Page 273 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

his own death in Kabul, in which he had detailed the events of her childhood

among other things. The letter had been left in the care of someone named
Markos Varvaris, a surgeon working in Kabul, who had then searched for and
found Pari in France. Over the summer, Pari had flown to Kabul, met with
Markos Varvaris, who had arranged for her to visit Shadbagh.
Near the end of the conversation, I sensed her gathering herself before she
finally said, Well, I think I am ready. Can I speak with him now?
That was when I had to tell her.
I slide the photo album closer now and inspect the picture that Pari is pointing
to. I see a mansion nestled behind high shiny-white walls topped with barbed

wire. Or, rather, someone’s tragically misguided idea of a mansion, three stories
high, pink, green, yellow, white, with parapets and turrets and pointed eaves and
mosaics and mirrored skyscraper glass. A monument to kitsch gone woefully
awry.
“My God!” I breathe.
“C’est affreux, non?” Pari says. “It is horrible. The Afghans, they call these
Narco Palaces. This one is the house of a well-known criminal of war.”

“So this is all that’s left of Shadbagh?”
“Of the old village, yes. This, and many acres of fruit trees of—what do you
call it?—des vergers.”
“Orchards.”
“Yes.” She runs her fingers over the photo of the mansion. “I wish I know
where our old house was exactly, I mean in relation to this Narco Palace. I

would be happy to know the precise spot.”
She tells me about the new Shadbagh—an actual town, with schools, a clinic,
a shopping district, even a small hotel—which has been built about two miles
away from the site of the old village. The town was where she and her translator
had looked for her half brother. I had learned all of this over the course of that
first, long phone conversation with Pari, how no one in town seemed to know
Iqbal until Pari had run into an old man who did, an old childhood friend of
Iqbal’s, who had spotted him and his family staying on a barren field near the
old windmill. Iqbal had told this old friend that when he was in Pakistan, he had
been receiving money from his older brother who lived in northern California. I

asked, Pari said on the phone, I asked, Did Iqbal tell you the name of this
brother? and the old man said, Yes, Abdullah. And then, alors, after that the rest
was not so difficult. Finding you and your father, I mean.
I asked Iqbal’s friend where Iqbal was now, Pari said. I asked what happened
to him, and the old man said he did not know. But he seemed very nervous, and