Atiq Rahimi - A Curse on Dostoevsky

I wondered how to tell him that by contrast I knew him very well, that I was in love with his daughter…

But I stopped myself. In these times of suspicion and doubt, it’s not right to bother people. So I told him that I’d just moved to the neighborhood.

“And what do you do?”

Just as I was inventing myself a respectable profession, one of his friends, the one-armed one, sniggered to the other: “Hey, Osman, look at our tavarish Moharamullah, he’s an investigator now!”

“Why did Allah O Al-Alim, the All-Knowing, create the cat without wings?” asked the lame one, Osman.

“Because otherwise it would have eaten all the birds in the sky!” replied the one-armed man. “Praise be to Allah, the Vigilant for not making Moharamullah a winged mujahideen, or else…”

They burst into laughter. Your father turned toward them, annoyed: “Just wait till those winged, bearded cats arrive and give it to you hard; you won’t be laughing then.” This warning just made his two companions laugh harder. The one-armed one leaned toward your dad and said: “Chill out! We’re only laughing because we’ve already been fucked up the arse!” His reply cracked up the whole tearoom, including Moharamullah—everyone except the owner who, conscious of the talk, said: “Calm down, or they’ll be here before you know it, and they’ll ban the chai-khana and the saqi-khana .”

“They will take your chai-khana ! But our Islamic bradars will make sure this country stays full to the brim with hash, saqi-khanas, and fucked arseholes!” replied the one-armed guy, wiping away his tears.

Everyone laughed even harder. The owner had had enough. He walked over to his counter, grabbed a bowl of water and tipped it over the two cackling cripples. Startled, they stopped. “We’ve paid to smoke, and now you’re spoiling our high!” said the one-armed man, standing up and muttering into his beard. The drenched men left the tearoom.

Your father sat stiffly in his seat. Then he turned toward me, and saw me beaming at him. He couldn’t, of course, understand the reason for my happiness. He didn’t know that it wasn’t his friends’ jokes but his presence that pleased me, the fact that I was at last meeting someone from your family; it was a sign from you!

“Don’t you laugh at us, young man. It is fate that has made us ridiculous; fate!” He said this slowly, and seriously. After a brief silence, he continued: “Fate… we say it is fate that in the end forces the mirror to make do with ashes. Do you know what that means?” He didn’t wait for me to reply. “You know that a mirror is simply glass covered with a blend of metals? Well, when time has eroded the metal, the glass is coated in ashes! Yes, it is fate that reduces everything to ashes… How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“I’m twice as old as you… more even… a noble life!” He stared into the middle distance, then continued, “War destroys man’s dignity,” and stood up. “My heart is bleeding but I have no blood on my hands. My hands are pure…” He showed me his palms. “I took part in the jihad myself, in my own way…” he moved closer… “for a long time I was administrative director of the National Archives. They used to be at Salangwat, just near here… It was during the communist era, the first one, the Khalqs. Yes, at the time we had a general director, one of those Pashtun dogs who used to sell all our archives to the Russians. Every time a document disappeared I felt like strangling him. This was the history of our country he was selling. Do you understand? The history of our country! Anything can be done to a population without History, anything! The proof…” He didn’t explain the proof, letting me find it myself in the ruins of our souls. “In short, there was nothing I could do about that director. He was a Khalq.” He spat in disgust and turned toward the owner of the chai-khana , crying: “Moussa, some tea for this…,” jerking his head toward me. He paused a moment, as if trying to remember what he’d been talking about. I reminded him. “Yes, thanks… hash… wrecks the memory. No, sorry, not hash!… Fate… fate reduces our memories to ashes! We need hash to cope with our fate—a good big dose to blot out all feeling. But how to afford that, these days? If I had any money left, I’d still be downstairs in the saqi-khana .” I told him that I would pay. He didn’t refuse. We stood up and asked the owner to bring our tea down to the smoking room.

Downstairs, the smoky space was lit by the yellow glow of an oil lamp hung from the ceiling. Men sat in a silent circle around a large chillum, staring into space. They were all high as kites. Your father found us a spot. He smoked, I didn’t. Gradually all the others left. When only he and I remained, he continued: “What was I telling you?” And I helped him out again. He went on: “Yes, that dog of a director… that dog, whom fate had given wings, was one of these nouveaux-riche types who had heard people talking about whisky, but never tasted it. One day he asked me to get him a bottle. He didn’t say whisky, he said ‘wetsakay’!” Your father burst out laughing. “Do you know what ‘ wetsakay ’ means in Pashto?” Again, he didn’t give me time to respond. “It means: Do you want a drink?” He paused, and then turned serious. “I bought him some local alcohol, the worst I could find, and added some Coca-Cola and a bit of tea. It looked just like whisky. I put it in a smart bottle and screwed the top on well. Very professional! I took it to him, and told him it had cost six hundred afghanis. At the time that was a lot of money, you know! And after that he kept asking me for ‘wetsakay,’ and I kept giving him that same counterfeit alcohol. A few months later his liver exploded. Burst! Finished! Kaput!” He pulled proudly on the chillum and exhaled the smoke up toward the lamp. “So tell me, young man—wasn’t that jihad? I too have every claim to being a mujahideen, a bradar , a Ghazi!”

I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him sadly. “Ever since that day, I call on Allah and ask him about justice—both his and mine. Listen, young man, that dog of a director was a traitor who needed to be punished. Which is what I did. I couldn’t wait for a change of regime in order to take him to court!” Another drag on the chillum, and a pause. “Now the regime has changed… These days any idiot thinks he can take the law into his own hands, with no investigation or trial. As I did then. So what! The purpose of punishment is to wipe out the betrayal, not the traitor… These days I ask myself whether this kind of law and punishment isn’t in itself a crime.”

Having been totally absorbed by your father’s voice and features I suddenly jumped, and asked him if he had read Crime and Punishment . He looked confused, then burst out laughing. “No, young man, no! Life… I have read LIFE!” And suddenly he was quiet. For a long time. I was quiet too. He was smoking, I was thinking. Each of us in our own world. My world was full of you. I was trying to think of a way to get your father to talk about you. Suddenly he began speaking again, but still about his own concerns.

“The era of the Khalq was over; it was the turn of the Russians. Shortly before they left, rockets were raining down left, right, and center. One day the Archives were hit. We were all in the office. Myself and my two colleagues whom you saw just now rushed to save the most important documents from the flames. Then another rocket landed, and all three of us were covered in blood.” He nodded, regretting their courage. “Now, we are disabled. Who gave us a medal? Who remembers us? No one!” Silence, again. Memories, again, and regrets, remorse… “Ever since then I stay home with my wife and kids. I have to cover the rent, and feed them all. Who’s going to pay for that? When I went to ask for money, they insulted me. They said I was a traitor because I’d worked for the communist regime. So I had no choice; I pawned all those precious documents I had saved. My landlord took them; he knew their value. But then he died. A heart attack. Only his wife and daughter were left, and I had to renegotiate the whole thing with his wife, Nana Alia—and what a bitch she is! A dirty illiterate! Not only did she never give me back the documents, she also increases our rent every month. We no longer own anything. My poor wife has pawned her dowry items to that cow, and her jewelry… And now my daughter has to work for her to pay the rent.”