Afghanistan by Atiq Rahimi... Has Afghanistan produced anything other than war?

Afghanistan has always been associated in our minds with the manifestations of armaments, killing, and bloodshed, with the Soviet planes and the raids of the Americans and others. We have come to the point where we cannot imagine that this inflamed part of the world contains literature, poetry, and art. Nor can we imagine that this land has given birth to sons who point their pens in the face of the world instead of pointing their guns, and politely explode their cries instead of blowing themselves up!

A deeper investigation into the structure of Afghan society reveals the existence of social issues and psychological conflicts that are buried under the rubble as many corpses are buried. Their stories are lost at the expense of the political clamor that is taking place around them. Thus we remain oblivious to what is happening there... in that society that has been deliberately marginalized, its stories and cries have been forgotten, and its requests have been ignored.

If you want to look closely at Afghan society, then stay away from political analyzes and get closer to the stories of the writers, because they alone care about those tormented people who are under pressure from psychological, social, and political factors, and because they are the most capable of conveying that image vividly as it is.

Perhaps this is indeed what the Afghan writer, Atiq Rahimi, wanted, to overlook the political conflicts and the international community, and look closer at the internal conflicts of the Afghan society. Here he is (Cursed Dostoevsky) carrying the (Patience Stone) moving between (A Thousand Homes Of Dream And Horror) on (Earth and Ashes).

Read this article about the writer Atiq Rahimi's works, and what messages he tried to include in each of his stories!

Earth and Ashes...

You know my son! The pain, either melts and runs through the eyes, or it becomes cut like a blade spouting out of the mouth, or it turns into an internal bomb, a bomb that explodes one day and blows you up with it.

What kind of pain is Rahimi talking about in this novel? The pain of alienation, war, death, the pain of meeting, or the pain of the unknown? If you follow this story from the first scene to the last scene, you will feel that it is a biography of sadness and pain in its various forms and torments, whether this is directly mentioned or not. It is a journey of reunification, a human need that pushes us to unite after death stripped us of our strength and cohesion.

It is the story of the old grandfather "Dastaguir" and the journey that he walked to reach where his son works to tell him of the tragedy caused by the Soviet raid that killed all the family members except for "Yasin" the little grandson from whom the bomb stole his hearing and with it the sounds of things around him. We live with Dastaguir's many situations, fantasies, and daydreams, to finally reach with him his son "Murad". But the eagerness of meeting, the warmth of the mutual embrace, the shared lament over a charred family burying itself, the feeling of safety and belonging again... All these things will not happen, but why?

Perhaps the goal that the writer wanted to reach from this short story, which does not exceed 100 pages, is to talk about the state of alienation experienced by the young Afghani man, about his transformation into a victim of two conflicting forces: the Soviets and their quest to turn young people into a working machine that is productive only according to their standards on the one hand, and the warring fundamentalist movements, each of which carved out a piece of land for itself and established its own ruling on it on the other hand.

The cinematic eye of Rahimi remains present in the narration of events. And this is what distinguishes him, as you feel as if you are watching a cinematic movie in all its dimensions in terms of environment, sounds, colors, dialogues, and others.

This novel was published in 2000 and turned into a movie in 2004, directed by Atiq Rahimi.

A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear...

What else can you call those moments of nameless terror other than 'annihilation'? Those moments when you begin to doubt your very existence. When you're so paralysed with fear that you turn to fantasies for reassurance, to imaginary women, to djinn, to angels, to life after death...

What a nightmare is this that Atiq is sharing with us in this novel! And about which houses are filled with terror at times and many times in dreams he talks about? It is like a delirious text in which voices from the present and the past alternate, to find ourselves sharing Farhad's nightmares, escape, and death without being dead.

This novel talks about Farhad's escape from the Afghan security forces under a pro-Soviet political regime, for a reason he does not realize until later. He was the victim of a joke invented by his friend, as he twisted the communist slogan on a piece of paper so that this paper fell into the hands of a party student who writes a report against them. Thus, the escape journey begins, only to find himself in the house of a woman who takes care of him, and her son calls him "Dad!"

Farhad lived for a period of time in this house, which was shrouded in mystery and sorrow, and every day his curiosity increased towards this bold woman and her insistence on protecting him in a conservative country!

