Page 125 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

him, “Have you read it?”

“No,” he says.
“We’re going to read it for our book club next month. It’s my turn to pick.”
“Ah.”
She frowns and pushes a palm against her chest. “I hope people read it. It’s
such a moving story. So inspiring. I bet they make it a movie.”

It’s true, what he told her. He has not read the book and doubts he ever will.
He does not think he has the stomach to revisit himself on its pages. But others
will read it. And when they do, he will be exposed. People will know. Nahil, his
sons, his colleagues. He feels sick at the thought of it.
He opens the book again, flips past the acknowledgments, past the bio of the
coauthor, who has done the actual writing. He looks again at the photo on the
book flap. There is no sign of the injury. If she bears a scar, which she must, the
long, wavy black hair conceals it. Roshi is wearing a blouse with little gold
beads, an Allah necklace, lapis ear studs. She is leaning against a tree, looking

straight at the camera, smiling. He thinks of the stick figures she had drawn him.
Don’t go. Don’t leave, Kaka. He does not detect in this young woman even a
scrap of the tremulous little creature he had found behind a curtain six years
before.
Idris glances at the dedication page.
To the two angels in my life: my mother Amra, and my Kaka Timur. You are
my saviors. I owe you everything.
The line moves. The woman with the short blond hair gets her book signed.

She moves aside, and Idris, heart stammering, steps forward. Roshi looks up.
She is wearing an Afghan shawl over a pumpkin-colored long-sleeved blouse
and little oval-shaped silver earrings. Her eyes are darker than he remembers,
and her body is filling out with female curves. She looks at him without
blinking, and though she gives no overt indication that she has recognized him,
and though her smile is polite, there is something amused and distant about her
expression, playful, sly, unintimidated. It steam-rolls him, and suddenly all the
words that he had composed—even written down, rehearsed in his head on the
way here—dry up. He cannot bring himself to say a thing. He can only stand
there, looking vaguely foolish.

The salesclerk clears her throat. “Sir, if you’ll give me your book I’ll flip to
the title page and Roshi will autograph it for you.”
The book. Idris looks down, finds it clutched tightly in his hands. He has not
come here to get it signed, of course. That would be galling—grotesquely galling
—after everything. Still, he sees himself handing it over, the salesclerk expertly