by Atiq Rahimi
And Sophia? Where is she?
Rassoul peers out into the passage. No sound, no sign of her. “I asked Nazigol for some money, telling myself that for once my children were going to eat their fill,” she says, as if justifying something. But what? She bends over her stove, looking into the pots as if they might contain her words. After a long pause, she says: “Sophia has gone to Nana Alia’s house.” Her voice is curt, too curt. “Nazigol came over to find her. She’s all alone. Her mother has disappeared off somewhere. There’s lots to do, and Sophia won’t be back till late.” But Rassoul asked her to never go back there. And she has. In other words, his instructions no longer mean anything to her. That’s it, then. He turns to leave, but Sophia’s mother stops him without turning around: “Rassoul …” A pause that presages no good. “I’ve … I’ve one or two things to say to you.” This is it. Rassoul is going to hear what he has been dreading she will say. “But I don’t know how to say them.” She wipes her nose on a corner of her headscarf. “Don’t take this badly. I know that we understand each other …” Yes, Rassoul understands you perfectly. He’s been waiting awhile now to hear you say what’s on your mind. Tell him everything. “Until when are we going to wait for you? Especially now that your life has changed. Your mother and sister need you, even more than we do. You must go and take care of them.” Rassoul feels as if his body is emptying. Emptying of blood, hope, life. He is just a wisp of straw, futile, dry, and tiny, to be tossed on the ground, or whisked away by the slightest breeze. He leans on the wall so as not to collapse under the feet of Sophia’s mother, who continues: “We have to think of ourselves now; we can’t just keep waiting for you forever. You have nothing anymore. No work. No money. Until when? Let us take ourselves in hand, and find a solution.” But he loves Sophia. “Go home to your mother, Rassoul! We will manage. Don’t worry.” But he loves Sophia.
Yes, she knows that. And that’s why she is quiet, now, holding back her words and expressing her thoughts only with a gaze full of pity and sadness for Rassoul. He looks down. After a long moment, he walks out of the kitchen and down the passage. In a corner of the courtyard he sees Dawoud working on a pigeon’s wounded wing by the light of an oil lamp. Rassoul takes out the bundle of notes and gives it to Dawoud. “What’s this?” Money for his Colt. Dawoud is delighted. He takes the money and holds out the pistol. “All this money is for me?” Yes. “All of it?” All of it. “How many pigeons can I buy with this?” Rassoul leaves him to his calculations, disappearing down the dusty streets of Dehafghanan like a shadow in the darkness, uncertain and empty.
Yes, empty. Empty of all substance.
No, Rassoul, you are not empty. You are simply free. Free of all constraint, all responsibility. Free because Sophia no longer needs you. And neither do your mother and sister.
Yes, this is emptiness: when nobody needs me, when I have nothing left to give. When whether I live or die changes nothing for them.
Exactly. Without you, the world will not be empty, but emptied of you. That’s all.
I don’t want to drag Sophia into this emptiness.
So, leave her!
I’m going to leave her. But first I’ve got to tell her that Nana Alia is no longer alive, that I killed her with my own hands.
She’ll find that out sooner or later. This evening she’s with Nazigol, who is offering the “hospitality” her mother used to provide. Amer Salam and his guests are bound to be there. What are you going to do?
Rassoul stops.
Inside, a sob he doesn’t know how to dissolve. He rummages in his pocket for a cigarette, knocking the pistol with his hand. A hand that is trembling. Oozing tears. Weeping for his death.
A BODY crashes to the floor. Rassoul opens his eyes. Through the veil of smoke he can just make out Jalal. He drags himself over and gives the young man a shake. Hopeless; he is lying on the floor, a line of spittle dribbling from his mouth. “That’s a happy man,” murmurs Kaka Sarwar, curled up with his eyes closed. “He’s not moving,” says a young man next to Rassoul. Kaka Sarwar opens one eye, glances at Jalal and repeats: “That’s a happy man. Born high, dying high.”
