And the Mountains Echoed

by Khaled Hosseini

When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

No one even spoke her name. It astonished Abdullah how thoroughly she had vanished from their lives.

I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.

one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person’s heart.

“It was you, Nabi,” she said in my ear. “It was always you. Didn’t you know?”

They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.

And please tell her, tell her that I cannot know the myriad consequences of what I set into motion.

“Kabul is . . .” Idris searches for the right words. “A thousand tragedies per square mile.”

He should be relieved. But it hurts. He feels the blow of it, like an ax to the head.

NW: Well, children are never everything you’d hoped for, Monsieur Boustouler.

NW: That was his nickname for me. I loved it. I used to hop around the garden—we had a very large garden—chanting, “I am Papa’s fawn! I am Papa’s fawn!” It wasn’t until much later that I saw how sinister the nickname was. EB: I’m sorry? She smiles. NW: My father shot deer, Monsieur Boustouler.

“I look at you sometimes and I don’t see me in you. Of course I don’t. I suppose that isn’t unexpected, after all. I don’t know what sort of person you are, Pari. I don’t know who you are, what you’re capable of, in your blood. You’re a stranger to me.”

EB: Is your daughter a disappointment to you? NW: Monsieur Boustouler, I’ve come to believe she’s my punishment.

What was I, Maman? Pari thinks. What was I supposed to be, growing in your womb—assuming it was even in your womb that I was conceived?

When she tells him of her plans to go to Afghanistan, he understands in a way that Pari believes Julien never would. And also in a way that she had never openly admitted to herself.

“Brother,” she says, unaware she is speaking. Unaware she is weeping.

The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around your neck.

I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that. My patients knew this. They saw that much of what they were, would be, or could be hinged on the symmetry of their bone structure, the space between their eyes, their chin length, the tip projection of their nose, whether they had an ideal nasofrontal angle or not. Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

“It’s a funny thing, Markos, but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they’re afraid of. What they don’t want.”

I blink and my mother blinks back, and then she is laughing and so am I. Even as I crumple inside.

You’ve turned out good. You’ve made me proud, Markos. I am fifty-five years old. I have waited all my life to hear those words.

And yet when my mother says, “Isn’t it beautiful, Markos?” I say to her, “It is, Mamá. It is beautiful,” and as something begins to break wide open inside me I reach over and take my mother’s hand in mine.

She thinks he sees her clearly now. She will understand momentarily that he is merely reacting, responding to her warm touch and show of affection. It’s just animal instinct, nothing more. This I know with painful clarity.

I look down at my hands and rotate my watch around on my wrist. “I used to pretend we were twin sisters, you and I. No one could see you but me. I told you everything. All my secrets. You were real to me, always so near. I felt less alone because of you. Like we were Doppelgängers. Do you know that word?”

As I was walking away, I had the distinct feeling that Baba was watching me. But when I turned to see, his head was down and he was toying with a button on his fidget apron.

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.

She turns her face to look at him, her big brother, her ally in all things, but his face is too close and she can’t see the whole of it. Only the dip of his brow, the rise of his nose, the curve of his eyelashes. But she doesn’t mind. She is happy enough to be near him, with him—her brother—and as a nap slowly steals her away, she feels herself engulfed in a wave of absolute calm. She shuts her eyes. Drifts off, untroubled, everything clear, and radiant, and all at once.