A Curse on Dostoevsky

by Atiq Rahimi

  He stands, walks over to the window and opens it. What a beautiful day it is, outside! He puts on his shoes and rushes out of the room, down the stairs and across the courtyard, managing to avoid his landlord. Now he’s in the street. Heart leaping and body light, he heads for the river. All around, women, men, young people, musicians are strolling in the afternoon sun. He wanders among them on the banks of the Neva River. No one notices him. No one looks at him suspiciously. And yet he must stand out, in these worn, bloodstained clothes. What joy to go unnoticed, to be imperceptible! Enchanted by the thrill of invisibility, he suddenly, among the crowd, spots a woman in a sky-blue chador. What is she doing here, in Saint Petersburg? She passes him at great speed. He stares at her, confounded. He knows that walk. She disappears into the crowd. He soon pulls himself together and rushes after her. He spots her crossing a busy junction in her chador. He starts sprinting, until he comes close enough to reach out and touch her. He manages to grab hold of her chador and pull it off. The woman is naked. Appalled, she curls into a ball to hide her body and face, but also the object she holds in her hands. Then, slowly, she looks up. It is Sophia. Between her knees is Nana Alia’s jewelry box. Confused, Rassoul looks at her and murmurs something inaudible. Then he shuts his eyes and throws himself at her feet to cry out in thanks. He feels saved. She has saved him. A hand is shaking him. “Rassoul! Rassoul!” It is not Sophia’s voice. It’s a man’s voice. A man he knows. Razmodin, his cousin. But where is he?

  Here, in front of you, in your room. Open your eyes!

  Barely awake, Rassoul scrambles to his feet, knocking the copy of Crime and Punishment off his chest. “Razmodin?” His cousin’s name trembles on his lips and is lost. He coughs and pretends to say “Salam.” Razmodin, who is crouching nearby, looks at him anxiously.

  “Are you all right, cousin?”

  Rassoul opens his eyes wide, then closes them again thoughtfully. Razmodin insists. “What’s going on? Are you well?”

  Rassoul nods his head and sits down on the mattress, gazing at the broken window. It is already day but the sky is still black, black with smoke. “Do you want me to take you to a doctor?” No, it’s OK, he gestures. “Yes, I can see that! Tell me what’s going on!” Razmodin’s worried gaze lingers on Rassoul’s shirt. “What is that blood? Did they beat you up?”

  After a moment’s thought, Rassoul stands up to look out at the courtyard, and sees Yarmohamad watching him. He beckons him to come up. But the landlord goes back inside his own house. “Leave him alone! He came to my office at dawn and told me everything. He was pale and kept telling me it wasn’t him … And that’s the truth. There are patrols everywhere, these days. Especially in this neighborhood … You’ve no idea what’s going on in this country right now. Buried in who-knows-what world, you have no interest …” Stop, Razmodin, please! Look what they’ve done to him.

  Razmodin stops, not to notice the state Rassoul is in, but to hear him explain himself. He waits a moment. Nothing. He can’t believe it. Rassoul rolls up his sleeves to reveal his bruises. “What sons of bitches! But you’re a madman, too. What are you doing with all these Russian books in times like this?” Rassoul’s ankle starts hurting again. He grimaces and sits back down on the bed to rub it. His cousin stares down at him. “Dostoevsky! Dostoevsky! You’re always getting in trouble with your damned Dostoevsky! How do you expect them to know who he is?”

  They aren’t all as ignorant as you, Razmodin! Commandant Parwaiz, whose name I’m sure you know, is very familiar with Dostoevsky. His troops are based just opposite your place, in the Ministry of Culture and Information. But in my current state, I am not able to tell you about it.

  Write it down!

  What’s the point? It’s more peaceful like this, without words, without all these endless conversations. I’ll just leave him to wonder at my mute state.

  “Yarmohamad told me that they took you to Commandant Parwaiz’s office. I know him.” So you were right. “We were imprisoned together during the 1979 protests. That was a stroke of luck, being sent to him. Did you mention my name?” Rassoul shakes his head, then stands up to lurk behind the window once more. Yarmohamad is back in the courtyard. Rassoul beckons again for him to come over. “Forget him, it’s done. I paid him the two months’ rent you owed, he’ll leave you alone now.” Distressed by his cousin’s generosity, Rassoul totters back to his bed and attempts to communicate in sign language that he shouldn’t have done it, that he, Rassoul, would have paid it … The same words he’d used last time, when Razmodin paid three months’ rent on his behalf.

