Page 76 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Let me say, Mr. Markos, that I proceeded with a mostly clean conscience, and

with the conviction that my proposal was born of goodwill and honest intentions.
Something that, though painful in the short term, would lead to a greater long-
term good for all involved. But I had less honorable, self-serving motives as
well. Chief among them this: that I would give Nila something no other man—
not her husband, not the owner of that big pink house—could.
I spoke to Saboor first. In my defense, I will say that if I had thought Saboor
would accept money from me, I gladly would have given it to him in lieu of this
proposal. I knew he needed the money for he had told me of his struggles finding
work. I would have borrowed an advance against my salary from Mr. Wahdati
for Saboor to see his family through the winter. But Saboor, like many of my
countrymen, had the affliction of pride, an affliction both misbegotten and
unshakable. He would never take money from me. When he married Parwana,
he even put an end to the small remittances I had been giving her. He was a man
and he would provide for his own family. And he died doing just that, when he

was not yet forty, collapsing one day while he was out harvesting a field of sugar
beets somewhere near Baghlan. I heard he died with the beet hook still in his
blistered, bleeding hands.
I was not a father and thus will make no pretense at understanding the
anguished deliberations that led to Saboor’s decision. Nor was I privy to the
discussions between the Wahdatis. Once I revealed the idea to Nila, I only asked
that in her discussions with Mr. Wahdati she put forth the idea as her own and
not mine. I knew that Mr. Wahdati would resist. I had never glimpsed in him a
sliver of paternal instinct. In fact, I had wondered if Nila’s inability to bear
children may have swayed his decision to marry her. Regardless, I steered clear

of the tense atmosphere between the two. When I lay down to sleep at night, I
saw only the sudden tears that had leaked from Nila’s eyes when I told her and
how she had taken both my hands and gazed into me with gratitude and—I was
sure of it—something quite like love. I thought only of the fact that I was
offering her a gift that men with far greater prospects could not. I thought only of
how thoroughly I had given myself over to her, and how happily. And I thought,
hoped—foolishly, of course—that she may begin to see me as something more
than the loyal servant.
When Mr. Wahdati eventually buckled—which didn’t surprise me, Nila was a
woman of formidable will—I informed Saboor and offered to drive him and Pari
to Kabul. I will never fully understand why he chose to instead walk his
daughter from Shadbagh. Or why he allowed Abdullah to come along. Perhaps
he was clinging to what little time he had left with his daughter. Perhaps he