Page 109 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

“Are you?”
“Little bit,” she says. “But you are honest guy.” She taps him on the shoulder
gently, and a little playfully. “You ask to know for right reasons. For other
Afghans like you, Afghans coming from West, it is like—how do you say?—
stretching the neck.”
“Rubbernecking.”
“Yes.”

“Like pornography.”
“But maybe you are good guy.”
“If you tell me,” he says, “I will take it as a gift.”

So she tells him.
Roshi lived with her parents, two sisters, and her baby brother in a village a
third of the way between Kabul and Bagram. One Friday last month, her uncle,
her father’s older brother, came to visit. For almost a year, Roshi’s father and the
uncle had had a feud over the property where Roshi lived with her family,
property which the uncle felt belonged rightfully to him, being the older brother,
but which his father had passed to the younger, and more favored, brother. The
day he came, though, all was well.
“He say he want to end their fight.”

In preparation, Roshi’s mother had slaughtered two chickens, made a big pot
of rice with raisins, bought fresh pomegranates from the market. When the uncle
arrived, he and Roshi’s father kissed and embraced. Roshi’s father hugged his
brother so hard, his feet lifted off the carpet. Roshi’s mother wept with relief.
The family sat down to eat. Everyone had seconds, and thirds. They helped
themselves to the pomegranates. After that, there was green tea and small toffee
candies. The uncle then excused himself to use the outhouse.
When he came back, he had an ax in his hand.

“The kind for chopping tree,” Amra says.
The first one to go was Roshi’s father. “Roshi told me her father never even
know what happened. He didn’t see anything.”
A single strike to the neck, from behind. It nearly decapitated him. Roshi’s
mother was next. Roshi saw her mother try to fight, but several swings to the
face and chest and she was silenced. By now the children were screaming and
running. The uncle chased after them. Roshi saw one of her sisters make a run
for the hallway, but the uncle grabbed her by the hair and wrestled her to the
ground. The other sister did make it out to the hallway. The uncle gave chase,

and Roshi could hear him kicking down the door to the bedroom, the screams,