The Swallows of Kabul (15 page)

“WHAT’S THE MATTER?” Musarrat asks. “That’s the fifth time you’ve salted your rice, and you haven’t even tasted it yet. And you keep on putting the water cup to your mouth without ever taking a sip.”

Atiq gazes stupidly at his wife. He doesn’t seem to grasp the meaning of her words. His hands are trembling, his heart is racing, and now and again his breathing is afflicted by a kind of suffocation. On wobbly legs, his head emptied of thought, he walked home, but he can’t recall how; he doesn’t remember meeting anyone on the streets of his district, streets where he can’t ordinarily venture without being hailed or greeted by many acquaintances. He has never before in his life known the condition in which he’s been languishing since the previous evening. He’s not hungry; he’s not thirsty. The world around him doesn’t so much as graze his consciousness. What he’s experiencing is at once prodigious and terrifying, but he wouldn’t be rid of it for all the gold on earth: He feels
fine.

“What’s wrong with you, Atiq?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“God be praised, you can hear. I was afraid you’d been struck deaf and dumb.”

“What can you be talking about?”

“Nothing,” Musarrat says, giving up.

Atiq replaces his cup on the floor, takes a pinch of salt from a small earthenware bowl, and once again begins mechanically sprinkling the white granules over his dish of rice. Musarrat puts her hand to her mouth to hide a smile. Her husband’s absentmindedness amuses and worries her, but his radiant face, she must admit, is reassuring. She’s rarely seen him so endearingly awkward. He looks like a child just back from a puppet show. His eyes are sparkling, dazzled from within, and his agitation is almost unbelievable in one who never shakes, except with indignation, and then only when he’s repressing his anger and not threatening to destroy everything in sight.

“Eat,” she urges him.

Atiq stiffens. His forehead huddles around his eyebrows. Suddenly he leaps up, slapping his thighs. “My God!” he cries out as he snatches his great bunch of keys from its designated nail. “I’m inexcusable.”

Musarrat tries to get to her feet. Her thin arms give way, and she falls back onto her pallet. The effort has drained her strength; she leans against the wall, her feet out in front of her, and stares at her husband. “Now what have you done?”

Atiq feels badgered but replies nonetheless: “I just remembered—I didn’t give the prisoner anything to eat.”

He turns on his heels and disappears.

Musarrat remains where she is, deep in thought. Her husband has gone out without his turban, his vest, and his whip. Such a thing has almost never happened. She waits, expecting him to return for his things. Atiq doesn’t return. From this, Musarrat concludes that her husband, the part-time jailer, is no longer in full possession of his faculties.

ZUNAIRA IS ASLEEP, lying on a worn blanket. The sight of her makes Atiq think of a sacrificial offering. Around her, the cell, its corners spattered with unequivocal stains, sways in the pulsing light of the hurricane lamp. The night is thick, dusty, without real depth, its busy whir clearly audible. Atiq places a tray laden with skewered meats (bought with money from his own pocket), a flat cake, and some fruit on the floor of the cell. He squats down and extends an arm to wake the prisoner; his fingers hover above the curve of her shoulder. She must regain her strength, he tells himself. His thoughts, however, do not suffice to activate his hand, which continues to hesitate, suspended in the air. He creeps backward until he’s leaning against the wall. Clasping his drawn-up legs, he wedges his chin between his knees, then sits unmoving, with his eyes riveted on the woman’s body. Its shadow, fashioned by the bright lamplight and cast upon the wall as upon a canvas, delineates the landscape of a dream. Atiq is astonished by the prisoner’s composure. He doesn’t believe that tranquillity could reveal itself more plainly anywhere else than on that face, as limpid and beautiful as water from a spring. And that black hair, smooth and soft, which the least impudent of breezes would lift as easily as a kite. And those delicate, translucent houri’s hands, which look as soft as a caress. And that small round mouth . . .
“La
hawla,”
Atiq says, pulling himself together. He thinks, I have no right to take advantage of the fact that she’s asleep. I must go back home; I must leave her alone. Atiq thinks, but he does not act. He stays where he is, squatting in the corner, his arms embracing his legs, his eyes bigger than his conscience.

“IT’S VERY SIMPLE,” Atiq declares. “No words can describe her.”

“Is she so beautiful as that?” Musarrat asks skeptically.

“Beautiful? The word sounds commonplace to me—it sounds banal. The woman languishing in my jail is more than that. I’m still trembling from the sight of her. I spent the night watching her sleep. Her magnificence so filled my eyes that I didn’t notice the dawn.”

“I hope she didn’t distract you from your prayer.”

Atiq lowers his head. “It’s true—she did.”

“You forgot to perform your
salaat
?”

“Yes.”

Musarrat bursts into tinkling laughter, which quickly gives way to a succession of coughs. Atiq frowns. He doesn’t understand why his wife is laughing at him, why she’s not cross. It’s not often that he hears her laugh, and her unusual gaiety makes their dark hovel almost habitable. Panting but delighted, Musarrat wipes her eyes, adjusts the cushion behind her, and leans back on it.

“Am I amusing you?” Atiq asks.

“Enormously.”

“You think I’m ridiculous.”

“I think you’re fabulous, Atiq. Why would you hide such generous words from me? After more than twenty years of marriage, at last you reveal the poet who’s been hiding inside you. You can’t imagine how happy I am to know that you’re capable of speaking from your heart. Generally, you avoid such words as though they were pools of vomit. Atiq, the man with the eternal frown, the man who could walk past a gold coin without deigning to notice it, this man has tender feelings? That doesn’t simply amuse me; it revives me. I’d like to kiss the feet of the woman who’s awakened such sensitivity in you in the course of a single night. She must be a saint. Or perhaps a good fairy.”

