The Swallows of Kabul

by Khadra, Yasmina

  Mirza abruptly falls silent. A young man with a faraway look and bloodless lips has just stopped beside the door of the little shop. He’s tall, and thin patches of boyishly wispy beard adorn his handsome, youthful face. His hair, long and straight, falls to his shoulders, which are as narrow and fine-boned as a young girl’s.

  Mirza reaches over and shakes him. “What do you want?”

  Attempting to concentrate, the young man brings his fingers to his temples in a gesture that further irritates Mirza. “Make up your mind. Step inside or go away. Can’t you see we’re talking here?”

  Mohsen Ramat notices that the two individuals have whips in their hands and are preparing to lash him across the face. Walking backward and apologizing effusively, he moves away toward the tent encampment.

  “Can you believe it?” Mirza asks indignantly. “Some people have no manners whatsoever.”

  Atiq shakes his head and mutters something. The intrusion has just brought some clarity to his thoughts. Now he’s aware of how indecent such confidences as this are, and he’s cross with himself for having been unable to resist the morbid compulsion to display his dirty linen on the sidewalk in front of a café. An embarrassed silence descends upon him and his childhood friend. They dare not even look at each other. One of them falls to contemplating the lines in his hands; the other pretends to be looking for the owner of the shop.

  T hree

  MOHSEN RAMAT pushes open the door of his house with an uncertain hand. He hasn’t eaten anything since this morning, and his ramblings have worn him out. In the shops, in the market, in the square, wherever he ventured, the immense weariness that he drags around like a convict’s ball and chain caught up with him immediately. His only friend and confidant died of dysentery last year, and Mohsen’s had a hard time finding anyone to take his place. It’s difficult for a person to live with his own shadow. Fear has become the most effective form of vigilance. These days, everyone’s touchier than ever before, a remark made in confidence can easily be misinterpreted, and the Taliban are indisposed to pardon careless tongues. Since people have nothing but misfortunes to share, everyone prefers to nibble at his disappointments in his own corner and thus avoid burdening himself with other people’s problems. In Kabul, where pleasure has been ranked among the deadly sins, seeking any sort of solace from anyone not closely connected to you has become an exercise in futility. What lasting solace could one hope to obtain in a chaotic world bled white by a series of uncommonly violent wars, deserted by its patron saints, and given over to the executioners and the crows, in a world the most fervent prayers cannot bring to its senses?

  In the room, apart from a large woven mat doing service as a rug, two ample, aging, burst ottomans, and a worm-eaten lectern that holds the book of Readings, nothing remains. Mohsen has sold all his furniture, piece by piece, to survive the various shortages. The windows in his darkened house are blocked up. Every time a Taliban passed in the street, he would order Mohsen to repair the broken panes without delay, along with the rickety shutters, lest the glimpse of a woman’s unveiled face offend some unsuspecting passerby. Since Mohsen couldn’t afford these improvements, he covered the windows with canvas curtains, and now the sun no longer visits him at home.

  He leaves his shoes on the little flight of steps and collapses on one of the ottomans. A woman’s voice from behind a curtain at the end of the hall asks, “Can I bring you something to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Perhaps a little water?”

  “If it’s cold, I won’t say no.”

  Tinkling sounds come from the next room; then the curtain is drawn aside, revealing a woman beautiful as the dawn. She places a small carafe in front of Mohsen and sits down on the other ottoman, facing him. Mohsen smiles. He always smiles when his wife shows herself to him. She is sublime, her freshness never fades. Despite the rigors of her daily life, despite her mourning for her city, which has been turned over to the obsessions and follies of men, not a single wrinkle marks Zunaira’s face. It’s true that her cheeks have lost their former translucence and the sound of her laughter is seldom heard, but her enormous eyes, as brilliant as emeralds, have kept their magic intact.

  Mohsen brings the little carafe to his lips.

  His wife waits until he finishes drinking, then clears the carafe away. “You seem exhausted,” she says.

  “I walked a lot today. My feet are on fire.”

  Zunaira brushes her husband’s toes with her fingertips, then begins gently massaging his feet. Mohsen leans back on his elbows, abandoning himself to his wife’s delicate touch.