  “And what exactly would you have paid it with?! You’ve let everything drop. Look at the state of you. You look like a beggar, or a madman escaped from an asylum!” Razmodin would have said, again.

  So there is no point in Rassoul going to such lengths to make himself understood. But Razmodin expects to hear it from Rassoul. He can’t understand why he won’t talk to him. He looks on curiously as Rassoul stands up and rummages through a mound of clothing, looking for a clean shirt. They are all dirty and rumpled. Rassoul knows that. He is just pretending, so he doesn’t have to respond to Razmodin. The thing is, he doesn’t want him to know that he has lost his voice. They are cousins, and know each other well. They can hear each other’s thoughts, even when they are unspoken. Despite this, Razmodin insists as he always does.

  “Rassoul, you’ve got to do something. How long are you going to live like this? If I could speak the languages you can, I’d have earned buckets of cash by now. These foreign journalists and humanitarian organizations are all crying out for interpreters. Every day, a hundred times a day, people ask me if I know someone who speaks even a little English. But how can I give them your name? You’ve already landed me in the shit. I’ve regretted it a dozen times.” And again, he will forgive him. “If you want, you can put the past behind you and start again. But I beg you, cousin, stop being so aggressive with the journalists. What business is it of yours who works for who, or why they are defending this or that group? Just take the dollars—fuck them and their ideas and shitty political posturing!” But this time, he doesn’t wait for Rassoul to bend his ear with his usual motto: “I’d rather be a murderer than a traitor!” Instead, he continues: “It’s easy to say that you’d rather be a murderer than a traitor. Why don’t you carry a gun then? You’re burying your head in the sand. If you’re asked to fly, you say you’re a camel, and if you’re asked to carry, you say you’re a bird. You’ve dropped your parents, forgotten your sister and your friends. If you want to fuck everything up then just carry on as you are. Do you even know what you want from life?” Furious, he stands up, takes a cigarette from his pocket and lights it. Despite his annoyance at these repeated reproaches, Rassoul is still pretending to look for a shirt, while nodding his head and drawing circles in the air with his hand to signal that he knows what’s coming.

  “I swear, you’ve changed, you’re no longer the same man. You wanted Sophia, you got her. But what are you doing with her now? Do you want her to meet the same fate as you? We grew up together, cousin, we know each other, you’re like my brother. You taught me everything …” Razmodin doesn’t finish the sentence, because when he made the same speech—or nearly—a few weeks ago, Rassoul snapped: “Except for one thing.”

  “What?”

  “The horror of a moral lecture.”

  “I’m not trying to lecture you. I’m holding up a mirror.”

  “A mirror? No, it’s the bottom of a glass that bears only your own face, and which you hold up to others in order to say Be like me!”

  Better to shut up, Razmodin. You think I’m pretending not to give a fuck about what you’re telling me. It’s a good thing you don’t know that I’m condemned to silence, or you’d still be speaking. You’d have emptied out your heart, bilious from my previous insults, without hearing me say that I don’t want your charity, I don’t like your fleamarket humanitarians, I hate these philanthropists who only care about their own name, I can’t s
tand all these buzzards circling above our corpses, these flies buzzing around the arsehole of a dead cow. Yes, I hate everything now: myself, and you too, my cousin, my childhood friend—you who are looking into my eyes, waiting for me to say something. Well, you won’t hear anything from me now. Perhaps you think this silence is a sign of indifference toward you. Or else resignation to your recriminations.

  Interpret it how you will. What difference will that make to the world? To me? None. So just leave me alone!

  After this long silence, Razmodin attacks again: “So now you won’t speak to me anymore? It’s all over?” Rassoul stops rummaging through his clothes. He shrugs his shoulders to show that he has nothing left to say. Disappointed, Razmodin stands up. “You’ve really lost it now, Rassoul. If you don’t want to see me anymore, or listen to me, then I’m off …,” he heads toward the door … “the fact that I paid the rent was just to protect our family’s honor. That’s it!” and he leaves.

