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Sitting cross-legged, sunlight and shadows of pomegranate leaves dancing on his face, Hassan absently plucked blades of grass from the ground as I read him stories he couldn't read for himself. That Hassan would grow up illiterate like Ali and most Hazaras had been decided the minute he had been born, perhaps even the moment he had been conceived in Sanaubar's unwelcoming womb--after all, what use did a servant have for the written word? But despite his illiteracy, or maybe because of it, Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words, seduced by a secret world forbidden to him. I read him poems and stories, sometimes riddles--though I stopped reading those when I saw he was far better at solving them than I was. So I read him unchallenging things, like the misadventures of the bumbling Mullah Nasruddin and his donkey. We sat for hours under that tree, sat there until the sun faded in the west, and still Hassan insisted we had enough daylight for one more story, one more chapter.
哈桑盘腿坐着，阳光和石榴叶的阴影在他脸上翩翩起舞。我念那些他看不懂的故事给他听，他心不在焉地摘着地上杂草的叶片。哈桑长大后，会跟阿里和多数哈扎拉人一样，自出生之日起，甚至自莎娜芭不情不愿地怀上他那天起，就注定要成为文盲--毕竟，仆人要读书识字干吗呢?但尽管他目不识丁，兴许正因为如此，哈桑对那些谜一样的文字十分入迷，那个他无法接触的世界深深吸引了他。我给他念诗歌和故事，有时也念谜语--不过后来我不念了，因为我发现他解谜语的本领远比我高强。所以我念些不那么有挑战性的东西，比如装腔作势的纳斯鲁丁毛拉和他那头驴子出洋相的故事。我们在树下一坐就是几个钟头，直到太阳在西边黯淡下去，哈桑还会说，日光还足够亮堂，我们可以多念一个故事、多读一章。 If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thou didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting...
"Read it again please, Amir agha,"Hassan would say. Sometimes tears pooled in Hassan's eyes as I read him this passage, and I always wondered whom he wept for, the grief-stricken Rostam who tears his clothes and covers his head with ashes, or the dying Sohrab who only longed for his father's love? Personally, I couldn't see the tragedy in Rostam's fate. After all, didn't all fathers in their secret hearts harbor a desire to kill their sons?
