Page 60 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

the city, for hours, without aim or purpose, from one neighborhood to another,

alongside the Kabul River, up to Bala Hissar, sometimes out to the Darulaman
Palace. Some days, I drove us out of Kabul and up to Ghargha Lake, where I
would park near the banks of the water. I would turn off the engine, and Mr.
Wahdati would sit perfectly still in the backseat, not saying a word to me,
seemingly content enough to just roll down the window and look at the birds
darting from tree to tree, and the streaks of sunlight that struck the lake and
scattered into a thousand tiny bobbing specks on the water. I would gaze at him
in the rearview mirror and he looked to me like the most lonesome person on
earth.
Once a month, Mr. Wahdati, quite generously, let me borrow his car, and I
would drive down to Shadbagh, my native village, to visit my sister Parwana and
her husband, Saboor. Whenever I drove into the village, I would be greeted by
hordes of hollering children, who would scamper alongside the car, slapping the
fender, tapping at the window. Some of the little runts would even try to climb

atop the roof, and I would have to shoo them away for fear that they would
scratch the paint or cause a dent in the fender.
Look at you, Nabi, Saboor said to me. You are a celebrity.
Because his children, Abdullah and Pari, had lost their natural mother
(Parwana was their stepmother), I always tried to be attentive to them, especially
to the older boy, who most seemed to need it. I offered to take him alone for
rides in the car, though he always insisted on bringing his baby sister, holding

her tightly in his lap, as we circled the road around Shadbagh. I let him work the
wipers, honk the horn. I showed him how to switch the headlights from dim to
full.
After all the fuss about the car died down, I would sit for tea with my sister
and Saboor and I would tell them about my life in Kabul. I took care not to say
too much about Mr. Wahdati. I was, in truth, quite fond of him, for he treated me
well, and speaking of him behind his back seemed to me like a betrayal. If I had
been a less discreet employee, I would have told them that Suleiman Wahdati
was a mystifying creature to me, a man seemingly satisfied with living the rest
of his days off the wealth of his inheritance, a man with no profession, no
apparent passion, and apparently no impulse to leave behind something of
himself in this world. I would have told them that he lived a life lacking in
purpose or direction. Like those aimless rides I took him on. A life lived from
the backseat, observed as it blurred by. An indifferent life.

This is what I would have said, but I did not. And a good thing I did not. For
how wrong I would have been.