“What can we do for him?”
“Nothing,” whispers Mustapha, stoned, in another corner of the saqi-khana, his hands huddled under his armpits.
“He wants to die. Now that our lives depend on others, allow us the right to die,” says Kaka Sarwar, closing his eyes again and droning into his beard: “We come and go, but for the gain, where is it? / And spin life’s woof, but for the warp, where is it? / And many a righteous man has burned to dust / In heaven’s blue rondure, but their smoke, where is it?”
Rassoul backs away, to sit against the wall and stare at Jalal, waiting to witness the arrival of another death. A peaceful, gentle death. It will remove Jalal from this hell. Stop him dying from a stray bullet, or the blade of an ax. A death without suffering. And there will be no one to accuse, to condemn, or to execute. There will be neither crime nor punishment.
Rassoul takes out a cigarette and lights it, then stands up and leaves the smoking den to return to his fly-ridden room. He walks over to the bed, crushes his cigarette on the wall and lies down. Something in his pocket is bothering him. The gun. He rests it on his chest. What is to be done? He asks himself. What is to be done? he repeats in the silence of his throat, then tries to shout the question in the hope that the words will ring out from his lips, into this room, at the foot of the mountain, above the city … But there is no sound at all, no response.
What is to be done; it must be said without a question mark. It is not a question, but a thought. No, it’s not even a thought, it’s a state of being. Yes, that’s right, a state of dullness, a state in which questions astound rather than challenge, ring out rather than inquire.
What is to be done.
I have already experienced this state, already seen it, I’ve even seen it in the eyes of a donkey.
It was autumn, and I was eleven years old.
As every year at that season, my father took me hunting near Jalalabad, where my grandparents had a great qal’a or clay fortress. The country hadn’t yet been invaded by the Russians, the war hadn’t yet started, and my father still got on well with his anti-communist in-laws.
As usual, we had a donkey to carry our hunting equipment and to guide us through the featureless deserts and valleys. After a long journey, we came to an enormous reed field surrounding a large lake. The perfect place for hunting migrant birds. We tied the donkey to a lone, dead tree not far from the field.
At the lakeside, we built a makeshift shelter in which we could wait for the birds. It was still early. While we waited, my father drifted off to sleep.
The gentle wind caressed the reeds, making them whistle a lovely, peaceful, sleep-inducing tune. I gradually dozed off, and slept for a long time. By the time I opened my eyes, the dusk had already enveloped the field in a strange, sad, and disturbing fog.
My father was very excited and kept looking up at the sky, saying that the migrant birds wouldn’t be long now. He checked his shotgun several times.
The minutes went by, night was falling, but there was no sound, and no sign from the sky.
Silence.
Emptiness.
Suddenly, the donkey’s braying invaded the field; quiet to start with, then louder and louder, frightened and frightening.
My father told me to go and see what was happening. I hesitated; I was scared. He shouted at me to go and quiet the beast or else the birds would never land. I went, the blood frozen in my veins. At the edge of the field I was horrified to see two wolves snarling and prowling around the donkey, preparing to attack. The trapped animal could do nothing but bray.
I panicked and ran to tell my father. He rushed furiously through the reeds with his gun. At first he tried to scare away the wolves by pelting them with stones, but they turned on us. Their gleaming eyes made them look terrifying. Even more afraid than before, I hid behind my father who cocked his gun and pointed it
at the wolves. At the very moment they were about to attack a shot rang out and one of the wolves fell to the floor crying. The other beast stopped, and as my father took aim backed away and ran off.
The donkey was still braying.
We had to get out of there as fast as possible, before the whole pack arrived. My father went back into the reeds to get our things while I rushed over to calm the donkey by stroking it and loosening its halter. It quieted eventually.
As he harnessed the donkey my father kept glancing up, grumbling and cursing at the filthy fucking sky.
We left.
