The Swallows of Kabul

Nine

IN A DESPERATE EFFORT to avoid a huge boulder, the driver gives the steering wheel a violent jerk and sends the car swerving and skidding along the shoulder of the road. The defective brakes can’t slow the big 4 × 4, which bounces down an incline amid a burst of deafening pops from the shock absorbers before coming to a miraculous stop at the edge of a crevasse. Imperturbable, Qassim Abdul Jabbar merely shakes his head. “Are you trying to kill us, or what?”

The driver gulps as he realizes that one of his front wheels is about four inches from the precipice. Daubing his forehead with the tail of his turban, he mutters an incantation, puts the vehicle in reverse, and backs up.

“Where did that fucking rock come from?” the driver asks.

“Maybe it’s a meteorite,” says Qassim ironically.

The driver looks around, searching for a clue that might explain how the boulder could have rolled into the middle of the road. As he gazes up at the nearest ridge, he sees an old man climbing up the hillside. The driver furrows his brow. “Isn’t that Nazeesh up there?”

Qassim follows the man’s eyes. “I’d be surprised if it was.”

The driver squints, concentrating on the ragged creature clambering up the dangerous slope. “If that’s not Nazeesh, it must be his twin brother.”

“Stop worrying about him and try to get me home in one piece.”

The incorrigible driver nods and launches the 4 × 4 at full speed down the uneven road. Just before it curves around a hillock, he takes a last look at the rearview mirror, convinced that the old man in question is indeed the simpleminded graybeard who occasionally comes prowling around the little prison house where Atiq Shaukat spends so much of his time.

Exhausted, his throat burning and his calves knotty with pain, Nazeesh collapses on the crest of the ridge. Supporting himself on all fours, he tries to catch his breath, then lies down on his back and lets himself spin into vertigo. The sky, which seems within reach of his hand, inspires him with a rare sense of lightness; he has the sensation of emerging from a chrysalis, of slipping like a wisp of smoke through the mesh of his body. He stays that way for a while, lying on the ground with his chest heaving and his arms flung out in a cross. When the rhythm of his breathing slows to normal, he sits up and puts his drinking gourd to his lips. Now that he’s conquered the mountain, there’s nothing to stop him from taking on the horizon. He feels capable of walking to the ends of the earth. Proud of his exploit, unthinkable for a man of his age, he shakes his fist in the air and casts his vengeful eyes over Kabul, the old sorceress, lying there at his feet in the grip of her torments, twisted, disheveled, flat on her stomach, her jaw-bones cracked from eating dirt. Once upon a time, her legend rivaled those of Samarkand and Baghdad, and when her kings ascended to the throne, they immediately began dreaming of empires vaster than the firmament. . Those days are gone, Nazeesh thinks bitterly; you can’t bring them back by circling around their memory. For Kabul has a horror of memory. She has put her history to death in the public square, sacrificed the names of her streets in horrific bonfires, dynamited her monuments into smithereens, and canceled the oaths her founders signed in their enemies’ blood. Today, Kabul’s enemies are her own offspring. They have disowned their ancestors and disfigured themselves in order to resemble no one, especially not those creatures who wander about like submissive ghosts bowed under the Taliban’s contempt and the anathema of their holy men.

A stone’s throw away, a monitor lizard surveys his realm from atop a rock, his long tail lying at his side like a saber. Of course! A truce among predators is a serious miscalculation. And in Afghanistan, whether you’re a member of a tribe or a part of the fauna, whether you’re a nomad or the guardian of a mosque, you never feel really alive unless you’re close to a weapon. And so the big monitor is standing guard; he sniffs the air, on the lookout for traps. Now, Nazeesh does not want to hear any more talk about battles, sieges, swords, or rifles, nor has he any desire to expose himself further to the menaces of street urchins. He’s decided to turn his back on the clamorous gunfire, to go and commune with himself on some wild, unspoiled beach, to see the ocean close-up. He wants to go to the country he’s seen in fantastic daydreams, the one he’s built with his sighs and his prayers and his dearest wishes — a country where the trees don’t die of boredom, where the paths wander and drift like birds, where no one will look askance on his resolve to journey to the immutable lands from which he will never return. He gathers seven stones. For a long time, he glares tauntingly at the city, where his eyes can find no landmark. Suddenly, his arm uncoils and he throws his missiles as far as he can, determined to ward off ill fortune and to stone the Evil One in his tracks.

