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Set in Kabul under the rule of the Taliban, this extraordinary novel takes readers into the lives of two couples: Mohsen, who comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; Zunaira, his wife, exceedingly beautiful, who was once a brilliant teacher and is now no longer allowed to leave her home without an escort or covering her face. Intersecting their world is Atiq, a prison keeper, a man who has sincerely adopted the Taliban ideology and struggles to keep his faith, and his wife, Musarrat, who once rescued Atiq and is now dying of sickness and despair. Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies. The Swallows of Kabul is a dazzling novel written with compassion and exquisite detail by one of the most lucid writers about the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching but compassionate insight into a society that violence and hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.… (more)
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The setting is so foreign it could be science fiction. The poverty and misery of existence between the
Atiq is a jailer. He fought as a muhjadeen and after being wounded in the war was nursed for months by Musarrat who he then married. They were not able to have children and now she is dying from a disease that is beyond the skill of the doctors available. His soul is in constant torment and only she who truly loves him can see it.
The book is a depiction of misery and tragedy equal to the ancient Greeks. Everyone suffers in a primitive world run by the Taliban who are barely human and abuse everyone in the name of God.
There are brief moments of beauty such as Atiq watching the moon and remembering his father tell him where it came from.
Those brief moments only emphasize the bare, hot and dusty world that everyone moves in. To describe the story would give it away. Suffice it to say that the book ends in tragedy piled on tragedy until there is nothing.
It is not an uplifting book but this is life as it is lived by people I will never know. The people in the camps stayed alive so that there would be a memory of what happened. This book is that type of memory and it should be read if only to acknowledge how circumstances beyond our control can inflict ghastly misery on life's innocents.
The Swallows of Kabul is a story about two couples in Kabul under the rule of the Taliban. The book begins with an execution, another death that has almost no effect on anyone, as death has become so normal. War is the normality, and the Taliban has taken such control over everyone's lives that Mohsen, one of the main characters, has to convince himself that it was not always this way. He remembers being able to laugh in public, entertaining guests with his family, being happy. But he has not experienced these things in so long, they seem like the swallows of the title - they have fled with the arrival of war.
This book is a quick read. The almost 200 pages fly by. Yet it is not easy to read. It is tragic, the way the main characters' lives are torn apart by the week or so the story covers. In a sense, this is a book that mourns for all of the things that were lost because of the wars Afghanistan has endured: beauty, freedom, the ability to love, Kabul itself. It is a eulogy.
At its essence, this is a story about love and the strength of women. Love is a thing that is universal, yet incredibly varied. These husbands and wives love each other in an entirely different way than American couples love each other. I believe this story shows the validity in this alternate kind of love that is so foreign to Americans.
The women are clearly the group who suffers the most injustice under the Taliban in Kabul, but it was the men in this story who were falling apart. Despite their misfortunes, the women showed incredible strength, both in different ways. I found this to be empowering and it gave me hope that all spirits in Afghanistan are not and will not be broken. Strength and bravery are important characteristics for the future of Afghanistan.
Overall, I would rate this book a 4/5 and I highly recommended it to anyone looking for a fast, beautiful and thought-provoking read.
The story is set in Kabul during the Taliban era, and tells the story of a few people whose fates unexpectedly cross through the execution of
The action moved fast and it was interesting and written with a passion for issues and characters. It was easy to see the insanity of Taliban and the despair and hopelessness to which they led the Afghani people.
Still, there were a few things that I felt were weak, or simply not to my taste. The first thing I did not like was the almost Gothic Romance convention it was written in. Then, the ideas were very openly laid out, so that you wouldn’t miss anything- there was no subtlety in the writing. And the style was another problem. The dialog sounded artificial and the sentences went from really poetic to choppy for no apparent reason. That may be the translator’s fault though, and not the author’s at all.
In the end I felt disappointed as it did not fulfill my expectations. Especially that it sucked me right in at the beginning. It wasn’t a bad book, but not my cup of tea perhaps.
Khadra is the nom de plume for Algerian army officer and the original novel was written in French. Makes me wonder what was lost in the translation - but not wonder enough to consider French lessons.
The novel follows two married couples and
The setting of the novel inevitably draws comparisons to the works of Khaled Hosseini, yet Swallows of Kabul tells a unique and gripping story of its own. Obviously this was not an easy or lighthearted read, but fans of literature set in the middle east will appreciate the beautiful yet tragic story.
Kite Runner paints a vivid portrait of present day Afghanistan. There is horror in the lives of its inhabitants, but they have not lost their humanity. In fact, they are admirable because they survive as humans despite the brutal Taliban rule. The picture painted in The Swallows of Kabul is quite different. It is gray and dreary, with no hope for anyone.
