And the Mountains Echoed

dreadful. The poor child. I can’t imagine.”
    â€œI know,” he says. He asks if the group would be willing to cover her procedure. “Or
procedures
. My sense is, she’ll need more than one.”
    Joan sighs. “I wish. But, frankly, I doubt the board of directors would approve it, Idris. I doubt it very much. You know we’ve been in the red for the last five years. And there would be legal issues as well, complicated ones.”
    She waits for him, maybe prepared for him, to challenge this, but he doesn’t.
    â€œI understand,” he says.
    â€œYou should be able to find a humanitarian group that does this sort of thing, no? It would take some work, but …”
    â€œI’ll look into it. Thanks, Joan.” He gets up again, surprised that he is feeling lighter, almost relieved by her response.
    The home theater takes another month to be built, but it is a marvel. The picture, shot from the projector mounted on the ceiling, is sharp, the movements on the 102-inch screen strikingly fluid. The 7.1 channel surround sound, the graphic equalizers, and the bass traps they have put in the four corners, have done wonders for the acoustics. They watch
Pirates of the Caribbean
, the boys, delighted by the technology, sitting on either side of him, eating from the communal bucket of popcorn on his lap. They fall asleep before the final, drawn-out battle scene.
    â€œI’ll put them to bed,” Idris says to Nahil.
    He lifts one, then the other. The boys are growing, their lean bodies lengthening with alarming speed. As he tucks each into bed, an awareness sets in of the heartbreak that is in store for him with his boys. In a year, two at the outside, he will be replaced. The boys will become enamored with other things, other people, embarrassed by him and Nahil. Idris thinks longingly of when they were small and helpless, so wholly dependent on him. He remembers how terrified Zabi was of manholes when he was little, walking wide, clumsy circles around them. Once, watching an old film, Lemar had asked Idris if he had been alive back when the worldwas in black and white. The memory brings a smile. He kisses his sons’ cheeks.
    He sits back in the dark, watching Lemar sleep. He had judged his boys hastily, he sees now, and unfairly. And he had judged himself harshly too. He is not a criminal. Everything he owns he has earned. In the nineties, while half the guys he knew were out clubbing and chasing women, he had been buried in study, dragging himself through hospital corridors at two in the morning, forgoing leisure, comfort, sleep. He had given his twenties to medicine. He has paid his dues. Why should he feel badly? This is his family. This is his life.
    In the last month, Roshi has become something abstract to him, like a character in a play. Their connection has frayed. The unexpected intimacy he had stumbled upon in that hospital, so urgent and acute, has eroded into something dull. The experience has lost its power. He recognizes the fierce determination that had seized him for what it really was, an illusion, a mirage. He had fallen under the influence of something like a drug. The distance between him and the girl feels vast now. It feels infinite, insurmountable, and his promise to her misguided, a reckless mistake, a terrible misreading of the measures of his own powers and will and character. Something best forgotten. He isn’t capable of it. It is that simple. In the last two weeks, he has received three more e-mails from Amra. He read the first and didn’t answer. He deleted the next two without reading.
    The line in the bookstore is about twelve or thirteen people long. It stretches from the makeshift stage to the magazine stand. A tall, broad-faced woman passes out little yellowPost-its to those in line to write their names on and any personal message they want inscribed in the book. A saleswoman at the head of the line helps people flip to the title page.
    Idris is near the head of the line, holding a copy in his hand. The woman in front of him, in her fifties and with short-clipped blond hair, turns and says to him, “Have you read it?”
    â€œNo,” he says.
    â€œWe’re going to read it for our book club next month. It’s my turn to pick.”
    â€œAh.”
    She frowns and pushes a palm against her chest. “I hope people read it. It’s such a moving story. So inspiring. I bet they make it a