The 4 × 4 pitches madly on the unpredictable road. The recent near-fatal skid has done nothing to calm the driver. Qassim Abdul Jabbar clings to the door on his side and suffers in silence. Ever since they left Qassim’s tribal village, the young chauffeur has done just as he pleased. Like most combat soldiers, he’s learned to drive on the job, and he fails to notice the damage he’s doing to the vehicle. As far as he’s concerned, you judge an engine’s worthiness according to the speed you can wrench out of its innards, a little like the way you treat a disobedient horse. Qassim, convinced that nothing he can say will have any effect on the stubborn young man, braces himself in his seat and tries to withdraw his mind from his present circumstances. He thinks about his tribe, which the war has severely reduced, about the widows and orphans, whose numbers have grown beyond the outer limits of the tolerable, about the livestock, which the harsh seasons have decimated, about his dilapidated village, where he saw no reason to linger for any length of time. Had it been up to him, he would never have set foot there again. But his mother died a few days ago and was buried yesterday. He arrived too late for the funeral services, so he contented himself with a brief period of meditation at her grave. A few minutes of silence and a verse from the Qur’an were sufficient. Then he slipped a bundle of banknotes inside his father’s vest and ordered the driver to take him back to Kabul.

“We could have spent the night,” the driver says, as if he were reading Qassim’s thoughts.

“Why?”

“So we could rest. We didn’t even have anything to eat.”

“There was nothing to do up there.”

“But you were with your family.”

“So what?”

“Well, I don’t know. If I were you, I would’ve stayed awhile. How many weeks has it been since the last time you went back to your village? It’s been months, maybe even years.”

“I don’t feel comfortable in the village.”

The driver nods, accepting this explanation, but he doesn’t give it much credence. He watches his passenger out of the corner of his eye, thinking that Qassim is behaving quite peculiarly for someone who has just lost his mother. The young man falls silent while successfully negotiating a curve, then picks up the conversation again. “One of your cousins told me your mother was a saint.”

“She was a good woman.”

“Are you going to miss her?”

“Possibly, but I can’t see how. She was a deaf-mute. I remember very little about her, to tell you the truth. Besides, I left home when I was quite young. At the age of twelve, I was already running from one frontier to the other, earning my bowl of rice. I seldom went back home. One Ramadan out of every three. The result was that I didn’t know the deceased as well as I should have. For me, she was the woman who brought me into the world — period, new paragraph. She had fourteen kids. I was the sixth, and the least interesting. I was sullen and unapproachable, more likely to fight than cry. I thought there were too many people in the shack, and not enough ambition. Then again, my late mother was astonishingly reserved. The old man loved to say that he married her because she never questioned his orders. That made him laugh his head off. Quite a joker, the old man. A little slow on the uptake, but not demanding and never ever abusive. He had no reason to be. On the rare occasions when there was a domestic quarrel, it was conducted in complete silence, and he was too amused to lose his temper. . ”

Qassim’s reminiscences fill his eyes with a distant shimmer. He purses his lips and stops talking. He’s not sad; rather, he’s disappointed, as if his memories have unexpectedly upset him. After a long silence, he clears his throat, turns his whole body around to the left, and adds, “Maybe she was a saint. Why not, after all? She heard no evil and spoke no evil.”

“So she was blessed.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. She was a placid person, she had no enemies, and she led an uneventful life. For me, the epitome of her was her smile, which was always the same, except that it was bigger when she was contented and smaller when she was upset. If I left home too young, that was surely the reason. Talking to her was like talking to a wall.”

The driver leans his head out of the window and spits. His saliva whirls in the flying dust before landing on his beard, which he wipes with the back of his hand. Then, in a curiously cheerful tone, he says, “I never knew my mother. She died giving birth to me. She was fourteen. My old man, who had barely reached puberty himself, was grazing the flock a few steps away, a bit lost in childish daydreams. When my mother started groaning, he didn’t panic. Instead of going to fetch the neighbors, he tried to take care of her himself. Like a grown-up. Things went wrong very fast. He kept trying, and here I am. He doesn’t know how I survived and, what’s worse, he can’t understand why my mother died on him. It still preys on his mind, after so many years and four marriages. . My mother suffered a lot before she passed away. I never knew her, but she’s always there at my side. I swear to you, sometimes I can feel her breath on my face. I’m on my third marriage in less than a year.”

“Because of her?”

“No, my first two wives were disobedient. They weren’t very energetic, and they asked too many questions.”

