And the Mountains Echoed

by Khaled Hosseini

All these decades later and shame still washes over me like some warm, sticky liquid at the memory of what happened next. To this day I can picture the scene like a photograph, frozen. Madeleine smoking, standing at the bedroom window, looking at the sea through a set of teashade glasses with yellow lenses, one hand on her hip, ankles crossed. Her pillbox hat sits on the dresser. Above the dresser is a mirror and in the mirror is Thalia, sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to me. She is stooped down, doing something, maybe undoing her shoelaces, and I can see that she has removed her mask. It’s sitting next to her on the bed. A thread of cold marches down my spine and I try to stop it, but my hands tremble, which makes the porcelain cup clink on the saucer, which makes Madeleine turn her head from the window to me, which makes Thalia look up. I catch her reflection in the mirror. The tray slipped from my hands. Porcelain shattered. Hot liquid spilled and the tray went clanking down the steps. It was sudden mayhem, me on all fours, retching all over shards of broken porcelain, Madeleine saying, “Oh dear. Oh dear,” and Mamá running upstairs, yelling, “What happened? What did you do, Markos?” A dog bit her, Mamá had told me by way of a warning. She has a scar. The dog hadn’t bitten Thalia’s face; it had eaten it. And perhaps there were words to describe what I saw in the mirror that day, but scar wasn’t one of them.