And the Mountains Echoed

Paghman, I was sitting on the grass, studying the chessboard. This was years later, in 1968, the year after Suleiman’s mother died, and also the year both Mr. Bashiri and his brother became fathers, boys they had named, respectively, Idris and Timur. I often spotted the little baby cousins in their strollers as their mothers took them for leisurely walks around the neighborhood. That day, Suleiman and I had started a chess game, before he had dozed off, and I was trying now to find a way to equalize my position after his aggressive opening gambit, when he said, “Tell me, how old are you, Nabi?”
    â€œWell, I’m past forty,” I said. “I know that much.”
    â€œI was thinking, you should marry,” he said. “Before you lose your looks. You’re already graying.”
    We smiled at each other. I told him my sister Masooma used to say the same to me.
    He asked if I remembered the day he had hired me, back in 1947, twenty-one years earlier.
    Naturally, I did. I had been working, rather unhappily, as an assistant cook at a house a few blocks from the Wahdati residence. When I had heard that he needed a cook—his own had married and moved away—I had walked straight to his house one afternoon and rung the bell at the front gates.
    â€œYou were a spectacularly bad cook,” Suleiman said. “You work wonders now, Nabi, but that first meal? My God. And the first time you drove me in my car I thought I would have a stroke.” Here he paused, then chuckled, surprised at his own unintended joke.
    This came as a complete surprise to me, Mr. Markos, a shock, really, for Suleiman had never submitted to me in all these years asingle complaint about either my cooking or my driving. “Why did you hire me, then?” I asked.
    He turned his face to me. “Because you walked in, and I thought to myself that I had never seen anyone as beautiful.”
    I lowered my eyes to the chessboard.
    â€œI knew when I met you that we weren’t the same, you and I, that it was an impossible thing what I wanted. Still, we had our morning walks, and our drives, and I won’t say that was enough for me but it was better than not being with you. I learned to make do with your proximity.” He paused, then said, “And I think you understand something of what I am describing, Nabi. I know you do.”
    I could not lift my eyes to meet his.
    â€œI need to tell you, if only this once, that I have loved you a long, long time, Nabi. Please don’t be angry.”
    I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.
    â€œAnd I am telling you this now,” he said, “so you understand why I want you to go. Go and find yourself a wife. Start your own family, Nabi, like everyone else. There is still time for you.”
    â€œWell,” I said at last, aiming to ease the tension with flippancy, “one of these days I just might. And then you’ll be sorry. And so will the miserable bastard who has to wash your diapers.”
    â€œYou always joke.”
    I watched a beetle crawl lightly across a green-gray leaf.
    â€œDon’t stay for me. This is what I’m saying, Nabi. Don’t stay for me.”
    â€œYou flatter yourself.”
    â€œAgain the joking,” he said tiredly.
    I said nothing even though he had it wrong. I was not joking that time. My staying was no longer for him. It had been at first. Ihad stayed initially because Suleiman needed me, because he was wholly dependent on me. I had run once before from someone who needed me, and the remorse I still feel I will take with me to the grave. I could not do it again. But slowly, imperceptibly, my reasons for staying changed. I cannot tell you when or how the change occurred, Mr. Markos, only that I was staying for me now. Suleiman said I should marry. But the fact is, I looked at my life and realized I already had what people sought in marriage. I had comfort, and companionship, and a home where I was always welcomed, loved, and needed. The physical urges I had as a man—and I still had them, of course, though less frequent and less pressing now that I was older—could still be managed, as I explained earlier. As for children, though I had always liked them I had never felt a tug of paternal impulse in myself.
    â€œIf you mean to be a mule and not marry,” Suleiman