The Swallows of Kabul (14 page)

“QASSIM ABDUL JABBAR asks you not to leave your post today,” the militia soldier says. “He’s got a new consignment for you.”

Atiq, sitting on a stool in the entrance to the jailhouse, shrugs his shoulders without taking his eyes off the trucks, loaded with soldiers, that are leaving the city in an indescribable frenzy. The drivers’ bellowing and the blasts of their horns cleave the crowd like icebreakers, while groups of street kids, delighted by the upheaval the convoy is causing, run about shrieking in every direction. The news has come this morning: Commander Massoud’s troops have fallen into a trap, and Kabul is sending reinforcements to annihilate them.

The militiaman also looks at the military vehicles streaming past them like the wind, leaving a storm of dust in their wake. His hand, dark with scars, instinctively squeezes the barrel of his rifle. He spits to one side and says in a grumbling voice, “It’s really going to hit the fan this time. They say we’ve lost a lot of men, but that renegade Massoud is caught like a rat. He’ll never see his goddamned Panjshir again.”

Atiq picks up the glass of tea at his feet and brings it to his lips. With one eye closed against the sun, he stares at the soldier, then mutters, “I hope your Qassim isn’t going to make me hang around here all day waiting for him. I’ve got a lot of better things to do.”

“He didn’t specify any time. If I were you, I wouldn’t budge from here. You know how he is.”

“I don’t know how he is, and I don’t want to find out.”

The militiaman frowns, creasing his broad, prominent forehead. With a bored look in his eyes, he considers the jailer. “You’re not well this morning, right?”

Atiq Shaukat’s lips go slack as he sets his glass down. The other’s presence irritates him. He doesn’t understand why the man won’t just go away now that he’s delivered his message. Atiq stares at him a moment, finding his profile quite disagreeable, with his tangled beard, his flat nose, and his rheumy, inexpressive eyes.

“I can go away if you want,” the soldier says, as if reading the jailer’s thoughts. “I don’t like to disturb people.”

Atiq suppresses a sigh and turns away. The last of the military vehicles has passed. For several minutes, they can still be heard, a distant rumble behind the ruins; then silence sets in and dampens the howling of the children. The air is still filled with dust, obscuring a section of the sky, where a flock of painfully white clouds has come to a halt. Far off, behind the mountains, one seems to hear the sound of detonations, which echoes counterfeit as they please. For ten days, sporadic firing has broken out amid general indifference. In Kabul, especially at the market and in the bazaars, the hubbub of commerce would drown out the tumult of the very worst battles anyway. Stacks of banknotes are sold at auction; fortunes are made and unmade according to mood shifts. People’s eyes are fixed solely on investment and profit; news from the front is taken into consideration, but quietly, as something of a spur to business negotiations.

Atiq’s sick of it. He has started seriously wondering whether he might wind up following in Nazeesh’s footsteps. Apparently, the poor devil made up his mind at last; one morning not long ago, he packed his things and—poof!—vanished without a word to his children, who spent a week looking for him. Some shepherds claimed they’d seen the old man in the mountains, but no one took them seriously. At his age, people thought, Nazeesh wouldn’t be capable of taking on even the lowest of the surrounding hills, especially in the summer heat. Atiq is nevertheless convinced that the former mullah has indeed ventured into the mountains, and that he has done so only to prove to him—to Atiq, the cruel, sardonic jailer—that he was wrong to bury him too soon.

The militiaman suddenly stoops and picks up the jailer’s glass. “You’re a nice fellow,” he says. “I don’t know what’s been wrong with you lately, but that doesn’t make any difference. I won’t be angry if you run me off.”

“I’m not running you off.” Atiq sighs, watching in disgust as the other drinks from his glass. “You’re the one talking about going away.”

The soldier nods. He squats down with his shoulders against the wall and goes back to fingering his Kalashnikov.

After a long silence, Atiq asks him, “Whatever happened to Qaab? It’s been a good while since I’ve seen him.”

“Which Qaab? The one from the armored outfit?”

“There’s only one.”

Raising his eyebrows, the militia soldier turns toward the jailer. “Are you trying to make me think you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Qaab’s dead. Come on, he’s been dead for more than two years.”

“He’s dead?”

“That’s enough, Atiq. We all went to his funeral.”

The jailer pouts a little, scratching his temple, but his mental efforts get him nowhere. He shakes his head in embarrassment. “How could I forget something like that?”

The militiaman, more and more fascinated, observes Atiq out of the corner of his eye. “You don’t remember anything about it?”

“No.”

“That’s strange.”

Atiq recovers his tea glass, sees that it’s empty. He ponders it dreamily and places it under his stool. “How did he die?”

“You’re not putting me on by any chance, are you, Atiq?”

“I assure you I’m serious.”

“His tank blew up during a firing exercise. The shell had a defective charge. Instead of following proper security procedure and waiting for the official observer, Qaab immediately ejected the shell, and it exploded inside the turret. Pieces of the tank were scattered for a hundred and fifty feet all around.”

“Did they find his body?”

The soldier slams the ground with his rifle butt and stands up, convinced that the jailer is making fun of him. “You aren’t well today. Frankly, you’re not well at all.”

Whereupon he spits on the ground and goes away, cursing under his breath.

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Qassim Abdul Jabbar arrives in a dilapidated van. The two militiawomen accompanying him take hold of the prisoner and hurry her into the jailhouse. Giving the key a double turn, Atiq locks the new inmate inside a narrow, stinking cell at the end of the hall. His head is elsewhere, his movements mechanical; he doesn’t appear to notice what’s going on around him. Qassim, his arms folded across his chest and his eyes glowering down intensely from his great height, observes Atiq in silence. When the two militiawomen have climbed back into the van, Qassim declares, “At least you’ll have some company.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Don’t you want to know what she’s done?”

