Khaled Hosseini - And the Mountains Echoed

Masooma was already out, wriggling quietly in the midwife’s arms, when their mother cried out and the crown of another head parted her a second time. Masooma’s arrival was uneventful. She delivered herself, the angel, the midwife would say later. Parwana’s birth was prolonged, agonizing for the mother, treacherous for the baby. The midwife had to free her from the cord that had wrapped itself around Parwana’s neck, as if in a murderous fit of separation anxiety. In her worst moments, when she cannot help being swallowed up by a torrent of self-loath- ing, Parwana thinks that perhaps the cord knew best. Maybe it knew which was the better half.

Masooma fed on schedule, slept on time. She cried only if in need of food or cleaning. When awake, she was playful, good-hu- mored, easily delighted, a swaddled bundle of giggles and happy squeaks. She liked to suck on her rattle.

What a sensible baby, people said. Parwana was a tyrant. She exerted upon

their mother the full force of her authority. Their father, bewildered by the infant’s histrionics, took the babies’ older brother, Nabi, and escaped to sleep at his own brother’s house. Nighttime was a misery of epic proportion for the girls’ mother, punctuated by only a few moments of fitful rest. She bounced Parwana and walked her all night every night. She rocked her and sang to her. She winced as Parwana ripped into her chafed, swollen breast and gummed her nipple as though she was after the milk in her very bones. But nursing was no antidote: Even with a full belly, Parwana was flailing and shrieking, immune to her mother’s supplications.

Masooma watched from her corner of the room with a pensive, helpless expression, as though she pitied her mother this predicament.

Nabi was nothing like this, their mother said one day to their father.

Every baby is different. She’s killing me, that one.

It will pass, he said. The way bad weather does.

And it did pass. Colic, perhaps, or some other innocuous ailment. But it was too late. Parwana had already made her mark.

One late-summer afternoon when the twins were ten months old, the villagers gathered in Shadbagh after a wedding. Women worked with fevered focus to pile onto platters pyramids of fluffy white rice speckled with bits of saffron. They cut bread, scraped crusty rice from the bottom of pots, passed around dishes of fried eggplant topped with yogurt and dried mint. Nabi was out playing with some boys. The girls’ mother sat with neighbors on a rug spread beneath the village’s giant oak tree. Every now

and then, she glanced down at her daughters as they slept side by side in the shade.

After the meal, over tea, the babies woke from their nap, and almost immediately, someone snatched up Masooma. She was merrily passed around, from cousin to aunt to uncle. Bounced on this lap, balanced on that knee. Many hands tickled her soft belly. Many noses rubbed against hers. They rocked with laughter when she playfully grabbed Mullah Shekib’s beard. They marveled at her easy, sociable demeanor. They lifted her up and admired the pink flush of her cheeks, her sapphire blue eyes, the graceful curve of her brow, harbingers of the startling beauty that would mark her in a few years’ time.

Parwana was left in her mother’s lap. As Masooma performed, Parwana watched quietly as though slightly bewildered, the one member of an otherwise adoring audience who didn’t understand what all the fuss

was about. Every now and then, her mother looked down at her, and reached to squeeze her tiny foot softly, almost apologetically. When someone remarked that Masooma had two new teeth coming in, Parwana’s mother said, feebly, that Parwana had three. But no one took notice.

When the girls were nine years old, the family gathered at Saboor’s family home for an early-evening iftar to break the fast after Ramadan. The adults sat on cushions around the perimeter of the room, and the chatter was noisy. Tea, good wishes, and gossip were passed around in equal measure. Old men fingered their prayer beads. Parwana sat quietly, happy to be breathing the same air as Saboor, to be in the vicinity of his owlish dark eyes. In the course of the evening, she chanced glances his way. She caught him in the midst of biting into a sugar cube, or rubbing the smooth slope of his forehead, or laughing spiritedly at something an elderly

uncle had said. And if he caught her looking at him, as he did once or twice, she quickly looked away, rigid with embarrassment. Her knees began to shake. Her mouth went so dry she could hardly speak.

Parwana thought then of the notebook hidden under a pile of her things at home. Saboor was always coming up with stories, tales packed with jinns and fairies and demons and divs; often, village kids gathered around him and listened in absolute quiet as he made up fables for them. And about six months earlier, Parwana had overheard Saboor telling Nabi that one day he hoped to write his stories down. It was shortly after that that Parwana, with her mother, had found herself at a bazaar in another town, and there, at a stall that sold used books, she had spotted a beautiful notebook with crisp lined pages and a thick dark brown leather binding embossed along the edges. Holding it in her hand, she knew her mother couldn’t

afford to buy it for her. So Parwana had picked a moment when the shopkeeper was not looking and quickly slipped the notebook under her sweater.

But in the six months that had since passed, Parwana still hadn’t found the courage to give the notebook to Saboor. She was terrified that he might laugh or that he would see it for what it was and give it back. Instead, every night she lay in her cot, the notebook secretly clutched in her hands under the blanket, fingertips brushing the engravings on the leather. Tomorrow, she promised herself every night. Tomorrow I will walk up to him with it.

Later that evening, after iftar dinner, all the kids rushed outside to play. Parwana, Masooma, and Saboor took turns on the swing that Saboor’s father had suspended from a sturdy branch of the giant oak tree. Parwana took her turn, but Saboor kept forgetting to push her because he was busy

telling another story. This time it was about the giant oak tree, which he said had magic powers. If you had a wish, he said, you had to kneel before the tree and whisper it. And if the tree agreed to grant it, it would shed exactly ten leaves upon your head.

When the swing slowed to a near stop, Parwana turned to tell Saboor to keep pushing but the words died in her throat. Saboor and Masooma were smiling at each other, and in Saboor’s hand Parwana saw the notebook. Her notebook.

I found it in the house, Masooma said later. Was it yours? I’ll pay you back for it somehow, I promise. You don’t mind, do you? I just thought it was perfect for him. For his stories. Did you see the look on him? Did you, Parwana?

Parwana said no, she didn’t mind, but inside she was crumpling. Over and over she pictured how her sister and Saboor had smiled at each other, the look they shared

between them. Parwana might as well have winked out into thin air like a genie from one of Saboor’s stories, so unaware had they been of her presence. It cut her to the bone. That night, on her cot, she cried very quietly.

By the time she and her sister were eleven, Parwana had developed a precocious understanding of the strange behavior of boys around girls they privately liked. She saw this especially as she and Masooma walked home from school. School was really the back room of the village mosque where, in addition to teaching Koran recitation, Mullah Shekib had taught every child in the village to read and write, to memorize poetry. Shadbagh was fortunate to have such a wise man for a malik, the girls’ father told them. On the way home from these lessons, the twins often came across a group of boys sitting on a wall. As the girls passed, the boys sometimes heckled, sometimes threw pebbles. Parwana usually shouted back and

answered their pebbles with rocks, while Masooma always pulled her elbow and told her in a sensible voice to walk faster, to not let them anger her. But she misunderstood. Parwana was angry not because they threw pebbles but because they threw them only at Masooma. Parwana knew: They made a show of the ribbing, and the bigger the show, the deeper their desire. She noticed the way their eyes ricocheted off her and trained themselves on Masooma, forlorn with wonder, helpless to pull away. She knew that behind their crass jokes and lascivious grins, they were terrified of Masooma.

Then, one day, one of them hurled not a pebble but a rock. It rolled to the sisters’ feet. When Masooma picked it up, the boys snickered and elbowed one another. An elastic band held a sheet of paper wrapped around the rock. When they were at a safe distance, Masooma unrolled it. They both read the note.