And the Mountains Echoed

Something that, though painful in the short term, would lead to a greater long-term good for all involved. But I had less honorable, self-serving motives as well. Chief among them this: that I would give Nila something no other man—not her husband, not the owner of that big pink house—could.
    I spoke to Saboor first. In my defense, I will say that if I hadthought Saboor would accept money from me, I gladly would have given it to him in lieu of this proposal. I knew he needed the money for he had told me of his struggles finding work. I would have borrowed an advance against my salary from Mr. Wahdati for Saboor to see his family through the winter. But Saboor, like many of my countrymen, had the affliction of pride, an affliction both misbegotten and unshakable. He would never take money from me. When he married Parwana, he even put an end to the small remittances I had been giving her. He was a man and he would provide for his own family. And he died doing just that, when he was not yet forty, collapsing one day while he was out harvesting a field of sugar beets somewhere near Baghlan. I heard he died with the beet hook still in his blistered, bleeding hands.
    I was not a father and thus will make no pretense at understanding the anguished deliberations that led to Saboor’s decision. Nor was I privy to the discussions between the Wahdatis. Once I revealed the idea to Nila, I only asked that in her discussions with Mr. Wahdati she put forth the idea as her own and not mine. I knew that Mr. Wahdati would resist. I had never glimpsed in him a sliver of paternal instinct. In fact, I had wondered if Nila’s inability to bear children may have swayed his decision to marry her. Regardless, I steered clear of the tense atmosphere between the two. When I lay down to sleep at night, I saw only the sudden tears that had leaked from Nila’s eyes when I told her and how she had taken both my hands and gazed into me with gratitude and—I was sure of it—something quite like love. I thought only of the fact that I was offering her a gift that men with far greater prospects could not. I thought only of how thoroughly I had given myself over to her, and how happily. And I thought, hoped—foolishly, of course—that she may begin to see me as something more than the loyal servant.
    When Mr. Wahdati eventually buckled—which didn’t surprise me, Nila was a woman of formidable will—I informed Saboor and offered to drive him and Pari to Kabul. I will never fully understand why he chose to instead walk his daughter from Shadbagh. Or why he allowed Abdullah to come along. Perhaps he was clinging to what little time he had left with his daughter. Perhaps he sought a measure of penance in the hardship of the journey. Or perhaps it was Saboor’s pride, and he would not ride in the car of the man who was buying his daughter. But, in the end, there they were, the three of them, coated in dust, waiting, as agreed, near the mosque. As I drove them to the Wahdati home, I did my best to seem cheerful for the children’s benefit, the children who were oblivious to their fate—and to the terrible scene that would soon unfold.
    There is little point in recounting it in detail, Mr. Markos, the scene that
did
unfold precisely as I had feared. But all these years later, I still feel my heart clench when the memory of it forces its way to the fore. How could it not? I took those two helpless children, in whom love of the simplest and purest kind had found expression, and I tore one from the other. I will never forget the sudden emotional mayhem. Pari slung over my shoulder, panic-stricken, kicking her legs, shrieking,
Abollah! Abollah!
as I whisked her away. Abdullah, screaming his sister’s name, trying to fight past his father. Nila, wide-eyed, her mouth covered with both hands, perhaps to silence her own scream. It weighs on me. All this time has passed, Mr. Markos, and it still weighs on me.
    Pari was nearly four years old at the time, but, despite her young age, there were forces in her life that needed to be reshaped. She was instructed not to call me Kaka Nabi any longer,for instance, but simply Nabi. And her mistakes were gently corrected, by me included, over and over until she came to believe that we bore no relation to each other. I became for her Nabi the cook and Nabi the driver. Nila became “Maman,” and Mr. Wahdati “Papa.” Nila set about teaching her