by Atiq Rahimi
She stops and sinks into a long, thoughtful silence, slowly resuming her patching of the little blouses.
She does not emerge from this silence until she pricks her finger with the needle, and shrieks. She sucks the blood and goes back to her sewing. “This morning … my father came into my room again. He was holding a Koran under his arm, my copy, the very same one I had here … yes, it was he who took it … and so he had come to ask me for the peacock feather. Because it was no longer inside the Koran. He said it was that boy—the one I let come here, into my home—who stole the feather. And that if he comes I must make sure to ask him for it.” She stands up, goes to the window. “I hope he does come.”
She steps out of the house. Her footsteps cross the courtyard, stop behind the door that opens onto the road. No doubt she takes a quick look into the street outside. Nothing. Silence. No one, not even the shadow of a passerby. She turns away. Waits outside, in front of the window. Silhouetted against the background of migrating birds frozen mid-flight on the yellow and blue sky.
The sun is setting.
The woman must go back to her children.
Before leaving the house, she stops by the room to carry out her usual tasks.
Then leaves.
Tonight, they are not shooting.
Beneath the cold, dull light of the moon, the stray dogs are barking in every street of the city. Right through till dawn.
They are hungry.
There are no corpses tonight.
As day breaks, someone knocks on the door to the street, then opens it, and walks into the courtyard. Goes straight to the door into the passage. Places something on the ground and leaves.
As the last drip of solution makes it into the dropper and flows down the tube into the man’s veins, the woman returns.
She walks into the room, looking more exhausted than ever. Her eyes are guarded, somber. Her skin pale, muddy. Her lips less fleshy, less bright. She throws her veil into a corner and walks over, carrying a red-and-white bundle with an apple-blossom pattern. She checks the state of her man. Talks to him, as she always does. “Someone came by again, and left this bundle at the door.” She opens it. A few grains of toasted wheat, two ripe pomegranates, two pieces of cheese, and, wrapped in paper, a gold chain. “It’s him, it’s the boy!” An ephemeral happiness flits across her sad face. “I should have rushed. I hope he comes back.”
As she changes the man’s sheet: “He will come back … because before he dropped by here, he came to see me at my aunt’s house … while I was in bed. He came very gently, without a sound. He was dressed all in white. He seemed very pure. Innocent. He was no longer stammering. He had come to explain to me why that fucking peacock feather was so important to my father. He told me it was from the peacock that had been banished from Eden alongside Eve. Then he left. He didn’t even give me a chance to ask him anything.” She changes the drip bag, adjusts the timing of the drops, and sits down next to her man. “I hope you don’t hate me for talking to you about him and entertaining him here in the house. I don’t know what’s going on, but he’s very—how can I say?—very present for me. It’s almost the same feeling I used to have about you, at the beginning of our marriage. I don’t know why! Even though I know that he too could become awful, like you. I’m sure of it. The moment you possess a woman, you become monsters.” She stretches out her legs. “If you ever come back to life, ever get back on your feet, will you still be the same monster you were?” A pause, as she follows her train of thought. “I don’t think so. I convince myself that you will be changed by everything I’m telling you. You are hearing me, listening to me, thinking. Pondering …” She moves closer to him. “Yes, you’d change, you’d love me. You’d make love to me as I want to be made love to. Because now you have learned lots of new things. About me, and about yourself. You know my secrets. From now on, those secrets are inside you.” She kisses his neck. “You’d respect my secrets. As I shall respect your body.” She slips her hand between the man’s legs, and strokes his penis. “I never touched it like this … your … your quail!” She laughs. “Can you …?” She slips her hand inside the man’s trousers. Her other hand drops between her own thighs. Her lips skim over the beard; they brush against the half-open mouth. Their breath merges, converges. “I used to dream of this … always. As I touched myself, I would imagine your cock in my hands.” Little by little the gap between her breaths becomes shorter, their rhythm speeds up, overtakes the man’s breathing. The hand between her legs strokes gently, then quickly, intensely … Her breathing becomes more and more rough. Panting. Short. Heavy.
A cry.
Moans.
Once again, silence.
Once again, stillness.
Just breathing.
Slow.
And steady.
A few breaths later.
A stifled sigh suddenly interrupts this silence. The woman says “Sorry!” to the man, and shifts a little. Without looking at him, she pulls away and moves out of the hiding place to sit against the corner of the wall. Her eyes are still closed. Her lips are still trembling. She is moaning. Gradually, words begin to emerge: “What’s gotten into me now?” Her head bangs against the wall. “I really am possessed … Yes, I see the dead … people who aren’t there … I am …” She pulls the black prayer beads from her pocket. “Allah … What are you doing to me?” Her body rocks back and forth, slowly and rhythmically. “Allah, help me to regain my faith! Release me! Rescue me from the illusion of these devilish ghosts and shams! As you did with Muhammad!” She stands up suddenly. Paces around the room. Into the passage. Her voice fills the house. “Yes … he was just one messenger among others … There were more than a hundred thousand like him before he came along … Whoever reveals something can be like him … I am revealing myself … I am one of them …” Her words are lost in the murmur of water. She is washing herself.
