And the Mountains Echoed in English

Raja Babu
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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. —JELALUDDIN RUMI, 13th century

Episodes

  1. 07/18/2025

    Fall 2010

    Eight Fall 2010 This evening, I come home from the clinic and find a message from Thalia on the landline phone in my bedroom. I play it as I slip off my shoes and sit at my desk. She tells me she has a cold, one she is sure she picked up from Mamá, then she asks after me, asks how work is going in Kabul. At the end, just before she hangs up, she says, Odie goes on and on about how you don’t call. Of course she won’t tell you. So I will. Markos. For the love of Christ. Call your mother. You ass. I smile. Thalia. I keep a picture of her on my desk, the one I took all those years ago at the beach on Tinos—Thalia sitting on a rock with her back to the camera. I have framed the photo, though if you look closely you can still see a patch of dark brown at the left lower corner courtesy of a crazed Italian girl who tried to set fire to it many years ago.

    22 min

  2. 07/18/2025

    Summer 2009

    Seven Summer 2009 “Your father is a great man.” Adel looked up. It was the teacher Malalai who had leaned in and whispered this in his ear. A plump, middle-aged woman wearing a violet beaded shawl around her shoulders, she smiled at him now with her eyes shut. “And you are a lucky boy.” “I know,” he whispered back. Good, she mouthed. They were standing on the front steps of the town’s new school for girls, a rectangular light green building with a flat roof and wide windows, as Adel’s father, his Baba jan, delivered a brief prayer followed by an animated speech. Gathered before them in the blazing midday heat was a large crowd of squinting children, parents, and elders, roughly a hundred or so locals from the small town of Shadbagh-e-Nau, “New Shadbagh.”

    15 min

  3. 07/18/2025

    February 1974

    Six February 1974 EDITOR’S NOTE, Parallaxe 84 (WINTER 1974), P. 5 Dear Readers:Five years ago, when we began our quarterly issues featuring interviews with little-known poets, we could not have anticipated how popular they would prove. Many of you asked for more, and, indeed, your enthusiastic letters paved the way for these issues to become an annual tradition here at Parallaxe.

    17 min

  4. 07/13/2025

    Spring 2003

    Five Spring 2003 The nurse, whose name is Amra Ademovic, had warned Idris and Timur. She had pulled them aside and said, “If you show reaction, even little, she going to be upset, and I kick you out.” They are standing at the end of a long, poorly lit hallway in the men’s wing of Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital. Amra said the only relative the girl had left—or the only one who visited—was her uncle, and if she’d been placed in the women’s wing he would not be permitted to visit her.

    15 min

  5. 07/13/2025

    Four

    Four In the Name of Allah the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful, I know that I will be gone when you read this letter, Mr. Markos, for when I gave it to you I requested that you not open it until after my death.

    29 min

  6. 07/13/2025

    Spring 1949

    Three Spring 1949 Parwana smells it before she pulls back the quilt and sees it. It has smeared all over Masooma’s buttocks, down her thighs, against the sheets and the mattress and the quilt too. Masooma looks up at her over her shoulder with a timid plea for forgiveness, and shame—still the shame after all this time, all these years. “I’m sorry,” Masooma whispers.

    15 min

  7. 07/13/2025

    Fall 1952

    Two Fall 1952 Father had never before hit Abdullah. So when he did, when he whacked the side of his head, just above the ear—hard, suddenly, and with an open palm—tears of surprise sprung to Abdullah’s eyes. He quickly blinked them back. “Go home,” Father said through gritted teeth. From up ahead, Abdullah heard Pari burst into sobs.

    14 min

  8. 07/13/2025

    Fall 1952

    One Fall 1952 So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one. But just the one. Don’t either of you ask me for more. It’s late, and we have a long day of travel ahead of us, Pari, you and I. You will need your sleep tonight. And you too, Abdullah. I am counting on you, boy, while your sister and I are away. So is your mother. Now. One story, then. Listen, both of you, listen well. And don’t interrupt.

    15 min
  • 8 Episodes

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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. —JELALUDDIN RUMI, 13th century

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