Page 177 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

his loans that, Adel had learned from Kabir, were rarely, if ever, paid back.

Adel had meant what he had said to the teacher earlier. He knew he was lucky
to be the son of such a man.
Just as the rounds of handshaking were coming to an end, Adel spotted a
slight man approaching his father. He wore round, thin-framed spectacles and a
short gray beard and had little teeth like the heads of burnt matches. Trailing him
was a boy roughly Adel’s own age. The boy’s big toes poked through matching
holes in his sneakers. His hair sat on his head as a matted, unmoving mess. His
jeans were stiff with dirt, and they were too short besides. By contrast, his T-
shirt hung almost to his knees.

Kabir planted himself between the old man and Baba jan. “I told you already
this wasn’t a good time,” he said.
“I just want to have a brief word with the commander,” the old man said.
Baba jan took Adel by the arm and gently guided him into the backseat of the
Land Cruiser. “Let’s go, son. Your mother is waiting for you.” He climbed in
beside Adel and shut the door.

Inside, as his tinted window rolled up, Adel watched Kabir say something to
the old man that Adel couldn’t hear. Then Kabir made his way around the front
of the SUV and let himself into the driver’s seat, laying his Kalashnikov on the
passenger seat before turning the ignition.
“What was that about?” Adel asked.
“Nothing important,” Kabir said.
They turned onto the road. Some of the boys who had stood in the crowd

gave chase for a short while before the Land Cruiser pulled away. Kabir drove
through the main crowded strip that bisected the town of Shadbagh-e-Nau,
honking frequently as he needled the car through traffic. Everyone yielded.
Some people waved. Adel watched the crowded sidewalks on either side of him,
his gaze settling on and then off familiar sights—the carcasses hanging from
hooks in butcher shops; the blacksmiths working their wooden wheels, hand-
pumping their bellows; the fruit merchants fanning flies off their grapes and
cherries; the sidewalk barber on the wicker chair stropping his razor. They
passed tea shops, kabob houses, an auto-repair shop, a mosque, before Kabir
veered the car through the town’s big public square, at the center of which stood
a blue fountain and a nine-foot-tall black stone mujahid, looking east, turban
gracefully wrapped atop his head, an RPG launcher on his shoulder. Baba jan

had personally commissioned a sculptor from Kabul to build the statue.
North of the strip were a few blocks of residential area, mostly composed of
narrow, unpaved streets and small, flat-roofed little houses painted white or