Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies.
The Swallows of Kabul is a dazzling novel written with compassion and exquisite detail by one of the most lucid writers about the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching but compassionate insight into a society that violence and hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.
Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies.
The Swallows of Kabul is a dazzling novel written with compassion and exquisite detail by one of the most lucid writers about the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching but compassionate insight into a society that violence and hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.
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Overview
Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies.
The Swallows of Kabul is a dazzling novel written with compassion and exquisite detail by one of the most lucid writers about the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching but compassionate insight into a society that violence and hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307429421 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 07/08/2019 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Group |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Sales rank: | 328,078 |
| File size: | 500 KB |
About the Author
Hometown:
Aix-en-Provence, FranceDate of Birth:
January 10, 1955Place of Birth:
Kenadsa, Sahara, AlgeriaEducation:
Officer in the Algerian armyWebsite:
http://www.yasmina-khadra.comRead an Excerpt
One
Atiq Shaukat flails about him with his whip, trying to force a passage through the ragged crowd swirling around the stalls in the market like a swarm of dead leaves. He's late, but he finds it impossible to proceed any faster. It's like being inside a beehive; the vicious blows he deals out are addressed to no one in particular. On souk day, people act as if in a trance. The throng makes Atiq's head spin. In thicker and thicker waves, beggars arrive from the four corners of the city and compete with carters and onlookers for hypothetically free spaces. The porters' effluvia and the emanations of rotting produce fill the air with an appalling stench, and a burden of relentless heat crushes the esplanade. A few spectral women, segregated inside their grimy burqas, extend imploring hands and clutch at passersby; some receive a coin for their trouble, others just a curse. Often, when the women grow too insistent, an infuriated lashing drives them backward. But their retreat is brief, and soon they return to the assault, chanting their intolerable supplications. Others, encumbered by brats whose faces are covered with flies and snot, cluster desperately around the fruit vendors, interrupting their singsong litanies only to lunge for the occasional rotten tomato or onion that an alert customer may discover at the bottom of his basket.
"You can't stay there!" a vendor shouts at them, furiously brandishing a long stick above their heads. "You're bringing my stall bad luck, not to mention all kinds of bugs."
Atiq Shaukat looks at his watch and clenches his teeth in anger. The executioner must have arrived a good ten minutes ago, and he, Atiq, is still dawdling in the streets. Exasperated, he starts hitting out again, wielding his many-thonged whip in an effort to part the flood of humanity, futilely harrying a group of old men as insensible to his blows as they are to the sobs of a little girl lost in the crowd. Then, taking advantage of the opening caused by the passage of a truck, Atiq manages to squeeze into a less turbulent side street and hastens, despite his limp, toward a building that stands oddly upright amid an expanse of rubble. Formerly a clinic, but fallen into disuse and long since ransacked by phantoms of the night, the building is used by the Taliban as a temporary prison on the occasions when a public execution is to take place in the district.
"Where have you been?" thunders a large-bellied, bearded man stroking a Kalashnikov. "I sent someone to fetch you an hour ago."
Without slackening his gait, Atiq says, "I beg your pardon, Qassim Abdul Jabbar. I wasn't home." Then, in a resentful voice, he adds, "I was at the hospital. I had to take my wife. It was an emergency."
Qassim Abdul Jabbar grumbles, not at all convinced, and puts a finger on the face of his watch, indicating to Atiq that everyone's growing impatient, and all because of him. Atiq hunches his shoulders and heads toward the building, where armed men waiting for him are squatting on either side of the main door. One of them stands up, dusts off his behind, walks over to a pickup truck parked about sixty feet away, climbs inside, guns the motor, and backs up to the prison entrance.
Atiq Shaukat extracts a ring of keys from under his long vest and rushes into the jail, followed by two militiawomen hidden inside their burqas. In a corner of the cell, in a pool of light directly under a small window, a veiled woman has just finished her prayers. The other two women, the ones from the militia, ask the prison guard to withdraw. Once they are alone, they wait for the prisoner to rise to her feet. Then they approach her, unceremoniously command her to keep still, and begin to bind her tightly, pinioning her arms to her sides and trussing her legs together at midthigh. Having verified that the cords are pulled taut and solidly knotted, they envelop the woman in a large sack of heavy cloth and push her ahead of them into the corridor. Atiq, who is waiting at the door, signals to Qassim Abdul Jabbar that the militiawomen are coming. He, in turn, tells the men in front of the jail to move away. Intrigued by the proceedings, a few onlookers form a silent group at some distance from the building. The two militiawomen step out into the street, seize the prisoner by her armpits, push and haul her up into the back of the truck, load her onto the bench, and sit beside her, so close that she's pinned between them.
