The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra

outer limits of the tolerable, about the livestock, which the harsh seasons have decimated, about his dilapidated village, where he saw no reason to linger for any length of time. Had it been up to him, he would never have set foot there again. But his mother died a few days ago and was buried yesterday. He arrived too late for the funeral services, so he contented himself with a brief period of meditation at her grave. A few minutes of silence and a verse from the Qur’an were sufficient. Then he slipped a bundle of banknotes inside his father’s vest and ordered the driver to take him back to Kabul.
    “We could have spent the night,” the driver says, as if he were reading Qassim’s thoughts.
    “Why?”
    “So we could rest. We didn’t even have anything to eat.”
    “There was nothing to do up there.”
    “But you were with your family.”
    “So what?”
    “Well, I don’t know. If I were you, I would’ve stayed awhile. How many weeks has it been since the last time you went back to your village? It’s been months, maybe even years.”
    “I don’t feel comfortable in the village.”
    The driver nods, accepting this explanation, but he doesn’t give it much credence. He watches his passenger out of the corner of his eye, thinking that Qassim is behaving quite peculiarly for someone who has just lost his mother. The young man falls silent while successfully negotiating a curve, then picks up the conversation again. “One of your cousins told me your mother was a saint.”
    “She was a good woman.”
    “Are you going to miss her?”
    “Possibly, but I can’t see how. She was a deaf-mute. I remember very little about her, to tell you the truth. Besides, I left home when I was quite young. At the age of twelve, I was already running from one frontier to the other, earning my bowl of rice. I seldom went back home. One Ramadan out of every three. The result was that I didn’t know the deceased as well as I should have. For me, she was the woman who brought me into the world—period, new paragraph. She had fourteen kids. I was the sixth, and the least interesting. I was sullen and unapproachable, more likely to fight than cry. I thought there were too many people in the shack, and not enough ambition. Then again, my late mother was astonishingly reserved. The old man loved to say that he married her because she never questioned his orders. That made him laugh his head off. Quite a joker, the old man. A little slow on the uptake, but not demanding and never ever abusive. He had no reason to be. On the rare occasions when there was a domestic quarrel, it was conducted in complete silence, and he was too amused to lose his temper. . . .”
    Qassim’s reminiscences fill his eyes with a distant shimmer. He purses his lips and stops talking. He’s not sad; rather, he’s disappointed, as if his memories have unexpectedly upset him. After a long silence, he clears his throat, turns his whole body around to the left, and adds, “Maybe she was a saint. Why not, after all? She heard no evil and spoke no evil.”
    “So she was blessed.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. She was a placid person, she had no enemies, and she led an uneventful life. For me, the epitome of her was her smile, which was always the same, except that it was bigger when she was contented and smaller when she was upset. If I left home too young, that was surely the reason. Talking to her was like talking to a wall.”
    The driver leans his head out of the window and spits. His saliva whirls in the flying dust before landing on his beard, which he wipes with the back of his hand. Then, in a curiously cheerful tone, he says, “I never knew my mother. She died giving birth to me. She was fourteen. My old man, who had barely reached puberty himself, was grazing the flock a few steps away, a bit lost in childish daydreams. When my mother started groaning, he didn’t panic. Instead of going to fetch the neighbors, he tried to take care of her