  “I waited for you at lunch,” she says.

  “I forgot.”

  “You forgot?”

  “I don’t know what came over me today. I’ve never had this feeling before, not even when we lost our house. It was as though I’d passed out, yet I was still wandering around, groping my way along. I couldn’t recognize any of the streets I was on. I walked up and down them, but it seemed that I wasn’t able to cross them. It was truly strange. I was in a kind of fog. I couldn’t remember the way to where I was going, and I didn’t know where I wanted to go.”

  “You must have been in the sun too long.”

  “No, it wasn’t sunstroke.”

  Suddenly, he reaches for his wife’s hand, compelling her to stop the massage. Bemused by the desperate force of the grip on her wrist, Zunaira lifts her bright eyes and looks him in the face.

  Mohsen hesitates a moment, then asks in a toneless voice, “Have I changed?”

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “I’m asking you if I’ve changed.”

  Zunaira furrows her splendid brow and reflects. “I don’t understand what it is you want me to talk about.”

  “About me—what else? Am I still the same man, the one you preferred over all others? Have I kept the same habits, the same ways? Do you think my reactions are normal? Do I treat you with the same affection?”

  “It’s certainly true that many things around us have changed. Our house was bombed. Our relatives and friends aren’t here anymore—some of them have even left this world. You’ve lost your business. My career has been taken away from me. We don’t have enough to eat anymore, and we’ve stopped making plans for the future. But we’re together, Mohsen. For us, that’s what has to count. We’re together so that we can support each other. It’s up to us, to us alone, to keep hope alive. One day, God will remember us. He’ll see that the horrors we’re subjected to every day haven’t diminished our faith, that we haven’t failed in our duty, that we deserve His mercy.”

  Mohsen releases his wife’s wrist and runs his fingers along her cheekbone. It’s an affectionate gesture, and she leans into his caress.

  “You’re the only sun I have left, Zunaira. Without you, my night would be darker than the deepest darkness and colder than the grave. But, for the love of God, if you find that I’m changing toward you, if I’m becoming mean or unjust, please tell me. I feel that things are escaping me, I don’t think I’m in control of myself anymore. If I’m going crazy, help me to be aware of it. I’m willing to fail everyone else’s expectations, but I can’t let myself do you any harm, not even inadvertently.”

  Zunaira clearly senses the depth of her husband’s distress. To prove to him that he’s done nothing wrong in her eyes, she rests her cheek against his diffident palm. “We’re living through some difficult times, my dear. We moan and groan so much, we’ve lost the idea of tranquillity. When there’s a lull all of a sudden, it terrifies us, and we grow suspicious of things that pose no threat.”

  Mohsen gently withdraws his fingers from under his wife’s cheek. His eyes mist over; he has to stare at the ceiling and struggle mightily to contain his emotion. His Adam’s apple panics inside his skinny throat. So great is his remorse that a trembling begins in his cheekbones and spreads out in waves, all the way to his lips and his chin. “I did something unthinkable this morning,” he declares.

  Zunaira
freezes, alarmed by the trouble she sees in his eyes. She tries to take his hands; he holds them up in front of his chest like a man warding off an attack.

  “I can’t believe it,” he mutters. “How did it happen? How could I?”

  More and more intrigued, Zunaira sits up straight. Mohsen starts panting. His chest rises and falls at a frightening rate. Though the words horrify him, he tells his tale: “A prostitute was stoned in the square. I don’t know how, but I joined the crowd of degenerates who were clamoring for her blood. It was as though I’d been taken up by a whirlwind. I, too, wanted to be in a good position to watch the impure beast perish! And when the rain of stones began to overwhelm the demon, I found myself picking up rocks—me, too—and pelting her with them. I must have gone mad, Zunaira. How could I dare do such a thing? All my life, I’ve thought of myself as a conscientious objector. Some people made threats and other people made promises, but none of them ever persuaded me to pick up a weapon and kill another person. I agreed to have enemies, but I couldn’t bear being the enemy of anyone else, no matter who. And this morning, Zunaira, just because the crowd was shouting, I shouted with it, and just because it demanded blood, I called out for blood, too. Since then, I can’t stop looking at my hands, and I don’t recognize them anymore. I walked along the streets, trying to shake off my shadow, trying to put some distance between me and what I’d done, and at every corner, at every pile of rubble, I came face-to-face with that moment of . . . of confusion. I’m afraid of myself, Zunaira. I don’t have any more confidence in the man I’ve become.”

