Page 107 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

in gatherings like this. He tries to busy himself inspecting the décor. There are

posters of the Bamiyan Buddhas, of a Buzkashi game, one of a harbor in a Greek
island named Tinos. He has never heard of Tinos. He spots a framed photograph
in the foyer, black-and-white, a little blurry, as though it had been shot with a
homemade camera. It’s of a young girl with long black hair, her back to the lens.
She is at a beach, sitting on a rock, facing the ocean. The lower left-hand corner
of the photo looks like it had burned.
Dinner is leg of lamb with rosemary and imbedded little cloves of garlic.
There is goat cheese salad and pasta topped with pesto sauce. Idris helps himself
to some of the salad, and ends up toying with it in a corner of the room. He spots
Timur sitting with two young, attractive Dutch women. Holding court, Idris
thinks. Laughter erupts, and one of the women touches Timur’s knee.

Idris carries his wine outside to the veranda and sits on a wooden bench. It’s
dark now, and the veranda is lit only by a pair of lightbulbs dangling from the
ceiling. From here, he can see the general shape of some sort of living quarters at
the far end of the garden, and, off to the right side of the garden, the silhouette of
a car—big, long, old—likely American, by the curves of it. Forties model,
maybe early fifties—Idris can’t quite see—and, besides, he has never been a car
guy. He is sure Timur would know. He would rattle off the model, year, engine
size, all the options. It looks like the car is sitting on four flats. A neighborhood
dog breaks into a staccato of barks. Inside, someone has put on a Leonard Cohen
CD.

“Quiet and Sensitive.”
Amra sits beside him, ice tinkling in her glass. Her feet are bare.
“Your cousin Cowboy, he is life of party.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“He is very good-looking. He is married?”

“With three kids.”
“Too bad. I behave, then.”
“I’m sure he’d be disappointed to hear that.”

“I have rules,” she says. “You don’t like him very much.”
Idris tells her, quite truthfully, that Timur is the closest thing he has to a
brother.
“But he make you embarrassed.”
It’s true. Timur has embarrassed him. He has behaved like the quintessential
ugly Afghan-American, Idris thinks. Tearing through the war-torn city like he
belongs here, backslapping locals with great bonhomie and calling them brother,