Qassim fails to see the connection. He rests his head on the back of his seat and stares up at the interior light. Another curve, and then — Kabul! Huddled amid the wreckage of her avenues, she seems at best a tragic joke, but in the background, like a raptor waiting for its quarry, looms the sinister prison of Pul-e-Sharki. Qassim’s eyes gleam with a peculiar light. If he never misses an opportunity to accompany condemned wretches to the foot of the scaffold, it’s precisely because he wishes to draw the mullahs’ attention to himself. He was an exceptional combat soldier, and he has gained a commendable reputation as a militiaman. One day, his perseverance and dedication will induce the decision makers to appoint him commander of that fortress, the largest and most important penal institution in the country. This position will allow him to rise in status, become one of the notables, establish connections, and go into business. Then and only then will he know peace and rest from his exertions.

“So she must be in Paradise right now?”

Qassim jumps. “Who?”

“Your mother.”

Qassim stares at the driver, who seems not wholly in his right mind. The young man smiles at him while steering through the middle of a web of ruts. At that instant, the road curves, they turn their backs to the city, and the fortress of Pul-e-Sharki vanishes behind a sandstone quarry.

Below them, far below them, down there where the bottom of the valley sinks beneath the deceptive waters of a mirage, a contingent of camels is climbing up the slope. Lower still, on his feet in the middle of a cemetery, Mohsen Ramat looks up at the mountainside, where the lights of a big 4 × 4 are streaking along the road.

Every morning, Mohsen comes here to look up at the taciturn peaks; he does not, however, dare to climb them. Zunaira has withdrawn into an overwhelming silence, and ever since then, Mohsen can no longer bear to go among crowds of people. When he leaves his house, he hastens to the old cemetery, where he spends hours and hours alone, far from the bazaars and their infestation of bawling vendors and armed zealots. Nevertheless, he knows that he won’t draw much profit from his ascetic meditations. There’s nothing to see, except for utter dereliction, and nothing to hope for. And all around him, there’s the exceedingly arid landscape. It’s as though the land has despoiled itself in order to heighten the distress of those who live there, trapped between the rocks and the blazing heat. The sparse strips of greenery that deign to show themselves here and there make no promise of blooming; the blades of the baked grass crumble at the least quiver. Like gigantic dehydrated hydras, the streams languish in their undone beds, with nothing but their stony bowels to offer to the sunstroke gods. What has he come looking for among these grotesque tombs, at the foot of these taciturn mountains?

Leading an impressive cloud of dust, the big 4 × 4 rolls through the cemetery. Qassim glances at the dejected young man wandering among the dead. It’s the same fellow he caught a glimpse of this morning, when he left for his native village. Qassim looks at him carefully for a moment, wondering what he could be doing all day long in a deserted cemetery under the scorching sun.

The driver relaxes, easing up on the accelerator as he turns into the first narrow streets of the city. The sight of groups of kids at play and clusters of old men gathered in the shade of garden fences cheers him up. He’s glad to be going home. “That sure was a hell of a trip,” he remarks, waving at an acquaintance in the crowd. “We spent hours jolting our vertebrae loose on bad roads, and we ate all sorts of horrible food.”

“Stop whining,” Qassim growls.

“After I turn off the engine, and not before,” the driver says stubbornly, pulling a comical face. “What are we going to do? Shall I drop you off at home?”

“Not just yet. I need to take my mind off things. Since you won’t stop griping about how I’m starving you, what do you say we go to Khorsan’s and nibble on some kabob? My treat.”

“I warn you, I can eat enough for four.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You’re a prince, boss. Thanks to you, I’m going to stuff myself until I’m sick.”

Khorsan’s eating place stands at one corner of a ravaged public garden, across from a bus stop. In the little square, the fumes of barbecued meat compete for the rare breezes with the clouds of smoke raised by the passing vehicles. A few customers — among them the jailer, Atiq — are sitting at the crude tables squeezed against one another under a wicker canopy. Indifferent to the sun and the squadrons of flies, the diners bestir themselves only to drive away the hungry street urchins. These children have been overexcited by the aromas coming from the grill, where Khorsan himself, his belly hanging to his knees and his beard to his navel, waves a fan to revive his coals. With the other hand, he turns the slabs of meat; when he determines that they’re done, he licks his chops. The 4 × 4 that squeals to a stop ten feet away does nothing to disconcert him. Without taking his eye off the sizzling cutlets, he merely turns his fan toward the cloud of dust that begins to envelop his person. Qassim shows him four fingers and takes a seat on a worm-eaten wooden bench; Khorsan acknowledges the order with a movement of his head and continues his ritual with renewed application.