Abdul Jabbar raises the truck's side rails and fastens the latches. He takes one last look at the militiawomen and their prisoner to assure himself that all is as it should be, then climbs into the cab beside the driver and strikes the floor with the butt of his weapon to signal the beginning of the procession. The truck pulls away at once, escorted by an enormous 4 ´ 4 topped with a rotating light and packed with slovenly militia soldiers.
Mohsen Ramat hesitates for a long time before he decides to join the crowd gathering in the square. The authorities have announced the public execution of a prostitute: She is to be stoned to death. A few hours earlier, workers came to the execution site to unload wheelbarrows filled with rocks and dig a small hole about two feet deep.
Mohsen has been present at many lynchings of this nature. Just yesterday, two young men--one of them barely a teenager--were hanged from a traveling crane mounted on the back of a truck; their bodies were not taken down until nightfall. Mohsen loathes public executions. They make him conscious of his vulnerability, they sharpen his perception of his limits, they fill him with sudden insight into the futility of all things, of all people. At such times, there's no longer anything to reconcile him to his certitudes of days gone by, when he would raise his eyes to the horizon only to lay claim to it. The first time he watched someone put to death--a murderer, whose throat was slit by a member of his victim's family--the sight made him sick. For many nights thereafter, his sleep was dazzled by nightmarish visions. He started awake more than once, shouting like a man possessed. But time has passed, and scaffolds have come to seem more and more a part of ordinary life, so much so that the citizens of Kabul grow anxious at the thought that an execution might be postponed. Now expiatory victims are dispatched in droves, and Mohsen has gradually stopped dreaming. The light of his conscience has gone out. He drops off the moment he closes his eyes, he sleeps soundly until morning, and when he wakes up, his head is as empty as a jug. For him and everyone else, death is only a banality. Moreover, everything is banality. Apart from the executions, which are the mullahs' way of setting their house in order, there's nothing at all. Kabul has become the antechamber to the great beyond: a dark antechamber, where the points of reference are obscure; a puritanical ordeal; something latent and unbearable, observed in the strictest privacy.
Mohsen doesn't know where to go or what to do with his idleness. Every day, starting in the morning, he roams through the devastated areas of the city with a vacillating mind and an impassive face. In the old days--that is, several light-years ago--he loved to take an evening stroll along the boulevards of Kabul. Back then, the windows of the bigger stores didn't have very much to offer, but no one came up to you and struck you in the face with a whip. People went about their business with enough motivation to envision, in accesses of enthusiasm, fabulous projects. The smaller shops were filled to bursting; a hubbub of voices poured out from them and spilled onto the sidewalks like a flood of friendliness and goodwill. Settled into wicker chairs, their fans laid carelessly across their bellies, old men smoked their water pipes, occasionally squinting at a sunbeam. And the women, despite wearing long veils and peering through netting, pirouetted in their perfumes like gusts of warm air. The caravan travelers of bygone days used to swear that they had nowhere and never, in all their wanderings, encountered such bewitching beauties. They were inscrutable vestals, their laughter a song, their grace a dream of delight. And this is the reason why the wearing of the burqa has become a necessity, more to preserve women from malicious eyes than to spare men the temptations of infinite allurements. . . . How far off those days seem. Could they be nothing but pure fabrications? These days, the boulevards of Kabul are no longer amusing. The skeletal facades that by some miracle are still standing attest to the fact that the cafes, the eating places, the houses, and the buildings have all gone up in smoke. The formerly blacktopped streets are now only beaten tracks scraped by clogs and sandals all day long. The shopkeepers have put their smiles in the storeroom. The chilam smokers have vanished into thin air. The men of Kabul have taken cover behind shadow puppets, and the women, mummified in shrouds the color of fever or fear, are utterly anonymous.