Night was falling, the moon was shining, the donkey led the way and we followed. From time to time my father lit up the path with his torch. We climbed a hill. At the top, the donkey came to a standstill. My father hit it on the rump, but it refused to go any further. It was looking fearfully at the track. My father hit it again, harder this time, and it started moving slowly forward. I was afraid that we would get lost, but my father assured me that the donkey knew the path and that the village couldn’t be far away, perhaps another hour’s walk.
We walked down the hill, through another field, and up another hill. As we reached the top, the donkey once again came to a standstill. My father’s beatings forced it to proceed down the slope against its will.
At the foot of that hill, another huge field opened up in front of us, with a single tree in the middle. The donkey headed straight for the tree. As we approached, we could just make out in the twilight the corpse of an animal, with another beast standing watch. My father switched on his torch. It was the body of a wolf. The second wolf looked up. We were rooted to the spot, appalled. My father loaded his gun. The donkey was fearlessly approaching the wolves. The live one walked up to it, growling. As soon as my father took aim, it ran away.
The donkey walked past the dead wolf and stopped under the tree. My father’s torch lit up the body of the animal, then the tree, and finally the surrounding area. Both of us were first surprised and then horrified to find ourselves back in the same place where my father had killed the wolf. My voice shaking, I asked my father why the donkey had brought us back to the same place. He had no idea. He rushed wildly over to the donkey, and walloped it on the back to make it move. But the donkey stood quite still. Unbelievable. My father picked up the stick and passed me the rope, telling me to pull. In vain—the beast had decided to go no further. I could see that in its dull, tired eyes. I stroked and begged, to no avail. My father was becoming more and more furious. He gave me the stick, grabbed the rope, and shouted at me to hit the donkey on the back and head.
But my heart wasn’t in it. My half-hearted blows annoyed my father, who shouted and cursed at me. His shouts and the howling of the wolves rang out together across the plain.
On the verge of tears, I started hitting the donkey in impotent fury. To no effect. Discouraged and exhausted, I gave up and burst into tears. My father let go of the donkey’s rope and whacked it on the head with the butt of his gun. It fell down and wouldn’t get up. Everything seemed pointless: my tears, the cries of the wolves as they circled closer and closer, my father’s stormy orders as he took up the stick to stab its point into the donkey’s skin, swearing that if it didn’t move he would put the barrel of the gun up its rear end and shoot. But the donkey remained impassive and unchanging, lying on the ground. My father was beside himself. He lifted his gun to take aim at the donkey; it stared at him without moving.
I stopped sobbing. The silence was broken only by the howling of the wolves. The gun trembled in my father’s hand. I closed my eyes, and all I heard was a single shot, followed by the panic-stricken screeching of birds as they flew over the reed field. There was blood streaming from the beast’s forehead. Its resigned eyes opened for a moment and closed again gently, as if relieved. Then absolute silence. No bird noise, nothing from the wolves. Everything seemed frozen against the black backdrop of the night.
Once his rage had subsided and he had come back to his senses my father quickly reloaded his gun; then, with our belongings on his back, he started walking, shouting to me: “Rassoul! Come on, move! Rassoul?”
Rassoul is haunted by this strange story, which he has titled “Nayestan”—the reed field. It lives in him, silently and religiously. His father, too, used to tell the story over and over again, wherever he was, at any time, to anyone. Each time, he would ask Rassoul to fill in the details he had forgotten. This was to establish him as a witness to the incredible adventure—but Rassoul didn’t like joining in, and would leave as soon as his father started the story. Not that he’d had enough of it. No. It was just that he would have liked the story to remain a secret between him and his father. Why? He had no idea. And he still doesn’t know. But he often tells himself the story, from beginning to end. And each time he adds something and leaves something else out. From time to time, he lingers on a particular moment or image that is particularly pertinent to his current state of mind. That is why he has never wanted to write the story down, to fix it on paper. If he wrote it down, it would be flawless, featureless, dead. In any case, he is no longer able to tell what his father has added and what he himself has introduced; what is true and what is made up; what belongs to memory and what to his dreams … But it doesn’t matter. What is curious right now is that he keeps thinking about the look in the donkey’s eyes. What was hidden behind that dumb gaze?