Atiq looks at his watch. He’s clearly impatient; Qassim’s arrival has driven his nervousness to new heights. What’s Qassim going to think when he sees him there, eating dinner in a greasy spoon not twenty steps from his house? He hunches his shoulders and screens his face with his hand until a waiter brings him a huge sandwich bundled in wrapping paper. Atiq slips it into a plastic bag, places a few banknotes on the table, and beats a hasty retreat, without waiting for his change. Just when he thinks he’s free and clear, Qassim’s hand lays hold of him. “Is it me you’re running from, Atiq?”

The jailer acts the part of the man who just can’t believe his eyes. “Are you back already?”

“Why are you sneaking out like this? Have I given you some cause for complaint?”

“I don’t follow you.”

Qassim, disappointed, slowly nods his head. “Do you know what I think, Atiq? I think what you’re doing is wrong. No, please, don’t put on a show. It’s not necessary, I assure you. I’m not going to give you a lecture. It’s just that — look, I think you’ve changed a lot recently, and I don’t like it. Normally, I wouldn’t give a damn about such things, but I can’t be indifferent in your case. Maybe it’s because of the long years we’ve spent together. Sometimes we’ve had fun, but more often we’ve had to struggle against adversity. I don’t like meddling in something that’s not my business, but I have no qualms about telling you this: if you barricade yourself inside your worries, you’re going to wind up stuck there, unable to get out.”

“It’s not a big deal. Sometimes I get a little depressed, that’s all.”

Qassim doesn’t believe him and makes no attempt to hide his incredulity. He leans toward Atiq. “Do you need money?”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

The militiaman scratches his forehead, deep in thought, then makes a proposal. “Why don’t you come and join us tonight at Haji Palwan’s? Only old friends will be there. We drink tea, we talk and talk, we reminisce about the army and all our skirmishes, and we laugh at the bad old times. It’ll suit you just fine, I promise. We’re just a bunch of war buddies; everything’s very relaxed. If you have any ideas, we’ll discuss them together so you can find the right partners and get things rolling at once. You don’t have to be a wizard to go into business. A little imagination, a modicum of motivation, and the locomotive starts moving down the track. If you’re broke, we’ll stake you and you can reimburse us later.”

“It’s not a question of money,” Atiq declares wearily. “Money doesn’t dazzle me.”

“It doesn’t light your way, either, as far as I can tell.”

“I don’t mind the dark.”

“That’s a statement that needs proving. For my part, I just want to tell you there’s nothing wrong with going to see a friend when things are getting you down.”

“Did Mirza Shah send you?”

“You see? You’re wrong all down the line. I don’t need Mirza Shah’s advice to reach out to a colleague I’m fond of.”

Atiq’s neck bone protrudes as he looks down at his plastic bag. He toes a stone, unearths it, and begins digging a hole in the dirt. “May I go?” he asks in a tight voice.

“But of course, what a question!”

Atiq thanks him with a nod and starts to leave.

“There was a learned man in Jalalabad,” Qassim blurts out, falling in behind Atiq. “A savant, a phenomenal sage. He had an answer for everything. No literary or scholarly allusion ever escaped him. He knew by heart every hadith in the Six Sound Books and all the great events that have marked the history of Islam, all Islam, from east to west. The man was astounding. If he’d lived in our times, he would’ve probably wound up at the end of a rope, or perhaps beheaded, because his knowledge was so great, it passed all understanding. One day, while he was teaching a class, someone came in and whispered in his ear. And all at once, the illustrious wise man turned pale. His beads slipped from his fingers. He got to his feet without a word and left the classroom. He was never seen again.”

Atiq raises an eyebrow. “So what did the other person whisper to him?”

“The story doesn’t say anything about that detail.”

“And the moral of the story?”

“You can know all there is to know about life and mankind, but what do you really know about yourself? Atiq, my boy, don’t try too hard to complicate your existence. You’ll never guess what it holds in store for you. Stop filling your head with false ideas and unanswerable questions and useless reasoning. Even if you find an answer to every question today, you still won’t be safe from whatever unknowable event may take place tomorrow. The learned man knew many things, but he was ignorant about the essential thing. Basically, being alive means keeping yourself ready for the sky to fall in on you at any time. If you start from the assumption that existence is only an ordeal, a test we have to pass, then you’re equipped to deal with its sorrows and its surprises. If you persist in expecting it to give you something it can’t give, that just proves that you haven’t understood anything. Take things as they come; don’t turn them into a drama. You’re not piloting the ship, you’re following the course of your destiny. Yesterday, I lost my mother. Today, I went to spend a few moments in silence at her grave. Now I’m at Khorsan’s getting a bite to eat. I plan to go to Haji Palwan’s tonight to hear what our old comrades are talking about. If some misfortune has happened since the last time I went there, it’s not the end of the world. There’s no more painful love than the love you feel when you’re in a railroad station and you exchange glances with someone whose train is headed in the other direction.”