At the time of the Soviet invasion, Mohsen was ten years old, an age when one fails to understand why, all of a sudden, the gardens are deserted and the days as dangerous as the nights; an age when one is particularly ignorant of how easily great misfortunes happen. His father had been a prosperous merchant. The family lived in a large residence in the very center of the city and regularly entertained relatives and friends. Mohsen doesn't remember much from that period, but he's certain that his happiness was complete, that no one challenged his outbursts of laughter or condemned him for being a spoiled, capricious child. And then came the Russian tidal wave, with its apocalyptic armada and its triumphant massiveness. The Afghan sky, under which the most beautiful idylls on earth were woven, grew suddenly dark with armored predators; its azure limpidity was streaked with powder trails, and the terrified swallows dispersed under a barrage of missiles. War had arrived. In fact, it had just found itself a homeland. . . .
The blast of a horn propels him to one side. Instinctively, he puts his long scarf up to his face as a shield against the dust. Abdul Jabbar's truck grazes him, just misses a muleteer, and hurtles into the square, closely followed by the powerful 4 ´ 4. At the sight of this cortege, an incongruous roaring shakes the crowd, where shaggy adults and slender youths vie for the choicest places. To calm people down, militiamen distribute a few savage blows.
The vehicle comes to a stop in front of the freshly dug hole. The sinner is helped down while shouts of abuse ring out here and there. Once again, waves of movement perturb the crowd, catapulting the less vigilant into the rear ranks.
Insensible to the violent attacks intended to eject him, Mohsen takes advantage of the agitation, slips through the gaps it opens in the throng, and gains a spot near the front. Standing on tiptoe, he watches a fanatic of colossal proportions lift up the impure woman and "plant" her in the hole. Then, to keep her upright and prevent her from moving, he buries her in earth up to her thighs.
A mullah tosses the tails of his burnoose over his shoulders, addresses a final glare of contempt to the mound of veils under which a person is preparing to die, and thunders, "There are some among us, humans like ourselves, who have chosen to wallow in filth like pigs. In vain have they heard the sacred Message, in vain have they learned what perniciousness lurks in temptation; still they succumb, because their faith is insufficient to help them resist. Wretched creatures, blind and useless, they have shut their ears to the muezzin's call in order to hearken to the ribaldries of Satan. They have elected to suffer the wrath of God rather than abstain from sin. How can we address them, except in sorrow and indignation?"
He stretches out an arm like a sword toward the mummy. "This woman knew exactly what she was doing. The intoxication of lust turned her away from the path of the Lord. Today, the Lord turns His back on her. She has no right to His mercy, no right to the pity of the faithful. She has lived in dishonor; so shall she die."
He stops to clear his throat, then unfolds a sheet of paper amid the deafening silence.
"Allahu akbar!" yells someone in the back of the crowd.
The mullah raises an imperious hand to silence the shouter. After reciting a verse from the Qur'an, he reads something that sounds like a judgment, returns the sheet of paper to an interior pocket of his vest, and at the end of a brief meditation proposes that his listeners arm themselves with stones. This is the signal. In an indescribable frenzy, the crowd rushes to the heaps of rocks placed in the square a few hours earlier for this very purpose. At once, a hail of projectiles falls upon the condemned woman, who, since she has been gagged, shivers under their impact without a cry. Mohsen picks up three stones and throws them at the target. Because of the tumult around him, the first two go astray, but on the third try he hits the victim flush on the head. In an access of unfathomable joy, he sees a red stain blossom at the spot where his stone has struck her. At the end of a minute, bloody and broken, the woman collapses and lies still. Her rigidity further galvanizes her executioners; their eyes rolled back, their mouths dripping saliva, they redouble their fury, as if trying to resuscitate their victim and thus prolong her torment. In their collective hysteria, convinced that they're exorcising their own demons through those of the succubus, some of them fail to notice that the crushed body is no longer responding to their attacks and that the immolated, half-buried woman is lying lifeless on the ground, like a sack of abomination thrown to the vultures.
Two
Atiq Shaukat doesn't feel well. He's tormented by the need to go outside and breathe some fresh air, to find a likely wall and stretch out on it with his face to the sun. He can't stay in this rat hole one more minute, talking to himself or trying to decipher the inextricable arabesques of words inscribed on the walls of the cells. The chill inside the little jailhouse revives his old wounds; sometimes his knee gets cold and stiffens up so much it hurts him to bend it. At the same time, he has a feeling that he's becoming claustrophobic: He can't stand the darkness any longer, nor the cubbyhole that serves as his office, festooned with spiderwebs and littered with the corpses of pill bugs. He puts away his hurricane lamp, his goatskin gourd, and the velvet-draped box where he keeps a voluminous copy of the Qur'an. After rolling up his prayer mat and hanging it on a nail, he decides to leave the jailhouse. In the unlikely event that his services are needed, the militia officers know where to find him.
