And the Mountains Echoed

throat and looked out the window at the dark sky and the clouded-over moon, his eyes liquid with emotion.
    Everything will remind me of you
.
    It was in the tender, slightly panicky way he spoke these words that I knew my father was a wounded person, that his love for me was as true, vast, and permanent as the sky, and that it would always bear down upon me. It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.
    I reached over from the darkened backseat and touched his face. He leaned his cheek onto my palm.
    What’s taking so long?
he murmured.
    She’s locking up
, I said. I felt exhausted. I watched Mother hurry to the car. The drizzle had turned into a downpour.
    A month later, a couple of weeks before I was due to fly east for a campus visit, Mother went to Dr. Bashiri to tell him the antacid pills had done nothing to help her stomach pain. He sent her for an ultrasound. They found a tumor the size of a walnut in her left ovary.
    â€œBaba?”
    He is on the recliner, sitting motionless, slumped forward. He has his sweatpants on, his lower legs covered by a checkeredwool shawl. He is wearing the brown cardigan sweater I bought him the year before over a flannel shirt he has buttoned all the way. This is the way he insists on wearing his shirts now, with the collar buttoned, which makes him look both boyish and frail, resigned to old age. He looks a little puffy in the face today, and strands of his white hair spill uncombed over his brow. He is watching
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
with a somber, perplexed expression. When I call his name, his gaze lingers on the screen like he hasn’t heard me before he drags it away and looks up with displeasure. He has a small sty growing on the lower lid of his left eye. He needs a shave.
    â€œBaba, can I mute the TV for a second?”
    â€œI’m watching,” he says.
    â€œI know. But you have a visitor.” I had already told him about Pari Wahdati’s visit the day before and again this morning. But I don’t ask him if he remembers. It is something that I learned early on, to not put him on the spot, because it embarrasses him and makes him defensive, sometimes abusive.
    I pluck the remote from the arm of the recliner and turn off the sound, bracing myself for a tantrum. The first time he threw one, I was convinced it was a charade, an act he was putting on. To my relief, Baba doesn’t protest beyond a long sigh through the nose.
    I motion to Pari, who is lingering in the hallway at the entrance to the living room. Slowly, she walks over to us, and I pull her up a chair close to Baba’s recliner. She is a bundle of nervous excitement, I can tell. She sits erect, pale, leaning forward from the edge of the chair, knees pressed together, her hands clamped, and her smile so tight her lips are turning white. Her eyes are glued on Baba, as if she has only moments with him and is trying to memorize his face.
    â€œBaba, this is the friend I told you about.”
    He eyes the gray-haired woman across from him. He has an unnerving way of looking at people these days, even when he is staring directly at them, that gives nothing away. He looks disengaged, closed off, like he meant to look elsewhere and his eyes happened upon them by accident.
    Pari clears her throat. Even so, her voice shakes when she speaks. “Hello, Abdullah. My name is Pari. It’s so wonderful to see you.”
    He nods slowly. I can practically
see
the uncertainty and confusion rippling across his face like waves of muscle spasm. His eyes shift from my face to Pari’s. He opens his mouth in a strained half smile the way he does when he thinks a prank is being played on him.
    â€œYou have an accent,” he finally says.
    â€œShe lives in France,” I said. “And, Baba, you have to speak English. She doesn’t understand Farsi.”
    Baba nods. “So you live in London?” he says to Pari.
    â€œBaba!”
    â€œWhat?” He turns sharply to me. Then he understands and gives an embarrassed little laugh before switching from Farsi. “Do you live in London?”
    â€œParis, actually,” Pari says. “I live in a small apartment in Paris.” She doesn’t lift her eyes from him.
    â€œI always planned to take my wife to Paris. Sultana—that was her name, God rest her