Atiq stops walking, but he keeps his neck bowed. He reflects for a moment, then raises his chin and asks, “Is it really so obvious that I’m going through a bad time?”

“If you want my opinion, it’s written all over your face.”

Atiq nods and goes away.

Sadly, Qassim watches him leave. Then he scratches his head under his turban and goes back to rejoin his driver in Khorsan’s little eating place.

LIFE IS NOTHING but an inexorable process of erosion, Musarrat thinks. Whether you neglect yourself or take care of yourself, it makes no sort of difference. The fact of birth dooms you to death; it’s the rule. If the body could choose, people would live for a thousand years. But the will doesn’t always have the power to enforce itself, and an old person’s wits, however sharp, can do nothing to support his knees. The fundamental human tragedy derives from the fact that no one can outlive the most hopeless of desires, which is, moreover, the main cause of our misfortune. As for the world, isn’t it a human failure, the monstrous proof of human paltriness? Musarrat has decided to face the evidence. Putting a veil over her face won’t do any good. She has fought against the evil thing that’s gnawing her life away; she’s refused to lower her fists. But now the time has come to drop her guard, to resign herself to her fate, because that’s all that’s left; she’s tried everything else. Her only regret is that she must falter at an age when all the chimeras have been tamed at last. At forty-five, her life is still ahead of her, but more nuanced, more carefully measured; her dreams are less fantastic, her impulses more serene, and her body, when desire claws it out of its indolence, quivers with such discernment that lovemaking makes up in intensity for whatever it may have lost in freshness. The fifth decade is an age of reason, and that’s an advantage when one has to negotiate challenges. In her forties, her certainty about the end she’s coming to is too strong to admit a second’s doubt. Musarrat has no doubts; everything will come to an end, except this certainty. There will be no miracles. The thought grieves her, but not excessively. Excess would be useless, perhaps ridiculous, and surely blasphemous. Of course, she would like to make herself beautiful, to put mascara on her lashes and open her eyes so wide that nothing in Atiq’s eyes could escape her notice. But such resorts are no longer possible for her. That’s a hard truth to admit at forty-five years. And, alas, admitting the hard truth doesn’t exempt her from very much. There is no appeal from the reflection she sees in the small chipped mirror: she’s decomposing faster than her prayers. Her face is nothing but a fleshless skull with furrowed cheeks and pinched lips. Her eyes are glazed, icy, glimmering with a faint, deathly light, as though shreds of glass lie deep in her pupils. And, my God, her hands. Bony, covered with thin, drab skin, crumpled like paper, they have trouble recognizing things by touch. This morning, when she finished combing her hair, she found she was holding a fistful of it in her hand. How can you lose so much hair in so little time? She wound the hair around a bit of wood and thrust it into a crack in the wall; then she slid down to the floor with her head in her hands and waited for a tear to well up and bring her back to herself. When no tear came, she crawled on all fours to her pallet. There, sitting cross-legged on the mattress, she faced the wall for a full hour. Had her strength not abandoned her, she would have spent the whole day with her back to the room. But she was felled by her own obstinacy; she lay down on the floor and fell asleep at once, her mouth open in a long, drawn-out groan.

When he found her lying in a heap on the floor, Atiq immediately feared the worst. Curiously enough, he didn’t drop the package he was carrying, and his breathing was untroubled. He remained standing in the doorway, one eyebrow higher than the other, careful to make no noise. For several long minutes, he gazed at her body attentively — the hand turned toward the ceiling, the curled fingers, the open mouth, the rigid chest — looking for a sign of life. Not a hair on Musarrat’s head moved. After putting his bag on a low table, Atiq swallowed hard and approached his wife’s inert body. Cautiously, he knelt beside her, and at the moment when he bent over her pallid wrist to take her pulse, a soft sigh sent him lurching backward. His Adam’s apple began furiously twitching. He listened carefully, imagining he had heard some ordinary rustling sound, then brought his ear close to the still face. Once again, a faint breath touched his cheek. He pressed his lips together to hold his anger in check, straightened up, and with closed eyes and clenched fists backed away until he was sitting against the wall. Sternly setting his jaw and folding his arms across his chest, he stared at the body stretched out at his feet as if he were trying to pierce it with his eyes, through and through.