Atiq Rahimi: A Curse on Dostoevsky

That’s too much! Where do you think you’re going, you infidel? You’ve no right to that money, or those jewels. They belong to Rassoul. Stop right there!

The woman speeds up and disappears down a lane. Rassoul ignores the pain in his ankle to rush after her. He catches up with her by an unlit entrance to a building, where he is suddenly stopped in his tracks by running footsteps and the cries of teenagers. Again, he tries to hide by flattening himself against the wall. Despite her haste, the woman also stands aside to let them pass. Rassoul’s eyes meet hers through the gauze of her chador as he bends to rub his sore ankle. Then she is off again, in the teenagers’ wake, even more hurried and distressed than before.

Rassoul resumes his pursuit, limping and out of breath. At a crossroads the woman takes a new, wider, busier street. Rassoul stops dead, horrified by the dozens of women in blue chadors walking briskly along the road. Which one to follow?

He pushes desperately through the mass of veiled faces, searching for the slightest clue—a bloodstained hem, a box hidden under one arm, a suspicious haste—but there is nothing. He feels suddenly dizzy, and has to make an effort not to pass out. Once again, he is terribly nauseous. Sweating, he moves into the shade of a wall and doubles up to vomit more yellowish bile.

Feet pass in front of his dazed eyes. He is exhausted, becoming less and less aware of the surrounding noise. Everything goes quiet: the coming and going of the people, their talk, the cries of the street hawkers, the beeping of the cars, the traffic…

The woman has disappeared. Lost among all the others, faceless.

But how could she have run off, leaving Nana Alia—surely one of her relatives—in such a state? All she did was scream. She didn’t even call for help. How cunningly she must have assessed the situation, made a decision, and gone off with the loot. Without even committing murder. The bitch!

Without committing murder, perhaps, but she is a traitor. She has betrayed her own family. Betrayal is worse than murder.

This isn’t the moment to work up a theory, Rassoul. Look, someone is trying to give you money, fifty afghanis.

Who does he think I am?

A beggar. Squatting wretchedly on the pavement in your dirty, ragged clothes, unshaven, with your sunken eyes and filthy hair, you look more like a beggar than a murderer. A beggar who won’t even take what’s given.

The man can’t believe it. He insists, shaking the note in front of Rassoul’s distraught eyes. Nothing. So he shoves the note into Rassoul’s bony fist and walks away. Rassoul looks down at the money.

The booty from your murder!

A bitter smile plays on his bloodless lips. He closes his fist and is about to stand when a terrifying blast of noise glues him to the spot.

A rocket explodes.

The earth shakes.

People throw themselves to the ground; others run around screaming.

A second rocket, closer and more terrifying. Rassoul joins those on the ground. All around him is chaos and noise. A great fire is giving off black smoke that spreads through this entire central Kabul neighborhood at the foot of the Asmai mountain.

Some minutes later a few heads, looking like dusty mushrooms, begin to poke up in the oppressive silence. Shouts ring out:

“They hit the petrol station!”

“No, it was the Ministry of Education.”

“No, the petrol station…”

Just to the right of Rassoul, a prostrate old man is desperately searching for something on the ground while grumbling into his beard: “Fuck you and your petrol pump, and your ministry… Where are my teeth? Dear God, what’s the matter with these marauders of Gog and Magog? My teeth…” He rummages around in the earth beneath him. “Have you seen my false teeth?” he asks Rassoul, who is staring at him curiously, wondering if he has lost his mind. “They fell out of my mouth. I’ve lost them…”

“Come on, baba , is a set of false teeth really so important in these times of war and starvation?” sniggers a bearded man lying nearby.

“Why ever not?” retorts the old man haughtily, indignant at such a thought.

“What vanity!” snorts the bearded man, standing up and brushing himself off. He walks away with his hands in his pockets, watched suspiciously by the old man, who mutters, “ Kos-madar , that son of a bitch stole my teeth… I’m sure of it.” He turns back to Rassoul. “I had five gold teeth in that set. Five!” With a quick glance at the bearded man, he continues in a regretful voice, “My wife was always nagging me to sell them to cover the household costs. I pawned them more than once. Every time my son sent a bit of money from overseas, I would get them back. I only retrieved them from the pawnbroker today at lunchtime. What a shitty day!” He stands up and slips into the crowd, searching for the man, perhaps.

Rassoul appreciated the bearded man’s irony, not out of cynicism but because he hates gold false teeth, an external manifestation of greed in all its ugliness. Nana Alia had two herself. If he had had time, he wouldn’t have minded pulling them out!

He had had the time, but not the wits; otherwise he wouldn’t be here, wretched, with this fifty-afghani note in his hand.

He stands up among the people who are once again bustling about, running here and there, doing their best to get on with things while covering their mouths and noses so as not to suffocate in the dust and smoke. Most of them are heading toward the blaze. The flames are burning higher and higher. Rassoul approaches too. The burning corpses make him step back, but then a man shouts to him through the smoke for help. He is trying to carry an injured girl on his back. “I’m all alone. This poor young girl is still alive.” Rassoul goes to help, takes the girl in his arms and carries her away from the flames before handing her back. “We need to get out of here. The tank is about to explode!” shouts the man, spreading a gust of panic among all those trying to put out the flames.

Rassoul resumes his journey toward the mountain. He stares wearily at the dark, narrow lanes that weave up the slopes, forming a veritable labyrinth, a sprawl of about a thousand houses, all made of earth, built right on top of each other all the way up to the top of the mountain that divides the city of Kabul geographically, politically, and morally, in both its dreams and its nightmares. It looks like a belly about to burst.

From below, he can see the roof of Nana Alia’s house. A big house with green walls and white windows.

Now that the woman has left, he can go back, just to have a look around, that’s all.

He makes his painful way back up the steep street. He has just reached a building entrance when three armed and raging men burst out of a small side alley. Rassoul bends down to hide his face, so he can only hear their shouts.

“The bastards, now they’re blowing up our petrol station…”

“Two rockets! Well, we’ll hit their station with eight. Their neighborhood will be destroyed, it’ll be running with blood!”

They disappear.

Rassoul continues on his way. Before reaching his victim’s street he pauses for a moment. His legs are trembling. He is breathing hard. Along with the petrol and explosives, there is a smell of rotting. The air has become even heavier and harder to breathe. There is also another smell: flesh, burnt flesh. Horrific. Rassoul blocks his nose, and takes a step. The second step is hesitant, interrupted by an image of Nana Alia’s corpse surging into his disordered mind. There’s no way he can go back and look at the corpse he killed with his own hands—these hands that are fluttering, trembling, sweating. Everything must be abandoned. Everything.

He turns on his heel. But a morbid, almost pathological curiosity stops him again. There must be police in the house, relatives, neighbors, tears, wailing…