From the Hardcover edition.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction from the Publisher
A San Francisco Chronicle and Christian Science Monitor Best Book
"Like Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, this is a superb meditation on the fate of the Afghan people." -- Publishers Weekly
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group's discussion of Yasmina Khadra's The Swallows of Kabul. Set in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, it is a moving portrait of a society in which "death is only a banality"[p. 10] and "pleasure has been ranked among the deadly sins" [p. 31].
Discussion Questions from the Publisher
1. Khadra depicts the city of Kabul in exquisite detail. How does the language the author uses turn the city into a presence as vital and as memorable as the people who inhabit it? In what ways does the physical environment mirror the inner lives of the characters?
2. How do small passing moments or incidents bring to life the atmosphere of Kabul? How do the descriptions of the marketplace [p. 19] and the services at the mosque [pp. 40-42 and pp. 93-97], for example, reinforce the fear and sense of claustrophobia that engulfs the city and its population?
3. Why does Mohsen experience "an access of unfathomable joy" [p. 14] when his stone strikes the condemned woman? Is he simply swept away by the fervor of the crowd, or does the incident reflect a deeper need of his own? Is scapegoatism a natural, if highly regrettable, human impulse? What purpose might it serve in society?
4. What does Mohsen hope to gain by revealing his participation in the stoning to Zunaira? Why does he "understand that he should not have confided to his wife what he refuses to admit to himself" [p. 38]? From what you know about Mohsen and the dynamics of his marriage, would it have been possible for him to keep his actions a secret? Why does Zunaira remain silent in the face of Mohsen's appalling confession?
5. Zunaira has steadfastly refused to leave her home or wear the burqa that "cancels my face and takes away my identity and turns me into an object" [p. 77]. Why does she give in to Mohsen's insistence on taking a walk? Is she persuaded by his arguments, or does her decision come from the desire to heal the breach between them? How does Khadra build a sense of uneasiness and impending disaster in the description of their outing? What aspects of Mohsen's behavior turn Zunaira against him? Why does the experience of waiting for him [p. 98] affect her so profoundly? What does she learn about herself and her ability to survive the intolerance that defines her world? What is the significance of her decision "never again to remove her burqa" [p. 125]? Is it a sign of defeat or defiance?
6. Is Atiq's businesslike acceptance of his job and his complicity in the deaths of innocent people an unforgivable moral failing? Do his circumstances-including his wife's illness, as well as his increasing misgivings about his position as jailer [p. 18]-mitigate his culpability? Do the conditions in Kabul necessitate the suspension of the usual ethical rules? Do readers also need to modify or even suspend ordinary judgment in evaluating the characters and events in the novel?
7. Initially, we see Musarrat through Atiq's eyes [pp. 26-27]. Do the face-to-face interactions between husband and wife [pp. 53-58] change your impressions of her and of the nature of their marriage? At what point in the novel does Musarrat's character come into her own? 8. What qualities do Musarrat and Zunaira share? What are the differences between them? To what extent are these differences attributable to their respective ages, social position, education, and religious beliefs?
9. Are the issues confronting the two couples universal? How has the situation in Kabul increased the harm and hurt in their relationships? Have their marriages been strengthened in any way by their dire circumstances?
10. In addition to the main plot, Khadra presents the stories of Mirza, Nazeesh, and Qassim. In what ways do these vividly drawn secondary characters expand your understanding of Afghan culture, history, and values? What, for example, does Mirza's advice to Atiq to divorce his wife [pp. 26-27] suggest about the willingness of some Afghans to accept the fundamentalists? What insight does Qassim's character offer into the brutalizing effects of war and tyranny? How does Khadra bring out Qassim's human side? Nazeesh, once a mullah respected for his erudition, "was found one morning stalking along the avenues, wildly gesticulating, drooling, eyes bulging" [p. 65]. Does Nazeesh-both a holy man and a madman-see the transformation of his country in a way that eludes the other characters?
