I have read Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, but it was not the knowledge of his works that made me pick up And the Mountains Echoed – it was this review.
This book takes you on a ride through several people’s stories, all of whom are somehow connected to the house where the Wahadatis, a wealthy family, lived. There is Pari with a gap-toothed smile and her older brother ‘Abollah’; siblings by birth, but bound by love so pure that even the Gods would become jealous. And they do, apparently, for Pari is sold to the Wahadatis, in whose house the children’s uncle (Nabi) works as a chauffeur and handyman. The children’s cries rent the air when they are parted from each other, but all too soon, they are back in their own lives – Abdullah in his village, carrying the burden of his lost sister in silence, and Pari, distracted by new parents and a world of luxury.
Within a few years, Pari’s adoptive father, Suleiman, suffers a stroke, which renders him immobile and unable to care for himself. Leaving Nabi in charge, Suleiman’s wife Nila flees to Paris with the daughter. Several years later, Nabi is left alone in the house (which is now his), and chooses to rent the place to a Greek aid worker named Markos. By the time Markos arrives on the scene, Afghanistan has been through a round of wars and the Wahadati’s house is riddled by bullet holes and decay.
We encounter Nila and Pari again in Paris, with the latter all grown up, but holding a void deep within, an absence that cannot be explained. The beautiful, chain-smoking, alcoholic Nila reveals parts of their lives in a magazine interview, but Pari is left to piece together the rest by herself. In the meantime, Nabi, on the brink of death, writes a long letter to Markos explaining all that happened, and asking for help in amends to be made.
There are several other characters who make their appearance as well, and leave their mark with little stories of their own. Abdullah’s step-mother Parwana, who literally shoves her beautiful twin out of her life, but bears the guilt of her actions for days to come. Markos’s female friend Thalia whose jaw and cheek were mutilated by a dog, but gains courage and the will to carry on from Markos’s mother. Timur, an incurable Casanova, who overtakes his moral cousin Idris by helping a young girl, who was the victim of a horrific murder attempt, through a life-saving surgery. And there is the young son of an Afghan army commander who is made to see the ugly side of his father’s philanthropic activities when he befriends a a boy who formerly lived in refugee camp, and now lives in the open fields.
All of these stories touch on different, conflicting, aspects of human life – love, betrayal, hope, sorrow, kinship, separation, trust, lies… And yet, truth be told, i found myself feeling a bit disappointed at the lack of drama, of violence and the intensity of emotions. When i put the book down, i didn’t feel a sense of happiness, that all was well at last, when Marriam comes into her own in A Thousand Splendid Suns, nor a feeling of overwhelming gladness that defined Kite Runner’s last sentence, “For you, a thousand times over.”
But, upon reflection, maybe it is this lack of drama that makes this book a masterpiece. The ability to observe the different characters’ lives without ascribing any form of judgement, but merely recording their thoughts, words and reactions, is probably the best gift a writer can give his readers – by allowing us to weigh each story against our own parameters of right and wrong, Khaled Hosseini has made us as much a part of the book as Pari, Abdullah, Markos, and all others.
Another sentiment comes to the fore – that there is usually little by way of drama that accompanies even the most horrific of events in human lives. Oftentimes, the people in the situation resign themselves and find a way to keep the daily humdrum of life going. And maybe that is where true heroism lies, where real beauty is to be seen, where the best stories are to be found.
the world in my eyes 