“IT’S VERY SIMPLE,” Atiq declares. “No words can describe her.”
“Is she so beautiful as that?” Musarrat asks skeptically.
“Beautiful? The word sounds commonplace to me—it sounds banal. The woman languishing in my jail is more than that. I’m still trembling from the sight of her. I spent the night watching her sleep. Her magnificence so filled my eyes that I didn’t notice the dawn.”
“I hope she didn’t distract you from your prayer.”
Atiq lowers his head. “It’s true—she did.”
“You forgot to perform your salaat?”
“Yes.”
Musarrat bursts into tinkling laughter, which quickly gives way to a succession of coughs. Atiq frowns. He doesn’t understand why his wife is laughing at him, why she’s not cross. It’s not often that he hears her laugh, and her unusual gaiety makes their dark hovel almost habitable. Panting but delighted, Musarrat wipes her eyes, adjusts the cushion behind her, and leans back on it.
“Am I amusing you?” Atiq asks.
“Enormously.”
“You think I’m ridiculous.”
“I think you’re fabulous, Atiq. Why would you hide such generous words from me? After more than twenty years of marriage, at last you reveal the poet who’s been hiding inside you. You can’t imagine how happy I am to know that you’re capable of speaking from your heart. Generally, you avoid such words as though they were pools of vomit. Atiq, the man with the eternal frown, the man who could walk past a gold coin without deigning to notice it, this man has tender feelings? That doesn’t simply amuse me; it revives me. I’d like to kiss the feet of the woman who’s awakened such sensitivity in you in the course of a single night. She must be a saint. Or perhaps a good fairy.”
“That’s what I said to myself the first time I saw her.”
“Then why have they sentenced her to death?”
Atiq flinches. Evidently, he hasn’t asked himself this question. That’s not like him at all, Musarrat thinks. Surely there must be some mistake. “How about her? What’s her story?”
“I haven’t spoken to her.”
“Why not?”
“It isn’t done. I’ve guarded many female prisoners awaiting execution, some of them for several days. We never exchanged a single word. It’s as if you’re all alone and the other person isn’t there. We ignored one another completely, they in their cells and me in my hole. Tears can’t do any good when a sentence of death has been pronounced. In such cases, there’s no place like a prison for gathering your thoughts, so people keep quiet. Especially the night before an execution.”
Musarrat seizes her husband’s hand and presses it against her chest. Surprisingly, the jailer offers no resistance. Perhaps he doesn’t notice. His gaze is far away, his breathing tense.
“Today I feel quite strong,” she says, elated by the color in her husband’s face. “If you’d like, I could fix her something to eat.”
“You’d do that for her?”
“I’d do anything for you.”
Thirteen
THE PRISONER pushes away her tray and wipes her lips delicately on the end of a rag. Her way of patting the corners of her mouth reveals her origins in a social rank that has been abolished and no longer exists. She has class, and she’s surely well educated. Atiq scrutinizes her while pretending to examine the lines in his hand. He doesn’t want to miss a single one of her movements; he wants to take in all her expressions, all her ways—of eating, of drinking, of picking up the things around her and putting them down again. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no doubt: This woman has been rich and distinguished, has worn silk and jewels, has doused herself with fantastic perfumes and mistreated the hearts of innumerable suitors; her face has radiated the joy of many an ardent love; her smile has soothed many a misfortune. How has she wound up here? What wretched wind has blown her into this dungeon, a woman whose eyes seem to hold the light of all the world?
Those eyes look up at him. An immense oppression crushes his chest, and he quickly turns away. When he glances at the prisoner again, he finds her staring at him with an enigmatic little smile playing on her lips. To subdue his mounting embarrassment, he asks her if she’s still hungry. She shakes her head. He remembers that there are some berries on his desk, but he doesn’t dare go to fetch them. To tell the truth, he doesn’t want to go away, not even for a second. He feels fine, just where he is, on this side of the bars, yet at the same time so close to her that he believes he can register the beating of her pulse.
The woman’s smile doesn’t fade. It floats on her face like the beginnings of a dream. Is she really smiling, or is he seeing visions? Since being confined to his jail, she hasn’t said a word. Silent and dignified, she encloses herself in her exile, betraying neither anxiety nor torment. She looks as if she’s waiting for the sun to come up so that they can leave together, without a sound. The imminent expiration of her brief reprieve hangs over her prayers like a patient blade, but its pernicious shadow cannot reach her thoughts. She seems impregnable in her martyrdom.
“My wife prepared this meal for you,” Atiq says.
“You’re very lucky.”
What a voice! Atiq drinks it in and waits for her to expand on this subject, to speak a little about her dramatic circumstances, which he knows must be eating her up inside. He waits in vain.
After a long silence, he hears himself murmur, “He deserved to die.”
Then, with increased fervor, he says, “I’d take my oath on it. A man who doesn’t appreciate his good fortune has no right to any sympathy.” His Adam’s apple scrapes his throat as he adds, “I’m certain he was a brute. Of the worst kind. Full of himself. He couldn’t have been anything else. When you don’t appreciate your good fortune, you forfeit your right to it. It’s obvious.”
The prisoner tenses her shoulders.
As Atiq’s words come faster, his voice grows steadily louder. “He abused you, isn’t that right? If he didn’t like some little thing you said, he rolled up his sleeves and attacked you.”
She lifts her head. Her eyes remind him of jewels; her smile has become more pronounced, at once sorrowful and sublime.
“He pushed you too far, was that it? He made you suffer more than you could bear. . . .”
“He was marvelous,” she says in a tranquil voice. “I’m the one who didn’t appreciate my good fortune.”
ATIQ IS OVERWROUGHT. He can’t stand still. Ever since he came home, earlier than expected, he hasn’t stopped walking back and forth in the patio, turning his eyes skyward and talking to himself.
Sitting on her pallet, Musarrat watches him without a word. This whole affair is beginning to bother her. Atiq hasn’t been himself since they put that prisoner in his charge. “What’s the matter?” he shouts at her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Musarrat thinks it would be unwise to answer him, though not so unwise as it would be to try to calm him down. Atiq looks as though that’s exactly what he’s waiting for, an excuse to pounce on her. His eyes are full of wrath, and his clenched knuckles are white.
He approaches her. There’s a milky secretion in the corners of his mouth. “You said something?”
She shakes her head.
He puts his hand on his hip and turns toward the courtyard; then, grimacing with rage, he strikes the wall and bellows, “It was a stupid accident. It could happen to anyone. It was the kind of thing you can’t anticipate, the kind of thing that takes you by surprise. Her husband tripped over a carafe and struck his head on the floor, fatally. It was as simple as that. It’s a tragedy, that’s true, but it was an accident. She wasn’t responsible for anything, the poor woman. The qazi must be made to see that they were wrong to condemn her. They don’t have the right to send an innocent person to her death just because she was involved in an accident. That woman didn’t kill her husband. She didn’t kill anyone.”
Musarrat nods her head timidly. Lost in his tirade, Atiq doesn’t even notice.
“I must speak to Qassim about her,” he says at the end of a long monologue. “He’s got influential friends and connections in high places. People will listen to him. They can’t possibly let an innocent woman be executed because of a misunderstanding.”
“WHAT ARE YOU talking about?” Qassim Abdul Jabbar demands indignantly. He’s not best pleased with Atiq, who has disturbed him in his home about a lot of nonsense. “She’s a mad bitch; she’s been judged and condemned. Soon she’ll be executed in the stadium. Many prestigious guests are coming to the ceremony, and she’s the only woman on the entire program. Even if she were innocent, no one could do anything for her. And since she’s guilty—”
“She’s innocent.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me so.”
“And you believed her?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because she lied to you. She’s an incorrigible liar, Atiq. She’s taking advantage of your good nature. Don’t play defense lawyer for a criminal you hardly know. You have enough problems as it is.”
“She didn’t kill anyone. . . .”
“Her neighbors testified against her. Their statements were categorical. That whore led her unfortunate husband a dog’s life. She was constantly chasing him out of his own home. The qazi didn’t even need to deliberate.”
Qassim seizes the jailer by the shoulders and looks him right in the eye. “Atiq, my poor Atiq. If you don’t get a grip on yourself right away, you’re going to wind up so lost, you won’t find your way home. Forget that witch. In a few days, she’ll join the ones who’ve gone before her, and a new one will come and take her place. I don’t know how she managed to bamboozle you, but if I were you, I’d try not to be fooled by the way she looks. You’re the one who needs attention, not her. I warned you the other day. You spend too much time in your bad moods, Atiq, all locked up inside them. Be careful, I told you: One day, you won’t be able to get out. You didn’t listen to me, and what’s the result? Your black moods weakened you, and when some smelly bitch appeared, all she had to do was whine and it broke your heart. Let her croak. I can assure you, she’s right where she belongs. After all, she’s only a woman.”
Atiq is beside himself. Caught up in a whirlwind, he doesn’t know where to hide his head or what to do with his hands when he catches himself cursing the whole world. He understands nothing, nothing at all. He’s become someone else, he’s been overwhelmed by a different person, who pummels him and submerges him, and without whom he’d feel like a cripple. How can he explain the shaking fits that make him shiver during the hottest hours of the day, or the sweats that cool him off a minute later? Never before has he lifted so much as a finger to help people in trouble, not even when a flick would have sufficed, so how can he explain his new boldness, his new ardor in this fight against the inevitable? How can he explain the impetuous wave of emotion that undoes him whenever he meets the prisoner’s eyes? He has never thought himself capable of sharing any stranger’s distress. His whole adult life has been based on this ambition: to be able to pass a torture victim without lingering over him, to be able to return from a cemetery with his resolutions intact. And suddenly here he is, desperately involved in the fate of a female prisoner whom no one can rescue from the shadow of the scaffold. Atiq doesn’t understand why, all of a sudden, his heart is beating in another’s place, nor why he has accepted so readily, from one day to the next, a change in himself of such magnitude that nothing will ever again be as it was before.
He had expected to find in Qassim Abdul Jabbar a modicum of indulgence, some inclination to leniency that would help him petition the qazi and induce them to reconsider their verdict. Qassim’s reaction was disappointing—or rather, unforgivable; now Atiq loathes him entirely. Everything’s over between them. No sermon, no holy man will reconcile them. Qassim is nothing but a brute. He has no more heart than a cudgel, no more mercy than a snake. He embodies the common evil, and he will die of it. They will all die of it, without exception: the qazi, crouched inside their venerable monstrousness; the howling fanatics, feverish and obscene, who are already making preparations to fill the stadium on Friday; the prestigious guests, who are coming to share the joy of public executions; the notables, who will applaud the implementation of the Sharia with the same hands that shoo flies, and wave away the lifeless remains with the same gestures that bless the grotesque zeal of the executioners. All of them. Including Kabul itself, the accursed city, every day more expert in killing, more dedicated to the opposite of living. In this land, the public celebrations have become as appalling as the lynchings themselves.
Atiq returns home. “I’m not going to let them murder her,” he protests.
“Why are you getting yourself in such a state?” Musarrat admonishes him. “She’s not the first, and she won’t be the last. It’s insane, the way you’re acting. You have to pull yourself together.”
“I don’t want to pull myself together.”
“You’re doing yourself a useless injury. Look at you! Anyone would think you’ve gone crazy.”
Atiq shakes a threatening finger at her. “I forbid you to call me crazy.”
“Then pull yourself together, right now,” Musarrat urges him again. “You’re acting like someone who doesn’t know where he is. And whenever I try to reason with you, you get twice as angry.”
Atiq seizes her by the throat and jams her against the wall. “Stop your yapping, you old hag. I can’t stand the sound of your voice any longer, or the smell of your body, either. . . .”
He lets her go.
Shocked by her husband’s violence and devastated by his words, Musarrat sinks to the floor, her hands holding her bruised throat, her eyes bulging in disbelief.
Atiq makes an infuriated gesture, picks up his turban and his whip, and leaves the house.
THERE’S A HUGE CROWD at the mosque; the beggars and the disabled veterans are engaged in a bitter struggle for what little space is left in the recesses of the sanctuary.
Atiq finds the spectacle so revolting that he spits over his shoulder and decides to say his prayers somewhere else. As he moves off, he runs across Mirza Shah, who’s hastening to join the faithful before the muezzin’s call. He hurries past Atiq without paying him any attention. Then Mirza Shah stops, turns around, and gazes at his old friend for a long time before scratching his head under his turban and continuing on his way. Atiq is walking straight ahead, with an aggressive step and squinting eyes. He crosses streets without looking either left or right, indifferent to the blaring horns and the cries of the wagoners. Someone calls out to him from inside a small café; Atiq doesn’t hear him. He wouldn’t hear a thunderstorm if it should burst over his head. He hears only the blood pulsing in his temples and sees only his furies, all of them busily suffusing his mind with darkness: Qassim, making light of his torment; Musarrat, not understanding the depth of his grief; heaven, looking elsewhere; the ruins, turning their backs on him; the eager spectators, preparing to crowd the stadium on Friday; the Taliban agents, strutting along the thoroughfares; the mullahs, haranguing the crowds, shaking fingers more deadly than sabers. . . .
As Atiq slams the jailhouse door behind him, the confused sounds that have pursued him here fade away. All at once, the abyss is before him, and a silence as deep as a long fall. What’s happening to him? Why not open the door again and let the sounds catch up with him, along with the twilight, the smells, and the dust? Panting, bent forward at the waist, he walks up and down the corridor. His whip slips from his hand; he doesn’t pick it up. He keeps pacing, pacing, his beard pressed into the hollow of his throat, his hands behind his back. He comes to an abrupt stop, springs to the cell door, unlocks it, and resolutely yanks it open.
Frightened by the jailer’s violence, Zunaira raises her arms to protect her face.
“Get out of here,” he says to her. “Night is falling. Take advantage of it and run away. Get as far as possible from this city of madmen. Run as fast as you can, and what
ever happens, don’t look back. If you do, you’ll suffer the same fate as Lot’s wife.”
Zunaira fails to grasp what her guard is getting at. She cowers under her blanket, certain that her hour has come.
“Please get out,” Atiq implores her. “Don’t stay here. Go away. I’ll tell them it was my fault. I’ll say I must have padlocked the chains wrong. I’m a Pashtun, like them. They’ll curse me, but they won’t hurt me.”
“What’s going on?”
“Please don’t look at me like that. Put your burqa back on and leave.”
The Swallows of Kabul Page 11