Is it possible that the reason is just some sexual gratification to make up for a void that has accumulated over the years? Or is she still haunted by the story of her murdered husband, so she decided to protect Farhad in response to her inability to protect her husband at the time?

Farhad flees to Pakistan to start a new life there, away from the guns of the security forces and their shackles that monitor dreams, but can he actually escape from it? Or does he find himself again surrounded by a dictatorial regime similar to its predecessor, but different in terms of its geographical area?

Perhaps the main message that the writer intends to convey here is to emphasize the succession of oppression produced by dictatorial regimes in that part of the world under the control of major powers.

Rahimi lives in the body of his hero, and under his skin, expressing to us everything that goes on in his mind within a monologue presented with a cinematic eye... It is an Afghan revelation in a hallucinatory style, and cinematography rather than a novel.

The Patience Stone...

You know, that stone you put in front of you... and tell all your problems to, all your struggles, all your pain, all your woes... to which you confess everything in your heart, everything you don't dare tell anyone... And the stone listens, absorbing all your words, all your secrets, until one fine day it explodes. Shatters into tiny pieces... Then you will be freed from all your pain and suffering.

Well, what if this stone in our novel here is "human"?

The novel takes place in a small mud room, a small dagger is hung on one of its walls, which will be the judge at the end of the story, and a window opens to a world filled with the clamor of the Mujahideen fighting for power. Inside the room is the comatose lifeless body of an injured man, and a young woman will be the only voice speaking in this story.

It is amazing how Rahimi can reincarnate the role of a female! He speaks in her style and expresses her feelings, a female who used to be a distraction by her husband according to his whims and desires alone. This is, in fact, the gist of the story... Shedding light on the situation of women in Afghan society in particular and in developing societies in general, women there are transformed in one way or another into a tool for satisfying desires without any consideration of their entity, person, and needs.

In addition to addressing other parallel phenomena such as sexual suppression, or even addressing the phenomenon of resorting to brothels as a means of procreation at a time when it is not permissible to demolish the taboo that says: The woman is only responsible for “not having children,” and it is inappropriate for a man to be involved in this because it detracts from his masculinity!

The novel as a whole is a revelation that the woman throws at the ears of her sleepy husband, to break her and his unity. She tells him her feelings towards him, blames him for his brutal behavior, and he is like a stone of patience that the Afghan legend told about. He listens to her and absorbs her words until she reaches the last revelation that broke his silence and ended the story. What revelation it would be? And what happened to him at that time?

The novel was published in 2008, won the French Goncourt Prize in the same year, and was turned into a movie in 2013.

A Curse On Dostoevsky...

The moment Rassoul lifts the axe to bring it down on the old woman's head, the thought of Crime and Punishment flashes into his mind. It strikes him to the very core. His arms shake; his legs tremble. And the axe slips from his hands. it splits open the old woman's head, and sinks into her skull.

As soon as the reader passes through these lines, the novel by Dostoevsky's masterpiece is represented by its crime and punishment. He lives in a state of identification and imitation between the character of the hero here and the hero there, but the only difference is that our hero is from the land of ashes Afghanistan, the country about which the writer Atiq Rahimi said: “Everyone fights in it to turn into an invader, and when he is killed he turns into a martyr.”

Rassoul enters into a state of struggle to prove to himself and others the importance of his act. He does not want anything but to give his crime a real meaning with a lofty goal, not just to be in the chaotic contexts of murder hidden behind obsolete religious and social beliefs, but rather, to be the motive behind prosecuting all war criminals and bringing them to trial and accountability.

Perhaps Rassoul doesn't care in the end how he will be trialed? But why is he being trialed? He just wants to rip out that shrapnel embedded in his heart generated by his guilt over the act of murder. He just wants to be prosecuted to warn his countrymen how reprehensible and hateful killing is and sowing seeds of guilt in the soul of every killer.

All that can be said about this novel is not only the social or psychological context in which it was formulated but also the national context, which the writer summarized by saying: "This novel is for those who do not feel guilty about the bloody history of this country".

This novel was published for the first time in 2011 and this was the last work of the writer "Atiq Rahimi" so far.