Page 28 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

so he would be there to take care of Pari when He took away their mother.

“Baba,” Pari said. “Tell a story.”
“It’s getting late,” Father said.
“Please.”
Father was a closed-off man by nature. He rarely uttered more than two
consecutive sentences at any time. But on occasion, for reasons unknown to
Abdullah, something in Father unlocked and stories suddenly came spilling out.

Sometimes he had Abdullah and Pari sit raptly before him, as Parwana banged
pots in the kitchen, and told them stories his grandmother had passed on to him
when he had been a boy, sending them off to lands populated by sultans and
jinns and malevolent divs and wise dervishes. Other times, he made up stories.
He made them up on the spot, his tales unmasking a capacity for imagination
and dream that always surprised Abdullah. Father never felt more present to
Abdullah, more vibrant, revealed, more truthful, than when he told his stories, as
though the tales were pinholes into his opaque, inscrutable world.
But Abdullah could tell from the expression on Father’s face that there would
be no story tonight.

“It’s late,” Father said again. He lifted the kettle with the edge of the shawl
draping his shoulders and poured himself a cup of tea. He blew the steam and
took a sip, his face glowing orange in the flames. “Time to sleep. Long day
tomorrow.”
Abdullah pulled the blanket over their heads. Underneath, he sang into the
nape of Pari’s neck:

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

Pari, already sleepy, sluggishly sang her verse.

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

Almost instantly, she was snoring.
Abdullah awoke later and found Father gone. He sat up in a fright. The fire
was all but dead, nothing left of it now but a few crimson speckles of ember.
Abdullah’s gaze darted left, then right, but his eyes could penetrate nothing in