43 pages • 1 hour read
Yasmina KhadraThe Swallows of Kabul
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
Atiq watches Zunaira eat, unwilling to take his eyes off her. He tells her Musarrat made the food, and Zunaira says he is lucky. Atiq becomes enraged. He says that her husband must have been a brute. Zunaira says her husband was a good man, expressing regret at his death.
At home, Atiq insists that Zunaira should not be killed, and Musarrat is worried that Atiq’s obsession has gone too far. Atiq tries to convince Qassim to use his influence to free Zunaira. Qassim refuses, noting that Zunaira is the only woman scheduled for execution during the rally. Qassim disparages women, saying Atiq has lost his mind. Atiq insists on Zunaira’s innocence. He wonders why Zunaira has changed his perspective so much, transforming him from an uncaring man into one who would risk his safety for another person.
Musarrat tries to calm Atiq down, noting his continued rage. Atiq grabs Musarrat’s throat, pushing her against a wall and telling her he cannot stand her. Musarrat collapses, and Atiq leaves. The crowd outside the mosque upsets Atiq, and he passes Mirza without acknowledging him. Atiq goes to the jail, unlocks Zunaira’s cell, and tells her to leave, using the cover of night to escape. Zunaira refuses, noting that she has no family and no home. Atiq tells her she should not be killed, and Zunaira responds that the Taliban have already killed the women in Kabul.
Chapter 14 Summary
Atiq wanders from his home to the prison and back endlessly. Sitting at home one night, Musarrat takes his hand and tells him to get himself together. Musarrat explains how Atiq is having a change of heart, letting love and hope break through the trauma and coldness of his upbringing. Seeing Atiq cry convinces Musarrat that he has found some glimmer of humanity, which the harsh reality of living in Kabul has extinguished from most people. She encourages Atiq to release Zunaira again, telling him to speak from his heart to make Zunaira listen. Musarrat says Atiq and Zunaira can escape before dawn if he leaves now, and Atiq goes to the prison.
Before going to the cell, Atiq sits to pray. He wakes up and sees the beginning of dawn. A woman in a burqa wakes him, and he realizes she is Musarrat. Musarrat says their prayers have been answered. She explains that Atiq married her out of gratitude, not love, and she laments never giving him children or making herself more beautiful to him. With Zunaira, Musarrat feels Atiq has another chance at the life he wants, and she intends to take Zunaira’s place in the prison. Her disease will kill her anyway, and she hopes Atiq and Zunaira can be happy together. She notes that no one will check if the right woman is under the burqa at the execution.
Chapter 15 Summary
Atiq is nervous, with Zunaira in his office in a burqa and Musarrat in the cell. Qassim arrives, and two militiawomen take Musarrat to bring her to the execution. Qassim tells Atiq to come with him, and Atiq says his wife is in his office. Atiq tells Zunaira the charges against her were dropped, adding that she needs to attend the rally and meet Atiq afterward. Atiq rides with Qassim, while Zunaira goes to the bus of women heading to the rally. At the stadium, some men are already executed with different portions of the crowd expressing disapproval or excitement. Atiq focuses on the women’s stands, looking for Zunaira. As Musarrat is led to her execution, she sees Atiq looking at the stands and hopes he does not turn around to see her die. A soldier shoots Musarrat in the back of her head, and the crowd cheers.
After the rally, Atiq waits for Zunaira, and Qassim leaves with his wives. As everyone leaves, Atiq continues waiting until there are no people left at the stadium. Atiq charges through the stadium, looking for Zunaira, but he cannot find her. At night, Atiq goes home, and he finds a woman in a burqa. Thinking she is Zunaira, he removes her veil, but he finds Musarrat’s face, blown to pieces by the rifle shot that killed her. Atiq goes to the cemetery and mourns over Musarrat’s grave. He remembers his father telling him that the moon is just the sun, whitened from what it sees at night, though he cannot imagine what the sun sees.
Atiq loses touch with reality, wandering the streets, yelling Zunaira’s name, and chasing women in burqas. When Atiq begins tearing off women’s veils, they scream and panic, but Atiq continues charging through town, tearing off veils and receiving blows from nearby men. As the crowd of men pushes in on Atiq, he realizes his shirt is torn off, and he prays that his death is as unfathomable as the night.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
The novel’s conclusion involves a complex series of moving parts. Qassim and Musarrat embody opposite sides of The Complexities of Moral Choice and Personal Responsibility. Qassim hopes for a promotion, while Musarrat welcomes her own execution to save Zunaira. Qassim envisions himself “promoted to the directorship of the country’s biggest prison” (184), which frames the multiple public executions as a “success.” Critically, Qassim’s ambition is not to change anything about the Taliban or the current administration of Afghanistan. Instead, he aims to succeed within the current administration, in which the highest achievement for him would be control over an even larger prison than Atiq’s. For Qassim, personal responsibility is defined by his material existence, rather than by his own view of morality.
Musarrat takes the opposite approach. He focuses on Zunaira’s beauty as a symbol of resistance over her own well-being. He tells Atiq: “In this country there are many mistakes but never any regrets. The question of execution or mercy, of death or life, isn’t resolved by deliberation” (175). In this way, he notes how the whims of authorities determine the course of action, often without forethought. Musarrat makes the same kind of decision, choosing to support Atiq by sacrificing herself for Zunaira. Musarrat highlights how resistance needs to be unflinching. Her sacrifice is essentially a martyrdom to the resistance, though she fails to understand Zunaira’s agency.
Zunaira underpins the true meaning of resistance by removing herself from Kabul. Like the swallows, Zunaira cannot live in Kabul; she must either die or flee. Musarrat’s decision to take Zunaira’s place leaves Zunaira in a position of changing custody. She had no control in the prison cell beyond refusing the burqa. Living with Atiq would keep Zunaira in the “cell” of Kabul. Her fate is not revealed in the novel; she “disappears” from Atiq’s life and from the scene of Kabul as it is presented by Moulessehoul. The rally, which is the ultimate display of the Taliban’s power, is the last time Zunaira may be seen among the unidentified burqas in the stands. The ending implies that, like the swallows and Nazeesh, Zunaira left Kabul never to return.
This final section explores The Psychological Impact of Living Under Totalitarian Rule. Atiq struggles following Zunaira’s disappearance, deprived of the beauty and love that held together his mental well-being under the Taliban. Without Musarrat or Zunaira, Atiq wanders the streets accosting women, looking for the beauty he needs to sustain himself. Comparisons of Zunaira’s beauty to the sun clarify Atiq’s struggle. He essentially traded his wife, whom he saw as sick and unattractive, for Zunaira, whom he saw as a radiant light in his comparatively dark life. Now he sees how beauty cannot be sustained under the oppression of the Taliban. In trading Musarrat for Zunaira, Atiq loses both, suggesting that beauty, under oppression, must either die or flee.
In the final sequence of the novel, Atiq desperately searches for Zunaira. His choice of which burqas to unveil recalls his comparison to the swallows. He pursues a woman in a blue burqa, then a yellow, referencing the “infirm swallows” he pictures when he sees Zunaira without her burqa. In his final moments, Atiq hopes “his sleep may be as unfathomable as the secrets of the night” (195), echoing his father’s words. This is the culmination of Atiq’s rejection of the Taliban’s rule, which determines what is or is not shameful, and the necessity of the burqa to avoid shame for both men and women. In death, Atiq hopes his afterlife is free of restrictions, even though that would make it shameful.