  Rassoul is dumbfounded, his face frozen. Then suddenly he rushes to the window to cry out.

  I can no longer even yell my despair, my hatred, my rage …

  So cry out in hope, joy, serenity. Perhaps that will help you find your voice again.

  Where must I look for them?

  Wherever you lost them.

  RASSOUL LOOKS at himself in the small mirror hanging from the wall; looks with rage and hatred. He strokes his beard. He moistens his cheeks with the last drops of water from the jug, and picks up his razor; the blade is blunt; he continues regardless; it grazes his skin. The blood flows. He takes no notice, shaving furiously, scraping the blade repeatedly across and under his chin. A fly starts buzzing around the cuts. He waves it away. It comes back and tastes the blood. He slaps it away harshly, making the razor slip on his cheek. Another cut. He doesn’t give a damn. He keeps shaving, more and more frantic, as if trying to scrape off his skin.

  His movements are slowed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Someone knocks at the door. After a moment of stillness and silence he opens without bothering to wipe his bloodstained face. It is a woman in a sky-blue chador. When she sees Rassoul she gives a muffled cry and steps back slightly. Then she unveils herself. Sophia. Her innocent eyes are wide with horror. “What happened, Rassoul?” He runs his hand over his face, moving his lips to indicate that it’s just the blunt blade … but she doesn’t understand. “What’s the matter?” Nothing, gestures Rassoul, despairingly. “We waited up late for you last night. Why didn’t you come? My mother was so worried. She didn’t sleep all night.” Should I explain to her that I’ve lost my voice? Yes, why not. Who else can you confide in?

  Rassoul takes a step backward into the room, so Sophia can enter. Then he starts looking for a pen and paper. But Sophia notices Yarmohamad’s children watching and decides to remain at the door. “I don’t want to bother you. I just came to find you to go …” She doesn’t finish her sentence, perturbed by Rassoul rummaging anxiously through his books. After a moment of silence and hesitation, she pulls the chador back down over her face and departs, leaving Rassoul to search for something on which to write his voiceless words, leaving him in that dream where he’s pursuing her through the streets of Saint Petersburg. And what if that woman in the sky-blue chador really was her? A stupid question that forces him into action. He rushes down to the courtyard. Sophia is already out on the street. He washes his face at the courtyard tap, returns to his room to change, and sets off after her.

  What an absurd thought! If it had been Sophia, you would have recognized her voice.

  Her voice?

  He stops.

  Don’t tell me you don’t know her voice!

  Of course I know it, but I can’t remember how it sounds when she shouts. Actually, I’ve never heard her shout, or raise her voice at all. Well, what about her walk? The way she runs?

  Sophia moves as if in water. Her shoulders move back and forth like fins. Yes, but that particular way of walking was a long time ago, without a chador. All women walk the same in the chador, don’t they?

  They do.

  Uncertainty and doubt make Rassoul limp even faster on his way to Sophia’s house. He is so bizarrely overexcited that he cannot convince himself such a shy and innocent girl would never get up to something as dangerous as that.

  It was her, he feels like yelling at the top of his voice. Her! She did it, not only out of love for me and her family, but also from hate for Nana Alia! Yes! She did it!

  As he weaves through the crowded streets, engulfed in the black smoke that has descended on the city, a man grabs him by the shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Rassoulovski?”

  It is Jano’s cheerful voice. Jano notices the cuts on Rassoul’s face. “Did we do that to you?” No, he mimes, a razor. The blade of destiny, he would have said if he still had his voice. “You lucky devil! At least you know you have a destiny,” Jano would probably have replied. A destiny. Rassoul would rather not have one at all.

  “And your voice?”

  Still nothing.

  After a few steps in silence, Jano asks: “So, are you going to join Commandant Parwaiz? He’ll give you a good Kalashnikov! Do you know how to shoot?” No. “You’ll learn it all in a day. In any case …” he leans in close, whispers, “the bullet finds its own target,” and he laughs. A brief, smug laugh followed by a wink at the Kalashnikov he keeps hidden beneath his patou.

  Another few steps in silence. They are both thinking—Rassoul about the slow blade of his destiny, Jano about the targets of his stray bullets. They come to a chai-khana, and the young soldier invites Rassoul in. Why not? He feels like something to eat and drink, and more importantly getting to know Parwaiz’s crew, finding out whether or not they’ve found Nana Alia’s corpse. In brief, there are a thousand reasons to pursue this adventure instead of trying to find Sophia.

