The Patience Stone

Atiq Rahimi

The Patience Stone

Originally published in French as Syngué sabour

Translated by Polly McLean.

The Koran translated by N. J. Dawood (Penguin Classics 1956, Fifth revised edition 1990).

THIS TALE, WRITTEN IN MEMORY OF N.A.

– AN AFGHAN POET SAVAGELY MURDERED BY

HER HUSBAND-IS DEDICATED TO M.D.

From the body by the body with the body

Since the body and until the body.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

introduction

BY KHALED HOSSEINI

It is a vexing fact that women are the most beleaguered members of Afghan society. Long before the arrival of the Taliban, Afghan women struggled for basic rights. Outside of a few urban pockets, the ironclad rule of patriarchal, tribal law has long denied women their right to work, education, adequate health care, and personal independence-all of this made infinitely worse by three decades of war, displacement, and anarchy. Though there have been some improvements in recent years, far too many women continue to languish under the unquestioned, absolute domination of tribal customs that deprive them of meaningful participation in societal life. For far too long, Afghan women have been faceless and voiceless.

Until now. With The Patience Stone, Atiq Rahimi gives face and voice to one unforgettable woman-and, one could argue, offers her as a proxy for the grievances of millions.

The plot could not be simpler. The entire story unfolds in one room, where an u

It is to Atiq Rahimi’s credit that his heroine is no saint suffering quietly in purdah. Nor is she much of a heroine. As the woman’s one-way discourse with her presumably unconscious husband goes on, the layers are peeled back, revelations come forth, and what emerges is the portrait of a complex and nuanced human being. Rahimi’s heroine is brave, resilient, a devout mother, but she is also flawed in fundamentally human ways, a woman capable of lying, manipulating, of being spiteful, a creature that, pushed hard enough, bares her teeth. And her body. Here, Rahimi has broached a great Afghan taboo, the notion of a woman as a sexual being. A pair of passages in this novel may very well generate protest from the more conservative sectors of the Afghan community, but Rahimi is to be applauded for not shying away from the subject. He is to be commended for not turning his heroine into the archetype of the saintly, asexual, maternal figure. Perhaps, writing this novel in French, and not in Dari, made it easier for him. He has been quoted as saying, “… a kind of involuntary self-censorship has come into play when I’ve written in Persian. My acquired language, the one I have chosen, gives me a kind of freedom to express myself, away from this self-censorship and an unconscious shame that dwells in us from childhood.” Whatever the reason, the reader benefits from his unflinching approach.

It is also a testament to Rahimi’s considerable literary skills how vividly the war on the streets is depicted, even though the entire tale unfolds within the confines of a single bedroom. The specter of the u

The Patience Stone, wi

The Patience Stone

Somewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere

The room is small. Rectangular. Stifling, despite the paleness of the turquoise walls, and the two curtains patterned with migrating birds frozen mid-flight against a yellow and blue sky. Holes in the curtains allow the rays of the sun to reach the faded stripes of a kilim. At the far end of the room is another curtain. Green. Unpatterned. Concealing a disused door. Or an alcove.

The room is bare. Bare of decoration. Except between the two windows where someone has hung a small khanjar dagger on the wall, and above the khanjar a photo of a man with a moustache. He is about thirty years old. Curly hair. Square face, bracketed by a pair of neatly tended sideburns. His black eyes sparkle. They are small, separated by a hawklike nose. The man is not laughing, and yet seems as if he is holding back a laugh. This gives him a strange expression, that of a man inwardly mocking those who look at him. The photo is in black and white, hand-colored in drab tones.

Facing this photo, at the foot of a wall, the same man-older now-is lying on a red mattress on the floor. He has a beard. Pepper and salt. He is thi