A Curse on Dostoevsky

by Atiq Rahimi

  A shahid? No thanks! That’s what everyone wants, these days. There’d be no point in that. The whole world would have to know that I had committed suicide.

  So, go to a busy crossroads, make a speech and then shoot yourself in the head in front of witnesses. That way everyone will know. But even then, no one will understand the theoretical importance of your act. Each person will create their own explanation. One will say: “He was sick”; another: “He smoked a lot of hashish”; someone else: “It was remorse. He behaved badly toward his family”; or “He regretted being a collaborator, a communist, a traitor!”; and, if they eventually find out that it was you who murdered Nana Alia, they will say that it was your bad conscience that led to your suicide. Yes, no one will say that you committed suicide just because you’d come to the end, that your questions lacked a question mark, that all your questioning had come to nothing more than this stupor faced with the sudden absurdity of life. No one will say that you killed a louse, a loathsome, harmful creature, to attain the status of a “great man” and thus take your place in history. What’s more, don’t forget that today, here, in this country, everyone wants to attain that status. Everyone is fighting to become either a ghazi, if he kills, or a shahid, if he is killed. Your nearest and dearest will make you out to be a ghazi, because you killed a madam, and a shahid, because her family killed you in vengeance. On your tombstone they will write: “Shahid Rassoul, son of Ibrahim,” whether you want it or not.

  No. I don’t want that.

  Well, then, put down the gun.

  So I don’t even have the freedom to commit suicide?

  No.

  Does God really exist, as Dostoevsky said, to prevent man from committing suicide?

  That’s it, you’re off again! No, Rassoul, he was thinking of something else. Your Allah, on the other hand, allows suicide only as a way of bearing witness to his existence and his glory. Any suicide beyond that robs him of his name Al-Mumit, he who deals death.

  The pistol slips from his hands.

  And so it ends. He will not commit suicide, he cannot. Suicide requires just one thing: the action, and nothing more. No thoughts, no words, no remorse, no regret, no hope, no despair …

  Dawn, bolder than Rassoul, ravages the sky, picking off the stars one by one.

  And sleep, more rapacious even than dawn, takes over Rassoul’s exhausted body.

  A SOFT, gentle murmur ripples through the room, close to him. Through half-open eyes he can only make out a shape: the ethereal face of a wide-eyed young woman. She is whispering: “Rassoul?” It’s a lovely dream. “Rassoul!” the voice becomes anxious, loud, forcing him to open his eyes. “Are you OK?”

  Sophia? How long has she been here? What time is it? Rassoul stares dully at his Russian alarm clock, which still isn’t working—it hasn’t worked for ages, he just looks at it out of habit, or “chronic absurdity” as he says.

  He sits up and turns toward the window. The sky is still smoky and full of ashes. The sun doesn’t know where to appear. It will not appear. It is waiting for the earth to turn.

  “What’s going on?” asks Sophia, still staring at him anxiously. Rassoul feels for the pistol, and picks it up. “Since when have you been carrying a gun?” she asks suspiciously. He puts it back down so he can pick up a cigarette, making out that he doesn’t feel like replying so she doesn’t realize that he can’t speak, even though he knows how stupid that is. “My mother told me about your father, may God bless his soul. But why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you go to the burial?” She takes Rassoul’s hands in her own. “Now I understand your silence, your sadness …” No, Sophia, you don’t understand a thing. You ask these questions, when you know that the death of Rassoul’s father means nothing to him. It’s been a long time that they’ve been estranged, on both sides. He told you that. He is simply worried for his mother and his sister. He must rescue them. But that too is another story. Rassoul is thinking about one thing and one thing only: Where were you that night? Look at him carefully. Listen to his silence.

  “Rassoul, I’ve gone back to work for Nana Alia.” He knows that. “I do love you, I promise, but I have to work. If I don’t work, who will? My mother? My brother? You know what our lives are like. I swear to you, when Nazigol came over last night my mother threw herself at her feet, begging to go in my place. But Nazigol wouldn’t take her. They don’t want her.”

  They don’t want her?

  Who is this they?

