Page 241 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

broken by a rectangle of shifting colored light on the dresser on what I take to be

Thalia’s side of the bed, my old side. It’s one of those digital picture frames. A
field of rice paddies and wooden houses with gray-tiled roofs fade to a crowded
bazaar with skinned goats hanging from hooks, then to a dark-skinned man
squatting by a muddy river, finger-brushing his teeth.
I pull up a chair and sit at Mamá’s bedside. Looking at her now that my eyes
have adjusted, I feel something in me drop. I am startled by how much my
mother has shrunk. Already. The floral-print pajamas appear loose around her
small shoulders, over the flattened chest. I don’t care for the way she is sleeping,
with her mouth open and turned down, as though she is having a sour dream. I
don’t like seeing that her dentures have slid out of place in her sleep. Her eyelids
flutter slightly. I sit there awhile. I ask myself, What did you expect? and I listen
to the clock ticking on the wall, the clanging of Thalia’s spatula against the
frying pan from downstairs. I take inventory of the banal details of Mamá’s life
in this room. The flat-screen TV fastened to the wall; the PC in the corner; the

unfinished game of Sudoku on the nightstand, the page marked by a pair of
reading glasses; the TV remote; the vial of artificial tears; a tube of steroid
cream; a tube of denture glue; a small bottle of pills; and, on the floor, an oyster-
colored pair of fuzzy slippers. She would have never worn those before. Beside
the slippers, an open bag of pull-on diapers. I cannot reconcile these things with
my mother. I resist them. They look to me like the belongings of a stranger.
Someone indolent, harmless. Someone with whom you could never be angry.
Across the bed, the image on the digital picture frame shifts again. I track a
few. Then it comes to me. I know these photos. I shot them. Back when I was …
What? Walking the earth, I suppose. I’d always made sure to get double prints

and mail one set to Thalia. And she’d kept them. All these years. Thalia.
Affection seeps through me sweet as honey. She has been my true sister, my true
Manaar, all along.
She calls my name from downstairs.
I get up quietly. As I leave the room, something catches my eye. Something
framed, mounted on the wall beneath the clock. I can’t quite make it out in the
dark. I open my cell phone and take a look in its silver glow. It’s an AP story
about the nonprofit I work with in Kabul. I remember the interview. The
journalist was a pleasant Korean-American fellow with a mild stutter. We had
shared a plate of qabuli—Afghan pilaf, with brown rice, raisins, lamb. There is
in the center of the story a group photo. Me, some of the children, Nabi in the

back, standing rigidly, hands behind his back, looking simultaneously
foreboding, shy, and dignified, as Afghans often manage to in pictures. Amra is