Page 111 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

The next day, Timur rides with the Germans to the town of Istalif,
known for its clay pottery. “You should come.”
“I’m going to stay in and read,” Idris says.
“You can read in San Jose, bro.”

“I need the rest. I might have had too much to drink last night.”
After the Germans pick up Timur, Idris lies in bed for a while, staring at a
faded sixties-era advertising poster hanging on the wall, a quartet of smiling
blond tourists hiking along Band-e-Amir Lake, a relic from his own childhood
here in Kabul before the wars, before the unraveling. Early afternoon, he goes
for a walk. At a small restaurant, he eats kabob for lunch. It’s hard to enjoy the
meal with all the grimy young faces peering through the glass, watching him eat.
It’s overwhelming. Idris admits to himself that Timur is better at this than he is.
Timur makes a game of it. Like a drill sergeant, he whistles and makes the
beggar kids queue up, whips out a few bills from the Bakhsheesh bundle. As he
hands out the bills, one by one, he clicks his heels and salutes. The kids love it.
They salute back. They call him Kaka. Sometimes they climb up his legs.

After lunch, Idris catches a taxi and asks to be taken to the hospital.
“But stop at a bazaar first,” he says.

Carrying the box, he walks down the hallway, past graffiti-spangled
walls, rooms with plastic sheeting for doors, a shuffling barefoot old man with
an eye patch, patients lying in stifling-hot rooms with missing lightbulbs. A
sour-body smell everywhere. At the end of the hallway, he pauses at the curtain
before pulling it back. He feels a lurch in his heart when he sees the girl sitting
on the edge of the bed. Amra is kneeling before her, brushing her small teeth.
There is a man sitting on the other side of the bed, gaunt, sunburned, with a
rat’s-nest beard and stubbly dark hair. When Idris enters, the man quickly gets
up, flattens a hand against his chest, and bows. Idris is struck again by how

easily the locals can tell he is a westernized Afghan, how the whiff of money and
power affords him unwarranted privilege in this city. The man tells Idris he is
Roshi’s uncle, from the mother’s side.
“You’re back,” Amra says, dipping the brush into a bowl of water.
“I hope that’s okay.”