Page 179 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

the morning to oversee his fields of cotton in Helmand and to meet with workers

at the cotton factory he had built there. He would be gone for two weeks, a span
of time that, to Adel, seemed interminable.
Baba jan turned his gaze to him. He dwarfed Adel, taking up more than half
the backseat. “Wish I didn’t, son.”
Adel nodded. “I was proud today. I was proud of you.”
Baba jan lowered the weight of his big hand on Adel’s knee. “Thank you,
Adel. I appreciate that. But I take you to these things so you learn, so you
understand that it’s important for the fortunate, for people like us, to live up to
their responsibilities.”

“I just wish you didn’t have to leave all the time.”
“Me too, son. Me too. But I’m not leaving until tomorrow. I’ll be home later
in the evening.”
Adel nodded, casting his gaze down at his hands.

“Look,” his father said in a soft voice, “the people in this town, they need me,
Adel. They need my help to have a home and find work and make a livelihood.
Kabul has its own problems. It can’t help them. So if I don’t, no one else will.
Then these people would suffer.”
“I know that,” Adel muttered.
Baba jan squeezed his knee gently. “You miss Kabul, I know, and your
friends. It’s been a hard adjustment here, for both you and your mother. And I
know that I’m always off traveling and going to meetings and that a lot of people
have demands on my time. But … Look at me, son.”

Adel raised his eyes to meet Baba jan’s. They shone at him kindly from
beneath the canopy of his bushy brows.
“No one on this earth matters to me more than you, Adel. You are my son. I
would gladly give up all of this for you. I would give up my life for you, son.”
Adel nodded, his eyes watering a little. Sometimes, when Baba jan spoke like

this, Adel felt his heart swell and swell until he found it hard to draw a breath.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Baba jan.”
“Do you believe me?”
“I do.”

“Good. Then give your father a kiss.”
Adel threw his arms around Baba jan’s neck and his father held him tightly
and patiently. Adel remembered when he was little, when he would tap his father
on the shoulder in the middle of the night still shaking from a nightmare, and his