The Swallows of Kabul Read Online Free PDF Page B

a thing. That’s not your way—you’re an educated man.”
    “I don’t know what came over me. It happened so fast. It was as if the crowd put a spell on me. I don’t recall gathering up the stones. I only remember that I couldn’t get rid of them, and an irresistible rage seemed to come into my arm. . . . What frightens me and saddens me at the same time is that I didn’t even try to resist.”
    Zunaira stands up like one who has been knocked flat but then rises again to her feet. Weakly. Incredulous, but without anger. Her lips, which a moment ago were lush and full, have dried up. She feels around for support, finds only the end of a horizontal beam that juts out from the wall, and holds on tight. For a long time, she remains still, waiting to regain her senses, but in vain. Mohsen tries to take her hand again; she eludes him and staggers toward the kitchen amid the gentle rustling of her dress. The instant she disappears behind the curtain, Mohsen understands that he should not have confided to his wife what he refuses to admit to himself.

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