“That’s what I said to myself the first time I saw her.”

“Then why have they sentenced her to death?”

Atiq flinches. Evidently, he hasn’t asked himself this question. That’s not like him at all, Musarrat thinks. Surely there must be some mistake. “How about her? What’s her story?”

“I haven’t spoken to her.”

“Why not?”

“It isn’t done. I’ve guarded many female prisoners awaiting execution, some of them for several days. We never exchanged a single word. It’s as if you’re all alone and the other person isn’t there. We ignored one another completely, they in their cells and me in my hole. Tears can’t do any good when a sentence of death has been pronounced. In such cases, there’s no place like a prison for gathering your thoughts, so people keep quiet. Especially the night before an execution.”

Musarrat seizes her husband’s hand and presses it against her chest. Surprisingly, the jailer offers no resistance. Perhaps he doesn’t notice. His gaze is far away, his breathing tense.

“Today I feel quite strong,” she says, elated by the color in her husband’s face. “If you’d like, I could fix her something to eat.”

“You’d do that for her?”

“I’d do anything for you.”

Thirteen

THE PRISONER pushes away her tray and wipes her lips delicately on the end of a rag. Her way of patting the corners of her mouth reveals her origins in a social rank that has been abolished and no longer exists. She has class, and she’s surely well educated. Atiq scrutinizes her while pretending to examine the lines in his hand. He doesn’t want to miss a single one of her movements; he wants to take in all her expressions, all her ways—of eating, of drinking, of picking up the things around her and putting them down again. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no doubt: This woman has been rich and distinguished, has worn silk and jewels, has doused herself with fantastic perfumes and mistreated the hearts of innumerable suitors; her face has radiated the joy of many an ardent love; her smile has soothed many a misfortune. How has she wound up here? What wretched wind has blown her into this dungeon, a woman whose eyes seem to hold the light of all the world?

Those eyes look up at him. An immense oppression crushes his chest, and he quickly turns away. When he glances at the prisoner again, he finds her staring at him with an enigmatic little smile playing on her lips. To subdue his mounting embarrassment, he asks her if she’s still hungry. She shakes her head. He remembers that there are some berries on his desk, but he doesn’t dare go to fetch them. To tell the truth, he doesn’t
want
to go away, not even for a second. He feels
fine
, just where he is, on this side of the bars, yet at the same time so close to her that he believes he can register the beating of her pulse.

The woman’s smile doesn’t fade. It floats on her face like the beginnings of a dream. Is she really smiling, or is he seeing visions? Since being confined to his jail, she hasn’t said a word. Silent and dignified, she encloses herself in her exile, betraying neither anxiety nor torment. She looks as if she’s waiting for the sun to come up so that they can leave together, without a sound. The imminent expiration of her brief reprieve hangs over her prayers like a patient blade, but its pernicious shadow cannot reach her thoughts. She seems impregnable in her martyrdom.

“My wife prepared this meal for you,” Atiq says.

“You’re very lucky.”

What a voice! Atiq drinks it in and waits for her to expand on this subject, to speak a little about her dramatic circumstances, which he knows must be eating her up inside. He waits in vain.

After a long silence, he hears himself murmur, “He deserved to die.”

Then, with increased fervor, he says, “I’d take my oath on it. A man who doesn’t appreciate his good fortune has no right to any sympathy.” His Adam’s apple scrapes his throat as he adds, “I’m certain he was a brute. Of the worst kind. Full of himself. He couldn’t have been anything else. When you don’t appreciate your good fortune, you forfeit your right to it. It’s obvious.”

The prisoner tenses her shoulders.

As Atiq’s words come faster, his voice grows steadily louder. “He abused you, isn’t that right? If he didn’t like some little thing you said, he rolled up his sleeves and attacked you.”

She lifts her head. Her eyes remind him of jewels; her smile has become more pronounced, at once sorrowful and sublime.

“He pushed you too far, was that it? He made you suffer more than you could bear. . . .”

“He was marvelous,” she says in a tranquil voice. “I’m the one who didn’t appreciate my good fortune.”

ATIQ IS OVERWROUGHT. He can’t stand still. Ever since he came home, earlier than expected, he hasn’t stopped walking back and forth in the patio, turning his eyes skyward and talking to himself.

Sitting on her pallet, Musarrat watches him without a word. This whole affair is beginning to bother her. Atiq hasn’t been himself since they put that prisoner in his charge. “What’s the matter?” he shouts at her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Musarrat thinks it would be unwise to answer him, though not so unwise as it would be to try to calm him down. Atiq looks as though that’s exactly what he’s waiting for, an excuse to pounce on her. His eyes are full of wrath, and his clenched knuckles are white.

He approaches her. There’s a milky secretion in the corners of his mouth. “You said something?”

She shakes her head.

He puts his hand on his hip and turns toward the courtyard; then, grimacing with rage, he strikes the wall and bellows, “It was a stupid accident. It could happen to anyone. It was the kind of thing you can’t anticipate, the kind of thing that takes you by surprise. Her husband tripped over a carafe and struck his head on the floor, fatally. It was as simple as that. It’s a tragedy, that’s true, but it was an accident. She wasn’t responsible for anything, the poor woman. The
qazi
must be made to see that they were wrong to condemn her. They don’t have the right to send an innocent person to her death just because she was involved in an accident. That woman didn’t kill her husband. She didn’t kill anyone.”

Musarrat nods her head timidly. Lost in his tirade, Atiq doesn’t even notice.