Page 181 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

“What does he want anyway, a job?”

“Something like that.”
Kabir moved to the couch and removed his shoes. He looked up at Adel and
gave him a wink. Adel liked Kabir, far more than Azmaray, who was unpleasant
and rarely said a word to him. Kabir played cards with Adel and invited him to
watch DVDs together. Kabir loved movies. He owned a collection that he had
bought on the black market and watched ten to twelve movies a week—Iranian,
French, American, of course Bollywood—he didn’t care. And sometimes if
Adel’s mother was in another room and Adel promised not to tell his father,
Kabir emptied the magazine on his Kalashnikov and let Adel hold it, like a
mujahid. Now the Kalashnikov sat propped against the wall by the front door.

Kabir lay down on the couch and propped his feet up on the arm. He started
flipping through a newspaper.
“They looked harmless enough,” Adel said, releasing the curtain and turning
to Kabir. He could see the bodyguard’s forehead over the top of the newspaper.
“Maybe I should have asked them in for tea, then,” Kabir murmured. “Offer
them some cake too.”

“Don’t make fun.”
“They all look harmless.”
“Is Baba jan going to help them?”
“Probably,” Kabir sighed. “Your father is a river to his people.” He lowered
the paper and grinned. “What’s that from? Come on, Adel. We saw it last
month.”

Adel shrugged. He started heading upstairs.
“Lawrence,” Kabir called from the couch. “Lawrence of Arabia. Anthony
Quinn.” And then, just as Adel had reached the top of the stairs: “They’re
buzzards, Adel. Don’t fall for their act. They’d pick your father clean if they
could.”

One morning, a couple of days after his father had left for Helmand,
Adel went up to his parents’ bedroom. The music from the other side of the door
was loud and thumping. He let himself in and found his mother, in shorts and a
T-shirt in front of the giant flat-screen TV, mimicking the moves of a trio of
sweaty blond women, a series of leaps and squats and lunges and planks. She