And the Mountains Echoed

insists on playing for them. Over dinner, they ask Idris about his trip, his views on the situation in Afghanistan. He sips his mojito and gives short answers.
    â€œI can’t imagine what it’s like there,” Cynthia says. Cynthia is a Pilates instructor at the gym where Nahil works out.
    â€œKabul is …” Idris searches for the right words. “A thousand tragedies per square mile.”
    â€œMust have been quite the culture shock, going there.”
    â€œYes it was.” Idris doesn’t say that the real culture shock has been in coming back.
    Eventually, talk turns to a recent rash of mail theft that has hit the neighborhood.
    Lying in bed that night, Idris says, “Do you think we have to have all this?”
    â€œ ‘All this’?” Nahil says. He can see her in the mirror, brushing her teeth by the sink.
    â€œAll this. This stuff.”
    â€œNo we don’t
need
it, if that’s what you mean,” she says. She spits in the sink, gargles.
    â€œYou don’t think it’s too much, all of it?”
    â€œWe worked hard, Idris. Remember the MCATs, the LSATs, medical school, law school, the years of residency? No one
gave
us anything. We have nothing to apologize for.”
    â€œFor the price of that home theater we could have built a school in Afghanistan.”
    She comes into the bedroom and sits on the bed to remove her contacts. She has the most beautiful profile. He loves the way her forehead hardly dips where her nose begins, her strong cheekbones, her slim neck.
    â€œThen do both,” she says, turning to him, blinking back eyedrops. “I don’t see why you can’t.”
    A few years ago, Idris had discovered that Nahil was supporting a Colombian kid named Miguel. She’d said nothing to him about it, and since she was in charge of the mail and their finances Idris had not known about it for years until he’d seen her one day reading a letter from Miguel. The letter had been translated from Spanish by a nun. There was a picture too, of a tall, wiry boy standing outside a straw hut, cradling a soccer ball, nothing behind him but gaunt-looking cows and green hills. Nahil had started supporting Miguel when she was in law school. For eleven years now Nahil’s checks had quietly crossed paths with Miguel’s pictures and his thankful, nun-translated letters.
    She takes off her rings. “So what is this? You caught a case of survivor’s guilt over there?”
    â€œI just see things a little differently now.”
    â€œGood. Put that to use, then. But quit the navel-gazing.”
    Jet lag robs him of sleep that night. He reads for a while,watches part of a
West Wing
rerun downstairs, ends up at the computer in the guest bedroom Nahil has turned into an office. He finds an e-mail from Amra. She hopes that his return home was safe and that his family is well. It has been raining “angrily” in Kabul, she writes, and the streets are packed with mud up to the ankles. The rain has caused flooding, and some two hundred families had to be evacuated by helicopter in Shomali, north of Kabul. Security has been tightening because of Kabul’s support of Bush’s war in Iraq and expected reprisals from al-Qaeda. Her last line reads
You have talked with your boss yet?
    Below Amra’s e-mail is pasted a short paragraph from Roshi, which Amra has transcribed. It reads:
    Salaam, Kaka Idris
,
    Inshallah, you have arrived safely in America. I am sure that your family is very happy to see you. Every day I think about you. Every day I am watching the films you bought for me. I like them all. It makes me sad that you are not here to watch with me. I am feeling good and Amra jan is taking good care of me. Please say Salaam to your family for me. Inshallah, we will see each other soon in California
.
    With my respects
,
    Roshana
    He answers Amra, thanks her, writes that he is sorry to hear about the flooding. He hopes the rains will abate. He tells her that he will discuss Roshi with his chief this week. Below that he writes:
    Salaam, Roshi jan:
    Thank you for your kind message. It made me very happy to hear from you. I too think about you a lot. I have told my
family all about you and they are very eager to meet you, especially my sons, Zabi jan and Lemar jan, who ask a lot of questions about you. We all look forward to your arrival. I send you my love
,
    Kaka Idris
    He logs off and goes to bed.
    On Monday, a pile