Page 265 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

recliner. She is a bundle of nervous excitement, I can tell. She sits erect, pale,

leaning forward from the edge of the chair, knees pressed together, her hands
clamped, and her smile so tight her lips are turning white. Her eyes are glued on
Baba, as if she has only moments with him and is trying to memorize his face.
“Baba, this is the friend I told you about.”
He eyes the gray-haired woman across from him. He has an unnerving way of
looking at people these days, even when he is staring directly at them, that gives
nothing away. He looks disengaged, closed off, like he meant to look elsewhere
and his eyes happened upon them by accident.
Pari clears her throat. Even so, her voice shakes when she speaks. “Hello,

Abdullah. My name is Pari. It’s so wonderful to see you.”
He nods slowly. I can practically see the uncertainty and confusion rippling
across his face like waves of muscle spasm. His eyes shift from my face to
Pari’s. He opens his mouth in a strained half smile the way he does when he
thinks a prank is being played on him.
“You have an accent,” he finally says.

“She lives in France,” I said. “And, Baba, you have to speak English. She
doesn’t understand Farsi.”
Baba nods. “So you live in London?” he says to Pari.
“Baba!”
“What?” He turns sharply to me. Then he understands and gives an
embarrassed little laugh before switching from Farsi. “Do you live in London?”

“Paris, actually,” Pari says. “I live in a small apartment in Paris.” She doesn’t
lift her eyes from him.
“I always planned to take my wife to Paris. Sultana—that was her name, God
rest her soul. She was always saying, Abdullah, take me to Paris. When will you
take me to Paris?”
Actually, Mother didn’t much like to travel. She never saw why she would

forgo the comfort and familiarity of her own home for the ordeal of flying and
suitcase lugging. She had no sense of culinary adventure—her idea of exotic
food was the Orange Chicken at the Chinese take-out place on Taylor Street. It
is a bit of a marvel how Baba, at times, summons her with such uncanny
precision—remembering, for instance, that she salted her food by bouncing the
salt grains off the palm of her hand or her habit of interrupting people on the
phone when she never did it in person—and how, other times, he can be so
wildly inaccurate. I imagine Mother is fading for him, her face receding into
shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from
a fist. She is becoming a ghostly outline, a hollow shell, that he feels compelled