Page 269 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Our room was a cabin with a wooden porch, from which we had a view of the

swimming pool, the restaurant, and entire groves of redwood that soared straight
up into the clouds. Some of the trees were so close, you could tell the subtle
shades of color on a squirrel’s fur as it dashed up the trunk. Our first morning
there, Mother woke me up, said, Quick, Pari, you have to see this. There was a
deer nibbling on shrubs outside the window.
I pushed her wheelchair around the gardens. I’m such a spectacle, Mother
said. I parked her by the fountain and I would sit on a bench close to her, the sun
warming our faces, and we would watch the hummingbirds darting between
flowers until she fell asleep, and then I wheeled her back to our cabin.
On Sunday afternoon, we had tea and croissants on the balcony outside the
restaurant, which was a big cathedral-ceilinged room with bookshelves, a

dreamcatcher on one wall, and an honest-to-God stone hearth. On a lower deck,
a man with the face of a dervish and a girl with limp blond hair were playing a
lethargic game of Ping-Pong.
We have to do something about these eyebrows, Mother said. She was
wearing a winter coat over a sweater and the maroon wool beanie hat she had
knitted herself a year and a half earlier when, as she put it, all the festivities had
begun.
I’ll paint them back on for you, I said.

Make them dramatic, then.
Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra dramatic?
She grinned weakly. Why not? She took a shallow sip of tea. Grinning
accentuated all the new lines in her face. When I met Abdullah, I was selling
clothes on the side of the street in Peshawar. He said I had beautiful eyebrows.

The Ping-Pong pair ditched the paddles. They were leaning now against the
wooden railing, sharing a cigarette, looking up at the sky, which was luminous
and clear but for a few frayed clouds. The girl had long, bony arms.
I read in the paper there’s an arts-and-crafts fair up in Capitola today, I said.
If you’re up to it, maybe I’ll drive us, we’ll have a look. We could even have
dinner there, if you like.
Pari?

Yeah.
I want to tell you something.
Okay.
Abdullah has a brother in Pakistan, Mother said. A half brother.

I turned to her sharply.