Page 120 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

has the most beautiful profile. He loves the way her forehead hardly dips where

her nose begins, her strong cheekbones, her slim neck.
“Then do both,” she says, turning to him, blinking back eyedrops. “I don’t see
why you can’t.”
A few years ago, Idris had discovered that Nahil was supporting a Colombian
kid named Miguel. She’d said nothing to him about it, and since she was in
charge of the mail and their finances Idris had not known about it for years until
he’d seen her one day reading a letter from Miguel. The letter had been
translated from Spanish by a nun. There was a picture too, of a tall, wiry boy
standing outside a straw hut, cradling a soccer ball, nothing behind him but
gaunt-looking cows and green hills. Nahil had started supporting Miguel when
she was in law school. For eleven years now Nahil’s checks had quietly crossed

paths with Miguel’s pictures and his thankful, nun-translated letters.
She takes off her rings. “So what is this? You caught a case of survivor’s guilt
over there?”
“I just see things a little differently now.”
“Good. Put that to use, then. But quit the navel-gazing.”

Jet lag robs him of sleep that night. He reads for a while, watches part of a
West Wing rerun downstairs, ends up at the computer in the guest bedroom Nahil
has turned into an office. He finds an e-mail from Amra. She hopes that his
return home was safe and that his family is well. It has been raining “angrily” in
Kabul, she writes, and the streets are packed with mud up to the ankles. The rain
has caused flooding, and some two hundred families had to be evacuated by
helicopter in Shomali, north of Kabul. Security has been tightening because of
Kabul’s support of Bush’s war in Iraq and expected reprisals from al-Qaeda. Her
last line reads You have talked with your boss yet?
Below Amra’s e-mail is pasted a short paragraph from Roshi, which Amra
has transcribed. It reads:

Salaam, Kaka Idris,

Inshallah, you have arrived safely in America. I am sure that your
family is very happy to see you. Every day I think about you. Every
day I am watching the films you bought for me. I like them all. It
makes me sad that you are not here to watch with me. I am feeling
good and Amra jan is taking good care of me. Please say Salaam to
your family for me. Inshallah, we will see each other soon in
California.