Page 150 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

blue rim of Julien’s old, battered ashtray. She shut her eyes. “No, Maman. No it

doesn’t.”
“Well, I wish I could say that didn’t hurt.”
“I didn’t mean it to.”
“I think that’s highly debatable.”
“Why would I want to hurt you, Maman?”

Maman laughed. A hollow, ugly sound.
“I look at you sometimes and I don’t see me in you. Of course I don’t. I
suppose that isn’t unexpected, after all. I don’t know what sort of person you are,
Pari. I don’t know who you are, what you’re capable of, in your blood. You’re a
stranger to me.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” Pari said.

But her mother had already hung up.

FROM “AFGHAN SONGBIRD,” AN INTERVIEW WITH
NILA WAHDATI BY ÉTIENNE BOUSTOULER,
Parallaxe 84 (Winter 1974), p. 38

EB: Did you learn your French here?

NW: My mother taught me in Kabul when I was little. She
spoke only French to me. We had lessons every day. It was
very hard on me when she left Kabul.

EB: For France?

NW: Yes. My parents divorced in 1939 when I was ten. I was
my father’s only child. Letting me go with her was out of the
question. So I stayed, and she left for Paris to live with her
sister, Agnes. My father tried to mitigate the loss for me by

occupying me with a private tutor and riding lessons and art
lessons. But nothing replaces a mother.

EB: What happened to her?

NW: Oh, she died. When the Nazis came to Paris. They didn’t