And the Mountains Echoed

by Khaled Hosseini

“For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose.”

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

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.

If I’ve learned anything in Kabul, it is that human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.

“It’s a funny thing, Markos, but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides