Page 62 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

compare with the beautiful, graceful creature who had just stepped out of the big

house.
Leaning against the wall, she lit a cigarette and smoked without hurry and
with bewitching grace, holding it at the very tip of two fingers and cupping her
hand before her mouth each time she raised it to her lips. I watched with rapt
attention. The way her hand bent at its slender wrist reminded me of an
illustration I had once seen in a glossy book of poems of a long-lashed woman
with flowing dark hair lying with her lover in a garden, offering him a cup of
wine with her pale delicate fingers. At one point, something seemed to catch the
woman’s attention up the street in the opposite direction, and I used the brief
chance to quickly finger-brush my hair, which was beginning to mat down in the
heat. When she turned back, I froze once more. She took a few more puffs,
crushed the cigarette against the wall, and sauntered back inside.

At last, I could breathe.
That night, Mr. Wahdati called me into the living room and said, “I have
news, Nabi. I am getting married.”
It seemed I had overestimated his fondness for solitude after all.

News of the engagement spread swiftly. And so did rumors. I heard them
from the other workers who came and went through Mr. Wahdati’s house. The
most vocal of these was Zahid, a gardener who came in three days a week to
maintain the lawn and trim the trees and bushes, an unpleasant fellow with the
repulsive habit of flicking his tongue after each sentence, a tongue with which he
cast rumors as offhandedly as he tossed fistfuls of fertilizer. He was part of a
group of lifelong laborers who, like me, worked in the neighborhood as cooks,
gardeners, and errand men. One or two nights a week, after the workday was
over, they squeezed into my shack for after-dinner tea. I do not recall how this
ritual started, but, once it did, I was powerless to stop it, wary of seeming rude
and inhospitable, or, worse, of appearing to think myself superior to my own
kind.
Over tea one night, Zahid told the other men that Mr. Wahdati’s family did
not approve of the marriage because of his bride-to-be’s poor character. He said

it was well known in Kabul that she had no nang and namoos, no honor, and that
though she was only twenty she had already been “ridden all over town” like Mr.
Wahdati’s car. Worst of all, he said, not only had she made no attempt to deny
these allegations, she wrote poems about them. A murmur of disapproval spread
through the room when he said this. One of the men remarked that in his village
they would have slit her throat by now.
That was when I rose and told them that I had heard enough. I berated them