Yasmina Khadra - The Swallows of Kabul

Zunaira doesn’t relent. Her lips start to move dangerously under her veil. Mohsen puts his hand over her mouth. “Not another word. You’ve said enough for now. Let me hope that this has just been a bad day and tomorrow everything will be the way it was before.”

Zunaira steps back, away from her husband’s grasping hand. “I don’t think you understand,” she says. “ I don’t ever want to see you again, Mohsen. Those aren’t just empty words, and the passing days won’t mellow them. I want you out of my life, I don’t want you back in this house. And if you stay here, I’ll go away.”

“But why?” Mohsen protests, ripping his shirt in one violent motion and revealing his emaciated sickly white chest. “Tell me what I’ve done. What mistake was so grave that I deserve this fate? I feel it snapping at me, like a pack of dogs.”

“It’s over, Mohsen. Look, it’s simple: Nothing can ever be right between us again. The only thing I want now is for you to go away and never come back.”

Mohsen shakes his head. “That’s not true. I refuse to accept it.”

“I’m sorry.”

She starts to withdraw to her room. He snatches her back by her arm, violently yanking her toward him. “I’m still your husband, Zunaira Ramat! I didn’t think it would be necessary to remind you of that, but since you insist, there it is. I’m the one in charge here. It’s against our traditions for a wife to repudiate her husband. It’s unheard of. And I won’t permit it. I’ve been putting up with this for ten days, hoping that you’d come to your senses. Apparently, you’re not interested in coming to your senses, and I’ve had it up to here!”

With a jerk, she wrenches her arm out of his grip. He catches her again, twists her wrist, and forces her to face him. “For a start, you’re going to take off this fucking burqa.”

“Impossible. The Sharia of our country requires me to wear it.”

“You’re going to take it off, right now.”

“Ask the Taliban for permission first. Go on, let’s see what kind of guts you have. Go to them and demand that they change their law, and I promise I’ll take off my veil immediately. Why stay here scolding me, strong man, when you could be pulling their ears until they hear the loud, clear voice of the Lord? Since you’re my very own husband, go find the miserable bastard who dared to lay a finger on your wife and chop off his hand. You want to see my face, the only sun you have left? First prove to me that a new day has dawned, that this awful night has been just a bad dream, part of some distant memory.”

Mohsen crumples her veil in a concerted effort to lift it. Desperate to prevent him, Zunaira writhes and wriggles in every direction, and a fierce struggle ensues; groans and imprecations burst out against a background of heavy breathing. Mohsen clutches her frantically, tearing at her clothing, but despite the pain he’s causing her, Zunaira clings to her burqa. When her husband won’t let her go, she bites his shoulder, his arm, his chest, but she fails to discourage him. In a paroxysm of despair, she savagely scratches his face. Surprised to feel her nails slashing his cheekbone, Mohsen recoils. A flood of agony pours into his pupils and blinds him; his nostrils pulse with rage. One furious hand describes a dazzling arc before landing solidly on his wife’s cheek. She collapses under the mighty blow.

Horrified by what he’s done, Mohsen stares at his hand. How could he have dared to strike her? He doesn’t remember ever laying so much as his little finger on her in anger, not one single time. He’s never even imagined himself upbraiding her or reproaching her for any reason at all. He looks at his hand as if he doesn’t recognize it. “What’s happening to us?” he mumbles. Literally overwhelmed, shaking like a leaf, he kneels down beside his wife. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to. .”

Zunaira pushes him away, manages to get to her feet, and staggers to the living room.

He follows after, beseeching her.

“You’re nothing but a common lout,” she says. “You’re not much better than those raging madmen strutting around outside.”

“Forgive me.”

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

He grabs her arm. She spins to face him all at once, gathers her last remaining strength, and catapults him toward the wall. Mohsen trips over a small carafe and falls backward. His head caroms off a projection in the wall before violently striking the floor.

When her vision clears, Zunaira realizes that her husband isn’t moving. He’s lying on the floor with his neck oddly twisted, his eyes wide open, and his mouth agape. A strange serenity pervades his face, barely belied by the thin trickle of blood escaping from one nostril.

“Oh my God!” she cries.

“QASSIM ABDUL JABBAR asks you not to leave your post today,” the militia soldier says. “He’s got a new consignment for you.”

Atiq, sitting on a stool in the entrance to the jailhouse, shrugs his shoulders without taking his eyes off the trucks, loaded with soldiers, that are leaving the city in an indescribable frenzy. The drivers’ bellowing and the blasts of their horns cleave the crowd like icebreakers, while groups of street kids, delighted by the upheaval the convoy is causing, run about shrieking in every direction. The news has come this morning: Commander Massoud’s troops have fallen into a trap, and Kabul is sending reinforcements to annihilate them.

The militiaman also looks at the military vehicles streaming past them like the wind, leaving a storm of dust in their wake. His hand, dark with scars, instinctively squeezes the barrel of his rifle. He spits to one side and says in a grumbling voice, “It’s really going to hit the fan this time. They say we’ve lost a lot of men, but that renegade Massoud is caught like a rat. He’ll never see his goddamned Panjshir again.”

Atiq picks up the glass of tea at his feet and brings it to his lips. With one eye closed against the sun, he stares at the soldier, then mutters, “I hope your Qassim isn’t going to make me hang around here all day waiting for him. I’ve got a lot of better things to do.”

“He didn’t specify any time. If I were you, I wouldn’t budge from here. You know how he is.”

“I don’t know how he is, and I don’t want to find out.”

The militiaman frowns, creasing his broad, prominent forehead. With a bored look in his eyes, he considers the jailer. “You’re not well this morning, right?”

Atiq Shaukat’s lips go slack as he sets his glass down. The other’s presence irritates him. He doesn’t understand why the man won’t just go away now that he’s delivered his message. Atiq stares at him a moment, finding his profile quite disagreeable, with his tangled beard, his flat nose, and his rheumy, inexpressive eyes.

“I can go away if you want,” the soldier says, as if reading the jailer’s thoughts. “I don’t like to disturb people.”

Atiq suppresses a sigh and turns away. The last of the military vehicles has passed. For several minutes, they can still be heard, a distant rumble behind the ruins; then silence sets in and dampens the howling of the children. The air is still filled with dust, obscuring a section of the sky, where a flock of painfully white clouds has come to a halt. Far off, behind the mountains, one seems to hear the sound of detonations, which echoes counterfeit as they please. For ten days, sporadic firing has broken out amid general indifference. In Kabul, especially at the market and in the bazaars, the hubbub of commerce would drown out the tumult of the very worst battles anyway. Stacks of banknotes are sold at auction; fortunes are made and unmade according to mood shifts. People’s eyes are fixed solely on investment and profit; news from the front is taken into consideration, but quietly, as something of a spur to business negotiations.