Page 254 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

back taut and held with a crocheted headband. She wears jade earrings, faded

jeans, a long salmon tunic sweater, and a yellow scarf wrapped around her neck
with casual European elegance. She had told me in her last e-mail that she would
wear the scarf so I could spot her quickly.
She has not seen me yet, and I linger for a moment among the travelers
pushing luggage carts through the terminal, the town-car chauffeurs holding
signs with clients’ names. My heart clamoring inside my rib cage, I think to
myself, This is her. This is her. This is really her. Then our eyes connect, and
recognition ripples across her face. She waves.
We meet at the bench. She grins and my knees wobble. She has Baba’s grin
exactly—except for a rice grain’s gap between her upper front teeth—crooked
on the left, the way it scrunches up her face and nearly squeezes shut her eyes,

how she tilts her head just a tad. She stands up, and I notice the hands, the
knobby joints, the fingers bent away from the thumb at the first knuckle, the
chickpea-sized lumps at the wrist. I feel a twist in my stomach, it looks so
painful.
We hug, and she kisses me on the cheeks. Her skin is soft like felt. When we
pull back, she holds me at a distance, hands cupping my shoulders, and looks
into my face as if she were appraising a painting. There is a film of moisture
over her eyes. They’re alive with happiness.

“I apologize for being late.”
“It’s nothing,” she says. “At last, to be with you! I am just so glad”—Is
nussing. At lass, too be weez yoo! The French accent sounds even thicker in
person than it did on the phone.
“I’m glad too,” I say. “How was your flight?”
“I took a pill, otherwise I know I cannot sleep. I will stay awake the whole
time. Because I am too happy and too excited.” She holds me with her gaze,
beaming at me—as if she is afraid the spell will break if she looks away—until

the PA overhead advises passengers to report any unsupervised luggage, and
then her face slackens a bit.
“Does Abdullah know yet that I am coming here?”
“I told him I was bringing home a guest,” I say.
Later, as we settle into the car, I steal quick looks at her. It’s the strangest

thing. There is something oddly illusory about Pari Wahdati, sitting in my car,
mere inches from me. One moment, I see her with perfect clarity—the yellow
scarf around her neck, the short, flimsy hairs at the hairline, the coffee-colored
mole beneath the left ear—and, the next, her features are enfolded in a kind of
haze, as if I am peering at her through bleary glasses. I feel, in passing, a kind of