  Sophia stifles a sob and continues: “Last time you told me that I shouldn’t work there because people would talk, I didn’t go. And what happened? A week of starvation, a week of poverty. And who took care of us, that week?” She bursts into tears. “We can’t expect anything from you, either. And now you have your mother and sister to look after as well. And you need help yourself. So listen to me. I know it’s hard for you to accept, but tell me, Rassoul, do I have any choice?” No, she has no choice. And as she said, Rassoul, you no longer have anything to give her. You are empty. You are nothing. Incapable of suicide, incapable of sorting yourself out, or of protecting your sister and mother; you have even less, therefore, to offer Sophia and her family. You are not ashamed of your hopelessness, your apathy, and yet you feel dishonored and humiliated by what Sophia is doing. She, she is more innocent, purer, more worthy than you. Throw yourself at her feet, and cry out: “I do not bow down to you, I bow down to all the suffering of humanity.” Go on!

  He trembles.

  See, you can’t even utter your hero Raskolnikov’s most magnificent sentence, but you keep on feigning his nerve. What a wretch!

  His hands come together, clasp each other, as if in prayer. His head sinks into his shoulders. He writhes, and is broken. He understands that dignity is neither a stupid manly code of honor nor an absurd tribal morality, but simply the will of a being who admits his own weakness, and demands it be respected.

  “Where did this money come from?” asks Sophia, holding out the bundle of notes he gave to Dawoud.

  Now you’re going to have to write, Rassoul. You can’t just stay silent, leaving Sophia in the dark. She’ll probably end up thinking that you stole the money from Nana Alia. She and Nazigol must have noticed how strangely you were behaving the other day.

  Yes, I’ll write it all down for her. This money comes from my mother’s sale of my sister Donia to a commandant. It’s the price of my cowardice!

  More and more agitated, he stands up to look for some paper and a pencil. Sophia stares at him curiously: “You need this money for your mother and your sister …” Rassoul finds Sophia’s notebook. “I love you, Rassoul. But I can’t live with you. Or, rather, you cannot live with me,” she says, standing up to put on her chador and leave. But before she walks out of the door Rassoul stops her and hands over the notebook. “What is it? It’s …” she hesitates, “Is it my notebook?” Yes. “My notebook!” she exclaims vaguely, flooded with memories, smiling shyly. Rassoul gestures that she should open it. She does. He rushes over and turns to the final page, which she reads, rereads quietly to herself, and finally repeats out loud: “Today, I killed Nana Alia.” She looks up, not sure she has understood. She walks over to Rassoul. “What does this mean?” He points to the next sentence, and she reads it: “I killed her for you, Sophia,” then the next: “Sophia, I have never kissed you. Do you know why?…” She shuts the notebook, looks down as if searching anywhere but Rassoul’s lips for the meaning of the words. “Is it a poem?” she asks candidly. No, I killed. He tries to act it out, in vain. He looks right into her eyes in a fury, a dull fury at his inability to tell her everything. “Stop looking at me like that! You’re scaring me. Tell me what it is?” Go on, Rassoul, write down that you’ve lost your voice. “Why won’t you say anything? Have you really decided to stop talking?”

  Distraught, he nods “yes,” and sits back down on the bed. He almost picks up the pencil and writes, but something stops him. Something cynical. He still doesn’t know the cause of this resentment. Probably t
he fact that his silence annoys everyone, especially those who love him. And yet he does want to tell Sophia, in great detail, exactly how he came up with the idea of killing Nana Alia. It was when they quarreled, a week ago. Afterward he went to the teahouse and heard two militiamen talking about Nana Alia, the filthy whore who wasn’t just a moneylender. She had young girls working for her, ostensibly to do the cleaning but in fact for liaisons with her clients. Rassoul suddenly realized why she wanted Sophia to work late into the night. He couldn’t bear it. Yes, that was when he had the idea. The next day …

  “No, you cannot …,” she murmurs. “You cannot kill,” she repeats, as if she has already heard Rassoul’s whole story. She doesn’t believe it, will never believe it. Whatever he might say, or rather write, would simply be lying.

