Page 276 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

You could just pop in and ask, I said.

I don’t want to disturb you, she said. And I want to know. I want to know him.
I don’t tell her that she will never know him the way she longs to. Still, I
share with her a few tricks of the trade. For instance, how if Baba starts to get
agitated I can usually, though not always, calm him down—for reasons that
baffle me still—by quickly handing him a free home-shopping catalog or a
furniture-sale flyer. I keep a steady supply of both.
If you want him to nap, flip on the Weather Channel or anything to do with
golf. And never let him watch cooking shows.

Why not?
They agitate him for some reason.
After lunch, the three of us go out for a stroll. We keep it short for both their
sakes—what with Baba tiring quickly and Pari’s arthritis. Baba has a wariness in
his eyes, tottering anxiously along the sidewalk between Pari and me, wearing an
old newsboy cap, his cardigan sweater, and wool-lined moccasins. There is a

middle school around the block with an ill-manicured soccer field and, across
that, a small playground where I often take Baba. We always find a young
mother or two, strollers parked near them, a toddler stumbling around in the
sandbox, now and then a teenage couple cutting school, swinging lazily and
smoking. They rarely look at Baba—the teenagers—and then only with cold
indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better
than to allow old age and decay to happen to him.
One day, I pause during dictation and go to the kitchen to refresh my coffee
and I find the two of them watching a movie together. Baba on the recliner, his
moccasins sticking out from under the shawl, his head bent forward, mouth
gaping slightly, eyebrows drawn together in either concentration or confusion.
And Pari sitting beside him, hands folded in her lap, feet crossed at the ankles.

“Who’s this one?” Baba says.
“That is Latika.”
“Who?”

“Latika, the little girl from the slums. The one who could not jump on the
train.”
“She doesn’t look little.”
“Yes, but a lot of years have passed,” Pari says. “She is older now, you see.”
One day the week before, at the playground, we were sitting on a park bench,
the three of us, and Pari said, Abdullah, do you remember that when you were a
boy you had a little sister?