Baba once told Amir that there
were
"only
three real men in the world." He'd count them off on his fingers: America the brash
savior, Britain and Israel. "The rest of them--they're like gossiping old
women."
Baba loved the
power and the brashness that was displayed in America, but he never quite found his
place in the land of the free. As Amir put it,
For me, America was a place to bury my
memories.
For Baba, a place to
mourn his.
America offered
everything that Baba would like to have had in Afghanistan, but it was not like home.
The smog hurt his eyes, he got headaches from the noise of traffic, and he coughed from
the pollen.
The fruit was never sweet enough, the water never
clean enough, and where were all the trees and open
fields?
Baba was homesick for
his native land and angry about the downward spiral that his life had taken. Once a
powerful man, he was reduced to pumping gas in California. Perhaps the final straw for
him came when the manager of a local market that Baba had patronized for two years asked
for his ID in order to write a check. In Afghanistan, a man produced a stick to obtain
credit. A notch was made in the stick to denote the amount owed. Trust was different in
America, and life was different than in Kabul. Baba's English was poor and he was not
respected as he was in his home. He saw the greatness in America, but he also saw that
it was going to pass him by.
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