And the Mountains Echoed

Madrid.
    â€œWill you be going there?” Pari asks. “To Madrid?”
    â€œ
Non
. The budget is too small. They won’t cover my travel cost.”
    â€œThat’s a pity. You could have stayed with Alain.”
    â€œOh, can you imagine, Maman? Poor Alain. He hardly has room to stretch his legs.”
    Alain is a financial consultant. He lives in a tiny Madrid apartment with his wife, Ana, and their four children. He regularly e-mails Pari pictures and short video clips of the children.
    Pari asks if Isabelle has heard from Thierry, and Isabelle says she has not. Thierry is in Africa, in the eastern part of Chad, where he works at a camp with refugees from Darfur. Pari knows this because Thierry is in sporadic touch with Isabelle. She is the only one he speaks to. This is how Pari knows the general outlines of her son’s life—for instance, that he spent some time in Vietnam. Or that he was married to a Vietnamese woman once, briefly, when he was twenty.
    Isabelle sets a pot of water on to boil and fetches two cups from the cabinet.
    â€œNot this morning, Isabelle. Actually, I need to ask you to leave.”
    Isabelle gives her a wounded look, and Pari chides herself for not wording it better. Isabelle has always had a delicate nature.
    â€œWhat I mean to say is, I’m expecting a call and I need some privacy.”
    â€œA call? From who?”
    â€œI’ll tell you later,” Pari says.
    Isabelle crosses her arms and grins. “Have you found a lover, Maman?”
    â€œA lover. Are you blind? Have you even looked at me recently?”
    â€œThere is not a thing wrong with you.”
    â€œYou need to go. I’ll explain later, I promise.”
    â€œD’accord, d’accord.”
Isabelle slings her purse over her shoulder, grabs her coat and keys. “But I’ll have you know I’m duly intrigued.”
    The man who calls at 9:30 A.M. is named Markos Varvaris. He had contacted Pari through her Facebook account with this message, written in English:
Are you the daughter of the poet Nila Wahdati? If so, I would like very much to speak with you about something that will be of interest to you
. Pari had searched the web for his name and found that he was a plastic surgeon who worked for a nonprofit organization in Kabul. Now, on the phone, he greets her in Farsi, and continues to speak in Farsi until Pari has to interrupt him.
    â€œMonsieur Varvaris, I’m sorry, but maybe we speak in English?”
    â€œAh, of course. My apologies. I assumed … Although, of course, it does make sense, you left when you were very young, didn’t you?”
    â€œYes, that is true.”
    â€œI learned Farsi here myself. I would say I am more or less functionalin it. I have lived here since 2002, since shortly after the Taliban left. Quite optimistic days, those. Yes, everybody ready for rebuilding and democracy and the like. Now it is a different story. Naturally, we are preparing for presidential elections, but it is a different story. I’m afraid it is.”
    Pari listens patiently as Markos Varvaris makes protracted detours into the logistical challenge that are the elections in Afghanistan, which he says Karzai will win, and then on to the Taliban’s troubling forays into the north, the increasing Islamist infringement on news media, a side note or two on the overpopulation in Kabul, then on the cost of housing, lastly, before he circles back and says, “I have lived in this house now for a number of years. I understand you lived in this house too.”
    â€œI’m sorry?”
    â€œThis was your parents’ house. That is what I am led to believe, in any case.”
    â€œIf I can ask, who is telling you this?”
    â€œThe landlord. His name is Nabi. It
was
Nabi, I should say. He is deceased now, sadly, as of recently. Do you remember him?”
    The name conjures for Pari a handsome young face, sideburns, a wall of full dark hair combed back.
    â€œYes. Mostly, his name. He was a cook at our house. And a chauffeur as well.”
    â€œHe was both, yes. He had lived here, in this house, since 1947. Sixty-three years. It is a little unbelievable, no? But, as I said, he passed on. Last month. I was quite fond of him. Everyone was.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œNabi gave me a note,” Markos Varvaris says. “I was to read it only after his death. When he died, I had an Afghan colleague translate it into English.