Page 19 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Abdullah thought, She’s your wife. My mother, we buried. But he knew to

stifle those words before they came up and out.
“All right, then. Come,” Father said. “But there won’t be any crying. You
hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m warning you. I won’t have it.”
Pari grinned up at Abdullah, and he looked down at her pale eyes and pink

round cheeks and grinned back.
From then on, he walked beside the wagon as it jostled along on the pitted
desert floor, holding Pari’s hand. They traded furtive happy glances, brother and
sister, but said little for fear of souring Father’s mood and spoiling their good
fortune. For long stretches they were alone, the three of them, nothing and no
one in sight but the deep copper gorges and vast sandstone cliffs. The desert
unrolled ahead of them, open and wide, as though it had been created for them
and them alone, the air still, blazing hot, the sky high and blue. Rocks
shimmered on the cracked floor. The only sounds Abdullah heard were his own
breathing and the rhythmic creaking of the wheels as Father pulled the red

wagon north.
A while later, they stopped to rest in the shadow of a boulder. With a groan,
Father dropped the handle to the ground. He winced as he arched his back, his
face raised to the sun.
“How much longer to Kabul?” Abdullah asked.
Father looked down at them. His name was Saboor. He was dark-skinned and
had a hard face, angular and bony, nose curved like a desert hawk’s beak, eyes
set deep in his skull. Father was thin as a reed, but a lifetime of work had made

his muscles powerful, tightly wound like rattan strips around the arm of a wicker
chair. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he said, lifting the cowhide water bag to his lips.
“If we make good time.” He took a long swallow, his Adam’s apple rising and
dropping.
“Why didn’t Uncle Nabi drive us?” Abdullah said. “He has a car.”
Father rolled his eyes toward him.

“Then we wouldn’t have had to walk all this way.”
Father didn’t say anything. He took off his soot-stained skullcap and wiped
sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
Pari’s finger shot from the wagon. “Look, Abollah!” she cried excitedly.
“Another one.”
Abdullah followed her finger, traced it to a spot in the shadow of the boulder