Page 38 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

One morning that winter, Father fetched his ax and cut down the
giant oak tree. He had Mullah Shekib’s son, Baitullah, and a few other men help
him. No one tried to intervene. Abdullah stood alongside other boys and watched
the men. The very first thing Father did was take down the swing. He climbed
the tree and cut the ropes with a knife. Then he and the other men hacked away
at the thick trunk until late afternoon, when the old tree finally toppled with a
massive groan. Father told Abdullah they needed the firewood for winter. But he
had swung his ax at the old tree with violence, with his jaw firmly set and a
cloud over his face like he couldn’t bear to look at it any longer.

Now, beneath a stone-colored sky, men were striking at the felled trunk, their
noses and cheeks flushed in the cold, their blades echoing hollowly when they
hit the wood. Farther up the tree, Abdullah snapped small branches off the big
ones. The first of the winter snow had fallen two days before. Not heavy, not yet,
only a promise of things to come. Soon, winter would descend on Shadbagh,
winter and its icicles and weeklong snowdrifts and winds that cracked the skin
on the back of hands in a minute flat. For now, the white on the ground was
scant, pocked from here to the steep hillsides with pale brown blotches of earth.
Abdullah gathered an armful of slim branches and carried them to a growing
communal pile nearby. He was wearing his new snow boots, gloves, and winter
coat. It was secondhand, but other than the broken zipper, which Father had
fixed, it was as good as new—padded, dark blue, with orange fur lining inside. It
had four deep pockets that snapped open and shut and a quilted hood that

tightened around Abdullah’s face when he drew its cords. He pushed back the
hood from his head now and let out a long foggy breath.
The sun was dropping into the horizon. Abdullah could still make out the old
windmill, looming stark and gray over the village’s mud walls. Its blades gave a
creaky groan whenever a nippy gust blew in from the hills. The windmill was
home mainly to blue herons in the summer, but now that winter was here the
herons had gone and the crows had moved in. Every morning, Abdullah awoke
to their squawks and harsh croaks.

Something caught his eye, off to his right, on the ground. He walked over to it
and knelt down.
A feather. Small. Yellow.
He took off one glove and picked it up.
Tonight they were going to a party, he, his father, and his little half brother
Iqbal. Baitullah had a new infant boy. A motreb would sing for the men, and