Page 266 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

to fill with bogus details and fabricated character traits, as though false

memories are better than none at all.
“Well, it is a lovely city,” Pari says.
“Maybe I’ll take her still. But she has the cancer at the moment. It’s the
female kind—what do you call it?—the …”
“Ovarian,” I say.
Pari nods, her gaze flicking to me and back to Baba.

“What she wants most is to climb the Eiffel Tower. Have you seen it?” Baba
says.
“The Eiffel Tower?” Pari Wahdati laughs. “Oh yes. Every day. I cannot avoid
it, in fact.”
“Have you climbed it? All the way to the top?”

“I have, yes. It is beautiful up there. But I am scared of high places, so it is
not always comfortable for me. But at the top, on a good sunny day, you can see
for more than sixty kilometers. Of course a lot of days in Paris it is not so good
and not so sunny.”
Baba grunts. Pari, encouraged, continues talking about the tower, how many
years it took to build it, how it was never meant to stay in Paris past the 1889
World’s Fair, but she can’t read Baba’s eyes like I can. His expression has
flattened. She doesn’t realize that she has lost him, that his thoughts have already
shifted course like windblown leaves. Pari nudges closer on the seat. “Did you
know, Abdullah,” she says, “that they have to paint the tower every seven
years?”

“What did you say your name was?” Baba says.
“Pari.”
“That’s my daughter’s name.”

“Yes, I know.”
“You have the same name,” Baba says. “The two of you, you have the same
name. So there you have it.” He coughs, absently picks at a small tear in the
leather of the recliner’s arm.
“Abdullah, can I ask you a question?”
Baba shrugs.

Pari looks up at me like she is asking for permission. I give her the go-ahead
with a nod. She leans forward in the chair. “How did you decide to choose this
name for your daughter?”
Baba shifts his gaze to the window, his fingernail still scraping the tear in the
recliner’s arm.