“Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.” He laughed again.
Later, after Aisha changed the IV tubing and raised the head of the bed like I’d asked, I thought about what had happened to me. Ruptured spleen. Broken teeth. Punctured lung. Busted eye socket. But as I watched a pigeon peck at a bread crumb on the windowsill, I kept thinking of something else Armand/Dr. Faruqi had said: The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.
FARID AND SOHRAB came to visit the next day. “Do you know who we are today? Do you remember?” Farid said, only half-jokingly. I nodded.
“Al hamdullellah!” he said, beaming. “No more talking non sense.”
“Thank you, Farid,” I said through jaws wired shut. Armand was right--I did sound like Al Pacino from The Godfather. And my tongue surprised me every time it poked in one of the empty spaces left by the teeth I had swallowed. “I mean, thank you. For everything.”
He waved a hand, blushed a little. “Bas, it’s not worthy of thanks,” he said. I turned to Sohrab. He was wearing a new outfit, light brown pirhan-tumban that looked a bit big for him, and a black skullcap. He was looking down at his feet, toying with the IV line coiled on the bed.
“We were never properly introduced,” I said. I offered him my hand. “I am Amir.”
He looked at my hand, then to me. “You are the Amir agha Father told me about?” he said.
“你今天的工作是排便。你完成之后我们才能开始喂你吃流食。不见粪便，不给食物。”他又哈哈大笑。
稍后，艾莎帮我换输液管，又善解人意地摇起床头。随后，我想起发生在自己身上的事情。脾脏破裂。牙齿脱落。肺被刺穿。眼眶裂开。当我看见窗台上有只鸽子啄食碎面包的时候，忍不住想起阿曼德或者法鲁奇大夫适才说过的话。冲击力让你的上唇裂成两半，他说，从人中裂开。从人中裂开，像兔唇那样。
隔日，法里德和索拉博前来探望。“你今天知道我们是谁吗？你记得吗？”法里德半开玩笑地说。我点头。
“赞美安拉！”他说，喜气洋洋，“不用再说废话了。”
“谢谢你，法里德。”我透过缝着线的下巴说。阿曼德说得对——我听起来确实像《教父》里面那个阿尔?帕西诺。而我的舌头让我大吃一惊：它伸过我赖以进食的牙齿原来所在的地方，却是空空荡荡。“说真的，谢谢你替我做的一切。”
他摇摇手，脸色有点尴尬：“别这么说，没什么好谢的。”我转向索拉博。他穿着新衣服，淡蓝色的棉布长袍，看上去尺寸大了一些，还戴着黑色的无边便帽。他低头看着脚，手里拨弄着床边弯曲的输液管。
“我们还没好好地相互介绍呢。”我说，朝他伸出手，“我是阿米尔。”
他看着我的手，然后看着我。“你是爸爸跟我说过的阿米尔老爷吗？”他说。