She comes back. Beautiful, in her crimson dress embroidered with a few discreet ears and flowers of wheat at the cuffs and hem.
She returns to her spot next to the hiding place. Calm and serene, she starts speaking: “I didn’t go and seek counsel from the hakim, or the mullah. My aunt forbade me. She says I’m not insane, or possessed. I’m not under the spell of a demon. What I’m saying, what I’m doing, is dictated by the voice from on high, is guided by that voice. And the voice coming out of my throat is a voice buried for thousands of years.”
She closes her eyes and, three breaths later, opens them again. Without moving her head, she glances all around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. “I’m waiting for my father to come. I need to tell all of you, once and for all, the story of the peacock feather.” Her voice loses some of its softness. “But first I need to get it back … yes, it’s with that feather than I’m going to write the story of all these voices that are gushing up in me and revealing me!” She becomes agitated. “It’s that fucking peacock feather! And where is the boy? What do I bloody want with his pomegranates? Or his chain? The feather! I need the feather!” She stands up. Her eyes are shining. Like a madwoman. She flees the room. Searches the house. Comes back. Her hair a mess. Covered in dust. She throws herself onto the mattress opposite the photo of her man. Picks up the black prayer beads and starts telling them again.
Suddenly, she screams, “I am Al-Jabbar!”
Murmurs, “I am Al-Rahim …”
And falls silent.
Her eyes become lucid again. Her breath returns to the rhythm of the man’s breathing. She lies down. Facing the wall.
Her voice gentle, she continues: “That peacock feather is haunting me.” She picks a few flakes of peeling paint from the wall with her nails. “It has haunted me from the beginning, from the first time I had that nightmare. That nightmare I told you about the other day, the child harassing me in my dream, telling me that he knew my biggest secret. That dream made me afraid to go to sleep. But the dream gradually wormed its way into my waking hours as well … I used to hear the child’s voice i
n my belly. All the time. Wherever I was. At the baths, in the kitchen, in the street … The child would be talking to me. Harassing me. Demanding the feather …” She licks the tip of her nail, turned blue by the remnants of paint. “In those moments all I cared about was making it cease. But how? I prayed for a miscarriage. So I could lose that bloody child once and for all! All of you thought I was simply suffering the same neuroses as most pregnant women. But no. What I am about to tell you is the truth … what the child said was the truth … what he knew was the truth. That child knew my secret. He was my secret. My secret truth! So I decided to strangle him between my legs, as I gave birth. That’s why I wouldn’t push. If they hadn’t knocked me out with opium, the child would have suffocated in my belly. But the child was born. I was so relieved when I regained consciousness and saw that it wasn’t a boy—as in my dream—but a girl! A girl would never betray me, I thought to myself. I know you must be dying to find out my secret.” She turns around. Lifts her head to look at the green curtain and slithers toward the man like a snake. As she reaches his feet she tries to meet his vacant eyes. “Because that child was not yours!” She falls silent, impatient to see her man finally crack. As always, no reaction, none whatsoever. So she becomes bold enough to say, “Yes, my sang-e saboor, those two girls are not yours!” She sits up. “And do you know why? Because you were the infertile one. Not me!” She leans against the wall, at the corner to the hiding place, looking in the same direction as the man, toward the door. “Everyone thought it was me who was infertile. Your mother wanted you to take another wife. And what would have happened to me? I would have become like my aunt. And it was exactly then that I miraculously bumped into her. She was sent by God to show me the way.” Her eyes are closed. A smile full of secrets pulls at the corners of her mouth. “So I told your mother that there was a great hakim who worked miracles with this kind of problem. You know the story … but not the truth! Anyway, she came with me to meet him and receive amulets from him. I remember it as if it were yesterday. All the things I had to hear from your mother’s mouth on the way. She called me every name under the sun. She was yelling, telling me over and over that this was my last chance. She spent a lot of cash that day, I can tell you. And then I visited the hakim several times, until I fell pregnant. As if by magic! But you know what, that hakim was just my aunt’s pimp. He mated me with a guy they had blindfolded. They locked us up together in the pitch dark. The man wasn’t allowed to talk to me or touch me … and in any case, we were never naked. We just pulled down our pants, that’s all. He must have been young. Very young and strong. But seemingly short of experience. It was up to me to touch him, up to me to decide exactly when he should penetrate me. I had to teach him everything, him too! … Power over another’s body can be a lovely thing, but that first day it was horrible. Both of us were very anxious, terrified. I didn’t want him to think I was a whore, so I was as stiff as a board. And the poor man was so intimidated and frightened that he couldn’t get it up! Nothing happened. We kept far away from each other, all we could hear was our jerky breathing. I cracked. I screamed. They got me out of the room … and I spent the whole day vomiting! I wanted to give up. But it was too late. The following sessions got better and better. And yet I still used to cry, after each one. I felt guilty … I hated the whole world, and I cursed you—you and your family! And to top it all, at night I had to sleep with you! The funniest thing was that after I fell pregnant, your mother was endlessly going off to see the hakim, to get amulets for all her little problems.” A dull laugh rumbles in her chest. “Oh, my sang-e saboor, when it’s hard to be a woman, it becomes hard to be a man, too!” A long sigh struggles out of her body. She sinks back into her thoughts. Her dark eyes roll. Her ever-paler lips start moving, murmuring something like a prayer. Suddenly, she starts talking in a strangely solemn voice: “If all religion is to do with revelation, the revelation of a truth, then, my sang-e saboor, our story is a religion too! Our very own religion!” She starts pacing. “Yes, the body is our revelation.” She stops. “Our own bodies, their secrets, their wounds, their pain, their pleasures …” She rushes at the man, radiant, as if she holds the truth in her hands and is giving it to him. “Yes, my sang-e saboor … do you know the ninety-ninth, which is to say the last name of God? It’s Al-Sabur, the Patient! Look at you; you are God. You exist, and do not move. You hear, and do not speak. You see, and cannot be seen! Like God, you are patient, immobile. And I am your messenger! Your prophet! I am your voice! Your gaze! Your hands! I reveal you! Al-Sabur!” She draws the green curtain completely aside. And in a single movement turns around, flings her arms wide as if addressing an audience, and cries, “Behold the Revelation, Al-Sabur!” Her hand designates the man, her man with the vacant gaze, looking out into the void.
