Nan A. Talese
Hardcover
208 pages
January 2007

The early pages of Yasmina Khadra’s 2002 book, The Swallows of Kabul, bleed with violence.  Set after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the novel centers on two couples confined within the Taliban’s religious fervor; but Khadra’s superfluous style is almost as constricting as the regime’s control.

The first chapter gives us Atiq Shaukat, a man fighting his way through the dingy streets of Kabul with his whip and disgust.  Atiq is having trouble finding comfort, and his vocation as a jailer who guards prisoners before their executions makes life seem like an inescapable torment.  This feeling doesn’t leave him when he comes home to his weak terminally ill wife.  Atiq’s conscience borders on despair and rage.

The other characters, Mohsen and Zunaira Ramat, are also fighting the misery of Taliban rule.  Forced into the patriarchy, Zunaira remains inside all day, unable to don the burqa that will shroud her identity.  When Mohsen reveals to her that he participated in the stoning of a prostitute after being caught up in the crowd’s whirlwind of hatred, something irreparable tears in their loving relationship.

This novel is well-written Khadra creates a story in which the characters’ lives weave throughout a world of ignorance and danger.  Told in the present tense, his story is enrapturing, his characters dynamic.  The Ramats’ affluent past combined with their indiscernible future is heart-wrenching.  Yet, it is Khadra’s style and diction that makes this novel sometimes unbearable to read.

Khadra seems intent on spelling everything out for his reader.  He creates images that are meaningful and symbolic, but he follows it up with a direct connection to its meaning.  Nothing is left up to the reader.  In an early example, a few young boys are violently harassing a stray dog.  Clearly depicted in their intent to kill, this image creates a connection with the novel’s earlier execution.  Khadra needlessly connects it for us with the line, “The little scoundrels won’t disperse before lynching the animal, thus precociously preparing themselves to lynch men.”

Khadra’s novel becomes overtly didactic.  A story that was intended to elucidate the horrors of the Taliban’s regime becomes tied up in its own desire to make a point.  Khadra’s dialogue, as a result, is excessive and unrealistic, and I have trouble believing anything that the characters say.

The story is enthralling, however.  Khadra manages to create an oppressively realistic and grungy setting, and he develops characters that are just interesting enough for you to forget their pedantic purpose and actually care about them.

The Swallows of Kabul is rich—sometimes too rich to read in more-than-one-chapter sittings.  But it is still well written.  In any means, Kabul will devour you.