The Swallows of Kabul - Yasmina Khadra

...war zones. I find watching the news traumatic enough, and I prefer to use my down-time to read something a little more relaxing. However, I'd heard of this book, which was an international bestseller, and felt that I should at least give it a try, although I didn't particularly want to. I was pleasantly surprised by the book. It was well-written and very vivid; the story is not without its traumatic parts, but I found it thought-provoking and it ...
...journalist's view.

The author
Yasmina Khadra is actually the pen-name for Mohammed Moulessehoul, an army officer, who would have been required to get his book approved by the army had he used his real name. He is now based in France; this book was translated from the original French. Khadra has written two other books, In the Name of God and Wolf Dreams.

The story
In a war-torn Kabul run by the Taliban, ... more

Introduction
I generally avoid stories set in war zones. I find watching the news traumatic enough, and I prefer to use my down-time to read something a little more relaxing. However, I'd heard of this book, which was an international bestseller, and felt that I should at least give it a try, although I didn't particularly want to. I was pleasantly surprised by the book. It was well-written and very vivid; the story is not without its traumatic parts, but I found it thought-provoking and it added a human touch to something of which I've only seen a journalist's view.

The author
Yasmina Khadra is actually the pen-name for Mohammed Moulessehoul, an army officer, who would have been required to get his book approved by the army had he used his real name. He is now based in France; this book was translated from the original French. Khadra has written two other books, In the Name of God and Wolf Dreams.

The story
In a war-torn Kabul run by the Taliban, the lives of its citizens are being slowly destroyed, particularly two couples; Mohsen and Zunaira, and Atiq and Musarrat. Mohsen had dreams of becoming a diplomat; Zunaira wanted to become a magistrate, now the two of them are living in poverty. Atiq is a prison guard, who spends his days with those condemned to death; then when he goes home in the evening, he is faced with his wife, Musarrat, who is slowly dying a long painful death.

Following a twist of fate, the two couples lives are intertwined. Can the new relationships forged help to save the couples from their seemingly cruel fate?

The characters
Mohsen and Zunaira are definitely the easiest couple to fathom. Both are young and educated; both had dreams that they have been forced to put on hold because of the Taliban. Zunaira, well-known for her feminist beliefs at university, cannot even go outside without being completely covered by her burqa. Her ability to cope with her surroundings is further tried when she is persuaded by Mohsen to go out and then is forced by Taliban officers to wait outside a mosque with no protection from the heat while Mohsen is made to go in to pray. Mohsen is also changing as a result of the environment he is living in. One day, he attends the stoning of a prostitute and throws one of the stones that kill her. Zunaira is horrified by his out of character actions, which further adds to his depression.

Atiq is beginning to lose his grip on reality and is spotted by an old friend wondering around the streets of Kabul talking to himself. His constant link with death is making him wonder what the point of his life is. His wife's suffering is unbearable; all the more so because there is no cure and so he is unable to repay her for saving his life after a battle with the Russians. As sanity begins to slip away, he meets Zunaira in unexpected circumstances and falls deeply in love. Rather than be angry, Musarrat is pleased that her husband has finally begun to see that life is worth living. Atiq is not so difficult to understand. I think anyone living in the situation that he is in is likely to become depressed, morbid and bad-tempered. Musarrat is harder to understand, because her reaction to life is tempered so much by her religion, and it is something that is just too alien to me to fully understand.

For such a short book (just 195 pages), the characters are depicted extremely vividly. Perhaps it is partly because of the environment that they are living in, but I think it is also down to the skill of the author, whose effective use of language makes them leap off the page.

Conclusion
I think you need to be in the right mood to read this book. It does have a very human side to it, but it is obvious all along that there is not going to be a happy ending. The characters and their relationships make up the bulk of the story, but there is also room for the author to describe the situation in which they were living - Taliban officers who whipped anyone not conforming to society's role and the poverty that was affecting citizens who had previously had good lives. The only slight disappointment was the ending, which was unexplained and left the story hanging. However, this is what made it so thought-provoking.

The prose is very dramatic and vivid. It is written in the present tense, which helps brings the situation that much closer to home. The language is a lot more complicated than I usually like - I find the use of too many long words pretentious and prefer a more straightforward method of writing - but somehow it wasn't pretentious, perhaps because the book was so short. John Cullen, who translated the book from French into English has done a superb job.

I can really recommend this book. It was exactly the right length; too many pages of this type of writing would have been too much. To my mind, books like this about situations and cultures that are so alien to us can only help with our understanding in a way that the news cannot - it really brought the human suffering home to me and this is something that any human being can understand. Highly recommended.

The book is available from Amazon for £6.99. Published by Vintage, it has 195 pages. ISBN 0-099-46602-3.
 

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