And the Mountains Echoed

This chapter focuses on Abdullah narrates this chapter, as our narrator and he makes note that his their father had never before hit Abdullahhit him before. Seeing Abdullah being struck about the ears quite forcefully by her father makes Pari (Abdullah’s little sister) cry. The father tells Abdullah to head home and walks away with Pari, but. Abdullah keeps following. TThey are walking to Kabul and Abdullah does not give in, so the father eventually allows him to come along with them to Kabul. Pari likes to collect feathers, and so when she spots one, her father dusts it off for her and gives it to her. Her most prized feather iwas a peacock feather that Abdullah traded his shoes for.

They have a stepmother (Parwana) that Abdullah wishes he “could love her as he had his own mother” (21). His mother died from while giving birth to Pari childbirth, when Pari arrived. Parwana and Saboor had lost a two-week-old baby Omar, due to the cold. She and Saboor have one child together, their youngest child, Iqbal. Abdullah believes that Parwana's kindness to him is more like obligation than real love, like she has for her biological son, Iqbal. Abdullah notes, “It couldn't be helped that he and his sister didn't belong to her. They were another woman's leftovers” (22).

While on the journey to Kabul, Abdullah climbs in the wagon with Pari. He remembers his mother as ever joyful. His father, however, he notes “as different. Father had hardness in him. His eyes looked out on the same world as Mother's had, and saw only indifference” (24). Because he sees Pari having similar qualities as his mother, he feels a very special connection with her feeling she was “the only true family he had” (24).

Uncle Nabi (Parwana's brother) has told Saboor of about a job. Saboor iwas frequently looking for a labor job. This new job involvesd him working on construction of a wealthy man's home in Kabul. Abdullah believes that his father blames himself for Omar's death. If only Saboor had worked harder to provide a better home, Omar would not have died. Therefore, the search for work is his constant focus.

They stop for the night in the desert. Pari wants to help at the work site, and Saboor says she can keep their water full. Abdullah promises her that he will find other ways for her to help out if she masters the water job. He reflects on how he is the one raising her, even though he is a child himself at ten 10 years old. He woke with her in the night, bathed her, and changed her soiled diapers. Abdullah also notes how his father is a great storyteller. Even though father “was a closed-off man by nature […] ...sometimes […] ...unlocked ...stories suddenly came spilling out” (31). Abdullah feels closer to his father when he tells these stories, “Sometimes, his "tales [unmasked] a capacity for imagination and dream that always surprised Abdullah. Father never felt more present to Abdullah, more vibrant, revealed, more truthful, than when he told his stories, as though the tales were pinholes into his opaque, inscrutable world” (31).

Abdullah wakes up with a start in the darkness, and Father is not there. Panic rises in him as he calls for his father in the darkness and almost screams before his father finally returns. Abdullah reassures himself that Father would never leave them, and Saboor does not exactly agree with this statement , but tells Abdullah to just go back to sleep.

Next, they are in Kabul. Abdullah and Pari watch the busyness of the city. Uncle Nabi picks them up in his car. He takes them to their employer's house, which reminds and Abdullah is immediately reminded of the div's palace that in Saboor’s told in his story, with the beautiful garden in the back story. The polished and extravagant look of the home makesde Abdullah uncomfortable in his own dirty skin, and he recalls seeing this woman, Mrs. Wahdati, before when she came to visit their village because she wanted to meet Nabi's family. She insisted on not being treated specially, but Abdullah "had seen through it" (39). She asks Saboor of his impression of the city and rambles on about the “progressive ideas” that she hopes to come from it. She tries to appeal to Saboor by speaking fondly of the countryside, the “real Afghanistan” that the “people out there live more authentic lives. They have a sturdiness about them [...]” (40). Her husband asks her to stop talking.

Mrs. Wahdati then proposesoffers to take the children to the bazaar so Saboor and Mr. Wahdati could can work out the job details. Abdullah is not comfortable and wants to go home, but he follows along.

They reach the bazaar, and Mrs. Wahdati wants to buy shoes for the children. She gets Pari a lovely pair of yellow shoes, and something sinks into Abdullah realizes something. H, and he starts to cry, begging her. He begs her “[not to] do it” and she reassures him that “it's for the best” (45).

For unclear reasons, Pari is gone. We later learn that she has It can be assumed that she is now “adopted” by the Wahdatis. There iswas no talk of it back in Shadbagh. Shula, the stray dog that lovesd Pari dearly, keepspt hanging around the house, until he eventually leaves and never returnseventually, he gave up, left, and was never seen again. The only thing spoken oftime anyone speaks of Pari iwas when their stepmother says, stepmother saying, “It had to be her [...] she had to be the one […] the finger cut, to save the hand” (48).

That winter, Saboor cuts down the great oak tree, that great symbol of steadfastness and childhood fun; (even he swung from it as a child.). He tells Abdullah that it is needed for firewood, but Abdullah notes that he hacks at the tree with an incalculable aggressiveness. Abdullah warmly keeps Pari's box of feathers and hopes that he will one day bring it back to her, to show her the new feather he found when they chopped the oak tree down. However, he realizes that “there was nothing left” for him in Shadbagh anymore, and he will leave on foot someday.