Normally, especially as of late, when she steps in front of a mirror an automatic mental process kicks into gear that prepares her to greet her older self. It buffers her, dulls the shock.  But in the shopwindow, she has caught herself off guard, vulnerable to the reality undistorted by self-delusion.  She sees a middle-aged woman in a drab floppy blouse and a beach skirt that doesn’t conceal quite enough of the saggy folds of skin over her kneecaps.  The sun picks out the gray in her hair.  And despite eyeliner, and the lipstick that defines her lips, she has a face now that a passerby’s gaze will engage and then bounce from, as it would a street sign or a mailbox number.  The moment is brief, barely enough for a flutter of the pulse but long enough for her illusory self to catch up with the reality of the woman gazing back from the shopwindow.  It is a little devastating.  This is what aging is, she thinks as she follows Isabelle into the store, these random unkind moments that catch you when you least expect them.

          Pari, from And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini