Yasmina Khadra - The Swallows of Kabul

Atiq doesn’t know whether the ceremonies have lasted a few hours or an eternity. The stretcher-bearers finish stacking the corpses onto a trailer pulled by a tractor. A particularly trenchant sermon closes the festivities. Immediately thereafter, thousands of the faithful pour onto the field for the general prayer. A mullah with the air of a sultan leads the ritual while fanatical police agents harry late-comers. As soon as the prestigious guests depart, the crowd begins to ebb and flow in savage waves before converging on the exits. Incredible melees break out, so violent that the forces of order are obliged to beat a retreat. When the burqas start filing out of the stands, Atiq joins a large gathering of men outside. Qassim is there, hands on hips, visibly pleased with his performance. The public executions have gone off smoothly, without a single hitch, and Qassim’s convinced that his contribution to this success has not escaped the notice of the holy men at the top. He can already see himself promoted to the directorship of the country’s biggest prison.

The first women emerge from the stadium, to be quickly retrieved by their men. The women — some of them burdened with several children — leave the area in more or less uniform little groups. As the crowd disperses, the hubbub dies down and the environs of the stadium grow quiet. The throngs making their way back to the center of the city disappear inside clouds of dust, cut into sections by the Taliban’s trucks, which follow one another in an anarchic convoy.

Qassim has recognized his harem in the midst of the crowd and directed them, with a movement of his head, to the bus, parked and waiting under a tree. “If you want,” he says to Atiq, “I can drop you off at home, you and your wife.”

“That’s not necessary,” Atiq says.

“I don’t mind — it’s only a little out of my way.”

“I’ve got some things to do in town.”

“All right, as you wish. I hope you think about what I said.”

“Of course I will. . ”

Qassim waves and hurries away to catch up with his women.

And Atiq keeps waiting for his woman. The crowd of people around him shrinks away to nothing. Soon there’s only a little cluster of shaggy individuals still keeping him company, and after a few minutes these disappear in their turn, dragging a number of rustling burqas in their wake. When Atiq comes back to himself, he realizes that there’s no longer anyone around. There’s only the dust-laden sky, the wide-open stadium gate, and the silence — a wretched silence, as deep as an abyss. Incredulous, completely disoriented, Atiq looks around; he’s alone, absolutely alone. Seized by panic, he rushes into the stadium. The pitch, the stands, the special platform — all are deserted. Refusing to admit the truth, he runs to the section reserved for women. The naked stone steps are depressingly empty. He goes back down to the field and starts running back and forth like a maniac. The ground undulates under his feet. The deserted stands start whirling around him, empty, empty, empty. A mounting wave of nausea forces him to stop for a moment, but he immediately returns to his frenzied sprinting. The commotion of his breathing threatens to overwhelm the stadium, the city, the entire country. Bewildered, terrified, with his heart about to leap from his throat, Atiq returns to the middle of the pitch, exactly at the spot where there is a pool of coagulated blood. Taking his head in his hands, he stubbornly examines all the sections of the stadium, one by one. Suddenly, realizing the magnitude of the silence, he sinks to his knees, crying out like a stricken beast. As terrible as the fall of a Titan, his howl echoes across the arena: Zunaira!

THE FIRST STREAKS of night have gone methodically to work, putting out the last twilight fires in the ashen sky. The daylight has already retreated, step by step, to the uppermost part of the stands, while insidious tentacular shadows spread their cloaks on the earth to welcome the night. Far off, the sounds of the city are dying down. And in the stadium, where a breeze freighted with ghosts is preparing to blow, the concrete tiers lurk in sepulchral silence. Atiq, who has waited and prayed as never before, finally raises his head. The utter misery of his surroundings calls him to order; he has nothing more to do inside these ghastly walls. Pushing himself off the ground with one hand, he rises to his feet. His legs wobble uncertainly. He tries one step, then two, and manages to make his way to the stadium gate. Outside, night has buried the ruins in darkness. A few beggars emerge from their hole; their voices are sleepy enough to make their lamentations convincing. Farther off, some boys armed with wooden swords and rifles carry on the morning’s ceremonies; they have bound some of their comrades in the center of a blasted square and are preparing to execute them. Aging idlers watch the boys with smiles on their faces, diverted and touched by the exactness of the youngsters’ re-creation. Atiq goes where his legs take him. He feels as though a cloud drifts under his feet. A single name — Zunaira — insistent but inaudible, fills his parched mouth. He passes his little prison, then Nazeesh’s house. Full night finds him at the end of an alleyway littered with rubble. Fleeting silhouettes pierce him through and through. When he reaches his house, his legs betray him again, and he collapses in the patio.

Stretched out on his back, Atiq contemplates the moon. Tonight, it’s perfectly round, like a silver apple suspended in the air. When he was little, he would spend long hours contemplating it. Sitting on a mound far from the family shack, he’d try to understand how such a heavy star could float in space, and he’d wonder if creatures like his fellow villagers worked the fields on the moon and pastured their goats there. His father joined him once, and it was then that he explained to Atiq the mystery of the moon. “It’s only the sun,” he told the boy. “After shining conscientiously all day long, the sun gets carried away and tries to violate the secrets of the night. But what he sees is so unbearable that he blanches and loses all his heat.”

For a long time, Atiq believed this story. And even today, he still can’t stop believing it. What’s so frightful about the night that it makes the sun lose all his color?

Gathering the remnants of his strength, Atiq drags himself inside the house. His fumbling hands knock over the lamp. He makes no light; he knows that the least glimmer would strike him blind. His fingers slide along the wall until they come to the doorway of the room that used to be his wife’s. He gropes around for her straw mattress and collapses onto it. Choking with sobs, he seizes the blanket in a desperate embrace: “Musarrat, my poor Musarrat, what have you done to us?”

He lies down on the pallet, draws his knees up against his belly, and makes himself very, very small. .

“ATIQ.”

He starts awake.

A woman is standing in the center of the room. Her opalescent burqa glitters in the darkness. Dumbfounded, Atiq energetically rubs his eyes. The woman doesn’t vanish. She’s still in the same place, afloat in a luminous blur.

“I thought you were gone for good,” he mumbles, trying to get up. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“You were mistaken.”

“Where did you go? I looked for you everywhere.”

“I wasn’t far away — I was hiding.”

“I almost went crazy.”

“I’m here now.”

Clinging to the wall, Atiq gets to his feet. He’s shaking like a leaf. The woman opens her arms. “Come,” she says.

He runs to her and presses himself against her, like a child returned to its mother. “Oh, Zunaira, Zunaira, what would’ve become of me without you?”