Page 103 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

If Idris ever had to make one phone call, he’d almost surely call Timur.

And yet.
Idris found out, for instance, that everyone in the family knew about the loan
cosigning. Timur had told them. And at the wedding, Timur had the singer stop
the music, make an announcement, and the key to the Explorer had been offered
to Idris and Nahil with great ceremony—on a tray, no less—before an attentive
audience. Cameras had flashed. This was what Idris had misgivings about, the
fanfare, the flaunting, the unabashed showmanship, the bravado. He didn’t like
thinking this of his cousin, who was the closest thing Idris had to a brother, but it
seemed to him that Timur was a man who wrote his own press kit, and his
generosity, Idris suspected, was a calculated piece of an intricately constructed
character.

Idris and Nahil had a minor spat about him one night as they were putting
fresh sheets on their bed.
Everyone wants to be liked, she said. Don’t you?
Okay, but I won’t pay for the privilege.

She told him he was being unfair, and ungrateful as well, after everything
Timur had done for them.
You’re missing the point, Nahil. All I’m saying is that it’s crass to plaster
your good deeds up on a billboard. Something to be said for doing it quietly,
with dignity. There’s more to kindness than signing checks in public.
Well, Nahil said, snapping the bedsheet, it does go a long way, honey.

“Man, I remember this place,” Timur says, looking up at the house.
“What was the owner’s name again?”
“Something Wahdati, I think,” Idris says. “I forget the first name.” He thinks

of the countless times they had played here as kids on this street outside of these
front gates and only now, decades later, are they passing through them for the
first time.
“The Lord and His ways,” Timur mutters.
It’s an ordinary two-story house that in Idris’s neighborhood in San Jose
would draw the ire of the HOA folks. But by Kabul standards, it’s a lavish
property, with high walls, metal gates, and a wide driveway. As he and Timur
are led inside by an armed guard, Idris sees that, like many things he has seen in