And the Mountains Echoed (9 page)

Besides
, Masooma added with a shrug and a grin,
I'm already taken
.

Nabi has come for his monthly visit. He is the family's success story, perhaps the entire village's too, on account of his working in Kabul, his driving into Shadbagh in his employer's big shiny blue car with the gleaming eagle's-head hood ornament, everyone gathering to watch his arrival, the village kids hollering and running alongside the car.

“How are things?” he asks.

The three of them are inside the hut having tea and almonds. Nabi is very handsome, Parwana thinks, with his fine chiseled cheekbones, his hazel eyes, his sideburns, and the thick wall of black hair swept back from his forehead. He is dressed in his customary olive-colored suit that looks a size or so too big on him. Nabi is proud of the suit, Parwana knows, always tugging at the sleeves, straightening the lapel, pinching the crease of his pants, though he has never quite managed to eradicate its lingering whiff of burnt onions.

“Well, we had Queen Homaira over for tea and cookies yesterday,”
Masooma says. “She complimented our exquisite choice of décor.” She smiles amiably at her brother, revealing her yellowing teeth, and Nabi laughs, looking down at his cup. Before he found work in Kabul, Nabi had helped Parwana care for their sister. Or he had tried for a while. But he couldn't do it. It was too much for him. Kabul was Nabi's escape. Parwana envies her brother, but she does not entirely begrudge him even if he does—she knows that there is more than an element of penance in the monthly cash that he brings her.

Masooma has brushed her hair and rimmed her eyes with a dash of kohl as she always does when Nabi visits. Parwana knows that she does it only partially for his benefit and more for the fact that he is her tie to Kabul. In Masooma's mind, he connects her to glamour and luxury, to a city of cars and lights and fancy restaurants and royal palaces, regardless of how remote this link might be. Parwana remembers how, long ago, Masooma used to say to her that she was a city girl trapped in a village.

“What about you? Have you found yourself a wife yet?” Masooma asks playfully.

Nabi waves a hand and laughs her off, as he used to when their parents asked him the same question.

“So when are you going to show me around Kabul again, brother?” Masooma says.

Nabi had taken them to Kabul once, the year before. He had picked them up from Shadbagh and driven them to Kabul, up and down the streets of the city. He had shown them all the mosques, the shopping districts, the cinemas, the restaurants. He had pointed out to Masooma the domed Bagh-e-Bala Palace sitting on a hill overlooking the city. At the gardens of Babur, he had lifted Masooma from the front seat of the car and carried her in his arms to the site of the Mughal emperor's tomb. They had
prayed there, the three of them, at the Shah Jahan Mosque, and then, at the edge of a blue-tiled pool, they had eaten the meal Nabi had packed for them. It had been perhaps the happiest day of Masooma's life since the accident, and for that Parwana was grateful to her older brother.

“Soon,
Inshallah
,” Nabi says, tapping a finger against the cup.

“Would you mind adjusting this cushion under my knees, Nabi? Ah, that's much better. Thank you.” Masooma sighs. “I loved Kabul. If I could, I'd march all the way there first thing tomorrow.”

“Maybe one day,” Nabi says.

“What, me walking?”

“No,” he stammers, “I meant …” and then he grins when Masooma bursts out laughing.

Outside, Nabi passes Parwana the cash. He leans one shoulder against the wall and lights a cigarette. Masooma is inside, taking her afternoon nap.

“I saw Saboor earlier,” he says, picking at his finger. “Terrible thing. He told me the baby's name. I forget now.”

“Pari,”
Parwana says.

He nods. “I didn't ask, but he told me he's looking to marry again.”

Parwana looks away, trying to pretend she doesn't care, but her heart is thumping in her ears. She feels a film of sweat blooming on her skin.

“Like I said, I didn't ask. Saboor was the one who brought it up. He pulled me aside. He pulled me aside and told me.”

Parwana suspects that Nabi knows what she has carried with her for Saboor all these years. Masooma is her twin, but it is Nabi who has always understood her. But Parwana doesn't see why her brother is telling her this news. What good does it do? What
Saboor needs is a woman unanchored, a woman who won't be held down, who is free to devote herself to him, to his boy, his newborn daughter. Parwana's time is already consumed. Accounted for. Her whole life is.

“I'm sure he'll find someone,” Parwana says.

Nabi nods. “I'll be by again next month.” He crushes his cigarette underfoot and takes his leave.

When Parwana enters the hut, she is surprised to see Masooma awake. “I thought you were napping.”

Masooma drags her gaze to the window, blinking slowly, tiredly.