  Inside they sit by a window, next to three armed men who immediately break off their conversation to stare.

  Jano orders tea and bread. Apropos of nothing, he asks Rassoul: “Your landlord … do you know him well?” Yes, Rassoul nods sadly. Jano continues, “When we came into the house yesterday evening, just on patrol, he rushed over to tell us about his strange ex-communist tenant who had stopped paying his rent …” Rassoul’s persistent silence prevents Jano from continuing. He glances anxiously at their neighbors, who are still staring. How annoying. He takes a noisy gulp of tea and goes on.

  “Your blade scratches your face. Ours is sharper, it injures our very souls!” He stuffs a piece of bread into his mouth. “I was only twelve when the war broke out. My father put a gun on my shoulder and sent me off to do jihad against the Red Army. The things I saw … If you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t want to hear a single word of Russian, my friend. They burned down our village. I found my family’s remains, burnt to ashes! Commandant Parwaiz adopted me. He gave me the strength and courage to fight to avenge my family. And while we were mourning our dead, the destruction of our villages, the humiliation of our sisters … you, you were having a grand old time in the arms of little blonde white girls, soft and lively as fish … isn’t that right?” Another gulp of scalding tea. “You never imagined that we starving, barefoot creatures could ever take power …” Rassoul painfully ingests both the bread and the words. Even the tea burns his throat, his tongue. He would like to respond that his life hasn’t been as peaceful as Jano might think. By telling him about his conflict with his communist father, he might make himself more sympathetic.

  No guarantee of that. Jano would probably reproach him in much the same way as another mujahideen he’d spoken to recently: “That too is your Russian education.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not respecting your father is a Russian abomination!”

  “But I didn’t want to follow my father’s ideology. I was against the invasion of my country by the Russians.” “If you were a good son, you would respect him and follow his path, his beliefs!”

  “But what are you
saying? How can one follow a father who is a war criminal?”

  “That’s right, you must never betray your father, not even if he’s a murderer.”

  “And if he’s an unbeliever?”

  Silence.

  Jano sips his tea, his chest puffed out. Rassoul watches him, holding on to his rage and his desire to crush it against this chest puffed up with arrogant, rotten pride, to destroy this cage stuffed with hollow power …

  But why, Rassoul? What do you know about him? He hasn’t said anything. Leave the guy alone. He is happy. He is proud. He isn’t suffering as you are. Thank God that you can’t speak!

  Drink your tea, eat your bread, and get out of here!

  As Rassoul stands up, one of the armed men addresses Jano. “Excuse me, brother, aren’t you Jano?”

  “Yes.”

  The man walks up to him, smiling. “Don’t you recognize me? Momène, from Commandant Nawroz’s troop?”

  Jano drops his glass of tea, startled. “Of course! How could I forget? You’ve changed a bit. Put on weight, definitely! That must be five or six years ago … or more?”

  “Six years.”

  They stand up, throw themselves into each other’s arms, embrace warmly, and sit back down together. The perfect chance for Rassoul to escape. He gets to his feet to shake Jano’s hand and take his leave. But the soldier won’t have it. He invites him to drink another tea with these old friends.

  “Sit down!” He turns toward the other men. “Last night we beat this brother during a patrol, and today we’re drinking tea together! Who says we don’t want peace!” He snorts with laughter, tugging at Rassoul to sit down.

  And Rassoul complies.

  They order more tea. And smoke cigarettes. Momène starts telling his friends about “Our unforgettable operation! Six years ago …”

  “Yes, six years ago,” confirms Jano nostalgically. He turns to Rassoul. “It was summertime. A summer evening. We were on our way to attack a Soviet location. We’d been told that Commandant Nawroz would be in charge of this operation. Commandant Nawroz and our Commandant Parwaiz didn’t get on at all, but they decided to attack the Russians together anyway. We would take the prisoners, and they would get the guns …” Interrupted by a laugh from Momène, he takes a gulp of tea then continues. “Anyway, as soon as night fell we attacked!” This time he’s interrupted by his own laughter, and it is Momène who takes up the story.