Page 108 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

sister, uncle, making a show of handing money to beggars from what he calls the

Bakhsheesh bundle, joking with old women he calls mother and talking them
into telling their story into his camcorder as he strikes a woebegone expression,
pretending he is one of them, like he’s been here all along, like he wasn’t lifting
at Gold’s in San Jose, working on his pecs and abs, when these people were
getting shelled, murdered, raped. It is hypocritical, and distasteful. And it
astonishes Idris that no one seems to see through this act.
“It isn’t true what he told you,” Idris says. “We came here to reclaim the
house that belonged to our fathers. That’s all. Nothing else.”
Amra snorts a chuckle. “Of course I know. You think I was fooled? I have
done business with warlords and Taliban in this country. I have seen everything.
Nothing can give me shock. Nothing, nobody, can fool me.”

“I imagine that’s true.”
“You are honest,” she says. “At least you are honest.”
“I just think these people, everything they’ve been through, we should respect
them. By ‘we,’ I mean people like Timur and me. The lucky ones, the ones who
weren’t here when the place was getting bombed to hell. We’re not like these

people. We shouldn’t pretend we are. The stories these people have to tell, we’re
not entitled to them … I’m rambling.”
“Rambling?”
“I’m not making sense.”
“No, I understand,” she says. “You say their stories, it is gift they give you.”
“A gift. Yes.”

They sip some more wine. They talk for some time, for Idris the first genuine
conversation he has had since arriving in Kabul, free of the subtle mocking, the
vague reproach he has sensed from the locals, the government officials, those in
the aid agencies. He asks about her work, and she tells him that she has served in
Kosovo with the UN, in Rwanda after the genocide, Colombia, Burundi too. She
has worked with child prostitutes in Cambodia. She has been in Kabul for a year
now, her third stint, this time with a small NGO, working at the hospital and
running a mobile clinic on Mondays. Married twice, divorced twice, no kids.
Idris finds it hard to guess at Amra’s age, though likely she’s younger than she
looks. There is a fading shimmer of beauty, a roughshod sexuality, behind the

yellowing teeth, the fatigue pouches under the eyes. In four, maybe five years,
Idris thinks, that too will be gone.
Then she says, “You want to know what happen to Roshi?”
“You don’t have to tell,” he says.
“You think I am drunk?”