Book Corner                                                                     August 2, 2004
       
The Swallows of Kabul
 by Yasmina Khadra

Trans. from the French by John Cullen
Doubleday/ Random House, 2004

  Reviewed by Dr. Susan K. Hedahl

            As the chaos of actual warfare in Afghanistan has now settled into the aftermath of more localized struggles and reconstruction, artists have found time to reflect and write.  The setting of the nation's capitol, seen from the perspective of a Taliban-dominated society, provides the backdrop and plot of this truly lyrical novel.  Yasmina Khadra, the book's author, is the pseudonym of an Algerian army officer named Mohammed Moulessehoul who used a female name to get this manuscript approved by military censors.

            The story describes the lives of two couples.  One couple comes from the lower middle class:  a jailer and his spouse named Atiq and Musarrat.  The other is a highly educated pair named Mohsen and Zunaira.   The plot is driven forward by the impact of the chaotic social and religious scene that inevitability implodes both marriages.

            Khadra's opening descriptions of Kabul reads: "The cratered roads, the scabrous hills, the white-hot horizon...all seem to say Nothing will ever be the same again. The ruin of the city walls has spread into people's souls...It seems that the whole world is beginning to decay, and that is putrefaction has chosen to spread outward from here..."  (p.2)

            The pivotal event for both couples is the stoning of a prostitute.  Mohsen joins the crowd and the cross-currents of destruction and despair show how this choice comes about:  "...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...Mohsen has gradually stopped dreaming.  The light of his conscience has gone out." (p. 9)

            Khadra's writing is exquisite, poetic.  In a single sentence such as the following, he can capture despair and ennui:  "The days pass like indolent elephants." (p. 165)

His writing also reflects the religious violence of the setting as the town's radical Taliban mullah preaches at the mosque:  "The West is finished, it's over and done with, its rising stench smothers the ozone layer...it thinks it can impress us with its cutting-edge technology and intercept our prayers with its satellites...And it forgets that those who have chosen to die for the glory of the Lord cannot be impressed...! ( pp. 95,96)

            Like novels from other cultures suffering turmoil and fundamentalism - such as Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran - this work is a sensitive, thoughtful social, theological and political look at what happens when ordinary citizens are caught in the crossfire of chaos.  This book is a reminder of Jesus' comment about the fact that those who can kill the body are of little import compared to those who are capable of killing the soul.