Atiq Rahimi - Earth and Ashes

‘What are you doing? For God’s sake! Eat your apple!’

You grab Yassin by the shoulders and pull him to his feet. The child shouts:

‘Don’t! Let me go… Why don’t these stones make any noise?’

The smell of smoke escaping from the hut mingles with the roar of the guard’s voice:

‘You’re killing me! Can’t you keep your grandson quiet for one minute?’

You don’t have the chance to apologize, or rather, you can’t face it. You take hold of Yassin’s hand and drag him to the bridge. You drop back down to the ground against the iron railings, put the bundle by your side and, wrapping your arms around the little boy, scold him:

‘Will you behave!’

To whom are you speaking? To Yassin? He can’t even hear the sound of stones, let alone your feeble voice. Yassin’s world is now another world, one of silence. He wasn’t deaf. He became deaf. He doesn’t realise this. He’s surprised that nothing makes a sound anymore. Until a few days ago it wasn’t this way.

Just imagine. You’re a child, Yassin, who heard perfectly well just a short time ago, a child who didn’t even know what ‘deafness’ was. And then, one day, suddenly you can’t hear a sound. Why? It would be idiotic to try and tell you it was deafness. You don’t hear, you don’t understand. You don’t think it’s you who can’t hear; you think others have become mute. People have lost their voices; stones have lost their sound. The world is silent… So then, why are people moving their mouths?

Yassin hides his small, question-filled face under your clothes.

Your gaze is drawn over the side of the bridge, to the dried-up river that has become a bed of black stones and scrub. You look above the riverbed to the rocky mountains in the distance. They merge with Murad’s face.

‘Why have you come, Father? Is everything all right?’ he asks.

For more than a week now, this face with this question has haunted your days and your nights.

Why have you come? The question gnaws at your bones. Can’t that brain in your head find an answer? If only there were no such question. No such word as ‘why’. You’ve come to see how your son’s doing. That’s all. After all, you’re a father, you think about your son from time to time. Is it a sin? No. You know why you’ve really come.

You look for your box of naswar, tip a little into the palm of your hand, and put it under your tongue. If only things were simple, full of pleasure – like naswar, like sleep… Your gaze rises above the summits of the mountains to the sky… But Murad’s face still mingles with the mountains. The rocks are slowly becoming hot; they’re turning red. It is as if they have become coal and the mountains are one great furnace. The coal catches fire, erupting from the mountain and flowing down the dry riverbed towards you. You are on one side of the river, Murad is on the other. Murad keeps asking, ‘Why have you come? Why have you come alone with Yassin? Why have you given Yassin silent stones?’

Then Murad starts to cross over to you.

‘Murad’ you shout, ‘stay where you are, child! It’s a river of fire. You’ll get burned! Don’t come!’

You ask yourself who could believe such a thing: a river of flowing fire? Have you become a seer of visions? Look, Murad’s wading through the river without getting burned. No, he must be getting burned, but he’s not reacting. Murad is strong. He doesn’t break down. Look at him. His body is covered in sweat.

‘Murad,’ you shout again, ‘Stop! The river’s on fire!’

But Murad continues to move towards you, asking, ‘Why have you come? Why have you come?’

From somewhere, you’re not sure where, the voice of Murad’s mother rises.

‘Dastaguir, tell him to stay there. You cross the river. Take my apple-blossom patterned scarf with you and go and wipe away his sweat. Take my scarf for Murad…’

Your eyes open. You feel your skin covered in cold sweat. You’re not able to sleep in peace. It’s been a week now since you’ve had a restful sleep. As soon as you close your eyes, it’s Murad and his mother or Yassin and his mother or fire and ash or shouts and wails… and you wake up again. Your eyes burn. They burn with sleeplessness. Your eyes don’t see anymore. They’re exhausted. Out of exhaustion and sleeplessness you keep falling into a half-sleep -a half-sleep filled with visions. It’s as if you live only in these images and dreams. Images and dreams of what you’ve witnessed and wish you hadn’t… maybe also what you yet must see, wishing you didn’t have to.

If only you slept like a child, like Yassin. Yassin?

No, like any other child but Yassin, who whimpers and moans in his sleep. Maybe Yassin’s sleep has become like yours, full of images, dirt, fire, screams, and tears… No, not like Yassin’s. Like any other child’s. Like a baby’s. A sleep without images, memories -without dreams.

If only it were possible to begin life again from the beginning, like a newborn baby. You’d like to live again, if only for a day, an hour, a minute, a second.

You think for a moment about the time Murad left the village, when he walked out through the door. You too should have left the village with your wife and children and your grandchildren and gone to another village. You should’ve gone to Pul-i-Khumri. Never mind if you’d had no land, no crops, no work. May the land rot in Hell! You would have followed Murad. You would have worked in the mines, shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Then today, no one would be asking you why you’ve come.

If only…

Over the four years Murad has worked at the mine, you haven’t had a single chance to visit him. It’s been four years since he entrusted his young wife and his son Yassin to you and left for the mine to earn his living. The truth is, Murad wanted to flee the village and its inhabitants. He wanted to go far away. So he left… Thank God he left.

Four years ago your neighbour Yaqub Shah’s unworthy son made advances towards Murad’s wife, and your daughter-in-law told Murad. Grabbing a spade, Murad ran to Yaqub Shah’s house, demanded his son come out and, without asking questions or waiting for answers, brought the spade hard down on to the crown of his head. Yaqub Shah took his wounded son to the village council, and Murad was sentenced to six months in prison.

After he was freed, Murad collected his things together and left for the mine. Since then he has only returned to the village four times. It hasn’t even been a month since his last visit and now you’re going to the mine to see him, holding his son by the hand. He’ll definitely wonder why.

‘Water!’

With Yassin’s shout, your eyes drop from the mountains to the dry riverbed, and from the riverbed to the parched lips of your grandson.

‘From where should I get water, child?’

You glance furtively towards the guard’s wooden hut. You don’t have the nerve to ask him for water again. This morning you took some from his jug for Yassin, and if you ask him again… No, this time he’ll get angry and bring the jug down on your head… Better ask elsewhere.

Shading your eyes with your hand, you scan the other end of the bridge. This morning you stopped at a little makeshift shop there to ask the shopkeeper the way to the mine, and the man was kind. Go there again and ask him for water. You start to rise, but then remain nailed to the ground. If a vehicle goes past and the guard doesn’t see you, all this waiting will have been for nothing. No, you’d better stay put. The guard isn’t the sort of man to wait for you, or call out to you… No, Dastaguir, stay just where you are.

‘Water, Grandfather, water!’

Yassin is sobbing. You kneel down, take an apple from your bundle and hold it out to him.