Vocabulary

torment v. 折磨;使痛苦万分；

When I was older, I read in my poetry books that ‘yelda’ was the starless night tormented lovers kept vigil, enduring the endless dark, waiting for the sun to rise and bring with it their loved one.

极度痛苦；苦恼万分；折磨；

He spent days in torment while the police searched for his stolen car.

smirk v./n. (占了便宜或知道了别人不知道的事情时)洋洋得意地笑，自鸣得意地笑；

I invented excuses to stroll down the aisle--which Baba acknowledged with a playful smirk--and pass the Taheris' stand.

teeter v.濒临(危险的形势)；

This was teetering dangerously on the verge of gossip material, and the best kind of it. Poison tongues would flap.

Excerpt

After I met Soraya Taheri, every night of the week became a 'yelda' for me. And when Sunday mornings came, I rose from bed, Soraya Taheri's brown-eyed face already in my head. In Baba's bus, I counted the miles until I'd see her sitting barefoot, arranging cardboard boxes of yellowed encyclopedias, her heels white against the asphalt, silver bracelets jingling around her slender wrists. I'd think of the shadow her hair cast on the ground when it slid off her back and hung down like a velvet curtain. Soraya. Swap Meet Princess. The morning sun to my yelda.

(yelda is the first night of the month of ‘Jadi’, the first night of winter, and the longest night of the year in Afghanistan.)

看到心爱人后，每天夜晚都是yelda，盼望见到Soraya的日子度日如年。

Sometimes she sat alone, the general off to some other row to socialize, and I would walk by, pretending not to know her, but dying to. Sometimes she was there with a portly middle-aged woman with pale skin and dyed red hair. I promised myself that I would talk to her before the summer was over, but schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of winter swept in and wakened Baba's joints, baby leaves sprouted once more, and I still hadn't had the heart, the dil, to even look her in the eye.

这段加粗部分读起来美感十足，值得背诵。

She was alone, reading. White ankle-length summer dress today. Open-toed sandals. Hair pulled back and crowned with a tulip-shaped bun. I meant to simply walk by again and I thought I had, except suddenly I was standing at the edge of the Taheris' white tablecloth, staring at Soraya across curling irons and old neckties. She looked up.

几段男孩子对心仪女孩子爱慕的细腻描写，如歌如诗，扭捏却不造作。

这一段趣在作者说着女孩儿的外貌，说着说着发现自己Suddenly站在桌布旁了，原来是刚才看得入神，一步步被吸引过去了。画面感十足。

“Amir jan, good to see you,” she said, unloading the bag on the tablecloth. Her brow glistened with a sheen of sweat. Her red hair, coiffed like a helmet, glittered in the sunlight--I could see bits of her scalp where the hair had thinned. She had small green eyes buried in a cabbage-round face, capped teeth, and little fingers like sausages. A golden Allah rested on her chest, the chain burrowed under the skin tags and folds of her neck. “I am Jamila, Soraya jan's mother.”

说道Soraya的母亲，外貌就差很多，比喻多是与不是很有美感的食物相关，有些戏谑的味道。

Thought

“Listen,” she said, “I want to tell you something. Something you have to know before...”

“I don’t care what it is.”

“You need to know. I don’t want us to start with secrets. And I’d rather you hear it from me.”

Soraya的勇敢和坦诚令人动容，在新婚前夕，在如意郎君面前，她无比诚实地讲述了自己屈辱的过去，并做好了最坏的准备。她和Baba，从本质上讲是一类人，真诚，勇敢，认真。Amir想必正是在这样的环境下，逐渐被浸染，才能走出阴霾，最终得以赎罪和解脱。

Notes

爱情总是来得猝不及防，Amir显然已深陷其中。从远观，到想念，到聊天，Amir对Soraya的爱慕越来越深。行动上也逐渐从被动转为主动。与Soraya的交往越来越深，同时Soraya也心生好感，爱情在萌芽。

但同时，Baba发现自己身患癌症，时日不多了。他拒绝有损尊严、仅仅是延长死期的化疗，而是选择坦然接受疾病，直面死亡。