And the Mountains Echoed

Shadbagh, boys, and taste the water.’ He was born here, my father, raised here too. He said, ‘You’ve never had water this cool and this sweet, boys.’ He was always talking to us about Shadbagh, which I guess was nothing but a small village back when he lived here. He said there was a kind of grape that you could grow only in Shadbagh and nowhere else in the world. You’d think he was describing Paradise.”
    Adel asked him where he was staying now. Gholam tossed the cigarette butt, looked up at the sky, squinting at the brightness. “You know the open field over by the windmill?”
    â€œYes.”
    Adel waited for more, but there was no more.
    â€œYou live in a field?”
    â€œFor the time being,” Gholam mumbled. “We got a tent.”
    â€œDon’t you have family here?”
    â€œNo. They’re either dead or gone. Well, my father does have an uncle in Kabul. Or he did. Who knows if he’s still alive. He was my grandmother’s brother, worked for a rich family there. But I guess Nabi and my grandmother haven’t spoken in decades—fifty years or more, I think. They’re strangers practically. I guess if he really had to, my father would go to him. But he wants to make a go of it on his own here. This is his home.”
    They spent a few quiet moments sitting on the tree stump,watching the leaves in the orchards shiver in surges of warm wind. Adel thought of Gholam and his family sleeping nights in a tent, scorpions and snakes crawling in the field all around them.
    Adel didn’t quite know why he ended up telling Gholam about the reason he and his parents moved here from Kabul. Or, rather, he couldn’t choose among the reasons. He wasn’t sure if he did it to dispel Gholam’s impression that he led a carefree existence simply because he lived in a big house. Or as a kind of school-yard one-upmanship. Maybe a plea for sympathy. Did he do it to narrow the gap between them? He didn’t know. Maybe all of these things. Nor did Adel know why it seemed important that Gholam like him, only that he dimly understood the reason to be more complicated than the mere fact of his frequent loneliness and his desire for a friend.
    â€œWe moved to Shadbagh because someone tried to kill us in Kabul,” he said. “A motorcycle pulled up to the house one day and its rider sprayed our house with bullets. He wasn’t caught. But, thank God, none of us was hurt.”
    He didn’t know what reaction he had expected, but it did surprise him that Gholam had none. Still squinting up at the sun, Gholam said, “Yeah, I know.”
    â€œYou know?”
    â€œYour father picks his nose and people hear about it.”
    Adel watched him crush the empty cigarette box into a ball and stuff it into the front pocket of his jeans.
    â€œHe
does
have his enemies, your father,” Gholam sighed.
    Adel knew this. Baba jan had explained to him that some of the people who had fought alongside him against the Soviets in the 1980s had become both powerful and corrupt. They had lost their way, he said. And because he wouldn’t join in their criminal schemes, they always tried to undermine him, to pollute his nameby spreading false, hurtful rumors about him. This was why Baba jan always tried to shield Adel—he didn’t allow newspapers in the house, for instance, didn’t want Adel watching the news on TV or surfing the Internet.
    Gholam leaned in and said, “I also hear he’s quite the farmer.”
    Adel shrugged. “You can see for yourself. Just a few acres of orchards. Well, and the cotton fields in Helmand too, I guess, for the factory.”
    Gholam searched Adel’s eyes as a grin slowly spread across his face, exposing his rotting canine. “Cotton. You’re a piece of work. I don’t know what to say.”
    Adel didn’t really understand this. He got up and bounced the ball. “You can say, ‘Rematch!’”
    â€œRematch!”
    â€œLet’s go.”
    â€œOnly, this time, I bet you don’t score one goal.”
    Now Adel was the one grinning. “Name your bet.”
    â€œThat’s easy. The Zidane.”
    â€œAnd if I win, no,
when
I win?”
    â€œI were you,” Gholam said, “I wouldn’t worry about that improbability.”
    It was a brilliant hustle. Gholam dove left and right, saved all of Adel’s shots. Taking off the jersey, Adel felt