Page 112 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

“Why not,” she says.

Idris clears his throat. “Salaam, Roshi.”
The girl looks to Amra for permission. Her voice is a tentative, high-pitched
whisper. “Salaam.”
“I brought you a present.” Idris lowers the box and opens it. Roshi’s eyes
come to life when Idris takes out the small TV and VCR. He shows her the four
films he has bought. Most of the tapes at the store were Indian movies, or else
action flicks, martial-arts films with Jet Li, Jean-Claude Van Damme, all of
Steven Seagal’s pictures. But he was able to find E.T., Babe, Toy Story, and The
Iron Giant. He has watched them all with his own boys back home.

In Farsi, Amra asks Roshi which one she wants to watch. Roshi picks The
Iron Giant.
“You’ll love that one,” Idris says. He finds it difficult to look at her directly.
His gaze keeps sliding toward the mess on her head, the shiny clump of brain
tissue, the crisscrossing network of veins and capillaries.

There is no electric outlet at the end of this hallway, and it takes Amra some
time to find an extension cord, but when Idris plugs in the cord, and the picture
comes on, Roshi’s mouth spreads into a smile. In her smile, Idris sees how little
of the world he has known, even at thirty-five years of age, its savageness, its
cruelty, the boundless brutality.
When Amra excuses herself to go see other patients, Idris takes a seat beside
Roshi’s bed and watches the movie with her. The uncle is a silent, inscrutable
presence in the room. Halfway through the film, the power goes out. Roshi
begins to cry, and the uncle leans over from his chair and roughly clutches her
hand. He whispers a few quick, terse words in Pashto, which Idris does not
speak. Roshi winces and tries to pull away. Idris looks at her small hand, lost in
the uncle’s strong, white-knuckled grasp.

Idris puts on his coat. “I’ll come back tomorrow, Roshi, and we can watch
another tape if you like. You want that?”
Roshi shrinks into a ball beneath the covers. Idris looks at the uncle, pictures
what Timur would do to this man—Timur, who, unlike him, has no capacity to
resist the easy emotion. Give me ten minutes alone with him, he’d say.
The uncle follows him outside. On the steps, he stuns Idris by saying, “I am

the real victim here, Sahib.” He must have seen the look on Idris’s face because
he corrects himself and says, “Of course she is the victim. But, I mean, I am a
victim too. You see that, of course, you are Afghan. But these foreigners, they
don’t understand.”
“I have to go,” Idris says.