  Zunaira is petrified by her husband’s story. Mohsen is not the type to bare his soul. He rarely speaks about his tribulations and almost never lets his emotions show, but a little while ago, when she detected that great pain deep inside his pupils, she knew he couldn’t keep it to himself. She was braced for trouble of this kind, though not of this magnitude.

  Her face pales, and for the first time her eyes, as they grow wider, lose most of their brilliance. “You stoned a woman?”

  “I even think I hit her on the head.”

  “Mohsen, come on, you couldn’t have done such a thing. That’s not your way—you’re an educated man.”

  “I don’t know what came over me. It happened so fast. It was as if the crowd put a spell on me. I don’t recall gathering up the stones. I only remember that I couldn’t get rid of them, and an irresistible rage seemed to come into my arm. . . . What frightens me and saddens me at the same time is that I didn’t even try to resist.”

  Zunaira stands up like one who has been knocked flat but then rises again to her feet. Weakly. Incredulous, but without anger. Her lips, which a moment ago were lush and full, have dried up. She feels around for support, finds only the end of a horizontal beam that juts out from the wall, and holds on tight. For a long time, she remains still, waiting to regain her senses, but in vain. Mohsen tries to take her hand again; she eludes him and staggers toward the kitchen amid the gentle rustling of her dress. The instant she disappears behind the curtain, Mohsen understands that he should not have confided to his wife what he refuses to admit to himself.

  Four

  THE SUN PREPARES to withdraw. Its beams no longer ricochet with such fury off the hillsides. But the heat-stunned old men, even as they sit in their doorways and wait impatiently for evening, know that the night will be as torrid as the day. Confined inside the vast steam room formed by its stony mountains, Kabul is suffocating. It’s as though a window to hell has partially opened in the sky. The rare puffs of wind, far from refreshing or regenerating the impoverished air, mischievously fill it with eye-irritating, throat-parching dust. Atiq Shaukat observes that his shadow has lengthened inordinately; soon the muezzin will call the faithful to the Maghreb prayer. Atiq slides his whip under his belt and directs his languid steps to the neighborhood mosque, an immense, chastely whitewashed hall with a skeletal ceiling and a minaret disfigured by a bombardment.

  Taliban militiamen are patrolling the perimeter of the sanctuary in packs, seizing men who are passing by and forcing them manu militari to join the assembled faithful.

  The interior of the sanctuary is a humming furnace. The first arrivals have stormed and occupied the worn rugs scattered on the floor near the minbar, the pulpit where a mullah is eruditely perusing a religious book. The less privileged are obliged to dispute the few ragged mats that are being hawked as though they were made of eiderdown. The rest of the congregation, only too happy to be out of the sun and safe from the militiamen’s whips, make do with the floor, whose rugged surface makes deep imprints in their behinds.

  Atiq knees aside a cluster of old men, growls at the eldest of them to flatten himself more thoroughly against the wall, and sits down with his back against a column. Once again, he glares a sullen threat at the old man, warning him to keep himself as small as possible.

  Atiq Shaukat hates the elderly, especially the old folks in this part of town. Most of them are putrid untouchables, exhausted by beggary and insignificance, who spend their days chanting funereal litanies and tugging at people’s clothing. In the evening, in the places where a few charitable souls put out bowls of rice for widows and orphans, these ancients forgather like ravenous dogs awaiting the signal to consume their quarry, and they feel no compunctions about making spectacles of themselves in order to cadge a few mouthfuls. Above all else, Atiq loathes them for that. Every time he sees one of them in his row at the mosque, his prayers are tinged with disgust. He dislikes the moans they emit as they grovel; he abhors their sickly drowsiness during the sermons. As far as he’s concerned, they’re nothing but cadavers, pestilential remains that the gravediggers have unconscionably neglected, carcasses with rheumy eyes, shattered mouths, and the stench of dying animals. . . .

