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were right. Too soft.’ He stared at Omed. ‘Spose you’ll be wanting one too, huh?’
    Omed smiled at the man.
    â€˜I must have “sucker” tattooed here in big letters across my head, in Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi and just about every other language under the sun. Sucker, that’s me.’
    Zakir led the way to the kite shop. They picked the biggest, the brightest. They got large spools with powdered glass thread. Omed’s was fire-red and perfect, but when he got it home his mother made him sell it back to the shopkeeper so they could buy bread for the family and a sack of lentils and a flyblown neck of goat.
    Even when his father had lived, there were often times when they were hungry. Words were worth little. Less even than half the value of a kite, which was all the shopkeeper would pay.
    The American caught him two days later near the river. ‘Where’s the kite?’ he demanded. Omed just shook his head and pretended he didn’t understand, but the shame he felt, the overpowering disgrace of his poverty, made him want to weep.
    The man shouted after him. ‘That’s gratitude for you, hey.’

    â€˜I need the one hundred dollars now,’ said the Snake, getting up from a lopsided chair.
    Omed opened the tin. The rolls of American dollars were faded black and green, torn and shabby. Pulling the rubber band from one roll, he peeled off five twenty-dollar bills. The Snake’s small eye widened until the pupil was as big and black as a lychee seed. Omed stuffed the remaining money back in the tin and handed over the one hundred dollars.
    â€˜I will return with the passports,’ said the Snake as he left the room.
    After he had gone, Omed wondered if the Snake would return or if it was just another trick to milk a stupid village boy of more money. He cursed himself for being so unwise. But as the time passed he realised that to be free of the Snake was worth a hundred American dollars. He would just have to find the path to Australia by himself.
    Dread struck at him with heavy paws, sharp claws sunk into soft flesh; his stomach spilled outwards. He was a village boy who had landed beyond the horizon of the known lands. He had seen the world only through his father’s books. And how little those words had prepared him.
    The kites outside clashed. The powdered glass strings cut against each other. One drifted off. Torn by a violent wind, it spiralled up to meet the dark clouds that had formed over Lahore. Rain, in huge spots, stained the streets. Soon all the paper kites were drawn back to earth.
    Reaching under his pillow, Omed pulled out the tin box. He ran his hands over it and felt the roughness of rust under the swirls of his fingerprints. He slipped a small finger into a hole that may have been made by a bullet. Omed opened the box and stared at the rolls of dollars pressed against each other, like bodies. He removed the bands and spread the notes over the bed, faces of high-browed men staring back at him. Solid, square faces hacked from stone. Some bearded, others balding or with hair rising like clouds from their mountainous scalps. For these faces, men would kill. These slips of paper could mean freedom or death.
    Omed piled the notes into groups of faces. One dollar – white hair, solemn as a mullah. Five dollars – rock jaw, fringed with beard. Ten dollars – high forehead, strange shirt. Twenty dollars – wild poet’s hair. Fifty dollars – stern, beard too short to please the Taliban. He counted all the piles and stored the number in his head. Seven thousand, five hundred and ninety-six American dollars. More money than he had ever seen in his lifetime. How had the Poet of Kandahar collected it all? He looked as poor as anyone. It was a lot of money. If Omed could return home, his family could live like kings.
    But he could never return home. Even seven thousand, five hundred and ninety-six dollars could not stop a