And the Mountains Echoed

it inyou. What you did, the burden you agreed to shoulder, took courage. For that, I honor you.
    Baba Ayub weakly drew his scythe, but it slipped from his hand and struck the marble floor with a loud clang. His knees buckled, and he had to sit.
    Your son does not remember you, the
div
continued. This is his life now, and you saw for yourself his happiness. He is provided here with the finest food and clothes, with friendship and affection. He receives tutoring in the arts and languages and in the sciences, and in the ways of wisdom and charity. He wants for nothing. Someday, when he is a man, he may choose to leave, and he shall be free to do so. I suspect he will touch many lives with his kindness and bring happiness to those trapped in sorrow.
    â€œI want to see him,” Baba Ayub said. “I want to take him home.”
    Do you?
    Baba Ayub looked up at the
div
.
    The creature moved to a cabinet that sat near the curtains and removed from one of its drawers an hourglass. Do you know what that is, Abdullah, an hourglass? You do. Good. Well, the
div
took the hourglass, flipped it over, and placed it at Baba Ayub’s feet.
    I will allow you to take him home with you, the
div
said. If you choose to, he can never return here. If you choose not to,
you
can never return here. When all the sand has poured, I will ask for your decision.
    And with that, the
div
exited the chamber, leaving Baba Ayub with yet another painful choice to make.
    I will take him home, Baba Ayub thought immediately. This was what he desired the most, with every fiber of his being. Hadn’t he pictured this in a thousand dreams? To hold little Qais again, to kiss his cheek and feel the softness of his small hands in hisown? And yet … If he took him home, what sort of life awaited Qais in Maidan Sabz? The hard life of a peasant at best, like his own, and little more. That is, if Qais didn’t die from the droughts like so many of the village’s children had. Could you forgive yourself, then, Baba Ayub asked himself, knowing that you plucked him, for your own selfish reasons, from a life of luxury and opportunity? On the other hand, if he left Qais behind, how could he bear it, knowing that his boy was alive, to know his whereabouts and yet be forbidden to see him? How could he bear it? Baba Ayub wept. He grew so despondent that he lifted the hourglass and hurled it at the wall, where it crashed into a thousand pieces and its fine sand spilled all over the floor.
    The
div
reentered the room and found Baba Ayub standing over the broken glass, his shoulders slumped.
    â€œYou are a cruel beast,” Baba Ayub said.
    When you have lived as long as I have, the
div
replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color. Have you made your choice?
    Baba Ayub dried his tears, picked up his scythe, and tied it around his waist. He slowly walked toward the door, his head hung low.
    You are a good father, the
div
said, as Baba Ayub passed him by.
    â€œWould that you roast in the fires of Hell for what you have done to me,” Baba Ayub said wearily.
    He exited the room and was heading down the hallway when the
div
called after him.
    Take this, the
div
said. The creature handed Baba Ayub a small glass flask containing a dark liquid. Drink this upon your journey home. Farewell.
    Baba Ayub took the flask and left without saying another word.
    Many days later, his wife was sitting at the edge of the family’sfield, looking out for him much as Baba Ayub had sat there hoping to see Qais. With each passing day, her hopes for his return diminished. Already people in the village were speaking of Baba Ayub in the past tense. One day she was sitting on the dirt yet again, a prayer playing upon her lips, when she saw a thin figure approaching Maidan Sabz from the direction of the mountains. At first she took him for a lost dervish, a thin man with threadbare rags for clothing, hollow eyes and sunken temples, and it wasn’t until he came closer yet that she recognized her husband. Her heart leapt with joy and she cried out with relief.
    After he had washed, and after he had been given water to drink and food to eat, Baba Ayub lay in his house as villagers circled around him and asked him question after question.
    Where did you go, Baba Ayub?
    What did you see?
    What happened to you?
    Baba Ayub couldn’t answer them, because he didn’t recall what had happened to him. He remembered nothing of his voyage,