Page 119 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Speer, the new cabinets and copper-kettle floors, his kids’ $160 high-tops, the

chenille bedspreads in his room, the energy with which he and Nahil have
pursued these things. The fruits of his ambitions strike him as frivolous now.
They remind him only of the brutal disparity between his life and what he’d
found in Kabul.
“What’s the matter, honey?”
“Jet lag,” Idris says. “I need a nap.”
On Saturday he makes it through the guitar recital, on Sunday through most
of Zabi’s soccer match. During the second half he has to steal away to the
parking lot, sleep for a half hour. To his relief, Zabi doesn’t notice. Sunday

night, a few of the neighbors come over for dinner. They pass around pictures of
Idris’s trip and sit politely through the hour of video of Kabul that, against
Idris’s wishes, Nahil insists on playing for them. Over dinner, they ask Idris
about his trip, his views on the situation in Afghanistan. He sips his mojito and
gives short answers.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like there,” Cynthia says. Cynthia is a Pilates
instructor at the gym where Nahil works out.

“Kabul is …” Idris searches for the right words. “A thousand tragedies per
square mile.”
“Must have been quite the culture shock, going there.”
“Yes it was.” Idris doesn’t say that the real culture shock has been in coming
back.
Eventually, talk turns to a recent rash of mail theft that has hit the
neighborhood.

Lying in bed that night, Idris says, “Do you think we have to have all this?”
“ ‘All this’?” Nahil says. He can see her in the mirror, brushing her teeth by
the sink.
“All this. This stuff.”

“No we don’t need it, if that’s what you mean,” she says. She spits in the
sink, gargles.
“You don’t think it’s too much, all of it?”
“We worked hard, Idris. Remember the MCATs, the LSATs, medical school,
law school, the years of residency? No one gave us anything. We have nothing
to apologize for.”
“For the price of that home theater we could have built a school in
Afghanistan.”

She comes into the bedroom and sits on the bed to remove her contacts. She