The Swallows of Kabul (5 page)

Four

THE SUN PREPARES to withdraw. Its beams no longer ricochet with such fury off the hillsides. But the heat-stunned old men, even as they sit in their doorways and wait impatiently for evening, know that the night will be as torrid as the day. Confined inside the vast steam room formed by its stony mountains, Kabul is suffocating. It’s as though a window to hell has partially opened in the sky. The rare puffs of wind, far from refreshing or regenerating the impoverished air, mischievously fill it with eye-irritating, throat-parching dust. Atiq Shaukat observes that his shadow has lengthened inordinately; soon the muezzin will call the faithful to the Maghreb prayer. Atiq slides his whip under his belt and directs his languid steps to the neighborhood mosque, an immense, chastely whitewashed hall with a skeletal ceiling and a minaret disfigured by a bombardment.

Taliban militiamen are patrolling the perimeter of the sanctuary in packs, seizing men who are passing by and forcing them
manu militari
to join the assembled faithful.

The interior of the sanctuary is a humming furnace. The first arrivals have stormed and occupied the worn rugs scattered on the floor near the
minbar
, the pulpit where a mullah is eruditely perusing a religious book. The less privileged are obliged to dispute the few ragged mats that are being hawked as though they were made of eiderdown. The rest of the congregation, only too happy to be out of the sun and safe from the militiamen’s whips, make do with the floor, whose rugged surface makes deep imprints in their behinds.

Atiq knees aside a cluster of old men, growls at the eldest of them to flatten himself more thoroughly against the wall, and sits down with his back against a column. Once again, he glares a sullen threat at the old man, warning him to keep himself as small as possible.

Atiq Shaukat hates the elderly, especially the old folks in this part of town. Most of them are putrid untouchables, exhausted by beggary and insignificance, who spend their days chanting funereal litanies and tugging at people’s clothing. In the evening, in the places where a few charitable souls put out bowls of rice for widows and orphans, these ancients forgather like ravenous dogs awaiting the signal to consume their quarry, and they feel no compunctions about making spectacles of themselves in order to cadge a few mouthfuls. Above all else, Atiq loathes them for that. Every time he sees one of them in his row at the mosque, his prayers are tinged with disgust. He dislikes the moans they emit as they grovel; he abhors their sickly drowsiness during the sermons. As far as he’s concerned, they’re nothing but cadavers, pestilential remains that the gravediggers have unconscionably neglected, carcasses with rheumy eyes, shattered mouths, and the stench of dying animals. . . .

Astaghfirullah
, he says to himself. My poor Atiq, how your heart fills with venom even in the house of the Lord. Come on, pull yourself together. Forget about making a spectacle of your private life just now and try not to let the Evil One contaminate your thoughts.

He presses his hands to his temples and tries to empty his mind; then he tucks his chin into the hollow of his throat, obstinately keeping his eyes on the floor lest the sight of the old men disturb his contemplation.

The muezzin goes into his alcove to call the people to prayer. In one anarchically coordinated movement, the faithful rise and start forming rows. A small individual with pointy ears and an elvish look pulls Atiq by the end of his vest and asks him to align himself with the others. Irritated by this impudence, the jailer grabs the other’s wrist and twists it discreetly against his side. At first, the surprised little man tries to pull his hand out of the vise that’s threatening to crush it; then, having failed in the attempt, he sags, on the verge of collapsing from sheer pain. Atiq maintains the pressure for a few seconds. When he’s certain that his victim is just about to start howling, he lets him go. The dwarf clutches his burning wrist before slipping it under his armpit. Then, unable to assimilate the idea that a believer could behave like this inside a mosque, he makes his way to a place in the row in front of them and doesn’t turn around again.

Astaghfirullah
, Atiq says to himself once more. What’s happening to me? I can’t bear the dark, I can’t bear the light, I don’t like standing up or sitting down, I can’t tolerate old people or children, I hate it when anybody looks at me or touches me. In fact, I can hardly stand myself. Am I going stark raving mad?

