And the Mountains Echoed

concrete.
    No one knew about my games with Pari. Not even my father. She was my secret.
    Sometimes, when no one was around, we ate grapes and talked and talked—about toys, which cereals were tastiest, cartoons we liked, schoolkids we didn’t, which teachers were mean. We shared the same favorite color (yellow), favorite ice cream (dark cherry), TV show (
Alf
), and we both wanted to be artists when we grew up.Naturally, I imagined we looked exactly the same because, after all, we were twins. Sometimes I could almost see her—really
see
her, I mean—just at the periphery of my eyesight. I tried drawing her, and, each time, I gave her the same slightly uneven light green eyes as mine, the same dark curly hair, the same long, slashing eyebrows that almost touched. If anyone asked, I told them I had drawn myself.
    The tale of how my father had lost his sister was as familiar to me as the stories my mother had told me of the Prophet, tales I would learn again later when my parents would enroll me in Sunday school at a mosque in Hayward. Still, despite the familiarity, each night I asked to hear Pari’s story again, caught in the pull of its gravity. Maybe it was simply because we shared a name. Maybe that was why I sensed a connection between us, dim, enfolded in mystery, real nonetheless. But it was more than that. I felt
touched
by her, like I too had been marked by what had happened to her. We were interlocked, I sensed, through some unseen order in ways I couldn’t wholly understand, linked beyond our names, beyond familial ties, as if, together, we completed a puzzle.
    I felt certain that if I listened closely enough to her story, I would discover something revealed about myself.
    Do you think your father was sad? That he sold her?
    Some people hide their sadness very well, Pari. He was like that. You couldn’t tell looking at him. He was a hard man. But I think, yes, I think he was sad inside
.
    Are you?
    My father would smile and say,
Why should I be when I have you?
but, even at that age, I could tell. It was like a birthmark on his face.
    The whole time we talked like this, a fantasy played out in my head. In it, I would save all my money, not spend a dollar on candy or stickers, and when my piggy bank was full—though it wasn’t apig at all but a mermaid sitting on a rock—I would break it open and pocket all the money and set out to find my father’s little sister, wherever she was, and, when I did, I would buy her back and bring her home to Baba. I would make my father happy. There was nothing in the world I desired more than to be the one to take away his sadness.
    So what’s my dream tonight?
Baba would ask.
    You know already
.
    Another smile.
Yes, I know
.
    Baba?
    Mmm?
    Was she a good sister?
    She was perfect
.
    He would kiss my cheek and tuck the blanket around my neck. At the door, just after he’d turned off the light, he would pause.
    She was perfect
, he would say.
Like you are
.
    I always waited until he’d shut the door before I slid out of bed, fetched an extra pillow, and placed it next to my own. I went to sleep each night feeling twin hearts beating in my chest.
    I check my watch as I veer onto the freeway from the Old Oakland Road entrance. It’s already half past noon. It will take me forty minutes at least to reach SFO, barring any accidents or roadwork on the 101. On the plus side, it
is
an international flight, so she will still have to clear customs, and perhaps that will buy me a little time. I slide over to the left lane and push the Lexus up close to eighty.
    I remember a minor miracle of a conversation I had had with Baba, about a month back. The exchange was a fleeting bubble ofnormalcy, like a tiny pocket of air down in the deep, dark, cold bottom of the ocean. I was late bringing him lunch, and he turned his head to me from his recliner and remarked, with the gentlest critical tone, that I was genetically programmed to not be punctual.
Like your mother, God rest her soul
.
    But then
, he went on, smiling, as if to reassure me,
a person has to have a flaw somewhere
.
    So this is the one token flaw God tossed my way, then?
I said, lowering the plate of rice and beans on his lap.
Habitual tardiness?
    And He did so with great reluctance, I might add
. Baba reached for my hands.
So close, so very close He had you to perfection
.
    Well, if you like, I’ll happily let you in on a few more
.
    You have them hidden away, do