The Swallows of Kabul is a wordy and depressing book, with no satisfying resolution.
Khadra weaves a mesmerizing tale that moves to a painful, yet inevitable, conclusion. You know the end is going to be awful but you still must keep going. Khadra’s characters make confront untenable alternatives and must make unimaginable choices that break your heart.
The characters are all right. It's Atiq that really develops throughout this book. I liked Musarrat the most. She had this inner strength within her despite her health deteriorating and I admired her devotion and loyalty especially towards the end. I also pitied her the most as she had tried so hard to love Atiq and understand him. When she finally does though, it just seems too late. Which reinforces the feelings of sadness and despair which seems to be the main theme in this book.
Aside from the slow pace which sort of put me off, I couldn't help but continue reading. I wanted to know what happened to these four people. My heart went out to them because of what they had to live through and the eventual outcomes of their lives towards the end of the book. Don't expect any happy moments in this book (I can only think of one, and it didn't end so nicely). You find yourself immersed in this story because of the way it's beautifully written, and the emotions it can trigger while you're reading it.
Overall, although it's a short book, it might feel as if you've been drained of all emotion. Don't let that put you off of this book. It's written with a wonderful lyrical and poetical skill and with great detail to emotion and description that you'll feel as if you're actually there with the characters and going through their personal tragedies.
I previously read Khadra's The Attack and can say that while The Swallows of Kabul is a much better book, I don't find Khadra to be a particularly compelling writer. Still, he (Khadra is a man who writes under a female pseudonym) conveys well the tension of life in this brutal and unfamiliar world.
The story roughly follows the lives of two couples in Kabul: Moshen and Zunaira, once part of the educated middle class, and Atiq and Misarrat, the jailer and his dying wife. Stories of love and devotion, but not played out like a fairy tale.
The writing is stark in places, luminescent in others. Though the book is small, it took me longer to read, because I had to ruminate on certain passages. This was not a quick, easy read. Some parts were chilling in the brutishness, others made my soul sing. (An example of the latter, which rang true to me: "Music is the true breath of life. We eat so we won't starve to death. We sing so we can hear ourselves live." (p 84). And at another point "Basically, being alive means keeping yourself ready for the sky to fall in on you at any time." (p118)
Legend has it that the women of Afghanistan were the most beautiful and beguiling in the world, and that the burqa was instituted to protect men from being driven mad by that beauty.
I read somewhere that the title refers to the flocks of women in burqas.
The story undulates between inaction and action, thought and speech, indifference and concern. Despair lingers over everything. Slow to start, the narration grows in intensity towards the feverish end. Short and quietly intense, this book will stay with you if you stay with it.
EJ 11/2011
Khadra writes with poetic detail about a city which the residents no longer recognize as their own. Frightened, confused, unsure, despairing, they struggle to make sense of a culture that is at once familiar and foreign:
“…hundreds of little kids … many barely old enough to walk, and all silently braiding the stout rope they’ll use, someday soon, to lynch their country’s last hope of salvation.”
“We had some privileges that we didn’t know how to defend, and so we forfeited them to the apprentice mullahs….It would be marvelous to stand in front of a shop window, leaning against you, or to sit at a table, just the two of us, chatting away or making fantastic plans. But that’s no longer possible.”
”How could he have believed that lovers’ promenades were still possible in a city that looks like a hospice for the moribund, overrun with repellent fanatics whose eyes stare out of the dark backward and abysm of time? How could he have lost sight of the horrors that punctuate daily life in a nation so contemptible its official language is the whip?”
“You’re happy, but you don’t know it. All your life, you’ve only listened to other people – your teachers and your holy men, your leaders and your demons – and they’ve spoken to you of nothing but wrongs and bitterness and war.”
There are some startlingly brutal images contained in this small volume. This is a tragedy, and things will not end well for all these characters. But I feel that I have gained a little understanding of the situation by reading this novel, and for that I’m grateful.
Atiq's job is to guard the Taliban's prisoners before they are to be publicly executed for infractions. He is a man who does as he is told and feels that life is cruel for his lot in life with his sickly wife and his passionless mundane existence. Mohsen is also frustrated and cannot accept the horrible changes in his country that he can do nothing about. His wife must give up her career and can only be seen in public if escorted and veiled. One day in his powerless state, he joins a maddening mob as they publicly stone to death a young woman accused of adultery. He is appalled at his uncharacteristic behavior and is ashamed to tell his wife.
Taliban thugs roam the streets with whips and the penalty for truth is death. Even veterans must pretend that the corpses of God's warriors are bathed in a musky perfume and never decompose. The Swallows of Kabul is a scathing indictment of a society where the worship of a fundamentalist God makes life uninhabitable. Wherever you live today, be grateful you don't live the type of miserable existence described in this book.