A Curse on Dostoevsky

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ARAY of light shines through the window, illuminating a section of damp, crumbling wall covered in prisoners’ graffiti. A philosopher has scribbled “Everything passes in the end”; someone who must have been in love: “Love is not a sin,” and finally, a poet:

Rassoul knows the graffitti off by heart. He has already heard it, already read it. But it is the poem that intrigues him most. Who wrote it originally, and then on this wall? When? And for whom?

For me.

He walks up to the wall and runs his hand over the writing. But the sound of footsteps striding up the corridor freezes his fingers on the letters. Someone opens the door and several armed men burst into his cell, their faces hidden in the gloom. Rassoul huddles into himself, before glancing up at the sound of a familiar voice.

“And how is our watandar?” It is Parwaiz, accompanied by the clerk and two other men. Rassoul leaps to his feet: “Salam!” Parwaiz is surprised: “Well, now! You’ve got your voice back?”

“Yes, two days ago.”

“Then you can tell me the whole story, at last. I want to hear it all, in your own words.”

“I went to hand myself over to the law.”

“So the court clerk told me,” says Parwaiz. Rassoul continues: “The night I was first brought to your office, I had just committed a murder.”

The commandant leaves the cell, motioning Rassoul to follow him. “There is no such thing as coincidence! Why did you kill?”

“Why? I don’t know.”

Parwaiz stops and stares at him: “Like all of us!”

“That may be. But…” He stops. The clerk takes his chance to interrupt: “Commandant sahib, he killed to save his fiancée.”

“What did your fiancée do?” Parwaiz asks Rassoul, who finds himself unable to speak. He is ashamed, and his silence speaks louder than words.

“Nana Alia wanted to train her up…”

“Yes.”

“You did right, then,” says Parwaiz with a conviction that stuns Rassoul and provokes a laugh from the clerk behind him. Rassoul stops walking; he thinks I did right? Parwaiz is not taking me seriously, either—and he is Head of Security, a mujahideen, a man of the law. He says: “What do you mean, I did right? It was murder, premeditated murder…” Faced with the commandant’s silence, he falls silent again.

They enter the building that houses the Law Archives. The clerk leaves them at the door to a large furnished room, nodding at Rassoul as if to say not goodbye but You idiot!

Parwaiz drops into a battered old sofa and invites Rassoul to sit down opposite him. He continues, as if he had never stopped speaking: “In your position I would have done exactly the same thing.”

“But what was the point—I wasn’t able to change anything, for my fiancée or myself. It did no one any good. It has caused more suffering than good.”

“To do good, one must first suffer…”

“Worse still, my life has become hellish. I’ve lost both my fiancée and the money… A murder for nothing… Even the body has disappeared. Everyone just thinks Nana Alia went to the countryside. Tell me, could any crime be more absurd?”

“First, tell me why you didn’t see your crime through to its proper conclusion?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been asking myself. Perhaps because I wasn’t able to…”

“Or because you didn’t want to. Because you are not a thief. You are a good man.”

“But it was also Dostoevsky’s fault.”

“Dostoevsky? What has your beloved author done now?”

“He stopped me from carrying the act to its conclusion.”

“How so?”

“The moment I lifted the ax to bring it down on the old woman’s head the thought of Crime and Punishment flashed into my mind. I was struck to the very core… Dostoevsky, yes, it’s him! He stopped me from following in Raskolnikov’s footsteps, becoming prey to my remorse, sinking into the abyss of guilt, and ending up in prison…”

“But where are you now?”

Rassoul lowers his head and mutters: “I don’t know… nowhere.”

“Rassoul-djan, you read too much. That’s fine. But there’s one thing you should know: your fate is written in one book and one book only: the Lawh Mahfuz, the ‘Preserved Tablet,’ written by…” he points up at the ceiling, where a few flies are buzzing around. “Other books cannot change anything, in the world or in a person’s life. Listen: Was Dostoevsky able to change anything in his country? Was he able to influence Stalin, for instance?”

“No. But if he hadn’t written that book he might have murdered someone himself. And he gave me this conscience, this ability to judge myself, and to judge Stalin. That in itself is huge, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it is huge,” agrees Parwaiz, before retreating into a long silence. Then he says: “That is why I congratulate you on your conscience and your act!” He smiles. “You managed to wipe out a loathsome element of our society. The death of this woman must have been a great relief to many people. In fact, that explains the disappearance of her body—it was probably her own family. And if you hadn’t murdered her, someone else would have; Allah would have; a rocket would’ve fallen on her… who knows! So you must see that you have helped several people…”

“And what about me?”

“What about you?”

“What good has it done me?”

“You must see that you have done something important: you have restored justice.”

“Justice! But what justice? Who I am to decide if someone lives or dies? To kill is a crime, the most horrible crime a human being can commit.”

“Watandar, murder is a crime when the victim is innocent. This woman needed to be punished. She had done wrong to your family, your namouss. She had dishonored you. What you did is called vengeance. No one has the right to judge you as a murderer. The end.”

“Commandant, my problem is not with how others judge me; my problem is with myself. This suffering which gnaws away at me from the inside, like a wound, a festering wound that will not heal.”

“In that case, there are only two solutions: either you amputate the injured limb, or you grow accustomed to the pain.” He takes off his pakol, turns his head, and points to the back of his skull. “Look at that.”

Rassoul bends forward to look.

“Touch it.”

Rassoul brings his hand up, nervously; his fingers brush the commandant’s skull. “Can you feel anything?” Rassoul hesitates to reply, then suddenly pulls away his hand.