Everything. That lost, innocent, incredulous gaze cried out to him: “But why am I lost? Why can’t I find my way? Where is the path? Is this not the path I’ve always taken? What’s going on? Why can’t I recognize where I am? Why is this road so foreign to me? Is it because it’s night-time? Or because I’m afraid? Tired? Uncertain?” From a lack of response, these questions turned into a kind of stupor. To hell with the reasons why. The donkey was there, lost. And it knew that it would never find its way again. So all it could do was groan: “What is to be done,” with no question mark.
What is to be done. Rassoul sits up. The pistol slips from his sweat-drenched chest. His heart is beating madly, as if about to explode, to burst from his chest and land next to the weapon.
He grabs the pistol with a trembling hand and points it at the top of his nose, just between his eyes. He presses the trigger. It isn’t loaded, he knows that; he just wants to practice, to find out how easy it is to shoot himself in the head.
It is easy, very easy in fact. All he has to do is close his eyes.
He closes his eyes.
To no longer think. No longer think about anything. Or anyone. Not even his enemy, his hatred, his failure.
He is no longer thinking about those things.
Focus on the pistol. His soul is the bullet; his body, the trigger. The only thing remaining is the action, as simple as a game. A game with no winners or losers, no opponents. You just have to believe in the game, your game. And think only of the action. Nothing else. Not the realness of the game, nor its futility. The only thing that matters is to execute it well, following the rules. And not to cheat.
Now, he must load the bullet, and put the pistol back between his eyes.
The pistol is heavy.
Or his hand is weakening.
He is thirsty.
You mustn’t think about water, either. Just tell yourself it’s a game, and that when the game is over, you can stand up and drink some water.
You close your eyes.
And you shoot.
ARE YOU dying, then?
Yes, I’m dying. I’m dying from a hole between the eyes from which a stream of blood is spurting, running onto the mattress, then the kilim, and ending up in a hollow of the floor, where it forms a red pool. The shot rings out in the room, the courtyard, the city. It wakes Yarmohamad. He thinks that someone has fired a shot in the street, outside his house. He turns over in bed. Rona is worried and insists that he check the shot wasn’t fired inside the complex, at me. Yarmohamad doesn’t give a damn. “Good riddance,” he mutters, huddling deeper under the sheet.
At dawn, after prayers, he will come to my room and stand silently at the door.
Why would he come?
Yes, why would he come? He won’t come. My body will remain here. Decomposing. I will be covered in flies. It will be the stink that finally brings him, two or three days later. At first he will only notice the silence. He will knock once. No response. He will push at the door, and it will open easily with a click. On finding my bloody corpse he will panic, aghast at the idea that he might be accused of murdering his tenant. Then he’ll see the pistol in my hand and realize that I have committed suicide. He’ll run to tell Razmodin.
And then?
Nothing. They’ll understand that my suicide was my last sigh at a world that no longer responds to or surprises me.
But, Rassoul, who will say that you’ve committed such an act? Nobody. Not Yarmohamad, or Razmodin. You know perfectly well that suicide isn’t part of your culture. And you know why.
First, in order to commit suicide you have to believe in life, in the value of life. Death has to be worthy of life. Here, in this country, these days, life has no value at all, and therefore neither does suicide.
Next, suicide is considered an ungrateful rebellion against the wishes of Allah. As if you were saying to him: “Here, I’m giving it back before you ask for it, this filthy soul that you introduced into my innocent body!” It’s showing that you are more powerful than him, that you won’t be his slave, his banda. Suicide is giving up your soul, without gratitude.
Before being buried, your body would be whipped. That’s why no one admits to suicide. All suicides are disguised as murders. You will merely be a victim, a shahid, one martyr among many. You who wanted to be an Übermensch.