Page 53 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Masooma says, her voice shaking a bit, “You have to do it now. If
you wait until morning, you’ll lose heart.”
All around them, beyond the dim glow of the fire Parwana has stoked from
shrubs and brittle-looking weeds, is the desolate, endless expanse of sand and
mountains swallowed up by the dark. For nearly two days they have traveled
through the scrubby terrain, heading toward Kabul, Parwana walking alongside
the mule, Masooma strapped to the saddle, Parwana holding her hand. They
have trudged along steep paths that curved and dipped and wound back and forth

across rocky ridges, the ground at their feet dotted with ocher- and rust-colored
weeds, etched with long spidery cracks creeping every which way.
Parwana stands near the fire now, looking at Masooma, who is a horizontal
blanketed mound on the other side of the flames.
“What about Kabul?” Parwana says.
“Oh, you’re supposed to be the smart one.”

Parwana says, “You can’t ask me to do this.”
“I’m tired, Parwana. It’s not a life, what I have. My existence is a punishment
to us both.”
“Let’s just go back,” Parwana says, her throat beginning to close. “I can’t do
this. I can’t let you go.”

“You’re not.” Masooma is crying now. “I’m letting you go. I am releasing
you.”
Parwana thinks of a long-ago night, Masooma up on the swing, she pushing
her. She had watched as Masooma had straightened her legs and tipped her head
all the way back at the peak of each upward swing, the long trails of her hair
flapping like sheets on a clothesline. She remembers all the little dolls they had
coaxed out of corn husks together, dressing them in wedding gowns made of
shreds of old cloth.
“Tell me something, sister.”

Parwana blinks back the tears that are blurring her vision now and wipes her
nose with the back of her hand.
“His boy, Abdullah. And the baby girl. Pari. You think you could love them
as your own?”
“Masooma.”

“Could you?”
“I could try,” Parwana says.
“Good. Then marry Saboor. Look after his children. Have your own.”