  Astaghfirullah, he says to himself. My poor Atiq, how your heart fills with venom even in the house of the Lord. Come on, pull yourself together. Forget about making a spectacle of your private life just now and try not to let the Evil One contaminate your thoughts.

  He presses his hands to his temples and tries to empty his mind; then he tucks his chin into the hollow of his throat, obstinately keeping his eyes on the floor lest the sight of the old men disturb his contemplation.

  The muezzin goes into his alcove to call the people to prayer. In one anarchically coordinated movement, the faithful rise and start forming rows. A small individual with pointy ears and an elvish look pulls Atiq by the end of his vest and asks him to align himself with the others. Irritated by this impudence, the jailer grabs the other’s wrist and twists it discreetly against his side. At first, the surprised little man tries to pull his hand out of the vise that’s threatening to crush it; then, having failed in the attempt, he sags, on the verge of collapsing from sheer pain. Atiq maintains the pressure for a few seconds. When he’s certain that his victim is just about to start howling, he lets him go. The dwarf clutches his burning wrist before slipping it under his armpit. Then, unable to assimilate the idea that a believer could behave like this inside a mosque, he makes his way to a place in the row in front of them and doesn’t turn around again.

  Astaghfirullah, Atiq says to himself once more. What’s happening to me? I can’t bear the dark, I can’t bear the light, I don’t like standing up or sitting down, I can’t tolerate old people or children, I hate it when anybody looks at me or touches me. In fact, I can hardly stand myself. Am I going stark raving mad?

  After the prayer, he decides to wait at the mosque for the muezzin’s next call. Whatever happens, he doesn’t feel ready to go home and face his unmade bed, the dirty dishes forgotten in the foul-smelling basins, and his wife, lying in a corner of the room with her knees pulled up to her chin, a filthy scarf on her head, and purple blotches on her face. . . .

  The congregation breaks up. Some go home, others stand in front of the mosque, conversing. The old people and the other beggars, their hands already extended, crowd around the entrance to the sanctuary. Atiq goes up to a group of disabled veterans who are
swapping war stories. The biggest of them, a kind of Goliath entangled in his beard, is drawing some lines in the dust with a swollen finger. The others, sitting around him like so many dervishes, observe him in silence. Each man is missing at least an arm or a leg, and one of them, stationed slightly to the rear, has lost both legs. He sits in a heap inside a custom-made barrow designed to serve as a wheelchair. The Goliath is one-eyed, and half his face is mutilated. He finishes his drawing, leans on his hands, and tells his story.

  “The lay of the land was just about like that,” he says. His piping voice clashes violently with his herculean size. “There was a mountain here, a cliff there, and the two hills you see right here. A river flowed here and skirted the mountain to the north. The Soviets occupied the high ground, and their positions overlooked ours all along the line. For two days, they kept us boxed up tight. We couldn’t retreat because of the mountain. It was bare, and the helicopters would’ve had no problem cutting us to pieces. On this side, the cliff fell away into a precipice. The river was deep and wide, and it had us blocked on this other side. The only place to cross it was here, where there was supposed to be a ford, and the Russians left it open to us on purpose. The truth is, it was just a big trap. Once we sank down in there, we were done for, like drowning rats. But we couldn’t stay in our position very much longer. We were low on ammunition, and there wasn’t a lot to eat. Besides, the enemy had called in reinforcements, including artillery, and his guns were harassing us night and day. There was no way to get even a minute’s sleep. We were in a sorry state. We couldn’t even bury our dead, and they were starting to stink abominably. . . .”

  The legless man, deeply offended, interrupts him. “Our dead never smelled bad,” he declares. “I remember when a shell caught us by surprise and killed fourteen mujahideen at once. That’s how I got my legs blown off. We were surrounded, too, just like you. We stayed in our hole for eight days. And our dead didn’t even decompose. Their bodies were sprawled all around, wherever the explosion had thrown them, and they didn’t smell bad, either. Their faces were serene. In spite of their wounds and the pools of blood they were lying in, you would’ve thought they were only sleeping.”