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.
Themes
The Psychological Impact of Living Under Totalitarian Rule
Mohammed Moulessehoul gives the reader an insight into life under the Taliban in Kabul during the 1990s, in which people are policed under the rigid, tailored version of Sharia law that suits the Taliban’s needs. The first glimpse into this lifestyle is Atiq’s use of a whip to clear the crowd, with Mohsen providing insight into the psychology of totalitarianism through his observations of lynching. The narrator notes: “They make him conscious of his vulnerability, they sharpen his perception of his limits, they fill him with sudden insight into the futility of all things, of all people” (9). Totalitarianism enforces an atmosphere of violence and danger, and removes people’s conceptions of freedom and agency.
The nature of totalitarianism as a political ideology comes to the forefront in Atiq’s comment: “There’s no joking in Kabul” (25). Mirza highlights how the Taliban could interpret unruly behavior as either an issue with mental health or a legitimate threat to their dominance. The Taliban’s response is the same in either case: Atiq would be killed. The impact of a constantly listening and violent authority is clear. The loneliness under Taliban rule is reflected in Mohsen’s and Atiq’s constant struggles to find confidantes, or people with whom they can openly discuss their struggles without fear of retribution from the Taliban.
In the end, Atiq recalls his father telling him that the moon is simply the sun, paled with shame at what it sees during the night. However, Atiq cannot fathom what the sun sees at night that would be so shameful. In the moment of his death, Atiq wishes for a sleep as “unfathomable as the secrets of the night” (195), with “unfathomable” meaning “shameless.” In death, Atiq is wishing for an afterlife that transcends the limitations placed on him and other Afghan people by the Taliban. His final crime—removing the burqas from women in the street—mirrors Zunaira’s desire to remove her own burqa and the oppression of the Taliban. The ending of the novel implies that the only freedom, other than fleeing a totalitarian authority, is death.
Love and Beauty as Forms of Resistance
Khadra uses love and beauty to show both the necessity and futility of resistance under the Taliban. On one hand, the Taliban has destroyed most art and literature, but elements of beauty remain, like Zunaira. Mohsen notes how Zunaira is beautiful despite “the rigors of her daily life, despite her mourning for her city, which has been turned over to the obsessions and follies of men” (33). Critically, women embody beauty in the novel, while men only dismiss or love that beauty. If Zunaira is a personification of beauty, then her mourning for the loss of Kabul metaphorically expresses the death of beauty and love in the city. This is a crucial element in understanding the despair of Moulessehoul’s characters.
Relationships in Kabul are fraught with challenges, such as when the Taliban accosts Zunaira and Mohsen for laughing together in public. They are also nuanced. Atiq and Musarrat navigate their unconventional marriage in which Atiq feels indebted to Musarrat for saving his life. When Atiq sees Zunaira, he suddenly overcomes his melancholy. Musarrat, instead of being angry or overcome with jealousy, explains this change of heart as a kind of divine inspiration. Through Zunaira’s beauty, Atiq realizes the injustices of the Taliban’s control over Kabul, leading him to try to release Zunaira. In the end, Musarrat sacrifices herself, noting her failure to achieve beauty, to save Zunaira. This decision is made from love to circumvent the Taliban’s desire to execute a woman at the rally.
When Atiq tries to release Zunaira the first time, she refuses. This speaks to how women’s identities have been removed under the Sharia law of the Taliban, and highlights how futile resistance seems: “We’ve already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we’ve forgotten it” (164). The novel leaves Zunaira’s fate open-ended, but the assumption is that she fled, much as the swallows did. This conclusion is not hopeful. It implies that beauty and love, while crucial for resistance, cannot survive an oppressive atmosphere. Women like Zunaira, who possess the intelligence and beauty to inspire resistance, must either flee or die.
The Complexities of Moral Choice and Personal Responsibility
All characters in the novel face moral dilemmas and varying degrees of responsibility, particularly Mohsen Ramat. Mohsen was an educated, wealthy man, but years of war and the Taliban’s takeover have left him unemployed and lost. In the opening of the novel, Mohsen reflects on how lynchings disgust him, and yet he feels “an excess of unfathomable joy” when helping to stone a woman to death (14). This joy is primal and runs contrary to Mohsen’s personal beliefs and morals. Mohsen is conflicted because of the personal responsibility imposed by the Taliban, in which he feels he should meld with the crowd and assist in the execution.
Mohsen lacks agency, or the ability to understand and change one’s situation. He neither understands himself and his role under the Taliban, nor does he have the authority and ability to make any meaningful change in Kabul. After Taliban agents accost him and Zunaira, Zunaira is upset at Mohsen, men, and the social systems in which she must operate. Mohsen expresses that he and Zunaira lack sufficient power to overcome the Taliban: “Are you angry because I didn’t put that Taliban imbecile in his place? What could I do against him? He and his kind are the ones who make the laws” (128). Mohsen failed in his personal responsibility to Zunaira by insisting that they go for a walk in a public space, where the Taliban can and do threaten them.
In the ultimate expression of morality and personal responsibility, Mohsen’s death results from his domestic violence. Although he is immediately apologetic after striking Zunaira, the text reveals that Zunaira is “incapable […] of distinguishing him from the turbaned thugs who have transformed the streets into an arena and the days into a deathwatch” (124). Her pushing him back is the consequence of his own violence. Mohsen’s death, like his life, illustrates how Kabul’s citizens lack the means and power to make change. He also represents the dangers of giving in to the urge to emulate those tactics and acquiescing to oppression.
