53  Algeria – Yasmina Khadra – The Swallows of Kabul (Score 7.66}

I don’t normally go into quite as much detail as I have in discussing this book, but I don’t want to mislead you about the events in it. It is your choice whether to read on or not.

Thee first incident in this story is the Executive Murder, by crown stoning, of a woman condemned as a prostitute. There seems to have been no trial. By any normal standards of humanity she didn’t deserve to die like that. Mohsen Ramat is our eye at the killing.

I wonder if, in a situation like that under such a regime, people are afraid not to go and not to throw stones in case they are reported and suffer the same fate along with their families.

Chapter 2 opens in a jail where Atiq Shaukat works as a guard. His wife Zunaira is a beautiful woman. We can only know that because we are in his house and she is free of the burqa while she is at home.

On page 58, after an inconclusive talk with his sick wife Musarrat Atiq storms out of the house in which she has exhausted herself preparing a meal for him. The man is an idiot, unfeeling, though he has his own serious problems outside of their home.

Mohsen also proves himself an idiot when he fights with Zunaira, and strikes her.

The most horrendous sentence in this book, spoken about Zunaira when she is sentenced to death is “After all, she’s only a woman!” She pushed Mohsen away to stop him attacking her. He tripped and broke his neck against a wall.

Zunaira ends up in prison, waiting for execution (again no trial). Musarrat, who is already near death, takes her place and is executed in her place. This is possible because of the burqas which all women are forced to wear outside the home.

Zunaira disappears. Atiq is demented trying to find her, running around Kabul pulling women’s burqas off, but never finding her. Atiq is mobbed by irate husbands and is beaten to death.

All I can say at the end of this book is that I finished it because it was the book group selection. None of us could have known in advance just how horrific it is. The back cover blurb gives no real clue. Even J M Coetzee says merely that it is hell on earth, a place of hunger, tedium and stifling fear.

I gave this book a score of three because of the selflessness of Musarrat’s sacrifice and Zunaira’s escape.