Page 264 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

smaller than yourself.

I reached over from the darkened backseat and touched his face. He leaned
his cheek onto my palm.
What’s taking so long? he murmured.
She’s locking up, I said. I felt exhausted. I watched Mother hurry to the car.
The drizzle had turned into a downpour.
A month later, a couple of weeks before I was due to fly east for a campus

visit, Mother went to Dr. Bashiri to tell him the antacid pills had done nothing to
help her stomach pain. He sent her for an ultrasound. They found a tumor the
size of a walnut in her left ovary.

“Baba?”
He is on the recliner, sitting motionless, slumped forward. He has his
sweatpants on, his lower legs covered by a checkered wool shawl. He is wearing
the brown cardigan sweater I bought him the year before over a flannel shirt he
has buttoned all the way. This is the way he insists on wearing his shirts now,
with the collar buttoned, which makes him look both boyish and frail, resigned
to old age. He looks a little puffy in the face today, and strands of his white hair
spill uncombed over his brow. He is watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
with a somber, perplexed expression. When I call his name, his gaze lingers on
the screen like he hasn’t heard me before he drags it away and looks up with
displeasure. He has a small sty growing on the lower lid of his left eye. He needs
a shave.

“Baba, can I mute the TV for a second?”
“I’m watching,” he says.
“I know. But you have a visitor.” I had already told him about Pari Wahdati’s
visit the day before and again this morning. But I don’t ask him if he remembers.
It is something that I learned early on, to not put him on the spot, because it
embarrasses him and makes him defensive, sometimes abusive.

I pluck the remote from the arm of the recliner and turn off the sound, bracing
myself for a tantrum. The first time he threw one, I was convinced it was a
charade, an act he was putting on. To my relief, Baba doesn’t protest beyond a
long sigh through the nose.
I motion to Pari, who is lingering in the hallway at the entrance to the living
room. Slowly, she walks over to us, and I pull her up a chair close to Baba’s