Page 72 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

To this I could think of nothing to say. I longed to climb into the backseat

beside her and pull her into my arms, to soothe her with kisses. Before I knew
what I was doing, I had reached behind me and taken her hand into mine. I
thought she would withdraw, but her fingers squeezed my hand gratefully, and
we sat there in the car, not looking at each other but at the plains around us,
yellow and withering from horizon to horizon, furrowed with dried-up irrigation
ditches, pocked with shrubs and rocks and stirrings of life here and there. Nila’s
hand in mine, I looked at the hills and the power poles. My eyes traced a cargo
truck lumbering along in the distance, trailed by a puff of dust, and I would have
happily sat there until dark.
“Take me home,” she said at last, releasing my hand. “I’m going to turn in
early tonight.”

“Yes, Bibi Sahib.” I cleared my throat and dropped the shift into first gear
with a slightly unsteady hand.

She went into her bedroom and didn’t leave it for days. This was not
the first time. On occasion, she would pull up a chair to the window of her
upstairs bedroom and plant herself there, smoking cigarettes, shaking one foot,
staring out the window with a blank expression. She would not speak. She would
not change out of her sleeping gown. She would not bathe or brush her teeth or
hair. This time, she would not eat either, and this particular development caused
Mr. Wahdati uncharacteristic alarm.
On the fourth day, there was a knock at the front gates. I opened them to a
tall, elderly man in a crisply pressed suit and shiny loafers. There was something
imposing and rather forbidding about him in the way he did not so much stand as
loom, the way he looked right through me, the way he held his polished cane
with both hands like it was a scepter. He had not said a word as yet, but I already
sensed he was a man accustomed to being obeyed.

“I understand my daughter is not well,” he said.
So he was the father. I had never met him before. “Yes, Sahib. I’m afraid that
is true,” I said.
“Then move aside, young man.” He pushed past me.

In the garden, I busied myself, chopping a block of wood for the stove. From
where I worked, I had a good clear view of Nila’s bedroom window. Framed in
it was the father, bent at the waist, leaning into Nila, one hand pressing on her