  Yes, your story is just an absurd pastiche of Crime and Punishment, which you’ve described to her a hundred times, and that’s all it is.

  Beaten, he looks desperately at Sophia. He would like to ask her why she doesn’t believe his story.

  But how could she?

  There is no proof. No one is talking about it. No one has seen Nana Alia’s body, or she would have heard.

  That’s the thing, I need Sophia’s help to unravel the mystery.

  It’s a mystery to you, but not to her. For her the murder is irrelevant.

  She comes up to him, thoughtful and anxious. “Say something to me, Rassoul! Just a word, I’m begging you.” What does she want to hear? There is nothing more to say. “Did you really kill her?” Yes. “And you really killed her for me?”

  He kneels on his mattress and buries his face in his knees. Sophia bends over and strokes his hair. “Oh Rassoul, you love me that much?”

  Yes, he loves you.

  She hugs his head. She feels like crying.

  Can she live with a murderer?

  How to know? She doesn’t say anything, either.

  But by remaining silent she says a great deal. She says that recently, at Nana Alia’s house, she has met only thieves, criminals, and murderers, next to whom Rassoul is merely an innocent little ant. A nothing.

  A nothing! He repeats to himself, snuggling deeper into Sophia’s arms. And he waits.

  He waits for Sophia to instruct him: Go at once, this very minute, stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, “I am a murderer!”

  It would do him good to hear that. But don’t forget, Rassoul, that Sophia is not Sonia, Rasknolnikov’s sweetheart. Sophia is from another world. She knows that if you do that, in this city, you will be taken for a madman.

  “Right, come with me!” she says, disentangling herself from Rassoul and rushing to her chador, which she pulls over her head. “We’re going to Shah-e do Shamshira Wali’s tomb.” But … why? “Let’s go there, together, to pray. Revive your faith in Allah! Do tobah! Tell him that you have killed in his name, and he will forgive you. There are plenty who have killed in his name; you are just one of many.”

  But I didn’t kill in the name of Allah. And I don’t need His forgiveness.

  So what do you want?

  Her to come back to me!

  So go with her, follow her!

  HE FOLLOWS her.

  Wrapped in her sky-blue chador, she walks two steps in front of him. They stride down the big road that leads to the Shah-e do Shamshira Wali mosque and mausoleum, on the banks of the Kabul River. The city is still breathing the sulphurous air of war. Gasping.

  They enter the mausoleum courtyard, among the many pilgrims. At the entrance to the tomb Sophia removes her shoes and puts them next to the others, watched by a swarthy caretaker. Rassoul remains outside. He looks for shade beneath the “Wish Tree,” whose branches are festooned with countless shreds of colored fabric. An old woman stands up painfully to knot a green ribbon onto the tree. At her feet, an old man sits watching the pigeons ambling around in a pile of grain, making no effort to eat it.

  Having managed to tie her ribbon, the old woman sits down triumphantly next to the old man. “My son will come to me, for sure!” The old man isn’t listening, he is preoccupied with the pigeons. “Don’t give them wheat!” says the old woman crossly. The old man exclaims, “They only eat wheat. People don’t understand and bring them millet. Look!” as he throws a handful of wheat to the pigeons, who rush for it. “See?”

  “It’s a sin!”

  “Why is it a sin?”

  “Giving wheat is a sin.”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “From the Koran.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, it was because of wheat that Hazrat Adam and Bibi Hawa were exiled from paradise.”

  “Show me the verses.”

  “I told you, it’s a sin.”

  “My sin or their sin?”

  “Your sin, it’s you who is giving the wheat.”

  “I don’t give a damn. They don’t have to eat it, then. They too have their own free will.” He is having a good time, and turns toward Rassoul: “Who gives a damn about sin, when you’re hungry! Isn’t that right?” He leans toward him: “Between you and me, would Hazrat Adam and Bibi Hawa have eaten the forbidden fruit if they weren’t hungry? No.”

  “Don’t say that! Don’t sin, do not sin …” insists the old lady.

  “Well, why do you sit here, sharing my sin?” he says. “You wanted to make your wish, you’ve done it. Your son will come to you. So why are you still here? Go home.”

