The Swallows of Kabul Read Free Page B

way disheartened by the blazing heat, boils around the vendors’ makeshift stalls. Potential customers examine secondhand clothes from every angle, rummage among used objects in search of no one knows what, bruise overripe fruit with their skinny fingers.
    Atiq hails a young neighbor and hands him the melon he’s just bought. “Take it to my house,” he commands. “And don’t even think about dawdling in the street,” he adds threateningly, brandishing his whip.
    The boy nods in reluctant compliance, tucks the melon under his arm, and directs his steps toward a surreal jumble of hovels.
    Atiq thinks first of going to visit his uncle, a shoe-maker by trade. His den is located just behind a nearby pile of ruins, but Atiq promptly dismisses the idea; his uncle is among the most tireless talkers ever begotten by his tribe, and he’ll keep Atiq listening until late in the night to the same old stories, endlessly reworked, about the boots the uncle made for the king’s officers and the dignitaries of the former regime. At seventy years of age, half-blind and virtually deaf, Ashraf indulges in quite a bit of raving. When his customers, exhausted by his tirades, slip out of the shop, he fails to notice their absence and keeps haranguing the walls until breath fails him. Now no one has shoes made to measure anymore, and the rare, aging specimens brought to him for repair are so severely compromised that he doesn’t know where to begin. Atiq’s uncle Ashraf is bored, and he bores other people to death.
    Atiq stands still in the very middle of the street and considers what he’s going to do this evening. He can’t even think about going home to 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. Because of her illness, Atiq arrived at the jail late this morning and almost jeopardized the public execution of the adulteress. It was no use going to the clinic; ever since the doctor threw up his arms in a show of impotence, the nurses can’t be bothered to attend to Atiq’s wife anymore. Perhaps she’s another reason why Atiq has suddenly stopped believing the mullahs’ promises and no longer feels any particular fear of lightning bolts fired at him from out of the blue. Prostrated, moaning, contorting her body, almost mad with pain, his wife keeps him in a state of constant alert every night and dozes off only with the coming of the dawn.
    Every day, in his search for concoctions that may ease her suffering, Atiq is obliged to scour the pestilential lairs of various charlatans. But neither talismanic powers nor fervent prayers have succeeded in helping the patient. Even his own sister, who had agreed to move in with them in order to give Atiq a hand, has taken refuge in the province of Baluchistan and sent no further news. Left to his own devices, Atiq has lost his ability to manage a situation that’s steadily growing more and more complicated. If the doctor has thrown in the towel, what’s left except for a miracle? And do miracles still have any currency in Kabul? Sometimes, when he fears his nerves may crack under the pressure, Atiq clasps a fatihah in his trembling hands and implores Heaven to call back his wife. After all, why continue to suffer when each breath you take dehumanizes you and horrifies those you love?
    “Watch out!” someone shouts. “Out of the way, out of the way . . .”
    Atiq has just enough time to lurch to one side to avoid being run over. A horse pulling a cart has bolted. The frantic animal charges into the market, creates the beginnings of a panic, then suddenly veers off and heads for a nearby encampment. Thrown from his seat, the driver describes a low arc and lands on a canvas tent. Amid the squealing of children and the shouts of women, the horse continues its headlong dash and disappears behind the debris of a holy