Yasmina Khadra: The Swallows of Kabul

Mohsen brings the little carafe to his lips.

His wife waits until he finishes drinking, then clears the carafe away. “You seem exhausted,” she says.

“I walked a lot today. My feet are on fire.”

Zunaira brushes her husband’s toes with her fingertips, then begins gently massaging his feet. Mohsen leans back on his elbows, abandoning himself to his wife’s delicate touch.

“I waited for you at lunch,” she says.

“I forgot.”

“You forgot?”

“I don’t know what came over me today. I’ve never had this feeling before, not even when we lost our house. It was as though I’d passed out, yet I was still wandering around, groping my way along. I couldn’t recognize any of the streets I was on. I walked up and down them, but it seemed that I wasn’t able to cross them. It was truly strange. I was in a kind of fog. I couldn’t remember the way to where I was going, and I didn’t know where I wanted to go.”

“You must have been in the sun too long.”

“No, it wasn’t sunstroke.”

Suddenly, he reaches for his wife’s hand, compelling her to stop the massage. Bemused by the desperate force of the grip on her wrist, Zunaira lifts her bright eyes and looks him in the face.

Mohsen hesitates a moment, then asks in a toneless voice, “Have I changed?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“I’m asking you if I’ve changed.”

Zunaira furrows her splendid brow and reflects. “I don’t understand what it is you want me to talk about.”

“About me — what else? Am I still the same man, the one you preferred over all others? Have I kept the same habits, the same ways? Do you think my reactions are normal? Do I treat you with the same affection?”

“It’s certainly true that many things around us have changed. Our house was bombed. Our relatives and friends aren’t here anymore — some of them have even left this world. You’ve lost your business. My career has been taken away from me. We don’t have enough to eat anymore, and we’ve stopped making plans for the future. But we’re together, Mohsen. For us, that’s what has to count. We’re together so that we can support each other. It’s up to us, to us alone, to keep hope alive. One day, God will remember us. He’ll see that the horrors we’re subjected to every day haven’t diminished our faith, that we haven’t failed in our duty, that we deserve His mercy.”

Mohsen releases his wife’s wrist and runs his fingers along her cheekbone. It’s an affectionate gesture, and she leans into his caress.

“You’re the only sun I have left, Zunaira. Without you, my night would be darker than the deepest darkness and colder than the grave. But, for the love of God, if you find that I’m changing toward you, if I’m becoming mean or unjust, please tell me. I feel that things are escaping me, I don’t think I’m in control of myself anymore. If I’m going crazy, help me to be aware of it. I’m willing to fail everyone else’s expectations, but I can’t let myself do you any harm, not even inadvertently.”

Zunaira clearly senses the depth of her husband’s distress. To prove to him that he’s done nothing wrong in her eyes, she rests her cheek against his diffident palm. “We’re living through some difficult times, my dear. We moan and groan so much, we’ve lost the idea of tranquillity. When there’s a lull all of a sudden, it terrifies us, and we grow suspicious of things that pose no threat.”

Mohsen gently withdraws his fingers from under his wife’s cheek. His eyes mist over; he has to stare at the ceiling and struggle mightily to contain his emotion. His Adam’s apple panics inside his skinny throat. So great is his remorse that a trembling begins in his cheekbones and spreads out in waves, all the way to his lips and his chin. “I did something unthinkable this morning,” he declares.

Zunaira freezes, alarmed by the trouble she sees in his eyes. She tries to take his hands; he holds them up in front of his chest like a man warding off an attack.

“I can’t believe it,” he mutters. “How did it happen? How could I?”

More and more intrigued, Zunaira sits up straight. Mohsen starts panting. His chest rises and falls at a frightening rate. Though the words horrify him, he tells his tale: “A prostitute was stoned in the square. I don’t know how, but I joined the crowd of degenerates who were clamoring for her blood. It was as though I’d been taken up by a whirlwind. I, too, wanted to be in a good position to watch the impure beast perish! And when the rain of stones began to overwhelm the demon, I found myself picking up rocks — me, too — and pelting her with them. I must have gone mad, Zunaira. How could I dare do such a thing? All my life, I’ve thought of myself as a conscientious objector. Some people made threats and other people made promises, but none of them ever persuaded me to pick up a weapon and kill another person. I agreed to have enemies, but I couldn’t bear being the enemy of anyone else, no matter who. And this morning, Zunaira, just because the crowd was shouting, I shouted with it, and just because it demanded blood, I called out for blood, too. Since then, I can’t stop looking at my hands, and I don’t recognize them anymore. I walked along the streets, trying to shake off my shadow, trying to put some distance between me and what I’d done, and at every corner, at every pile of rubble, I came face-to-face with that moment of. . of confusion. I’m afraid of myself, Zunaira. I don’t have any more confidence in the man I’ve become.”

Zunaira is petrified by her husband’s story. Mohsen is not the type to bare his soul. He rarely speaks about his tribulations and almost never lets his emotions show, but a little while ago, when she detected that great pain deep inside his pupils, she knew he couldn’t keep it to himself. She was braced for trouble of this kind, though not of this magnitude.

Her face pales, and for the first time her eyes, as they grow wider, lose most of their brilliance. “You stoned a woman?”

“I even think I hit her on the head.”

“Mohsen, come on, you couldn’t have done such a thing. That’s not your way — you’re an educated man.”

“I don’t know what came over me. It happened so fast. It was as if the crowd put a spell on me. I don’t recall gathering up the stones. I only remember that I couldn’t get rid of them, and an irresistible rage seemed to come into my arm. . What frightens me and saddens me at the same time is that I didn’t even try to resist.”

Zunaira stands up like one who has been knocked flat but then rises again to her feet. Weakly. Incredulous, but without anger. Her lips, which a moment ago were lush and full, have dried up. She feels around for support, finds only the end of a horizontal beam that juts out from the wall, and holds on tight. For a long time, she remains still, waiting to regain her senses, but in vain. Mohsen tries to take her hand again; she eludes him and staggers toward the kitchen amid the gentle rustling of her dress. The instant she disappears behind the curtain, Mohsen understands that he should not have confided to his wife what he refuses to admit to himself.

THE SUN PREPARES to withdraw. Its beams no longer ricochet with such fury off the hillsides. But the heat-stunned old men, even as they sit in their doorways and wait impatiently for evening, know that the night will be as torrid as the day. Confined inside the vast steam room formed by its stony mountains, Kabul is suffocating. It’s as though a window to hell has partially opened in the sky. The rare puffs of wind, far from refreshing or regenerating the impoverished air, mischievously fill it with eye-irritating, throat-parching dust. Atiq Shaukat observes that his shadow has lengthened inordinately; soon the muezzin will call the faithful to the Maghreb prayer. Atiq slides his whip under his belt and directs his languid steps to the neighborhood mosque, an immense, chastely whitewashed hall with a skeletal ceiling and a minaret disfigured by a bombardment.