11. Compare the sermon delivered by Mullah Bashir [pp. 94-95], Qassim's speech about destiny [p. 118], and Musarrat's musings about her fate [p. 119]. What do these passages demonstrate about the various ways religious teachings can be interpreted?
12. In the context of the novel, has the Islamic clergy abandoned its religious mission and its moral responsibilities? Drawing on what you have read about the rise of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and other countries, do you think that this is an accurate picture? What light does the novel cast on the differences between devout faith and fanaticism? 13. The loss of intimacy is perhaps the most devastating effect of the Taliban's rule. In addition to the troubled marriages of the main characters, how is this theme woven into the novel? 14. References to swallows occur throughout the book, sometimes in literal descriptions and at other times, as metaphors for the women draped in burqas. Why is the juxtaposition of the literal and the metaphorical significant in the context of the novel's themes? What do the swallows symbolize? Do they suggest different things at different times?
15. From the stoning of the adulteress at the beginning of the novel to the stoning death at the end, The Swallows of Kabul presents many images of physical violence. What other kinds of violence does Khadra explore? Can the demeaning treatment of women, the suppression of free expression and movement, and the imposition of extreme religious orthodoxy also be defined as violence?
16. After the attacks of 9/11, America invaded Afghanistan, ending the rule of the Taliban. Despite continuing unrest, Afghanistan held free elections in the fall of 2004. What aspects of Afghan culture might undermine this step toward democracy? Can a Western military presence, as well as Western political and economic pressures, offer lasting solutions to the issues Khadra raises in the novel?
17. In the preface, Khadra writes that the story about to unfold is "like the water lily that blooms in a stagnant swamp" [p. 3]. Which character-or plot element-represents the lily? Despite its darkness, is The Swallows of Kabul ultimately a novel about hope and the possibility of redemption?
18. The author, Mohammed Moulessehoul, was an Algerian army officer who originally wrote under his wife's name, Yasmina Khadra, to avoid military censorship. Why does he continue to use the feminine penname, although he has retired from the army and now lives in France? What does this suggest about his views and on his role as a writer?
About This Book
From brutal battles with Soviet troops to the rise of the Taliban theocracy, to the American invasion in the wake of 9/11, Afghanistan has become a potent symbol of the political and religious realities shaping the landscape of the twenty-first century. The Swallows of Kabul puts a human face on the horrors and repression of that war-torn country. It tells the story of two couples-Mohsen and Zunaira Ramat, born into the privileged classes of pre-Taliban Afghanistan, and the prison guard Atiq Shaukat and his wife Musarrat, raised in poverty and drawn into the jihad in hopes of bettering their lot in life.
Mohsen once hoped for a career as a diplomat, but now he aimlessly wanders the devastated streets of Kabul. On one such desultory excursion he comes upon the stoning of an adulteress and finds himself joining the frenzied crowd. The next day Zunaira, anxious to assuage her husband's guilt and her own shock, capitulates to his pleas to accompany him to the marketplace, the first outing she has made in months. But the burqa she hides behind cannot protect them from the harassment of zealous Taliban soldiers, and their marriage, already frayed by Mohsen's act of violence, collapses under the strain of new resentments and suspicions. The shadow of the Taliban darkens the lives of Atiq and Musarrat as well. Worn out by years of war and deprivation, Musarrat is slowly succumbing to an incurable illness and Atiq to despair, which corrodes his faith in the mullahs and threatens to destroy his soul.
In lucid, lyrical prose, The Swallows of Kabul carries us into a land of mind-numbing fear and harrowing hardship and reveals the possibilities for love and compassion that simmer beneath the surface.
Suggested Reading
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale; Jung Chang, Wild Swans; J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians; Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali; Louis de Bernieres, Birds Without Wings; Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl; Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families; Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup; M. E. Hirsch, Kabul; Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner; Christina Lamb, The Sewing Circles of Herat; Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran; Orhan Pamuk, Snow; Ahmed Rashid, Taliban; Åsne Seierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul; Saira Shah, The Storyteller's Daughter; William Styron, Sophie's Choice.
About This Author
Yasmina Khadra is the nom de plume of the former Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul, who is the author of two other books published in English, In the Name of God and Wolf Dreams. He took the feminine pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by military censors while he was still in the army. He lives in France.