Page 79 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

sip tea and chat about the weather or that year’s grape harvest. We were feigning

a normalcy, Saboor and I, that no longer was. Whatever the reason, I was, in the
end, the instrument of his family’s rupture. Saboor did not want to set eyes on
me again and I understood. I stopped my monthly visits. I never saw any of them
again.

It was one day early in the spring of 1955, Mr. Markos, that the lives
of all of us in the household changed forever. I remember it was raining. Not the

galling kind that draws frogs out to croak, but an indecisive drizzle that had
come and gone all morning. I remember because the gardener, Zahid, was there,
being his habitual lazy self, leaning on a rake and saying how he might call it a
day on account of the nasty weather. I was about to retreat to my shack, if only
to get away from his drivel, when I heard Nila screaming my name from inside
the main house.
I rushed across the yard to the house. Her voice was coming from upstairs,
from the direction of the master bedroom.

I found Nila in a corner, back to the wall, palm clasped over her mouth.
“Something’s wrong with him,” she said, not removing her hand.
Mr. Wahdati was sitting up in bed, dressed in a white undershirt. He was
making strange guttural sounds. His face was pale and drawn, his hair
disheveled. He was repeatedly trying, and failing, to perform some task with his
right arm, and I noticed with horror that a line of spittle was streaking down
from the corner of his mouth.
“Nabi! Do something!”

Pari, who was six by then, had come into the room, and now she scampered
over to Mr. Wahdati’s bedside and pulled on his undershirt. “Papa? Papa?” He
looked down at her, wide-eyed, his mouth opening and closing. She screamed.
I picked her up quickly and took her to Nila. I told Nila to take the child to
another room because she must not see her father in this condition. Nila blinked,
as if breaking a trance, looked from me to Pari before she reached for her. She
kept asking me what was wrong with her husband. She kept saying that I must
do something.

I summoned Zahid from the window and for once the good-for-nothing fool
proved of some use. He helped me put a pair of pajama pants on Mr. Wahdati.
We lifted him off the bed, carried him down the stairs, and lowered him into the