Page 42 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

lugs buckets back and forth from the well. She makes dough and bakes the bread

in the tandoor outside their mud house. She sweeps the floor. In the afternoon,
she squats by the stream, alongside other village women, washing laundry
against the rocks. Afterward, because it is a Friday, she visits her parents’ graves
in the cemetery and says a brief prayer for each. And all day, in between these
chores, she makes time to move Masooma, from side to side, tucking a pillow
under one buttock, then the other.
Twice that day, she spots Saboor.
She finds him squatting outside his small mud house, fanning a fire in the
cooking pit, eyes squeezed against the smoke, with his boy, Abdullah, beside
him. She finds him later, talking to other men, men who, like Saboor, have
families of their own now but were once the village boys with whom Saboor

feuded, flew kites, chased dogs, played hide-and-seek. There is a weight over
Saboor these days, a pall of tragedy, a dead wife and two motherless children,
one an infant. He speaks now in a tired, barely audible voice. He lumbers around
the village a worn, shrunken version of himself.
Parwana watches him from afar and with a longing that is nearly crippling.
She tries to avert her eyes when she passes by him. And if by accident their
gazes do meet, he simply nods at her, and the blood rushes to her face.
That night, by the time Parwana lies down to sleep, she can barely lift her

arms. Her head swims with exhaustion. She lies in her cot, waiting for sleep.
Then, in the darkness:
“Parwana?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember that time, us riding the bicycle together?”

“Hmm.”
“How fast we went! Riding down the hill. The dogs chasing us.”
“I remember.”

“Both of us screaming. And when we hit that rock …” Parwana can almost
hear her sister smiling in the dark. “Mother was so angry with us. And Nabi too.
We ruined his bicycle.”
Parwana shuts her eyes.
“Parwana?”
“Yes.”

“Can you sleep by me tonight?”
Parwana kicks off her quilt, makes her way across the hut to Masooma, and
slips under the blanket beside her. Masooma rests her cheek on Parwana’s