Page 184 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

She shrugged a little. Truth be told, I was more frightened than anything else.

But you like him now, right? You love him.
Of course I do, Adel’s mother said. What a question.
You don’t regret marrying him.
She put down the glue and waited a few seconds before answering. Look at
our lives, Adel, she said slowly. Look around you. What’s to regret? She smiled
and pulled gently on the lobe of his ear. Besides, then I wouldn’t have had you.

Adel’s mother turned off the TV now and sat on the floor, panting, drying
sweat off her neck with a towel.
“Why don’t you do something on your own this morning,” she said,
stretching her back. “I’m going to shower and eat. And I was thinking of calling
your grandparents. Haven’t spoken to them for a couple of days.”

Adel sighed and rose to his feet.
In his room, on a lower floor and in a different wing of the house, he fetched
his soccer ball and put on the Zidane jersey Baba jan had given him for his last
birthday, his twelfth. When he made his way downstairs, he found Kabir
napping, a newspaper spread on his chest like a quilt. He grabbed a can of apple
juice from the fridge and let himself out.
Adel walked on the gravel path toward the main entrance to the compound.
The stall where the armed guard stood watch was empty. Adel knew the timing
of the guard’s rounds. He carefully opened the gate and stepped out, closed the
gate behind him. Almost immediately, he had the impression that he could
breathe better on this side of the wall. Some days, the compound felt far too

much like a prison.
He walked in the wide shadow of the wall toward the back of the compound,
away from the main road. Back there, behind the compound, were Baba jan’s
orchards, of which he was very proud. Several acres of long parallel rows of pear
trees and apple trees, apricots, cherries, figs, and loquats too. When Adel took
long walks with his father in these orchards, Baba jan would lift him high up on
his shoulders and Adel would pluck them a ripe pair of apples. Between the
compound and the orchards was a clearing, mostly empty save for a shed where
the gardeners stored their tools. The only other thing there was the flat stump of
what had once been, by the looks of it, a giant old tree. Baba jan had once

counted its rings with Adel and concluded that the tree had likely seen Genghis
Khan’s army march past. He said, with a rueful shake of his head, that whoever
had cut it down had been nothing but a fool.
It was a hot day, the sun glaring in a sky as unblemished blue as the skies in
the crayon pictures Adel used to draw when he was little. He put down the can