And the Mountains Echoed

everyone smoking, talking about the new war in Iraq, what it will mean for Afghanistan. The television in the corner is tuned to CNN International, the volume muted. Nighttime Baghdad, in the throes of
Shock and Awe
, keeps lighting up in flashes of green.
    Vodka on ice in hand, they are joined by Markos and a pair of serious-looking young Germans who work for the World Food Program. Like many of the aid workers he has met in Kabul, Idris finds them slightly intimidating, world savvy, impossible to impress.
    He says to Markos, “This is a nice house.”
    â€œTell the owner, then.” Markos goes across the room and returns with a thin, elderly man. The man has a thick wall of salt-and-pepper hair combed back from the brow. He has a closely cropped beard, and the sunken cheeks of the nearly toothless. He is wearing a shabby, oversize olive-colored suit that may have been in style back in the 1940s. Markos smiles at the old man with open affection.
    â€œNabi jan?” Timur exclaims, and suddenly Idris remembers too.
    The old man grins back shyly. “Forgive me, have we met before?”
    â€œI’m Timur Bashiri,” Timur says in Farsi. “My family used to live down the street from you!”
    â€œOh great God,” the old man breathes. “Timur jan? And you must be Idris jan?”
    Idris nods, smiling back.
    Nabi embraces them both. He kisses their cheeks, still grinning, and eyes them with disbelief. Idris remembers Nabi pushing his employer, Mr. Wahdati, in a wheelchair up and down the street. Sometimes he would park the chair on the sidewalk, and the two men would watch him and Timur play soccer with the neighborhood kids.
    â€œNabi jan has lived in this house since 1947,” Markos says, his arm around Nabi’s shoulder.
    â€œSo you
own
this place now?” Timur says.
    Nabi smiles at the look of surprise on Timur’s face. “I served Mr. Wahdati here from 1947 until 2000, when he passed away. He was kind enough to will the house to me, yes.”
    â€œHe
gave
it to you,” Timur says incredulously.
    Nabi nods. “Yes.”
    â€œYou must have been one hell of a cook!”
    â€œAnd you, if I may say, were a bit of a troublemaker, as I recall.”
    Timur cackles. “Never did care for the straight and narrow, Nabi jan. I leave that to my cousin here.”
    Markos, swirling his glass of wine, says to Idris, “Nila Wahdati, the wife of the previous owner, she was a poet. Of some small renown, as it turns out. Have you heard of her?”
    Idris shakes his head. “All I know is that she’d already left the country by the time I was born.”
    â€œShe lived in Paris with her daughter,” one of the Germans, Thomas, says. “She died in 1974. Suicide, I think. She had problems with alcohol, or, at least, that is what I read. Someone gave me a German translation of one of her early volumes a year or two ago and I thought it was quite good, actually. Surprisingly sexual, as I recall.”
    Idris nods, again feeling a little inadequate, this time because a foreigner has schooled him on an Afghan artist. A couple of feet away, he can hear Timur engaged in an animated discussion with Nabi over rent prices. In Farsi, of course.
    â€œDo you have any idea what you could charge for a place like this, Nabi jan?” he is saying to the old man.
    â€œYes,” Nabi says, nodding, laughing. “I am aware of rental prices in the city.”
    â€œYou could fleece these guys!”
    â€œWell …”
    â€œAnd you’re letting them stay for free.”
    â€œThey’ve come to help our country, Timur jan. They left their homes and came here. It doesn’t seem right that I should, as you say, ‘fleece them.’ ”
    Timur issues a groan, downs the rest of his drink. “Well, either you hate money, old friend, or you are a far better man than I am.”
    Amra walks into the room, wearing a sapphire Afghan tunic over faded jeans. “Nabi jan!” she exclaims. Nabi seems a little startled when she kisses his cheek and coils an arm around his. “I love this man,” she says to the group. “And I love to embarrass him.” Then she says it in Farsi to Nabi. He tilts his head back and forth and laughs, blushing a little.
    â€œHow about you embarrass me too,” Timur says.
    Amra taps him on the chest. “This one is big trouble.” She and Markos kiss Afghan-style, three times on