Page 198 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

and knit caps, were working on a monster truck.

“What is he going to do to that old man?” Adel said. He couldn’t stop from
shivering. “Mother, what is he going to do to him?”
He looked up at his mother, and saw a cloud pass over her face and he
suddenly knew, he knew right away, that whatever came out of her mouth next
could not be trusted.
“He’s going to talk to him,” she said with a tremor. “He’s going to reason
with whoever is out there. It’s what your father does. He reasons with people.”

Adel shook his head. He was weeping now, sobbing. “What is he going to do,
Mother? What is he going to do to that old man?”
His mother kept saying the same thing, that everything was going to be all
right, that it would all turn out just fine, that no one was going to get hurt. But
the more she said it, the more he sobbed, until it exhausted him and at some
point he fell asleep on his mother’s lap.

Former Commander Escapes Assassination Attempt.
Adel read the story in his father’s study, on his father’s computer. The story
described the attack as “vicious” and the assailant as a former refugee with
“suspected ties to the Taliban.” Midway through the article, Adel’s father was
quoted as saying that he had feared for the safety of his family. Especially my
innocent little boy, he’d said. The article gave no name to the assailant nor any

indication of what had happened to him.
Adel shut off the computer. He wasn’t supposed to be using it and he had
trespassed, coming into his father’s study. A month ago, he wouldn’t have dared
do either. He trudged back to his room, lay on his bed, and bounced an old tennis
ball against the wall. Thump! Thump! Thump! It wasn’t long before his mother
poked her head in through the door and asked, then told him, to stop, but he
didn’t. She lingered at the door for a while before slinking away.
Thump! Thump! Thump!

On the surface, nothing had changed. A transcript of Adel’s daily activities
would have revealed him falling back into a normal rhythm. He still got up at the
same hour, washed, had breakfast with his parents, lessons with his tutor.
Afterward, he ate lunch and then spent the afternoon lying around, watching
movies with Kabir or else playing video games.
But nothing was the same. Gholam may have cracked a door open to him, but