Dear Hassan,
I have made it into Pakistan and received your letter safely from Rahim Khan. Please accept my deepest gratitude of you writing that letter to me. I have always wondered about you and your life in Afghanistan. Ever since you moved out of Baba’s house, things haven’t been the same and life was different cause of the war but I am glad to hear that you and your family are doing well. I am saddened by the fact Afghanistan has turned into what it has become, a total disaster. I see Talibs everywhere I go holding sticks and guns beating the innocent for unjust reasons. My trip to Pakistan was called upon by Rahim Khan. He said he wanted to talk to me and ask a favor of me. I haven’t found out yet. I hope this letter I’m writing you will find you healthy and happy. There’s so much to tell you about my life. After leaving Afghanistan, I moved to Fremont, California with Baba. Things didn’t fair well in the early years of our stay. One Sunday in the spring of 1983, Baba was buying oranges at a shop where we’ve bought food from the owners for two years. However, this time, he didn’t have the cash to pay for the oranges and wrote the owners, Mr. Nguyen and Mrs. Nguyen, a check. The owners asked Baba for his ID, which was a standard procedure for writing checks in America, and Baba flipped. He broke the shop windows, oranges were all over the floor, and magazine racks were destroyed. He hollered, “Almost two years we’ve bought his damn fruits and put money in his pocket and the son of a dog wants to see my license! (128)” See Hassan, things aren’t the same as they’re used to be. People don’t trust each other around here. Remember we used to use branches as credit cards to buy bread and Baba would pay at the end of the month for each notch made on that stick. I wish things were like that in America. Anyways, things began to get better for Baba and I. I graduated high school when I was twenty and Baba had bought me a Ford Grand Torino navy blue color. The...