Page 99 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

absolved by good humor, a determined friendliness, and a beguiling air of

innocence that endears him to people he meets. The good looks don’t hurt, either
—the muscular body, the green eyes, the dimpled grin. Timur, Idris thinks, is a
grown man enjoying the privileges of a child.
“Good,” Amra says. “All right.” She pulls the bedsheet that has been nailed to
the ceiling as a makeshift curtain and lets them in.
The girl—Roshi, as Amra had called her, short for “Roshana”—looks to be
nine, maybe ten. She is sitting up on a steel-frame bed, back to the wall, knees
bent up against her chest. Idris immediately drops his gaze. He swallows down a
gasp before it can escape him. Predictably, such restraint proves beyond Timur.
He tsks his tongue, and says, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” over and over in a loud, pained
whisper. Idris glances over to Timur and is not surprised to find swollen tears

shivering theatrically in his eyes.
The girl twitches and makes a grunting sound.
“Okay, finished, we go now,” Amra says sharply.
Outside, on the crumbling front steps, the nurse pulls a pack of Marlboro
Reds from the breast pocket of her pale blue scrubs. Timur, whose tears have

vanished as swiftly as they’d materialized, takes a cigarette and lights both hers
and his. Idris feels queasy, light-headed. His mouth has gone dry. He worries
he’s going to vomit and disgrace himself, confirm Amra’s view of him, of them
—the wealthy, wide-eyed exiles—come home to gawk at the carnage now that
the boogeymen have left.
Idris expected Amra to reprimand them, at least Timur, but her manner is
more flirtatious than scolding. This is the effect Timur has on women.
“So,” she says, coquettishly, “what do you say for yourself, Timur?”

In the States, Timur goes by “Tim.” He changed his name after 9/11 and
claims that he has nearly doubled his business since. Losing those two letters, he
has said to Idris, has already done more for his career than a college degree
would have—if he’d gone to college, which he hadn’t; Idris is the Bashiri family
academic. But now since their arrival in Kabul, Idris has heard him introduce
himself only as Timur. It is a harmless enough duplicity, even a necessary one.
But it rankles.
“Sorry about what happened in there,” Timur says.

“Maybe I punish you.”
“Easy, pussycat.”
Amra turns her gaze to Idris. “So. He’s cowboy. And you, you are quiet,
sensitive one. You are—what do they call it?—introvert.”
“He’s a doctor,” Timur says.