Page 36 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Mrs. Wahdati sat in the backseat with them, the air filled with the
thick weight of her perfume and something Abdullah didn’t recognize,
something sweet, a little pungent. She peppered them with questions as Uncle
Nabi drove. Who were their friends? Did they go to school? Questions about
their chores, their neighbors, games they played. The sun fell on the right half of
her face. Abdullah could see the fuzzy little hairs on her cheek and the faint line
below her jaw where the makeup ended.
“I have a dog,” Pari said.

“Do you?”
“He’s quite the specimen,” Uncle Nabi said from the front seat.
“His name is Shuja. He knows when I’m sad.”
“Dogs are like that,” Mrs. Wahdati said. “They’re better at it than some
people I’ve come across.”

They drove past a trio of schoolgirls skipping down the sidewalk. They wore
black uniforms with white scarves tied under their chins.
“I know what I said earlier, but Kabul isn’t that bad.” Mrs. Wahdati toyed
with her necklace absently. She was looking out the window, a heaviness set on
her features. “I like it best here at the end of spring, after the rains. The air so
clean. That first burst of summer. The way the sun hits the mountains.” She
smiled wanly. “It will be good to have a child around the house. A little noise,
for a change. A little life.”

Abdullah looked at her and sensed something alarming in the woman,
beneath the makeup and the perfume and the appeals for sympathy, something
deeply splintered. He found himself thinking of the smoke of Parwana’s
cooking, the kitchen shelf cluttered with her jars and mismatched plates and
smudged pots. He missed the mattress he shared with Pari, though it was dirty,
and the jumbles of springs forever threatened to poke through. He missed all of
it. He had never before ached so badly for home.
Mrs. Wahdati slumped back into the seat with a sigh, hugging her purse the
way a pregnant woman might hold her swollen belly.

Uncle Nabi pulled up to a crowded curbside. Across the street, next to a
mosque with soaring minarets, was the bazaar, composed of congested
labyrinths of both vaulted and open alleyways. They strolled through corridors
of stalls that sold leather coats, rings with colored jewels and stones, spices of all
kinds, Uncle Nabi in the rear, Mrs. Wahdati and the two of them in the lead.
Now that they were outside, Mrs. Wahdati wore a pair of dark glasses that made