Page 159 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

were. How thoughtless. My God. Pari had hung up with him knowing that her

fling with Julien had been the final push for Maman. She had hung up knowing
that for the rest of her life it would slam into her at random moments, the guilt,
the terrible remorse, catching her off guard, and that she would ache to the bones
with it. She would wrestle with this, now and for all days to come. It would be
the dripping faucet at the back of her mind.
She takes a bath after dinner and reviews some notes for an upcoming exam.
She watches some more TV, cleans and dries the dishes, sweeps the kitchen
floor. But it’s no use. She can’t distract herself. The journal sits on the bed, its
calling to her like a lowfrequency hum.
Afterward, she puts a raincoat over her pajamas and goes for a walk down
Boulevard de la Chapelle, a few blocks south of the apartment. The air is chilly,

and raindrops slap the pavement and shopwindows, but the apartment cannot
contain her restlessness right now. She needs the cold, the moist air, the open
space.
When she was young, Pari remembers, she had been all questions. Do I have
cousins in Kabul, Maman? Do I have aunts and uncles? And grandparents, do I
have a grand-pére and a grand-maman? How come they never visit? Can we
write them a letter? Please, can we visit them?
Most of her questions had revolved around her father. What was his favorite

color, Maman? Tell me, Maman, was he a good swimmer? Did he know a lot of
jokes? She remembers him chasing her once through a room. Rolling her around
on a carpet, tickling her soles and belly. She remembers the smell of his lavender
soap and the shine of his high forehead, his long fingers. His oval-shaped lapis
cuff links, the crease of his suit pants. She can see the dust motes they had
kicked up together off the carpet.
What Pari had always wanted from her mother was the glue to bond together
her loose, disjointed scraps of memory, to turn them into some sort of cohesive
narrative. But Maman never said much. She always withheld details of her life
and of their life together in Kabul. She kept Pari at a remove from their shared
past, and, eventually, Pari stopped asking.

And now it turns out that Maman had told this magazine writer, this Étienne
Boustouler, more about herself and her life than she ever did her own daughter.
Or had she.
Pari read the piece three times back at the apartment. And she doesn’t know
what to think, what to believe. So much of it rings false. Parts of it read like a
parody. A lurid melodrama, of shackled beauties and doomed romances and
pervasive oppression, all told in such breathless, high-spirited fashion.