After the prayer, he decides to wait at the mosque for the muezzin’s next call. Whatever happens, he doesn’t feel ready to go home
and face his unmade bed,
the dirty dishes forgotten in the foul-smelling basins, and
his wife, lying in a corner of the room with her knees
pulled up to her chin, a filthy scarf on her head, and purple blotches on her face. . . .

The congregation breaks up. Some go home, others stand in front of the mosque, conversing. The old people and the other beggars, their hands already extended, crowd around the entrance to the sanctuary. Atiq goes up to a group of disabled veterans who are swapping war stories. The biggest of them, a kind of Goliath entangled in his beard, is drawing some lines in the dust with a swollen finger. The others, sitting around him like so many dervishes, observe him in silence. Each man is missing at least an arm or a leg, and one of them, stationed slightly to the rear, has lost both legs. He sits in a heap inside a custom-made barrow designed to serve as a wheelchair. The Goliath is one-eyed, and half his face is mutilated. He finishes his drawing, leans on his hands, and tells his story.

“The lay of the land was just about like that,” he says. His piping voice clashes violently with his herculean size. “There was a mountain here, a cliff there, and the two hills you see right here. A river flowed here and skirted the mountain to the north. The Soviets occupied the high ground, and their positions overlooked ours all along the line. For two days, they kept us boxed up tight. We couldn’t retreat because of the mountain. It was bare, and the helicopters would’ve had no problem cutting us to pieces. On this side, the cliff fell away into a precipice. The river was deep and wide, and it had us blocked on this other side. The only place to cross it was here, where there was supposed to be a ford, and the Russians left it open to us on purpose. The truth is, it was just a big trap. Once we sank down in there, we were done for, like drowning rats. But we couldn’t stay in our position very much longer. We were low on ammunition, and there wasn’t a lot to eat. Besides, the enemy had called in reinforcements, including artillery, and his guns were harassing us night and day. There was no way to get even a minute’s sleep. We were in a sorry state. We couldn’t even bury our dead, and they were starting to stink abominably. . . .”

The legless man, deeply offended, interrupts him. “Our dead never smelled bad,” he declares. “I remember when a shell caught us by surprise and killed fourteen mujahideen at once. That’s how I got my legs blown off. We were surrounded, too, just like you. We stayed in our hole for eight days. And our dead didn’t even decompose. Their bodies were sprawled all around, wherever the explosion had thrown them, and they didn’t smell bad, either. Their faces were serene. In spite of their wounds and the pools of blood they were lying in, you would’ve thought they were only sleeping.”

“It was winter,” the Goliath suggests.

“It wasn’t winter. We were in the middle of summer. It was so hot, you could fry eggs on the rocks.”

“Maybe your mujahideen were saints,” says the Goliath in annoyance.

“All mujahideen are blessed by the Lord,” the legless man reminds him. The others nod in vigorous assent. “They don’t stink, and their flesh doesn’t decay.”

“Our position stank to high heaven. Where do you suppose the smell came from?”

“From your dead mules.”

“We didn’t have any mules.”

“In that case, there’s only one other possibility: You were smelling the
Shuravi
. Those pigs would stink while getting out of a bath. I remember when we captured some of them, all the flies in the country came around for a closer look. . . .”

Pushed beyond patience, the Goliath says, “Will you let me finish my story, Tamreez?”

“I thought it was important to point out that our dead don’t stink. Moreover, a kind of musky perfume surrounds them all night long, from sunset to sunrise.”

The Goliath erases his dusty drawings with a forceful gesture and rises to his feet. After casting a baleful glance at the legless man, he steps over the low wall and moves off toward a tent encampment. The others remain silent until he disappears from sight, then feverishly gather around the man in the wheelbarrow.

“In any case, we all know his story by heart,” says an emaciated one-armed man. “He was getting to his accident, but he was going the long way around.”

“He was a great warrior,” his neighbor reminds him.