“What would be the good of that?”

“She killed her husband.”

“These things happen.”

Qassim perceives the jailer’s growing disgust. This exasperates Qassim in the highest degree, but he forbids himself to yield to the temptation to put Atiq in his place. He strokes his beard as though lost in thought, then turns toward the end of the corridor and says, “She’s going to stay here a bit longer than the others.”

“Why?” Atiq asks in an annoyed voice.

“Because of the big rally in the stadium next Friday. Some very high-ranking guests will be in attendance. To provide this event with some atmosphere, the authorities have decided to carry out ten or twelve public executions. Your inmate is to be included in the lot. In the beginning, the
qazi
wanted to have her shot right away. Then, since there was no woman on the program for Friday, they gave her a reprieve until then.”

Atiq nods halfheartedly. Qassim puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “We waited for you at Haji Palwan’s the other evening.”

“Something came up.”

“And the following evening, as well.”

Atiq elects to beat a retreat and withdraws into the cubbyhole that serves as his office. After hesitating a moment, Qassim follows him. “Have you thought about my proposals?” he asks.

Atiq emits a snort of laughter, brief and nervous. “I’d have to have a head to be able to think about something.”

“It’s your fault, you refuse to open your eyes. Things are clear. All you have to do is look them in the face.”

“Please, Qassim. I don’t feel like going over that again.”

“As you wish,” Qassim Abdul Jabbar says apologetically, raising his hands in front of his chest. “I take back what I just said. But for the love of heaven, hurry up and get rid of that gloomy expression. You look like a bad omen.”

Twelve

ATIQ SHAUKAT doesn’t understand all at once. A kind of trigger sets off a reaction in him, and a paralyzing wave like an ice-cold shower traverses him from head to foot. The pot he’s holding slips from his hands and crashes to the floor, scattering little wads of rice in the dust. For three or four seconds, he thinks he’s hallucinating. Staggered by the apparition that has just struck him full force, he withdraws to his cubbyhole to recover his wits. The light from the window assaults him; the shouts of the children playing war games outside throw him into confusion. He sinks down on his camp bed, presses his fingers to his temples, and curses the Evil One repeatedly in an attempt to remove his baleful influence.

“La hawla!”

After his head has partially cleared, Atiq goes back into the hallway to get the pot. He replaces its lid, which had rolled some distance away, and picks up the clumps of rice sprinkled across the floor. As he cleans up, he cautiously lifts his eyes to the roof beam looming over the cell like a bird of evil augury, and his gaze lingers on the anemic little lightbulb, growing steadily dimmer in its ceiling socket. Screwing his courage to the sticking point, he walks back to the lone occupied cell, and there, in the very middle of the cage, the magical vision: the prisoner has removed her burqa! She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her elbows are on her knees, her hands are joined under her chin. She’s praying. Atiq is thunderstruck. Never before has he seen such splendor. With her goddess’s profile, her long hair spread across her back, and her enormous eyes, like horizons, the condemned woman is beautiful beyond imagination. She’s like a dawn, gathering brightness in the heart of this poisonous, squalid, fatal dungeon.

Except for his wife’s, Atiq hasn’t seen a woman’s face for many years. He’s even learned to live without such sights. For him, women are only ghosts, voiceless, charmless ghosts that pass practically unnoticed along the streets; flocks of infirm swallows—blue, yellow, often faded, several seasons behind—that make a mournful sound when they come into the proximity of men.

And all at once, a veil falls and a miracle appears. Atiq can’t get over it. A complete, solid woman? A genuine, tangible woman’s face, also complete, right there in front of him? He’s been cut off from such a forbidden sight for so long that he believed it had been banished even from people’s imaginations. When he was a young man, just emerging from adolescence, he profaned the sanctuary of a couple of girl cousins in order to spy on them in secret, feasting his senses on their outbursts of laughter, their physical loveliness, the litheness of their movements. He’d even fallen in love with an Uzbek schoolteacher, whose endless braids made her way of walking as much of an enchantment as a mystical dance. At that impressionable age, when fables, like traditions and prejudices, pathetically live on, resisting all assaults, Atiq was convinced that he had but to dream of a girl and he would glimpse a corner of Paradise. Of course, this was not the surest way to get there, but it was the least inhuman.

Then all that came to an end; that world of bold delight is gone, broken up and crumbled away. Dreams have veiled their faces. A hood with latticed eyeholes has come down and confiscated everything: laughs, smiles, glances, dimpled cheeks, fringed eyelashes. . . .

The following morning, Atiq is still sitting in the hallway, facing the prisoner. He realizes that he’s stayed up the entire night, and that he hasn’t taken his eyes off her for an instant. He feels completely odd, light-headed and sore-throated. He has the sensation that he’s waking up inside someone else’s skin. With the force of a sudden possession, something has overwhelmed him, invaded his innermost recesses. It animates his thoughts, quickens his pulse, regiments his breathing, inhabits his least tremor; sometimes he pictures it as a reed, but rigid and unyielding, and sometimes it’s like some sort of reptilian ivy, winding itself around his very existence.

Atiq doesn’t even try to make sense of all this. He feels no pain, but a vertiginous, implacable sensation, an exhilaration bordering on ecstasy, overcomes him, reducing him to such a state that he even forgets to perform his morning ablutions. It’s as though he were under a spell, except that this is no spell. Atiq ponders the seriousness of his impropriety, measures it, and dismisses it. He lets himself go somewhere— somewhere close and yet very far away—where he can listen attentively to his own most imperceptible pulsations while remaining deaf to the most peremptory calls to order.