Atiq Rahimi - Earth and Ashes

Mirza Qadir’s cough brings you back from your childhood.

The shop returns to being small. Mirza Qadir’s head appears in the window frame.

‘Are you going to the mine to work with your son?’

‘No, brother, I’ve come only to see him… He knows nothing of the misfortune that has struck the family. On the one hand there’s the misery of the bombing, on the other, the misery of telling such a thing to my own son. How should I tell him? I don’t know. He’s not the type to take it quietly… You’d be able to take his life before you offended his honour. He has a temper…’

You bring your hand to your forehead and close your eyes.

‘My son, my only son will surely go mad. It would be better if I didn’t tell him.’

‘He’s strong, father. You must tell him. He must accept it. One day or another he’ll find out. It is better that he hear it from you, that you tell him you are with him and share the burden of his sorrow. Don’t leave him alone. Make him understand that man’s fate contains such things, that he is not alone, that he has both you and his son, that you are his source of strength and that he is yours. These hardships are everyone’s fate, war has no mercy…’

Mirza Qadir moves closer and lowers his voice.

‘The law of war is the law of the sacrifice. In sacrifice, there is either blood on your throat or on your hands.’

‘Why?’ you ask naively.

Mirza Qadir tosses his cigarette butt away. In the same soft tone, he adds, ‘Brother, the logic of war is the logic of sacrifice. There’s no ‘why’ about it. What matters is the act alone, not the cause or the effect.’

He falls silent. He reads your eyes for the impact of his words. You nod your head as if you have understood. You wonder what the logic of war could possibly be. His words in themselves are well and good, but they’re no cure for the troubles you and your son share. Murad is not a man who listens to advice or thinks about the law or logic of war. To him, blood is the only answer for blood. He’ll take vengeance, even at the cost of his own neck. That’s all there is to it. And he won’t care too much if he has blood on his hands either.

‘Old man, where are you? Come before your grandson drives me mad!’ The guard’s shouts alarm you. You jump up, shouting, ‘Here I am, I’m coming!’ as you run back to the hut.

Yassin is standing in front of the hut, tossing stones at it. The guard has taken shelter and is roaring with fury. You reach Yassin, slap him smartly on his small head and take the stones out of his hands. The furious guard emerges.

‘Your grandson’s gone mad. He began throwing stones at the hut. It didn’t matter what I said to him, he didn’t pay a blind bit of notice…’

‘I’m sorry, brother. The child is deaf. He can’t hear a word…’

You take Yassin back towards the shop. Mirza Qadir comes out and makes his way towards the guard, laughing. You take up your place against the wooden post again and hug Yassin’s head to your chest.

Yassin doesn’t cry. As usual, he’s bewildered. ‘Have tanks come here, too?’ he asks. ‘How should I know? Be quiet!’

You both fall silent. You both know that questions and answers are in vain. But then Yassin continues:

‘They must’ve come and taken the voice of the shopkeeper and the voice of the guard… Grandfather, have the Russians come and taken away everyone’s voice? What do they do with all the voices? Why did you let them take away your voice? If you hadn’t, would they’ve killed you? Grandma didn’t give them her voice and she’s dead. If she were here she’d tell me the story of Baba Kharkash… No, if she were here, she’d have no voice…’

He falls silent for a few moments, then he asks again, ‘Grandfather, do I have a voice?’

You answer involuntarily, ‘Yes.’

He repeats the question. You look at him and nod ‘yes’, making him understand. The child falls silent again. Then he asks, ‘So why am I alive?’

He buries his face under your clothes. As if he wants to put an ear to your chest to listen for some sound from within. He hears nothing and shuts his eyes. Inside himself everything must make a sound. If only you could enter inside him and tell him the story of Baba Kharkash…

Your wife’s unsteady voice reaches your ears: ‘Once upon a time there was a man named Baba Kharkash…’

You find yourself standing on the large branch of a jujube tree, stark naked. You’ve climbed up it to shake down jujubes for Yassin. At the base of the tree, Yassin is gathering the fruit. Without being able to help it, you start to urinate. Crying, Yassin moves away from the bottom of the tree and sits at the base of another. He empties the apples out of your scarf and replaces them with his jujubes, then ties up the bundle again. Digging into the ground with his small hands, he finds a door near the surface, secured with a big padlock. He opens the lock with a jujube stone and crawls underground.

‘Yassin, where are you going? Wait! I’m coming down!’

Yassin doesn’t hear your shouts and the door shuts behind him. You try to climb down from the tree, but the tree grows bigger and taller. You fall from the tree, but you don’t hit the ground…

Your eyes are half-open. Your heart pounds in your ribcage. Yassin’s head is still calmly buried under your clothes. Mirza Qadir is having a conversation with the guard beside the wooden hut. You try to open your eyes as wide as possible. You don’t want to doze off again. You don’t want to dream. But the heaviness of your eyes has crushed your will…

A woman’s voice rings in your ears. ‘Yassin! Yassin! Yassin!’

It’s the voice of Zaynab, Yassin’s mother. Her laughter echoes around your head. Her voice comes from somewhere far below. You step to the door that leads underground. It is closed. You call out for Zaynab but your voice reverberates on the other side of the door. Then the door opens and you see Fateh, the guard. He laughs and says, ‘Welcome. Come in. I was waiting for you.’

You walk down into the ground. Fateh closes the door on you from the outside. From the other side of the door, the sound of his laughter rings in your ears.

‘You’ve been wanting desperately to leave’ he says to you. ‘Since the morning you’ve been driving me mad. So, go on!’

Underground it’s cold and damp. You take in the smell of clay. There’s a large garden, an empty garden, without flowers or vegetation, a garden with narrow paths covered in mud and lined with bare oak trees.

Zaynab sits naked under a tree, next to a little girl. You call out to her. Your voice doesn’t seem to reach her. She lifts the little girl from the ground, wraps her in the apple-blossom scarf, kisses her on the cheek, then carries her away. Yassin is naked in a jujube tree. He says that the little girl is his sister, that he gave his mother his grandmother’s apple-blossom scarf, the one you knotted into a bundle, so that she could put it around his sister because it’s cold. But Yassin doesn’t have a sister! A few days ago, Zaynab was only four months pregnant. How quickly she’s given birth! How quickly her daughter has grown!

Yassin is shivering with cold. He wants to climb down from the tree, but he can’t. The tree keeps growing bigger and taller. Yassin weeps.

You feel snowflakes land on your skin. The garden paths fill with snow.

Zaynab runs from one tree to the next. You call out to her again. She doesn’t hear. She runs across the snow naked, the little girl in her arms. She laughs. Her feet leave no prints in the snow, but the sound of her steps echoes through the garden.

Yassin calls for his mother. His voice has become high-pitched like hers… You look at his body. It’s the body of a young girl. In place of his small penis, there is a girl’s vulva. You are overcome with panic. Without thinking, you call for Murad. Your voice is stuck in your throat. It reverberates in your chest. Your voice has become Yassin’s – weak, confused, questioning: