Yasmina Khadra - The Swallows of Kabul

Atiq hangs his head. Sadly, Nazeesh isn’t the same anymore, either. Atiq met Nazeesh a decade ago, when he was a mufti in Kabul. He wasn’t an object of adulation, but hundreds of the faithful would gather to hear his Friday sermons. He lived in a big house with a garden and a wrought-iron gate, and sometimes it happened that he was invited to official ceremonies, where he received the same treatment as the notables. His sons were killed in the war against the Russians, a fact that elevated him in the esteem of the local authorities. He never seemed to complain about anything, and no one knew anybody who was his enemy. He lived a comparatively reserved life, moving from the mosque to his house, and from his house to the mosque. He read a great deal; his erudition commanded respect, even though he was seldom called upon to give his opinion. Then, without any warning, he was found one morning stalking along the avenues, wildly gesticulating, drooling, eyes bulging. The first diagnosis was that he was possessed; the exorcists, however, struggled with his demons in vain, and then he was sent for several months to an asylum. He will never return to full possession of his faculties, but sometimes, in moments of lucidity, he withdraws completely to hide his shame at what he’s become. He often sits outside his front door under a faded umbrella and looks with equal indifference upon the passing people and the passage of time.

“Do you know what I’m going to do, Atiq?”

“How could I? You never tell me anything.”

Nazeesh listens carefully; then, certain that there’s no chance he’ll be overheard, he leans toward the jailer and says in a confiding whisper, “I’m going away.”

“You’re going away where?”

Nazeesh looks toward the door, holds his breath, pricks up his ears. Unsatisfied, he gets up and goes out into the street to make sure there’s no one around. When he returns, his pupils are sparkling with demented elation. “Damned if I know. I’m just going away, that’s all there is to it. I’ve got everything ready — my bag, my stick, and my money. As soon as my right foot is healed, I’m turning over my ration card and all the papers I’ve got and then I’m going away. No thank-yous, no good-byes. I’ll pick a road at random and follow it all the way to the ocean. And when I reach the shore, I’ll throw myself into the water. I’m never coming back to Kabul. It’s an accursed city. No one can be saved here. Too many people are dying, and the streets are full of widows and orphans.”

“And Taliban, too.”

Alarmed by the jailer’s remark, Nazeesh jerks his head around in the direction of the door; his scrawny arm sketches a gesture of disgust and his neck grows an inch longer when he mutters, “Ah, them. They’ll get theirs.”

Atiq inclines his head in agreement. He picks up a slice of dried meat and examines it with a skeptical air. To prove to him that there’s no risk, Nazeesh gulps down two mouthfuls. Atiq sniffs at the morsel of dessicated flesh once again before laying it aside and selecting an apple, which he bites into hungrily. “So when will your foot be healed?”

“In a week or two. And after that, without a word to anyone, I’m going to pack my things, and— poof! — I’ll be gone in a flash, never to be seen again. I’ll walk straight ahead until I keel over, without speaking to anyone, without even meeting anyone on the way. I’m going to walk and walk and walk till the soles of my feet merge with the soles of my shoes.”

Atiq licks his lips, chooses another fruit, rubs it on his vest, and swallows it whole. “You’re always saying you’re going to leave, and you’re always here.”

“I’ve got a bad foot.”

“Before this, you had a bad hip. And before that, it was your back. And before your back, it was your eyes. You’ve been talking about leaving for months, and yet you’re always here. You were here yesterday; you’ll be here tomorrow. You’re not going anywhere, Nazeesh.”

“Yes I am. I’m going away. And I’ll cover my tracks on every road I take. No one will know where I’ve gone, and even if I should want to return, I won’t be able to find my way back.”

“Nonsense,” says Atiq. He obviously means to be disagreeable, as if frustrating the poor devil could be a way of getting revenge for his own disappointments. “You’ll never leave. You’re going to stay planted in the middle of the neighborhood like a tree. It’s not that your roots are holding you back, it’s that people like you aren’t capable of venturing farther than you can see. They fantasize about distant lands, endless highways, and incredible adventures because they’ll never be able to make them real.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“You can’t know what tomorrow has in store for us, Atiq. God alone is omniscient.”

“You don’t need a crystal ball to predict what the beggars are going to do tomorrow. Tomorrow, when the sun comes up, you’ll find them in the same place, holding out their hands and whinnying, exactly as they did yesterday and the day before that.”

“I’m not a beggar.”

“In Kabul, we’re all beggars. As for you, Nazeesh, tomorrow you’ll be on your doorstep, sitting in the shade of that shitty old umbrella of yours and waiting for your daughters to bring you your wretched meal, which you’ll eat at street level.”

Nazeesh is upset. After all, the step he’s proposed to take is one that a considerable number of people have already taken; it’s happened many times over. He doesn’t understand why the jailer refuses to believe that he, Nazeesh, is capable of taking it, too, and he doesn’t know how to convince him otherwise. Nazeesh observes a period of silence, at the end of which he gathers up his little bundle, a sign that in his estimation the jailer is no longer worthy of his generosity.

Atiq sniggers, deliberately plucks away a third apple, and puts it aside.

“Before, when I spoke, people used to believe me,” Nazeesh says.

“Before, you were in your right mind,” replies the inflexible jailer.

“And now you think I’m cracked?”

“Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

Nazeesh shakes his chin in consternation. His hand is a little unsure as he lifts his bundle, but then he rises to his feet. “I’m going home,” he says.

“Excellent idea.”

With a heavy heart, he slouches to the door. Before disappearing, he confesses in a toneless voice, “It’s true. Every night I say I’m going to leave, and every day I’m still here. I wonder what can be holding me back.”

After Nazeesh has left, Atiq lies down on the cot again and joins his hands under his head. The ceiling in the little prison fails to inspire him with any escape fantasies, so he sits back up and clasps his face. A wave of anger mounts up to his eyeballs. With clenched fists and jaws, he rises and heads for home. If his wife persists in her role of sacrificial victim, he vows, he’s going to stop treating her so gently.

THE PAST NIGHT, it seems, has mellowed Zunaira’s mood. This morning, she got up early, apparently reassured, and her eyes were more captivating than ever. She’s forgotten our misunderstanding, Mohsen thought; soon she’ll remember it and start sulking again. But Zunaira hasn’t forgotten; she’s simply understood that her husband is distraught, and that he needs her. To harbor ill will against him for having performed a primitive, barbarous, revolting, insane act, an act not only absurd in itself but also symptomatic of the current state of Afghanistan, an atrocious act that he regrets and suffers from as from a wound in his conscience, would only serve to render him more fragile than he already is. Things in Kabul are going from bad to worse, sliding into ruin, sweeping along men and mores. It’s a chaos within chaos, a disaster enclosed in disaster, and woe to those who are careless. An isolated person is doomed beyond remedy. The other day, there was a madman in the neighborhood, screaming at the top of his lungs that God had failed. From all indications, this poor soul knew neither where he was nor how he had lost his wits. But the uncompromising Taliban, seeing no extenuating circumstances in his madness, had him blindfolded, gagged, and whipped to death in the public square.