When the girls were thirteen, they sometimes went to the crowded bazaars of nearby towns for their mother. The smell of freshly sprayed water rose from the unpaved street. The two of them strolled down the lanes, past stalls that sold hookahs, silk shawls, copper pots, old watches. Slaughtered chickens hung by their feet, tracing slow circles over hunks of lamb and beef.

In every corridor Parwana would see men's eyes snapping to attention when Masooma passed by. She saw their efforts to behave matter-of-factly, but their gazes lingered, helpless to tear away. If Masooma glanced in their direction, they looked idiotically privileged. They imagined they had shared a moment with her. She interrupted conversations midsentence, smokers mid-drag. She was the trembler of knees, the spiller of teacups.

Some days it was all too much for Masooma, as if she was almost ashamed, and she told Parwana she wanted to stay inside all day, wanted not to be looked at. On those days, Parwana thought
it was as though, somewhere deep inside, her sister understood dimly that her beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head. Most days, however, the attention seemed to please her. Most days, she relished her power to derail a man's thoughts with a single fleeting but strategic smile, to make tongues falter over words.

It blistered the eyes, beauty like hers.

And then there was Parwana, shuffling next to her, with her flat chest and sallow complexion. Her frizzy hair, her heavy, mournful face, and her thick wrists and masculine shoulders. A pathetic shadow, torn between her envy and the thrill of being seen with Masooma, sharing in the attention as a weed would, lapping up water meant for the lily upstream.

All her life, Parwana had made sure to avoid standing in front of a mirror with her sister. It robbed her of hope to see her face beside Masooma's, to see so plainly what she had been denied. But in public, every stranger's eye was a mirror. There was no escape.

She carries Masooma outside. The two of them sit on the charpoy Parwana has set up. She makes sure to stack cushions so Masooma can comfortably lean her back against the wall. The night is quiet but for the chirping crickets, and dark too, lit only by a few lanterns still shimmering in windows and by the papery white light of the three-quarter moon.

Parwana fills the hookah's vase with water. She takes two matchhead-sized portions of opium flakes with a pinch of tobacco and drops the mix into the hookah's bowl. She lights the coal on the metal screen and hands the hookah to her sister. Masooma takes a deep puff from the hose, reclines against the cushions, and
asks if she can rest her legs on Parwana's lap. Parwana reaches down and lifts the limp legs to rest across her own.

When she smokes, Masooma's face slackens. Her lids droop. Her head tilts unsteadily to the side and her voice takes on a sluggish, distant quality. A whisper of a smile forms on the corners of her mouth, whimsical, indolent, complacent rather than content. They say little to each other when Masooma is like this. Parwana listens to the breeze, to the water gurgling in the hookah. She watches the stars and the smoke drifting over her. The silence is pleasant, and neither she nor Masooma feel an urge to fill it with needless words.

Until Masooma says, “Will you do something for me?”

Parwana looks at her.

“I want you to take me to Kabul.” Masooma exhales slowly, the smoke twirling, curling, morphing into shapes with each blink of the eye.

“Are you serious?”

“I want to see Darulaman Palace. We didn't get a chance to last time. Maybe go visit Babur's tomb again.”

Parwana leans forward to decipher Masooma's expression. She searches for a hint of playfulness, but in the moonlight she catches only the calm, unblinking glitter of her sister's eyes.

“It's a two-day walk at least. Probably three.”

“Imagine Nabi's face when we surprise him at his door.”

“We don't even know where he lives.”

Masooma listlessly sweeps her hand. “He already told us which neighborhood. We'll knock on some doors and ask. It's not that difficult.”

“How would we get there, Masooma, in your condition?”

Masooma pulls the hookah hose from her lips. “When you were out working today, Mullah Shekib came by, and I spoke to
him a long time. I told him we were going to Kabul for a few days. Just you and I. He gave me his blessing in the end. Also his mule. So you see, it's all arranged.”

“You are insane,” Parwana says.

“Well, it's what I want. It's my wish.”

Parwana sits back against the wall, shaking her head. Her gaze drifts upward into the cloud-mottled darkness.

“I'm so bored I'm dying, Parwana.”

Parwana empties her chest of a sigh and looks at her sister.

Masooma brings the hose to her lips. “Please. Don't deny me.”

One early morning, when the sisters were seventeen, they sat on a branch high up the oak tree, their feet dangling.

Saboor's going to ask me!
Masooma had said this in a high-pitched whisper.

Ask you?
Parwana said, not understanding, at least not immediately.