And the Mountains Echoed Read Online Free PDF Page B

collarbone. He breathed in the coppery smell of desert dust and looked up at a sky thick with stars like ice crystals, flashing and flickering. A delicate crescent moon cradled the dim ghostly outline of its full self.
    Abdullah thought back to the winter before last, everything plunged into darkness, the wind coming in around the door, whistling slow and long and loud, and whistling from every little crack in the ceiling. Outside, the village’s features obliterated by snow. The nights long and starless, daytime brief, gloomy, the sun rarely out, and then only to make a cameo appearance before it vanished. He remembered Omar’s labored cries, then his silence, then Father grimly carving a wooden board with a sickle moon, just like the one above them now, pounding the board into the hard ground burnt with frost at the head of the small grave.
    And now autumn’s end was in sight once more. Winter was already lurking around the corner, though neither Father nor Parwana spoke about it, as though saying the word might hasten its arrival.
    â€œFather?” he said.
    From the other side of the fire, Father gave a soft grunt.
    â€œWill you allow me to help you? Build the guesthouse, I mean.”
    Smoke spiraled up from Father’s cigarette. He was staring off into the darkness.
    â€œFather?”
    Father shifted on the rock where he was seated. “I suppose you could help mix mortar,” he said.
    â€œI don’t know how.”
    â€œI’ll show you. You’ll learn.”
    â€œWhat about me?” Pari said.
    â€œYou?” Father said slowly. He took a drag of his cigarette and poked at the fire with a stick. Scattered little sparks went dancing up into the blackness. “You’ll be in charge of the water. Make sure we never go thirsty. Because a man can’t work if he’s thirsty.”
    Pari was quiet.
    â€œFather’s right,” Abdullah said. He sensed Pari wanted to get her hands dirty, climb down into the mud, and that she was disappointed with the task Father had assigned her. “Without you fetching us water, we’ll never get the guesthouse built.”
    Father slid the stick beneath the handle of the teakettle and lifted it from the fire. He set it aside to cool.
    â€œI’ll tell you what,” he said. “You show me you can handle the water job and I’ll find you something else to do.”
    Pari tilted up her chin and looked at Abdullah, her face lit up with a gapped smile.
    He remembered when she was a baby, when she would sleep atop his chest, and he would open his eyes sometimes in the middle of the night and find her grinning silently at him with this same expression.
    He was the one raising her. It was true. Even though he was still a child himself. Ten years old. When Pari was an infant, it was he she had awakened at night with her squeaks and mutters, he who had walked and bounced her in the dark. He had changed her soiled diapers. He had been the one to give Pari her baths. It wasn’t Father’s job to do—he was a man—and, besides, he was always too exhausted from work. And Parwana, already pregnant with Omar, was slow to rouse herself to Pari’s needs. She never had the patience or the energy. Thus the care had fallen on Abdullah, but he didn’t mind at all. He did it gladly. He loved the fact that he was the one to help with her first step, to gasp at her first uttered word. This was his purpose, he believed, the reason God had made him, so he would be there to take care of Pari when He took away their mother.
    â€œBaba,” Pari said. “Tell a story.”
    â€œIt’s getting late,” Father said.
    â€œPlease.”
    Father was a closed-off man by nature. He rarely uttered more than two consecutive sentences at any time. But on occasion, for reasons unknown to Abdullah, something in Father unlocked and stories suddenly came spilling out. Sometimes he had Abdullah and Pari sit raptly