“True, but he lost his eye in an accident, not in battle. And besides, I frankly wonder what side he was fighting on, if his dead stank. Tamreez is right. We’re all veterans. We lost hundreds of friends. They died in our arms or before our eyes, and not a single one stank. . . .”

Tamreez fidgets in his box, adjusts the pillow under his knees—which are bound up in strips of rubber—and looks toward the group of tents, as though he fears the Goliath may return. “I lost my legs, half of my teeth, and my hair, but my memory survived intact. I remember every detail as if it were yesterday. It was the middle of the summer, and that year the heat was so bad, it drove the crows to suicide. You could see them climbing higher and higher in the sky, and then they’d let themselves drop down like anvils, with their wings pressed against their sides and their beaks pointing straight down. That’s the truth—I swear it on the Holy Book. We spread out our underwear on the rocks, and they were so hot, you could hear the lice popping. It was the worst summer I ever saw. We had let our guard down, because we were positive that none of those white-arses would venture outside of their camp with the sun beating down like that. But the Russian brutes spotted our position with the help of a satellite or something of that sort. If a helicopter or a plane had flown over our hideout, we would’ve cleared out in a minute. But we saw nothing in the sky. Everything was totally calm, in all directions. We were in our hole, about to have lunch, when the shell came down. A dead-center bull’s-eye, in the right place at the right time. Boom! I was caught in a geyser of fire and earth, and that’s all I remember. When I came to, I was lying in pieces under a huge rock. My hands were all bloody; my clothes were torn and black from the smoke. I didn’t understand right away. Then I saw a leg lying on the ground next to me. I didn’t for a minute think it was mine. I felt nothing, I wasn’t suffering at all. I was just a little groggy.”

Suddenly, he turns his face toward the top of the minaret and opens his eyes wide. His lips tremble; frantic spasms convulse his cheeks. He cups his hands as if to collect water from a fountain. When he begins to speak again, his voice quavers in his throat. “And that’s when I saw him. The same way I see you. It’s true—I swear on the Holy Book it’s true. He was up in the blue sky, flying around in circles. His wings were so white, their reflection lit up the inside of the cave. He kept on flying, round and round. I was inside a circle of absolute silence—I couldn’t hear the cries of the wounded or the explosions around me—but I heard his wings. They beat the air majestically and made a silky, swishing sound. It was a magical vision. . . .”

The one-armed man asks in great agitation, “Did he come down close to you?”

“Yes,” says Tamreez. “He came all the way down to me. He was in tears. His face was crimson and shining like a star.”

“It was the angel of death,” his neighbor declares. “It couldn’t have been anything else. He always shows himself like that to the truly brave. Did he say anything to you?”

“I don’t remember. He folded his wings around my body, but I pushed him away.”

“Poor fool!” someone cries out. “You shouldn’t have resisted him. The angel would have taken you straight to Paradise, and you wouldn’t be where you are now, moldering in your wheelbarrow.”

Atiq figures he’s heard enough and decides to refresh his mind elsewhere. By dint of endless elaboration or unvarying repetition, according to the narrators’ propensities, the stories told by the men who survived the war are well on the way to becoming genuine tall tales. Atiq sincerely thinks that the mullahs should put a stop to this. But most of all, he thinks that he can’t keep walking the streets indefinitely. For a while now, he’s been trying to flee his own reality, the one he can neither elaborate nor recount, certainly not to the insensitive, obtuse Mirza Shah, who’s so ready to reproach people for the smattering of conscience they have left. Besides, Atiq’s angry with himself for having confided in Mirza. For a glass of tea he didn’t even drink! He’s angry with himself for shirking his responsibilities, for having been foolish enough to believe that the best way to resolve a problem is to turn your back on it. His wife is sick. Is that her fault? Has he forgotten the sacrifices she made for him after his platoon, defeated by the Communist troops, left him for dead in a wasted village? How she hid him and nursed him for weeks on end? How she transported him on the back of a mule, through hostile territory in snowy weather, all the way to Peshawar? Now that she needs him, he shamelessly flees from her side, running to left and right behind anything that seems likely to take his mind off her.