
fawning on chaperoning made our meetings, if not gossip-proof, then less gossip-worthy, even if her borderline fawning Taheri’s chaperoning
me clearly embarrasd Soraya.
One day, Soraya and I were alone at their booth, talking. She was telling me about school, how she too was working on her general education class, at Ohlone Junior College in Fremont.
“What will you major in?”
“I want to be a teacher,” she said.
“Really? Why?”
“I’ve always wanted to. When we lived in Virginia, I became ESL certified and now I teach at the public library one night a
