And the Mountains Echoed

another under sand.
    I do wish we had.
    She tells me her son Alain—“and your cousin,” she adds—and his wife, Ana, have had a fifth baby, a little girl, and they have moved to Valencia, where they have bought a house. “
Finalement
, they leave that detestable apartment in Madrid!” Her firstborn, Isabelle, who writes musical scores for television, has been commissioned to compose her first major film score. And Isabelle’s husband, Albert, is now head chef at a well-regarded restaurant in Paris.
    â€œYou owned a restaurant, no?” she asks. “I think you told me this in your e-mail.”
    â€œWell, my parents did. It was always my father’s dream to own a restaurant. I helped them run it. But I had to sell it a few years back. After my mother died and Baba became … incapable.”
    â€œAh, I am sorry.”
    â€œOh, don’t be. I wasn’t cut out for restaurant work.”
    â€œI should think not. You are an artist.”
    I had told her, in passing the first time we spoke and she asked me what I did, that I had dreams of going to art school one day.
    â€œActually, I am what you call a
transcriptionist
.”
    She listens intently as I explain to her that I work for a firm that processes data for big Fortune 500 companies. “I write up forms for them. Brochures, receipts, customer lists, e-mail lists, that sort of thing. The main thing you need to know is how to type. And the pay is decent.”
    â€œI see,” she says. She considers, then says, “Is it interesting for you, doing this work?”
    We are passing by Redwood City on our way south. I reach across her lap and point out the passenger window. “Do you see that building? The tall one with the blue sign?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI was born there.”
    â€œAh, bon?”
She turns her neck to keep looking as I drive us past. “You are lucky.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œTo know where you came from.”
    â€œI guess I never gave it much thought.”
    â€œ
Bah
, of course not. But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle.
Vous comprenez?
Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.”
    I imagine this is how Baba feels these days. His life, riddled with gaps. Every day a mystifying story, a puzzle to struggle through.
    We drive in silence for a couple of miles.
    â€œDo I find my work interesting?” I say. “I came home one day and found the water running in the kitchen sink. There was broken glass on the floor, and the gas burner had been left on. That was when I knew that I couldn’t leave him alone anymore. And because I couldn’t afford a live-in caretaker, I looked for workI could do from home. ‘Interesting’ didn’t figure much into the equation.”
    â€œAnd art school can wait.”
    â€œIt has to.”
    I worry she will say next how lucky Baba is to have me for a daughter, but, to my relief and gratitude, she only nods, her eyes swimming past the freeway signs. Other people, though—especially Afghans—are always pointing out how fortunate Baba is, what a blessing I am. They speak of me admiringly. They make me out to be a saint, the daughter who has heroically forgone some glittering life of ease and privilege to stay home and look after her father.
But, first, the mother
, they say, their voices ringing, I imagine, with a glistening kind of sympathy.
All those years of nursing her. What a mess that was. Now the father. She was never a looker, sure, but she had a suitor. An American, he was, the solar fellow. She could have married him. But she didn’t. Because of them. The things she sacrificed. Ah, every parent should have a daughter like this
. They compliment me on my good humor. They marvel at my courage and nobility the way people do those who have overcome a physical deformity or maybe a crippling speech impediment.
    But I don’t recognize myself in this version of the story. For instance, some mornings I spot Baba sitting on the edge of his bed, eyeing me with his rheumy gaze, impatient for me to slip socks onto his dry, mottled feet, and he growls my name and makes an infantile face. He wrinkles his nose in a way that makes him look like a wet, fearful rodent, and I resent him when he makes this face. I resent him