On Sunday, August 15, 2021, the Taliban invaded and invaded the entire capital of Afghanistan, twenty years after their fall. The novel The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra seems more than ever to be terribly topical. Algerian writer under a female pseudonym, Yasmina Khadra develops as a common thread in her novels, the conflictual dialogue between the West and the Middle East that the world has known for decades. Published in 2002, the novel Les Hirondelles de Kabul takes up the theme through love stories between heartbreak and despair. It belongs to a trilogy that highlights the situation in certain countries of the Middle East, with The Attack (published in 2005 which speaks of Israel and Palestine) and with The Sirens of Baghdad (published in 2006, for Iraq). It was also adapted to the cinema in 2019 by Zabou Breitman and Éléa Gobbé-Mévellec.
Under the pseudonym Yasmina Khadra
Born in 1955, in Kenadsa, in the current wilaya of Béchar (Algerian Sahara), Yasmina Khadra is the pen name of Mohammed Moulessehoul. From 1984 to 1989, he published six novels under his real name and won several literary prizes, including that of UNESCO's International Fund for the Promotion of Culture in 1993. However, in order to escape the Military Censorship Committee, established in 1988, he went underground and wrote for eleven years under different pseudonyms. It was not until the publication of Morituri , in 1997, by the Parisian publisher Baleine that he became known to the general public.
The pseudonym "Yasmina Khadra" is born from the two first names of his wife. A wink that marks the author's real commitment to the emancipation of Muslim women. Published in several countries and translated into forty-two languages, his novels give rise to cinema films, plays, comics and choreographies. With her pen, Yasmina Khadra now reaches several million readers around the world.
Synopsis of The Swallows of Kabul
"In the burning ruins of the thousand-year-old city of Kabul, death lurks, a black turban around its skull. Here, a stoning of a woman, there public executions, the Taliban are watching. Joy and laughter are suspect. Atiq, the brave mujahid turned jailer, drags out his sentence. The taste for life also abandoned Mohsen, who dreamed of modernity. His wife Zunaira, a lawyer, more beautiful than the sky, is now condemned to the screened darkness of Chadri. So Kabul, which is lurking in vain, has no other stories to offer than tragedies. The spring of the swallows seems far away… »
Yasmina Khadra plunges us into the intimacy of two couples
In The Swallows of Kabul , Yasmina Khadra tells us the story of two couples: on the one hand, that of Atiq and Mussarat and on the other, that of Mohsen and Zunaira. He paints deep characters trapped in lives they no longer control. While his wife is gravely ill, Atiq, a jailer by profession, wanders aimlessly in her meaningless existence. Cold and seemingly insensitive, he is content to guard the prison cells that hold women deemed impure by the Taliban. Yet, he will eventually prove to be full of humanity.
As for the beautiful Zunaira, Mohsen's wife, she was destined for a brilliant career in the judiciary. Faced with the regime, she was forced to leave the bar and forget her dreams of freedom. Carried by a drama that floods the first pages, the destiny of these two couples that everything opposes, will nevertheless inexorably cross.
The novel comes to an abrupt end, just as the story reaches its climax. Yasmina Khadra's sharp writing plunges us into this 150-page story, without us being able to catch our breath. With each page, each sentence, each word that scrolls, we come closer and closer to an end that we sense, tragic. As we prepare to close the pages of the book, the story comes to an abrupt end, in total confusion. The author then leaves us at the heart of a drama without any resolution being made. Driven by a story that touches us deeply, the novel The Swallows of Kabul sheds real light on the situation in Kabul, devastated by war.
In the alleys of Kabul, devastated by war
Published in 2002, the novel The Swallows of Kabul plunges us into a capital still smoking due to bombs, a capital punctuated for many years by a war that does not end. But the capture of Kabul by the Taliban on 27 September 1996 brought the country to the brink. By establishing a very strict Islamic law with the rigorous application of Sharia law, the Taliban permanently split the country into two opposing camps: on the one hand, Jamiat-e Islami, a moderate camp that gathers around Massoud and Rabbani, and on the other, Hezb-e Islami, made up of radical Islamists. like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In this peace of illusion, summary executions take place. In addition, women no longer have access to education. This Taliban-led dominance ended in 2001, with September 11 leading the United States, in a political U-turn, to respond to these attacks.
With a poetic, fair and visceral pen, Yasmina Khadra paints these torn and helpless lives, wandering the streets and gradually sinking into madness. In this apocalyptic atmosphere, loneliness, poverty, fear dominate and take everything in its path. Between public executions and stoning, death lurks in the alleys of the city at the hands of the Taliban and the mullahs.
A chiaroscuro picture, between cruelty and tolerance
"You are the only sun I have left, Zunaira. Without you, my night would be deeper than darkness, colder than graves. […] I have the feeling that things escape me, that I no longer control myself. »
Mohsen in Zunaira.
At the heart of religious extremists and their violence, Yasmina Khadra sometimes reveals a ray of light piercing these thick clouds. Therefore, it offers us a deep and universal humanism, despite the chaos that surrounds Kabul. In this call for tolerance, he highlights reflections around power, resilience and repentance. But, like swallows crossing the streets, freedom is only illusory since the drama ends the story. The novel's brevity thus seems to metaphorize the shortened lives of the inhabitants.
In this sense, beyond the notion of humanity, the author also addresses oppression in the broad sense: from banal cruelty to crowd hysteria, including sacrifice. Echoing Albert Camus, he floods his story with the absurd. But, in the face of this hopelessness, the humanity of the […] Kabul Swallows may lie within the truth.
Resonating with current events
If Yasmina Khadra evokes the Afghanistan of yesterday, her story, both dark and lucid, takes on a new dimension today. Indeed, the withdrawal of the American army heralds, inexorably, the return of the Taliban to power. A day after their arrival in Kabul, Ahmad Musad's son announced in a philosophical journal his intention to resist. From then on, like shadows, the events of the past seem to resurface in Kabul as if these shadows had never left the walls of the city. A city prisoner of its past. Thus, The Swallows of Kabul continue and will continue to fly above the chaos.
