The Swallows of Kabul (11 page)

“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.