“Do you know what that is?” Parwaiz replaces his pakol. “A piece of shrapnel. It’s been in my skull for years. It was during the jihad. I had come home to see my wife and son. The Russians had heard we’d come to the village, and they bombed it. Our house was hit by a rocket. A large fragment martyred my family, and a small fragment lodged itself in my skull. I never wanted to have it taken out. I wanted to live with it, so the pain would constantly remind me of my family’s death. Throughout the jihad this piece of shrapnel gave me strength, and hope. A French doctor told me that unless I had it removed, I wouldn’t live for more than ten years. But I don’t want to live for more than ten years.” A loud laugh to lighten his bitter words. “You too have a piece of shrapnel—an internal one, an internal wound, a wound that has given you strength.”

“What kind of strength?”

“The strength to live, and to create justice.”

A young man brings them breakfast. The commandant asks him for news of Jano. “No news. We still haven’t found him.”

“What do you mean? He hasn’t just disappeared into thin air! Search everywhere!”

“I bumped into him four or five days ago,” interrupts Rassoul.

“Where?”

“He invited me to drink tea with him in the Sufi chai-khana. Inside, he met some mujahideen with whom you carried out a joint operation during the jihad, against a Russian military base.”

“Can you remember their names?”

“They had served under Commandant… Nawroz, I think it was.” Parwaiz is looking more and more distressed. He tells the young man to go to the chai-khana and see what he can discover. After a moment’s thought, he continues: “Take the case of Jano. He is my adopted son. The Russians destroyed his village and massacred his family. But he has a lion’s will to survive, which stems precisely from his desire for vengeance.” He falls quiet, to give Rassoul a chance to ponder his words.

“Your wounds are wounds inflicted by others. But I inflicted my own wound. Instead of increasing my strength, it is smothering me, leading me nowhere. Sometimes, I think I wanted to murder that old woman just to find out if I was capable of killing, like everyone else…” He lowers his head. Parwaiz pours more tea and Rassoul continues, as if talking to himself: “I saw that I wasn’t cut out for it. The other day I wanted to kill someone else, and I didn’t…”

“Perhaps that person was innocent?”

“Innocent? I don’t know. But he had insulted my fiancée, chased her out of the Shah-e do Shamshira Wali mosque.”

“Is that all?” He puts the tea in front of Rassoul. “You can’t kill without a reason.”

“Perhaps I wanted to kill him in order to deal with my botched murder.”

“But that murder would have been botched, too, because you had done it for no reason.”

“I think that’s what happens. You return to a job in the hope of forgetting the previous one that you think you botched… And that is how crimes continue, in a vicious circle. That’s why I handed myself over to the law, so they could try me and put an end to all this.”

“Watandar, you know that a trial only makes sense if there is a legal system to ensure that rights are respected. And what has become of the law and the government these days?”

“Are you, too, looking for vengeance?”

“Perhaps.”

“Gandhi used to say, ‘An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.’”

“He was right. But vengeance is deeply rooted in us, whatever we do. Everything is vengeance, even a trial.”

“So the war will never end.”

“Yes, it will. It will end when one camp decides to accept the sacrifice, and stop demanding vengeance. Which is why it is so important to yield, to come to terms with one’s acts, crimes, and vengeances… until one reconciles oneself with the sacrifice. But who can do that? Nobody. Not even me.”

Parwaiz understands everything. He is capable of anything. Don’t let him out of your sight. It is your job to shake him up, to return him to his mission. All he needs is a sacrifice, an accomplice. You will be that sacrifice.

“I want a legal trial. I want to be sacrificed.”

Silence, again. It is the look on Parwaiz’s face that condemns Rassoul to silence. An admiring, questioning look. Rassoul continues: “This trial will bring an end to my suffering. It will give me the opportunity to expose my soul to all those who, like me, have committed murders…”

“Stop thinking you are that Dostoevsky character, please. His act only made sense within the context of his society, his religion.”

“But what woke up the West was a sense of responsibility, deriving from a sense of guilt.”

“Mash’Allah!” Parwaiz waves his hand around, knocking over his tea. “Bless the Lord for giving them that sense of guilt, or else what would the world be!” He bursts into sarcastic laughter. “You really do want to sacrifice yourself to your fantasies.”

“I’d prefer to sacrifice myself to my fantasies than to sacrifice others. I want my death to…”

He is interrupted by a burst of gunfire, not far from the Wellayat. Parwaiz pours more tea as he waits for Rassoul to continue.

“I want my death to be a sacrifice…”

“This country doesn’t need any more deaths, any more shahids…”

“But I’ve no interest in being a shahid!”

Stop right there, Rassoul! You’ve already taken this too far.

I still have things to say to him.

Things you have said a thousand times before!

Yes, but not to him. He will be able to understand me. He knows that the existence of Allah has no need for witnesses, or martyrs.

If he knows that, there’s no point telling him. Finish your sermon: “I want my trial and my sentence to bear witness to these times of injustice, lying, and hypocrisy…”

“In that case, watandar, the whole nation must be tried.”

“Why not? My trial will be on behalf of all war criminals: communists, warlords, mercenaries…”

There is a long silence. Parwaiz has stopped drinking his tea. He is elsewhere, his gaze lost in space. A long way away, beyond even the sun that beckons at the window. Suddenly, he stands up. “Go back to your life, watandar, and your family. Get out of here! In Afghanistan this filthy war, like all wars, has its own laws and its own rules.” Rassoul stands up too: “But you are in a position to change those rules.”

Parwaiz stares at him for a long while, then holds out his hand. “When that happens I’ll let you know. Ba amané Khoda. Now go home!”