Page 59 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

My own living space was a shack in the back of the yard. It had a window,

clean walls with white paint, and provided enough space to accommodate an
unmarried young man his meager needs. I had a bed, a desk and a chair, and
enough room to unroll my prayer rug five times a day. It suited me just fine then
and it suits me fine now.
I cooked for Mr. Wahdati, a skill I had picked up first from observing my late
mother and later from an elderly Uzbek cook who worked at a household in
Kabul where I had served for a year as his help. I was also, and quite happily,
Mr. Wahdati’s chauffeur. He owned a mid-1940s model Chevrolet, blue with a
tan top, matching blue vinyl seats, and chrome wheels, a handsome car that drew
lingering looks wherever we went. He allowed me to drive because I had proven
myself to be a prudent and skilled driver, and, besides, he was the rare breed of
man who did not enjoy the act of operating a car.

Please do not think I am boasting, Mr. Markos, when I say I was a good
servant. Through careful observation, I had familiarized myself with Mr.
Wahdati’s likes and dislikes, his quirks, his peeves. I had come to know his
habits and rituals well. For instance, every morning after breakfast he liked to go
for a stroll. He disliked walking alone, however, and thus I was expected to
accompany him. I abided by this wish, of course, though I did not see the point
of my presence. He hardly said a word to me in the course of these walks and
seemed forever lost in his own thoughts. He walked briskly, hands clamped
behind his back, nodding at passersby, the heels of his well-polished leather
loafers clicking against the pavement. And because his long legs made strides I
could not match, I was always falling behind and forced to catch up. The rest of
the day, he mostly retreated to his study upstairs, reading or playing a game of

chess against himself. He loved to draw—though I could not attest to his skills,
at least not then, because he never shared his artwork with me—and I would
often catch him up in the study, by the window, or on the veranda, his brow
furrowed in concentration, his charcoal pencil looping and circling over the
sketch pad.
I drove him around the city every few days. He went to see his mother once a
week. There were also family gatherings. And though Mr. Wahdati avoided most
of them, he did attend on occasion, and so I would drive him there, to funerals,
birthday parties, weddings. I drove him monthly to an art supply store, where he
restocked his pastel pencils, his charcoal, and his erasers and sharpeners and
sketchbooks. Sometimes, he liked to sit in the backseat and just go for a drive. I
would say, Where to, Sahib? and he would shrug, and I would say, Very well,
Sahib, and I would shift into gear and off we would go. I would drive us around