Page 85 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

shutting the door softly so as not to wake him. I walked down the dim hallway

and down the stairs. I saw myself walk on. Step out into the heat of that summer
day, make my way down the driveway, push out the front gates, stride down the
street, turn the corner, and keep walking, without looking over my shoulder.
How was I to stay on now? I wondered. I was neither disgusted nor flattered
by the discovery I had made, Mr. Markos, but I was discomfited. I tried to
picture how I could stay, knowing what I knew now. It cast a pall over
everything, what I had found in the box. A thing like this could not be escaped,
pushed aside. Yet how could I leave while he was in such a helpless state? I
could not, not without first finding someone suitable to take over my duties. I
owed Mr. Wahdati at least that much because he had always been good to me,
while I, on the other hand, had maneuvered behind his back to gain his wife’s
favors.

I went to the dining room and sat at the glass table with my eyes closed. I
cannot tell you how long I sat there without moving, Mr. Markos, only that at
some point I heard stirrings from upstairs and I blinked my eyes open and saw
that the light had changed, and then I got up and set a pot of water to boil for tea.

One day, I went up to his room and told him that I had a surprise for
him. This was sometime in the late 1950s, long before television had made its
way to Kabul. He and I passed our time those days playing cards, and, of late,
chess, which he had taught me and for which I was showing a bit of a knack. We
also spent considerable time with reading lessons. He proved a patient teacher.
He would close his eyes as he listened to me read and shake his head gently
when I erred. Again, he would say. By then, his speech had improved quite
dramatically over time. Read that again, Nabi. I had been more or less literate
when he had hired me back in 1947, thanks to Mullah Shekib, but it was through
Suleiman’s tutoring that my reading truly advanced, as did my writing by
consequence. He did it to help me, of course, but there was also a self-serving
element to the lessons for I now could read to him books that he liked. He could
read them on his own, naturally, but only for short bursts, as he tired easily.

If I was in the midst of a chore and could not be with him, he didn’t have
much to occupy himself with. He listened to records. Often, he had to make do
with looking out the window, at the birds perched on the trees, the sky, the
clouds, and listen to the children playing on the street, the fruit vendors pulling