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.
Symbols & Motifs
Swallows
Swallows, mentioned in the title, represent freedom and beauty. Much like how Zunaira embodies beauty, the swallows are inherently free and beautiful. They fly, giving them greater agency than human beings. Early in the novel, the narrator remarks on the departure of the swallows from Kabul, linking their disappearance to the ongoing wars prior to the Taliban taking over Kabul. Later, Atiq remembers the swallows when he sees Zunaira without a burqa, linking the swallows, as with Zunaira’s beauty, to the period of peace from the Soviet invasion. This hybrid of agency and nostalgia represents the desires of the people of Kabul to be free and take control of their own futures.
Blue and yellow sparrows are linked with the blue and yellow burqas Atiq targets. The unveiling of burqas of the same color as the swallows implies that the removal of burqas is itself an act of freedom. It also highlights the ways in which methods of oppression, such as forcing women to wear burqas, obscure and even remove beauty. The flight of the swallows, like the removal of the burqas, is a consequence of the ongoing violence in the region, embodied in the oppression faced by the people of Kabul.
Burqas
The subject of burqas is delicate, as many women choose to, and enjoy, wearing the burqa. What distinguishes this choice from the oppression portrayed in the novel is the Taliban’s requirement that women always wear their burqas in public. This law is paired with other methods of removing women’s rights, such as banning women from the workforce and mandating that women only travel with male companions. In the context of the novel, the burqa symbolizes women’s oppression under the Taliban, which is critically linked to the expression of identity and agency.
Zunaira believes that the burqa erases who she is. She notes that at home she can be herself, even if she is no longer able to fulfill her desired role as a lawyer and magistrate. In the streets, she loses her identity behind the burqa, becoming an object that must be guarded by a man. When Zunaira finally wears the burqa, she and Mohsen are accosted in the street; this shows how the burqa does not actually protect women from masculine violence. She knows that even though the burqa feels like it is killing her, removing it would only encourage further aggression. In prison, Zunaira removes her burqa in a clear show of resistance against the forces condemning her to execution. In her moment of escape, she wears the burqa to underscore how it removes her identity. Zunaira’s successful escape is a subversion of the Taliban’s desire to suppress women’s voices and movements.
Whips
Atiq uses his whip to clear the crowd in front of him. His disdain for the crowd is clear; he resents the market filled with vulnerable people begging for help. The whip is both a symbol of the violence used to maintain order in Kabul and the desperation of the people under the whip. As people struggle to survive under the Taliban, the Taliban uses violence to keep them suppressed and to show the power that they wield. Atiq, though not explicitly in favor of the Taliban’s rule, participates out of a sense of superiority. He expresses hatred for people begging, elderly people, and children, all of whom he sees as problematic because they burden society. He does not recognize how these people reflect broader issues, such as systemic poverty and oppression.
The whip represents Atiq’s connection to his privilege under the Taliban, a manifestation of authority. Critically, he forgets his whip when he goes to release Zunaira. This shows how, in releasing her, he is relinquishing that authority. At the novel’s end, Atiq is no longer carrying his whip, and the violence he once used to maintain order is turned on him as he is beaten to death in the street. Kabul can be divided into those with whips and those being whipped. As soon as Atiq removes his whip, he quickly becomes the target of violence.
