Later, well past midnight, after a few hours of poker between Baba and his cousins, the men lay down to sleep on parallel mattresses in the same room where we’d dined. The women went upstairs. An hour later, I still couldn’t sleep. I kept tossing and turning as my relatives grunted, sighed, and snored in their sleep. I sat up. A wedge of moonlight streamed in through the window.
后来，午夜过后，爸爸和他的亲戚玩了几个小时的扑克，终于在我们吃饭那间房子倒下，躺在平行摆放的地毯上呼呼入睡。妇女则到楼上去。过了一个钟头，我仍睡不着。各位亲戚在睡梦中或咕哝，或叹气，或打鼾，我翻来覆去。我坐起身，一缕月光穿过窗户，弥漫进来。
“I watched Hassan get raped,” I said to no one. Baba stirred in his sleep. Kaka Homayoun grunted. A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn’t have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.
“我看着哈桑被人强暴。”我自说自话。爸爸在梦里翻身，霍玛勇叔叔在说呓语。有一部分的我渴望有人醒来听我诉说，以便我可以不再背负着这个谎言度日。但没有人醒来，在随后而来的寂静中，我明白这是个下在我身上的咒语，终此一生，我将背负着这个谎言。
I thought about Hassan’s dream, the one about us swimming in the lake. There is no monster, he’d said, just water. Except he’d been wrong about that. There was a monster in the lake. It had grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I was that monster.
我想起哈桑的梦，那个我们在湖里游泳的梦。那儿没有鬼怪。他说，只有湖水。但是他错了。湖里有鬼怪，它抓住哈桑的脚踝，将他拉进暗无天日的湖底。我就是那个鬼怪。
That was the night I became an insomniac.
自从那夜起，我得了失眠症。
I DIDN’T SPEAK TO HASSAN until the middle of the next week. I had just half-eaten my lunch and Hassan was doing the dishes. I was walking upstairs, going to my room, when Hassan asked if I wanted to hike up the hill. I said I was tired. Hassan looked tired too 8211;he’d lost weight and gray circles had formed under his puffed-up eyes. But when he asked again, I reluctantly agreed.
又隔了半个星期，我才开口跟哈桑说话。当时我的午餐吃到一半，哈桑在收拾碟子。我走上楼梯，回房间去，哈桑问我想不想去爬山。我说我累了。哈桑看起来也很累——他消瘦了，双眼泡肿，下面还有灰白的眼圈。但他又问了一次，我勉为其难地答应了。
We trekked up the hill, our boots squishing in the muddy snow. Neither one of us said anything. We sat under our pomegranate tree and I knew I’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come up the hill. The words I’d carved on the tree trunk with Ali’s kitchen knife, Amir and Hassan: The Sultans of Kabul 8230; I couldn’t stand looking at them now.
我们爬上那座山，靴子踩在泥泞的雪花上吱嘎吱嘎响。没有人开口说话。我们坐在我们的石榴树下，我知道自己犯了个错误。我不应到山上来。我用阿里的菜刀在树干上刻下的字迹犹在：阿米尔和哈桑，喀布尔的苏丹……现在我无法忍受看到这些字。
He asked me to read to him from the _Shahnamah_ and I told him I’d changed my mind. Told him I just wanted to go back to my room. He looked away and shrugged. We walked back down the way we’d gone up in silence. And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait for spring.
他求我念《沙纳玛》给他听，我说我改变主意了。告诉他我只想走回自己的房间去。他望着远方，耸耸肩。我们沿着那条来路走下，没有人说话。我生命中第一次渴望春天早点到来。