Page 43 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

shoulder, one arm draped across her sister’s chest.

Masooma whispers, “You deserve better than me.”
“Don’t start that again,” Parwana whispers back. She plays with Masooma’s
hair in long, patient strokes, the way Masooma likes it.
They chat idly for a while in hushed voices of small, inconsequential things,
one’s breath warming the other’s face. These are relatively happy minutes for
Parwana. They remind her of when they were little girls, curled up nose to nose
beneath the blanket, whispering secrets and gossip, giggling soundlessly. Soon,
Masooma is asleep, her tongue rolling noisily around some dream, and Parwana
is staring out the window at a sky burnt black. Her mind bounces from one

fragmented thought to another and eventually swims to a picture she saw in an
old magazine once of a pair of grim-faced brothers from Siam joined at the torso
by a thick band of flesh. Two creatures inextricably bound, blood formed in the
marrow of one running in the veins of the other, their union permanent. Parwana
feels a constriction, despair, like a hand tightening inside her chest. She takes a
breath. She tries to direct her thoughts to Saboor once more and instead finds her
mind drifting to the rumor she has heard around the village: that he is looking for
a new wife. She forces his face from her head. She nips the foolish thought.

Parwana was a surprise.
Masooma was already out, wriggling quietly in the midwife’s arms, when
their mother cried out and the crown of another head parted her a second time.
Masooma’s arrival was uneventful. She delivered herself, the angel, the midwife
would say later. Parwana’s birth was prolonged, agonizing for the mother,
treacherous for the baby. The midwife had to free her from the cord that had
wrapped itself around Parwana’s neck, as if in a murderous fit of separation

anxiety. In her worst moments, when she cannot help being swallowed up by a
torrent of self-loathing, Parwana thinks that perhaps the cord knew best. Maybe
it knew which was the better half.
Masooma fed on schedule, slept on time. She cried only if in need of food or
cleaning. When awake, she was playful, good-humored, easily delighted, a
swaddled bundle of giggles and happy squeaks. She liked to suck on her rattle.
What a sensible baby, people said.

Parwana was a tyrant. She exerted upon their mother the full force of her
authority. Their father, bewildered by the infant’s histrionics, took the babies’