Atiq Rahimi - The Patience Stone

The water bearer doesn’t come today. The boy doesn’t cross the road on his bicycle whistling the tune of “Laïli, Laïli, Laïli, djân, djân, djân, you have broken my heart…”

Everyone is lying low. They are silent. Waiting.

Now night falls on the city, and the city falls into the drowsiness of fear.

But nobody shoots.

The woman comes into the room to check on the sugar-salt solution in the drip bag, and leaves again. Without a word.

The old neighbor is still coughing, still humming to herself. She is neither near nor far. She must be among the ruins of the wall that, so recently, separated the two houses.

A heavy, ominous sleep steals over the house, over all the houses, over the whole street, with the old neighbor’s hummed lament in the background, a lament that continues until she hears noise again, the noise of boots. She stops humming, but continues coughing. “They’re coming back!” Her voice trembles in the vast blackness of the night.

The boots are near, now. Arriving. They chase away the old lady, enter the courtyard of the house, and keep coming. They come right up to the window. The barrel of a gun pokes through one of the shattered panes, pushing aside the curtains patterned with migrating birds. The butt breaks open the whole window. Three yelling men hurl themselves into the room. “Nobody move!” And nothing does move. One of them switches on a torch and points it at the motionless man, barking, “Stay where you are, or I’ll smash your head in!” He puts a booted foot on the man’s chest. The faces and the heads of the three men are hidden by black turbans. They surround the man, who continues to breathe slowly and silently. One of the three bends over him. “Shit, he’s got a tube in his mouth!” He pulls it out and yells, “Where’s your weapon?” The recumbent man continues to stare blankly at the ceiling, his gaze lost in the darkness where the spider may already have spun its web. “We’re talking to you!” screams the man holding the torch. “He’s fucked!” concludes the second man, crouching down to pull off the watch and the gold wedding ring. The third man rifles through the whole room-under the mattress and pillows, behind the plain green curtain, under the kilim… “There’s nothing here!” he complains. “Go and check the other rooms!” orders the other, the first man, the one with the torch in his hand and his boot on the man’s chest. The other two obey. They disappear into the passage.

The one who is left lifts the sheet with the barrel of his gun, exposing the man’s body. Perturbed by its lifelessness, its total silence, he grinds the heel of his boot into the man’s chest. “What d’you think you’re looking at?” He waits for a groan. Nothing. No protest. Flustered, he tries again. “Do you hear me?” He scans the vacant face. Exasperated, he scolds, “Cut your tongue out, did they?” then snorts, “Already dead, are you?” Finally, he falls silent.

After a deep, angry breath, he grabs the man by the collar and lifts him up. The man’s pale and disturbing face scares him. He lets go and backs away, stopping in the doorway, unsettled. “Where are you, boys?” he grumbles from behind the strip of turban muffling his voice. He glances into the passage, dark as blackest night, and shouts, “Are you there?” His voice rings out in the emptiness. Like the man’s, his breathing becomes slow and deep. He walks back over to the man, to stare at him again. Something intrigues him, and distresses him. His torch sweeps over the motionless body, returning once more to the wide open eyes. He kicks him gently on the shoulder with the tip of his boot. Still no reaction. Nothing. He swings his weapon into the man’s field of vision, then rests the barrel on his forehead and presses down. Nothing. Still nothing. He takes another deep breath, and goes back to the doorway. At last, he hears the others sniggering in one of the rooms. “What the fuck are they doing?” he grumbles, afraid. His two comrades come back laughing.

“What did you find?”

“Look!” says one of them, brandishing a bra. “He’s got a wife!”

“Yes, I know.”

“You know?”

“You moron, you took off his wedding ring, didn’t you?”

The second man drops the bra on the floor, joking with his mate: “She must have tiny tits!” But the man with the torch doesn’t laugh. He is thinking. “I’m sure I know him,” he mutters as he approaches the man. The other two follow.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“Is he one of ours?”

“I think so.”

They remain standing, faces still hidden behind the strips of black turban.

“Did he speak?”

“No, he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t move.”

One of the men kicks him.

“Hey, wake up!”

“Stop that, can’t you see his eyes are already open?”

“Did you finish him off?”

The man holding the torch shakes his head, and asks, “Where is his wife?”

“There’s no one in the house.”

Silence, again. A long silence in which everything is pulled into sync with the man’s breathing. Slow and heavy. At last one of the men cracks. “What shall we do, then? Get out of here?” No response.

They don’t move.

The old neighbor’s chant is heard again, interspersed with her rasping cough. “The madwoman’s back,” says one man. “Perhaps it’s his mother,” suggests the other. The third leaves the room via the window, and rushes up to the old woman. “Do you live here, Mother?” She hums, “I live here…” She coughs. “I live there…” She coughs. “I live wherever I like, with my daughter, with the king, wherever I like… with my daughter, with the king…” She coughs. Again the man chases her away from the rubble of her own house, and returns. “She’s gone completely nuts!”

The coughing retreats and is lost in the distance.

The man with the torch notices the Koran on the ground, rushes up to it, grabs it, prostrates himself, and kisses the book as he prays behind the strip of his turban. “He’s a good Muslim!” he cries.

They plunge back into their silent thoughts. Remain there, until one-the same one-becomes impatient. “Right, what the fuck are we doing? Let’s patrol! Shit! We didn’t bomb the area for nothing, right?”

They stand up.

The one holding the torch covers the prostrate man with the sheet, puts the tube back in his mouth, and gestures to the other two to leave.

Off they go. With the Koran.

Dawn, again.

The woman’s footsteps, again.

She climbs the stairs from the cellar, walks down the passage and enters the room, not noticing that the door is open and the curtains too; not suspecting for a moment that visitors have forced their way in. She glances at her man. He is breathing. She leaves and comes back with two glasses of water. One for the drip bag, the other to moisten the man’s eyes. Even now, she notices nothing. It must be because of the shadowy light. Day has not yet broken, the sun has not yet shone through the hole-studded sky of the curtains patterned with migrating birds. It is only later, when she comes back to change the man’s sheet and shirt, that she finally notices his bare wrist and finger. “Where’s your watch? Your ring?” She checks his hands, his pockets. She rummages around under the sheet. Unsettled, she takes a few steps toward the door, then comes back. “What’s going on?” She is worried, then panicked. “Did someone come?” she asks herself, going to the window. “Yes, someone did come!” she exclaims, terrorized, as she sees how it has been smashed. “And yet… I didn’t hear anything!” She backs away. “I was sleeping! My God, how can I have slept so deeply?” Horrified, she runs to the passage, leaving the man uncovered. Comes back. Picks up her bra from the doorway. “Did they search the house? But they didn’t come down to the cellar?” She collapses next to the man, grabs his arm, and cries, “It was you… you moved! You’re doing all this to terrify me! To drive me mad! It’s you!” She shakes him roughly. Pulls out the tube. Waits. Still no sign, no sound. Her head hunches into her shoulders. A sob tears through her chest, shaking her whole body. After a long burdened sigh, she stands up, wipes her eyes on the end of her sleeve, and, before leaving, reinserts the tube into the man’s mouth.