She is quite carried away by this revelation. Beside herself, she takes a step forward to continue her speech, but a hand, behind her, reaches out and grabs her wrist. She turns round. It’s the man, her man, who has taken hold of her. She doesn’t move. Thunderstruck. Mouth gaping. Words hanging. He stands up suddenly, stiff and dry, like a rock lifted in a single movement.
“It’s … it’s a miracle! It’s the Resurrection!” she says in a voice strangled by terror. “I knew my secrets would bring you back to life, back to me … I knew it …” The man pulls her toward him, grabs her hair, and dashes her head against the wall. She falls. She does not cry out, or weep. “It’s happening … you’re exploding!” Her crazed eyes shine through her wild hair. “My sang-e saboor is exploding!” she shouts with a bitter laugh. “Al-Sabur!” she cries, closing her eyes. “Thank you, Al-Sabur! I am finally released from my suffering,” and embraces the man’s feet.
The man, his face haggard and wan, grabs hold of the woman again, lifts her up, and throws her against the wall where the khanjar and the photo are hanging. He moves closer, grabs her again, heaves her up against the wall. The woman looks at him ecstatically. Her head is touching the khanjar. Her hand snatches it. She screams and drives it into the man’s heart. There is not a drop of blood.
The man, still stiff and cold, grabs the woman by the hair, drags her along the floor to the middle of the room. Again he bangs her head against the floor, and then, brusquely, wrings her neck.
The woman breathes out.
The man breathes in.
The woman closes her eyes.
The man’s eyes remain wild.
Someone knocks at the door.
The man—with the khanjar deep in his heart—lies down on his mattress at the foot of the wall, facing his photo.
The woman is scarlet. Scarlet with her own blood.
Someone comes into the house.
The woman slowly opens her eyes.
The breeze rises, sending the migrating birds into flight over her body.
My thanks to
Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens
Christiane Thiollier
Emmanuelle Dunoyer
Marianne Denicourt
Laurent Maréchaux
Soraya Nouri
Sabrina Nouri
Rahima Katil
for their support
and their poetic gaze
ATIQ RAHIMI was born in Afghanistan in 1962, but fled to France in 1984. There he has become renowned as a maker of documentary and feature films, and as a writer. The film Earth and Ashes was in the official selection at Cannes in 2004 and won a number of prizes. He is currently adapting A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear for the screen. Since 2001 Rahimi has returned to Afghanistan a number of times to set up a writers’ house in Kabul and offer support and training to young Afghan writers and film-makers. He lives in Paris.
Copyright © P.O.L. éditeur, 2008
Originally published in French as Syngué sabour by P.O.L. éditeur in 2008. Published in English by agreement with Chatto & Windus, a division of Random House UK.
Translation copyright © 2009 Polly McLean
Introduction copyright © 2009 Khaled Hosseini
Ce
t ouvrage publié dans le cadre du programme d’aide à la publication bénéficie du soutien de CulturesFrance et du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères. This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from CulturesFrance and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Koran translated by N. J. Dawood (Penguin Classics 1956, Fifth revised edition 1990). Copyright © N. J. Dawood, 1956, 1959, 1966, 1968, 1974, 1990, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2003, 2006. Reproduced by permission of Penguin books Ltd.
Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Rahimi, Atiq.
[Syngué sabour. English.]
The patience stone : sang-e saboor / Atiq Rahimi; introduction by Khaled Hosseini; translated by Polly McLean.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-59051-382-8
I. McLean, Polly. II. Title.
PK6878.9.R34S9613 2010
891′.563–dc22
2009035737
Publisher’s Note:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