  The woman doesn’t move.

  “Wheat fattens them up. And after all, a fat pigeon is better than a thin one. Do you know why?” the old man asks Rassoul; then, after a moment’s pause, to emphasize what he is about to say rather than to wait for a response: “No, you don’t know …” He looks at Rassoul. “Are you from Kabul?” Yes. “You can’t be from here, or you would know why.” He takes another handful of wheat from his pocket and holds out his hand so the pigeons will eat from it. “Come on, come here; come and get fat.” He asks Rassoul: “Do you make this ziarat often?” No. “Good on you. I come here every day. But not to pray, or make a wish. Far from it. I don’t look for Allah in tombs. He is here”—he taps his chest—“in my heart!” He moves closer to Rassoul so he can whisper: “You know, the communists spent ten years doing everything they could to turn this nation against Allah, without success. The Muslims, on the other hand, have achieved it in a single year!” and laughs. A silent, mischievous laugh. “You see, all these bearded guys who spend their days praying and moaning over Shah-e do Shamshira Wali’s tomb spend their nights doing what the heathens did to that holy man. Do you know his story?” Another pause, once again to emphasize what he’s about to say: “No, you don’t know it. I’ll tell you: he was related to an uncle of the Prophet. This is his sacred tomb. Leys Ben Gheys, the King with two swords! He died a martyr here in Kabul. He had come to convert our country to Islam, and he was killed. He was fighting the unbelievers and they cut off his head; but this holy man continued to fight, with a sword in each hand.” The man pauses to observe the effect of his great tale. Shocked by Rassoul’s impassivity, he moves closer, lowering his voice as if to share an impressive secret: “Today, the same men who pray here during the day, by night organize ceremonies they call the ‘dance of the dead.’ Do you know about the ‘dance of the dead’?” He stops, glances at Rassoul, and emphasizes: “No, you don’t know. I will tell you: they cut off someone’s head and splash the wound with boiling oil, making the poor headless body wriggle and hop. They call it the ‘dance of the dead.’ Had you heard of that? No, you hadn’t!” But in fact, old man, Rassoul has heard this story, and others too, worse than that.

  The man looks despairingly at the grains of wheat in his trembling hand. From his bloodless lips burst the words: “Do you know … why they do it?” No, Rassoul mimes, looking at the man ironically as if to preempt him: “But you’re going to tell me.” The man searches for the right words, then continues: “Have th
ey no fear of Allah?” They have. And that is why they do it. “Would you be capable of committing an atrocity like that?” Yes. The man is surprised by Rassoul’s nod. “You would? Have you no fear of Allah?” No.

  The old man’s hand is waving about. The grains of wheat fall to the ground. “Lahawolla belahall … You have no fear of Allah!” and he recites once more his profession of faith. “Are you a Muslim?” Yes.

  The man plunges back into his thoughts, re-emerging a few seconds later in still greater despair: “In fact, given everything I’ve told you, whom should one fear most? Man, or Allah?” And he falls silent.

  Surprised by how long Sophia is taking to pray, Rassoul leaves the old man to his doubts and stands up to wander slowly toward the tomb. He stands at the gate and peers inside. A few women are keening as they lean over the rails surrounding the tomb. Others have sat down to pray in silence. Sophia is not among them. He returns to the caretaker and looks for her shoes, but cannot find them.

  He glances back inside. No sign of her. Nor outside, either.

  What has happened? Why did this heart, which had once again opened, shut back down so quickly? Did she bring him here to distance herself from him, to bid him goodbye, without a word?

  GOODBYE, SOPHIA!

  And he takes a great drag of hash, which he holds in his lungs for as long as possible.

  Goodbye, Sophia! You left with the only secret I had.

  Goodbye!

  Another two or three drags, and he leaves the saqi-khana.

  I am never coming back. I’m going to shut myself in my room, as gloomy as a grave, with no future and no way out. I will not eat. I will not drink. I will not leave my bed. I will let myself be taken by an endless sleep, free of dreams and of thought. Until I am nothing. A nothingness in the emptiness, a shadow in the abyss, an immortal corpse.