Page 244 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

it far more than she lets on. “It’s you I worry for. The news from that awful

country. Thalia doesn’t want me listening to it. She says it will agitate me.”
“We do have our incidents,” I say, “but mostly it’s just people going about
their lives. And I’m always careful, Mamá.” Of course I neglect to tell her about
the shooting at the guesthouse across the street or the recent surge in attacks on
foreign-aid workers, or that by careful I mean I have taken to carrying a 9mm
when I am out driving around the city, which I probably shouldn’t be doing in
the first place.
Mamá takes a sip of coffee, winces a bit. She doesn’t push me. I am not sure
whether this is a good thing. Not sure whether she has drifted off, descended into
herself as old people do, or whether it is a tactic to not corner me into lying or
disclosing things that would only upset her.

“We missed you at Christmas,” she says.
“I couldn’t get away, Mamá.”
She nods. “You’re here now. That’s what matters.”

I take a sip of my coffee. I remember when I was little Mamá and me eating
breakfast at this table every morning, quietly, almost solemnly, before we
walked to school together. We said so little to each other.
“You know, Mamá, I worry for you too.”
“No need to. I take care of myself all right.” A flash of the old defiant pride,
like a dim glint in the fog.
“But for how long?”

“As long as I can.”
“And when you can’t, then what?” I am not challenging her. I ask because I
don’t know. I don’t know what my own role will be or whether I will even play
one.
She levels her gaze at me evenly. Then she adds a teaspoon of sugar to her
cup, slowly stirs it in. “It’s a funny thing, Markos, but people mostly have it

backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them
is what they’re afraid of. What they don’t want.”
“I don’t follow, Mamá.”
“Well, take you, for instance. Leaving here. The life you’ve made for
yourself. You were afraid of being confined here. With me. You were afraid I
would hold you back. Or, take Thalia. She stayed because she didn’t want to be
stared at anymore.”
I watch her taste her coffee, pour in another spoonful of sugar. I remember

how out of my depth I’d always felt as a boy trying to argue with her. She spoke