A Curse on Dostoevsky

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THE CITY of Kabul is waiting for the wind. It waits for the wind as it waits for the rain to bring an end to the drought. Just five weeks ago, the wind would start blowing before the sun had even disappeared behind the mountains. It would raise all the dust that had covered the city and every inch of people’s lives, and chase it away. That wind arose from none of the cardinal points. You could say it arose at the end of the earth, and to there it returned having whirled around the city to help it breathe, sleep, and dream once more… But it blows no longer. It lets everything stagnate: the sulphur of war, the smoke of terror, the embers of hatred. The fatty stench of burning clings to your skin, seeps into your bones. Better to smoke one of Nana Alia’s cigarettes than to breathe this stifling air.

Rassoul lights up. No desire to go home, or to see Sophia. He is still wandering. Lost.

Perhaps he should find a doctor? With the money Razmodin gave him he could afford the consultation and the medicine, food, and something to smoke.

At the Malekazghar crossroads he sees a sign for a doctor’s clinic, “Specializing in ear, nose, and throat.” He walks in. The waiting room is full to bursting. Men and women with their families, some who seem to have spent the night there. People are eating, smoking, coughing, shouting, laughing…

At the entrance to the passage, a young man is handing out numbers. He shouts to Rassoul: “You have to arrive very early to get a number—around six in the morning.” Seeing Rassoul’s shocked face, he grumbles: “All Kabul comes here to be treated. Whether they have throat problems or piles! The hospital only takes the war wounded these days, and not all of them!”

Rassoul is about to leave when a woman approaches and says that if he needs to see the doctor urgently she will sell him her number for fifty afghanis. It is number ninety-six, tenth in the queue, “and you’ll see, it goes quick! Fifty afghanis would buy milk and medicine for my child.” Rassoul hesitates, then accepts and waits in the passage for his turn. As he waits he sees the woman sell three more numbers!

As luck would have it, the doctor is very old, and can barely see! This means that despite his hugely thick glasses he has trouble writing out the prescriptions. He tells his patients to speak up. Distraught, Rassoul scribbles “I’ve lost my voice” on a prescription form and holds it out to the doctor, who yells at him to read out what he’s written, then suddenly understands. “Since when?” Three days, he indicates on his fingers. “What caused it?” Silence. “A physical trauma?”

“…”

“Emotional?” Yes, nods Rassoul, after a moment’s pause. “There’s nothing I can give you for that,” says the doctor maddeningly, drumming his fingers on piles of prewritten prescriptions for all kinds of complaints. “The only way to get your voice back is to relive the situation, the emotion. That’ll be one hundred afghanis for the consultation, please.” Then he calls out, “Next!” Before the next patient arrives, Rassoul pays with all the money he has left, and leaves the clinic in a rage to wander again through the unsettled city until nightfall. Then he goes home and sleeps. No nightmares.