And the Mountains Echoed

Fall 1952
    Father had never before hit Abdullah. So when he did, when he whacked the side of his head, just above the ear—hard, suddenly, and with an open palm—tears of surprise sprung to Abdullah’s eyes. He quickly blinked them back.
    â€œGo home,” Father said through gritted teeth.
    From up ahead, Abdullah heard Pari burst into sobs.
    Then Father hit him again, harder, and this time across the left cheek. Abdullah’s head snapped sideways. His face burned, and more tears leaked. His left ear rang. Father stooped down, leaning in so close his dark creased face eclipsed the desert and the mountains and the sky altogether.
    â€œI told you to go home, boy,” he said with a pained look.
    Abdullah didn’t make a sound. He swallowed hard and squinted at his father, blinking into the face shading his eyes from the sun.
    From the small red wagon up ahead, Pari cried out his name, her voice high, shaking with apprehension. “Abollah!”
    Father held him with a cutting look, and trudged back to the wagon. From its bed, Pari reached for Abdullah with outstretched hands. Abdullah allowed them a head start. Then he wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands, and followed.
    A little while later, Father threw a rock at him, the way children in Shadbagh would do to Pari’s dog, Shuja—except they meant to hit Shuja, to hurt him. Father’s rock fell harmlessly a few feet from Abdullah. He waited, and when Father and Pari got moving again Abdullah tailed them once more.
    Finally, with the sun just past its peak, Father pulled up again. He turned back in Abdullah’s direction, seemed to consider, and motioned with his hand.
    â€œYou won’t give up,” he said.
    From the bed of the wagon, Pari’s hand quickly slipped into Abdullah’s. She was looking up at him, her eyes liquid, and she was smiling her gap-toothed smile like no bad thing would ever befall her so long as he stood at her side. He closed his fingers around her hand, the way he did each night when he and his little sister slept in their cot, their skulls touching, their legs tangled.
    â€œYou were supposed to stay home,” Father said. “With your mother and Iqbal. Like I told you to.”
    Abdullah thought,
She’s your wife. My mother, we buried
. But he knew to stifle those words before they came up and out.
    â€œAll right, then. Come,” Father said. “But there won’t be any crying. You hear me?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI’m warning you. I won’t have it.”
    Pari grinned up at Abdullah, and he looked down at her pale eyes and pink round cheeks and grinned back.
    From then on, he walked beside the wagon as it jostled along on the pitted desert floor, holding Pari’s hand. They traded furtivehappy glances, brother and sister, but said little for fear of souring Father’s mood and spoiling their good fortune. For long stretches they were alone, the three of them, nothing and no one in sight but the deep copper gorges and vast sandstone cliffs. The desert unrolled ahead of them, open and wide, as though it had been created for them and them alone, the air still, blazing hot, the sky high and blue. Rocks shimmered on the cracked floor. The only sounds Abdullah heard were his own breathing and the rhythmic creaking of the wheels as Father pulled the red wagon north.
    A while later, they stopped to rest in the shadow of a boulder. With a groan, Father dropped the handle to the ground. He winced as he arched his back, his face raised to the sun.
    â€œHow much longer to Kabul?” Abdullah asked.
    Father looked down at them. His name was Saboor. He was dark-skinned and had a hard face, angular and bony, nose curved like a desert hawk’s beak, eyes set deep in his skull. Father was thin as a reed, but a lifetime of work had made his muscles powerful, tightly wound like rattan strips around the arm of a wicker chair. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he said, lifting the cowhide water bag to his lips. “If we make good time.” He took a long swallow, his Adam’s apple rising and dropping.
    â€œWhy didn’t Uncle Nabi drive us?” Abdullah said. “He has a car.”
    Father rolled his eyes toward him.
    â€œThen we wouldn’t have had to walk all this way.”
    Father didn’t say anything. He took off his soot-stained skullcap and wiped sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
    Pari’s finger shot