And the Mountains Echoed

to mat down in the heat. When she turned back, I froze once more. She took a few more puffs, crushed the cigarette against the wall, and sauntered back inside.
    At last, I could breathe.
    That night, Mr. Wahdati called me into the living room and said, “I have news, Nabi. I am getting married.”
    It seemed I had overestimated his fondness for solitude after all.
    News of the engagement spread swiftly. And so did rumors. I heard them from the other workers who came and went through Mr. Wahdati’s house. The most vocal of these was Zahid, a gardener who came in three days a week to maintain the lawn and trim the trees and bushes, an unpleasant fellow with the repulsive habit of flicking his tongue after each sentence, a tongue with which he cast rumors as offhandedly as he tossed fistfuls of fertilizer. He was part of a group of lifelong laborers who, like me, worked in the neighborhood as cooks, gardeners, and errand men. One or two nights a week, after the workday was over, they squeezed into my shack for after-dinner tea. I do not recall how this ritual started, but, once it did, I was powerless to stop it, wary of seeming rude and inhospitable, or, worse, of appearing to think myself superior to my own kind.
    Over tea one night, Zahid told the other men that Mr. Wahdati’s family did not approve of the marriage because of his bride-to-be’s poor character. He said it was well known in Kabul that she had no
nang
and
namoos
, no honor, and that though she was only twenty she had already been “ridden all over town” like Mr. Wahdati’s car. Worst of all, he said, not only had she made no attempt to deny these allegations, she wrote poems about them. A murmur of disapproval spread through the room when he said this. One of the men remarked that in his village they would have slit her throat by now.
    That was when I rose and told them that I had heard enough. I berated them for gossiping like a sewing circle of old women and reminded them that without people like Mr. Wahdati the likes of us would be back in our villages collecting cow dung.
Where is your loyalty, your respect?
I demanded.
    A brief moment of quiet passed during which I thought I had made an impression on the dullards and then laughter broke out. Zahid said I was an ass-licker, and perhaps the soon-to-be mistress of the house would ink a poem and call it “Ode to Nabi, the Licker of Many Asses.” I stomped indignantly out of the shack to an uproar of cackles.
    But I did not stray too far. Their gossip, by turns, revolted and fascinated me. And despite my show of righteousness, for all my talk of propriety and discretion, I stayed within earshot. I did not want to miss a single lurid detail.
    The engagement lasted only days and culminated not in a big ceremony with live singers and dancers and merriment all around but with a brief visit by a mullah, a witness, and the scribbling of two signatures across a sheet of paper. And with that, less than two weeks after I had laid eyes on her for the first time, Mrs. Wahdati moved into the house.
    Allow me a brief pause here, Mr. Markos, to say that I will from here on refer to Mr. Wahdati’s wife as Nila. Needless to say, this is a liberty I was not allowed back then and one I would not have accepted even if it had been offered to me. I referred to her always as Bibi Sahib, with the deference expected of me. But for the purposes of this letter, I will dispense with etiquette and refer to her the way I always
thought
of her.
    Now, I knew from the start that the marriage was an unhappy one. Rarely did I see a tender look pass between the couple or hear an affectionate word uttered. They were two people occupying the same house whose paths rarely seemed to intersect at all.
    In the mornings, I served Mr. Wahdati his customary breakfast—a piece of toasted
naan
, half a cup of walnuts, green tea with a sprinkle of cardamom and no sugar, and a single boiled egg. He liked the yolk to run just so when he punctured the egg, and my initial failures to master this particular consistency had proved a source of considerable anxiety on my part. While I accompanied Mr. Wahdati on his daily morning walk, Nila slept in, often until noon or even later. By the time she rose, I was all but ready to serve Mr. Wahdati his lunch.
    All morning, as I tended to my chores, I ached for the moment when Nila would push the screen door that opened from the living room out onto the veranda. I