Page 287 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

brown paper. An envelope had been taped to the package. On it were written, in

English, the words For my sister, Pari. Immediately, I recognized Baba’s
handwriting from my days working at Abe’s Kabob House when I picked up the
food orders he would jot down at the cash register.
I hand the package now to Pari, unopened.
She looks down at it in her lap, running her hands over the words scribbled on
the envelope. From across the river, church bells begin to ring. On a rock jutting
from the edge of the water, a bird tears at the entrails of a dead fish.
Pari rummages in her purse, digging through its contents. “J’ai oublié mes
lunettes,” she says. “I forgot my reading glasses.”

“Do you want me to read it for you?”
She tries to tear the envelope from the package, but today is not a good day
for her hands, and, after some struggle, she ends up handing me the package. I
free the envelope and open it. I unfold the note tucked inside.
“He wrote it in Farsi.”

“But you can read it, no?” Pari says, her eyebrows knotted with worry. “You
can translate.”
“Yes,” I say, feeling a tiny smile inside, grateful—if belatedly—for all the
Tuesday afternoons Baba had driven me to Campbell for Farsi classes. I think of
him now, ragged and lost, staggering across a desert, the path behind him littered
with all the shiny little pieces that life has ripped from him.
I hold the note tightly against the blustering wind. I read for Pari the three
scribbled sentences.

They tell me I must wade into waters, where I will soon drown. Before I
march in, I leave this on the shore for you. I pray you find it, sister, so you will
know what was in my heart as I went under.
There is a date too. August 2007. “August of 2007,” I say. “That’s when he
was first diagnosed.” Three years before I had even heard from Pari.

Pari nods, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. A young couple rolls by
on a tandem bicycle, the girl in the lead—blond, pink-faced, and slim—the boy
behind, with dreadlocks and coffee-colored skin. On the grass a few feet away, a
teenage girl in a short black leather skirt sits, talking into a cell phone, holding
the leash to a tiny charcoal-colored terrier.
Pari hands me the package. I tear it open for her. Inside is an old tin tea box,
on its lid a faded picture of a bearded Indian man wearing a long red tunic. He is
holding up a steaming cup of tea like an offering. The steam from the teacup has
all but faded and the red of the tunic has mostly bleached to pink. I undo the
latch and lift the lid. I find the interior stuffed with feathers of all colors, all