Yasmina Khadra - The Swallows of Kabul

Outside in the street, Qassim announces his arrival in his usual way, loudly clearing his throat. This morning, there’s something particularly hideous about his phlegmy hawking. Atiq can hear metallic sounds, then the thud of several pairs of feet hitting the ground. Shadows move through the violent light of early morning. Two militiawomen enter the unhealthy darkness of the jailhouse. Despite the steadily rising temperature outside, the interior of the building is cold and damp. Stepping with military precision, the women pass in front of the jailer without a word and move toward the cell at the end of the corridor. Qassim appears in his turn. His massive shoulders fill the doorway, accentuating the semidarkness. Hands on his hips, he shakes his head left and right, performs a few exaggerated contortions, and approaches the jailer while feigning interest in a crack in the ceiling.

“Raise your head, warrior,” he says. “You’re going to get a crick in your neck, and then you won’t be able to look in the mirror properly anymore.”

Atiq nods but keeps his eyes fixed on the floor.

The militiawomen reappear, urging the prisoner ahead of them. The two men step back to let them pass. Qassim, who’s watching his friend out of the corner of his eye, coughs into his fist. “It’s already over,” he says softly.

Shivering from head to toe, Atiq hunches his shoulders a little higher.

“You must come with me,” Qassim insists. “There are a few matters I want to discuss with you.”

“I can’t.”

“What’s stopping you?”

The jailer opts for silence. Qassim looks around and glimpses a silhouette crouched in a corner of Atiq’s cubbyhole. “There’s someone in your office.”

Atiq feels his chest tighten, cutting off his breathing. “My wife.”

“I’ll bet she wants to go to the stadium.”

“Right, exactly right. . that’s just what she wants.”

“So do my wives and my sisters. In fact, they demanded that I requisition the microbus outside. Ah well, what can you do? Tell your wife to go in the bus with them. You come with me, and you can pick her up at the stadium exit when it’s over. I’ve got a proposal for you, something very dear to my heart, and I have to tell you about it.”

Thrown into confusion, Atiq casts around for a way out of his plight, but Qassim’s heavy voice prevents him from concentrating: “What’s the matter? Are you trying to avoid me?”

“I’m not trying to avoid you.”

“What, then?”

Atiq, caught off guard, slouches toward his office, half shutting his eyes in an attempt to bring some order into his thoughts. Everything around him appears to be picking up speed, overtaking him, jostling him about. He’s unsure how to cope with this completely unexpected turn of events. And never before has the look in Qassim’s eye seemed so penetrating, so alert. It’s making Atiq sweat all over. A vertiginous tide rolls over him, scanting his breath and sawing at his hamstrings. He stops in the doorway, reflects for a couple of seconds, then shuts the door behind him. The woman sitting on the camp bed stares at him. He can’t distinguish her eyes, but her stiffness makes him even more uneasy than he already is.

“You see?” he mutters. “Our prayers have been answered. You’re free. The man waiting outside has just confirmed it. They’ve dropped all the charges against you. You can go back home today.”

“Who were the women I saw passing in the hallway?”

“This is a women’s prison. Women often come and go here.”

“Did they take away a prisoner?”

“That’s no concern of yours. The window of yesterday is shut; let’s open the window of tomorrow. You’re free. That’s what counts.”

“So I can go now?”

“Of course. But before you do, I’m going to take you to some other women. They’re waiting in a little bus right outside. There’s no need to tell them who you are or where you come from. In fact, they mustn’t know. . The bus will drop you off at the stadium, where some official ceremonies are under way.”

“I want to go home.”

“Hush! Don’t talk so loud.”

“I don’t care to go to the stadium.”

“You must. It won’t take long. When the rally’s over, I’ll wait for you at the exit and take you to a place where you’ll be safe.”

In the corridor, Qassim clears his throat as a signal to the jailer that it’s time to go.

Zunaira stands up. Atiq walks her to the bus, then returns to the 4 × 4 and gets into the front seat next to Qassim. He doesn’t look, not even once, into the back of the vehicle, where the two militiawomen and their prisoner are sitting.

THE MULLAHS’ diatribes, broadcast through a battery of loudspeakers, echo amid the surrounding ruins. Intermittently, the stadium vibrates with ovations and hysterical clamoring. The crowd grows steadily, for spectators keep streaming in from all parts of the city. Despite the double and triple cordons formed by the forces of order, the atmosphere around the arena is pregnant with excitement. Qassim first directs the little bus to a less congested gate, ushers the ladies out, and turns them over to some militiawomen, ordering them to seat the women in the reserved stands. Then, satisfied on this point, he climbs back into his 4 × 4 and charges onto the field, where armed Taliban agents are bustling about with excessive enthusiasm. A few bodies dangling from ropes here and there testify that the public executions have already begun. The stands are filled to overflowing with people packed shoulder to shoulder. Many of them have come in order to avoid harassment; they witness the horrors, but they remain passive and make no demonstrations. Others, who have chosen to assemble as close as possible to the platform where the dignitaries of the apocalypse are lounging, do everything in their power to get themselves noticed; their inordinate (not to say morbid) jubilation and their discordant shouts repel even the religious authorities.

Atiq leaps to the ground and stations himself in front of the 4 × 4, his eyes fixed on the section of the stadium reserved for women. In each of them, he thinks he recognizes Zunaira. Detached from reality, impregnably barricaded, body and soul, inside his delirium, Atiq hears neither the mullahs’ sermons nor the crowd’s applause. Nor does he seem to see the thousands of onlookers who fill the stands in bestial packs, their mouths more rank and pestilential than their beards. As Atiq tries to guess the location of the woman he’s determined to protect, his burning eyes relegate all the rest of the world to oblivion.

A sudden uproar on one side of the stadium gives rise to some sinister ululations. Agents of the Taliban police hustle one of the “damned” to his destiny; on the pitch, a man with a knife is waiting for him. This part of the program lasts only long enough for the accomplishment of a few simple movements: The bound prisoner is forced to his knees; the knife glitters before it slits his throat. In the stands, sporadic applause pays tribute to the executioner’s dexterity. The bloody corpse is tossed onto a stretcher. Next!

Atiq is concentrating so hard on the rows of burqas ranged like a blue wall above his head that he doesn’t see the militiawomen lay hold of their prisoner. They walk her to the middle of the field; then two men escort her to the site reserved for her. A peremptory voice orders her to kneel. She complies, and as she raises her eyes behind the grille of her mask for the last time, she catches sight of Atiq, standing with his back to her over by the 4 × 4. At the moment when she feels the muzzle of the rifle brush against the back of her skull, she prays that the jailer won’t turn around. In the next instant, the weapon fires, carrying off in its blasphemy an unfinished prayer.