Page 274 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

he did not look at me when he said this. And I think, Pari, I worry that something

bad happened to Iqbal.
She flips through more pages now and shows me photographs of her children
—Alain, Isabelle, and Thierry—and snapshots of her grandchildren—at birthday
parties, posing in swimming trunks at the edge of a pool. Her apartment in Paris,
the pastel blue walls and white blinds pulled down to the sills, the shelves of
books. Her cluttered office at the university, where she had taught mathematics
before the rheumatoid had forced her into retirement.
I keep turning the pages of the album as she provides captions to the
snapshots—her old friend Collette, Isabelle’s husband Albert, Pari’s own
husband Eric, who had been a playwright and had died of a heart attack back in
1997. I pause at a photo of the two of them, impossibly young, sitting side by

side on orange-colored cushions in some kind of restaurant, her in a white
blouse, him in a T-shirt, his hair, long and limp, tied in a ponytail.
“That was the night that we met,” Pari says. “It was a setup.”
“He had a kind face.”
Pari nods. “Yes. When we get married, I thought, Oh, we will have a long

time together. I thought to myself, Thirty years at least, maybe forty. Fifty, if we
are lucky. Why not?” She stares at the picture, lost for a moment, then smiles
lightly. “But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.” She
pushes the album away and sips her coffee. “And you? You never get married?”
I shrug and flip another page. “There was one close call.”
“I am sorry, ‘close call’?”
“It means I almost did. But we never made it to the ring stage.”

This is not true. It was painful and messy. Even now, the memory of it is like
a soft ache behind my breastbone.
She ducks her head. “I am sorry. I am very rude.”
“No. It’s fine. He found someone both more beautiful and less …
encumbered, I guess. Speaking of beautiful, who is this?”

I point to a striking-looking woman with long dark hair and big eyes. In the
picture, she is holding a cigarette like she is bored—elbow tucked into her side,
head tilted up insouciantly—but her gaze is penetrating, defiant.
“This is Maman. My mother, Nila Wahdati. Or, I thought she was my mother.
You understand.”
“She’s gorgeous,” I say.
“She was. She committed suicide. Nineteen seventy-four.”

“I’m sorry.”