Page 267 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

“Do you remember, Abdullah? Why this name?”

He shakes his head. With a fist, he yanks at his cardigan and clutches it shut
at his throat. His lips barely move as he begins to hum under his breath, a
rhythmic muttering he always resorts to when he is marauded by anxiety and at a
loss for an answer, when everything has blurred to vagueness and he is bowled
over by a gush of disconnected thoughts, waiting desperately for the murkiness
to clear.
“Abdullah? What is that?” Pari says.
“Nothing,” he mutters.

“No, that song you are singing—what is it?”
He turns to me, helpless. He doesn’t know.
“It’s like a nursery rhyme,” I say. “Remember, Baba? You said you learned it
when you were a boy. You said you learned it from your mother.”

“Okay.”
“Can you sing it for me?” Pari says urgently, a catch in her voice. “Please,
Abdullah, will you sing it?”
He lowers his head and shakes it slowly.
“Go ahead, Baba,” I say softly. I rest my hand on his bony shoulder. “It’s
okay.”

Hesitantly, in a high, trembling voice and without looking up, Baba sings the
same two lines several times:

I found a sad little fairy
Beneath the shade of a paper tree.

“He used to say there was a second verse,” I say to Pari, “but that he’d
forgotten it.”

Pari Wahdati lets out a sudden laugh that sounds like a deep, guttural cry, and
she covers her mouth. “Ah, mon Dieu,” she whispers. She lifts her hand. In
Farsi, she sings:

I know a sad little fairy
Who was blown away by the wind one night.

Folds appear on Baba’s forehead. For a transitory moment, I think I detect a tiny
crack of light in his eyes. But then it winks out, and his face is placid once more.
He shakes his head. “No. No, I don’t think that’s how it goes at all.”