Excerpt from « The Kite Runner » by Khaled Hosseini
It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife’s slain body in his arms. I read my story to Hassan in the living room by the marble fireplace. – « Mashallah! » He was beaming. – « But will you permit me to ask a question about the story? » He said shyly. – « Well, if I may ask…why did the man kill is wife? In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn’t he have just smelled an onion? »
