This story was produced as part of Paranda, a writer development program and global network for women writers in Afghanistan and the diaspora, facilitated by Untold Narratives and supported by KFW Stiftung. Often the writers choose to remain anonymous for their safety.
Parand
Translated from Dari by Abdul Bacet Khurram
A monotonous dawn breaks in Purgatory. Weary residents begin their day, hearts turbulent from fear of Judgment. They go about their usual activities with drooping shoulders and lifeless faces.
Eve also gets up, lets out a long yawn and looks around, disgusted. A neighbor is building a house, stacking brick after brick in the most spiritless way possible; another gives a loud speech while many people watch him, confused. An old woman works her spinning wheel. Eve sees a hoard of yarn skeins behind her. It gets longer every day.
Adam is digging through his pockets. He pulls out his Earth-gazing magnifier. As always, he inspects the glass and complains about the dust marring its lens. He breathes on it and starts polishing it with the palm of his hand.
The only time Eve saw Adam happy was when they first entered Purgatory and he was sure of having his magnifier. His happiness quickly faded, however, as he soon realized that the magnifier he carried was his curse, not his gift. In the never-ending loop that was Purgatory, Adam’s obligation was to observe the Earth, where his descendants often engaged in corruption and wickedness, denying him even the smallest window of escape from the entrapment of his guilty conscience.
On several occasions, he had tried to share this demanding work with Eve, like the first time when he shared with her the blame for eating the forbidden fruit, but Eve had refused.
Eve hasn’t integrated with the other dwellers. She’s not sure if this is a privilege or punishment, but her soul still hasn’t given in to the repetition and waiting. She still craves novelty and despises monotony. She has no choice but to drift along.
She puts the same effort into untangling her long grey hair as she did yesterday, and picks up the wooden comb at her side. She gazes at it, lovingly. The smile that forms on her lips is like that of a lover on seeing a cherished keepsake from their beloved. This comb was Adam’s first gift to her after their reunion on Earth. Unlike Adam’s Earth-gazing magnifier, the comb gives her a good feeling, and it’s useful.
She begins to comb her hair. Her locks cascade down her shoulders like a waterfall. Her mind travels back in time, revisiting her memories one by one. She recalls how much Adam loved her hair, admired its beauty, caressed it gently.
Eve gazes at him with a look of longing but doesn’t say anything. There is no place for change in Purgatory because everything is predictable. She already knows Adam’s next step that day and for every day thereafter.
Apparently satisfied with the cleanliness of the lens, Adam brings the Earth-gazing magnifier closer to his eye and sighs.
“Eve, if you could only see how our error unleashed a flood of sin on Earth.”
She furrows her eyebrows and resorts to the answer she gives every day. “Our sin? No dear Adam, we were subservient for a long time. It was the serpent’s temptations. We were tricked into violating God’s laws and being disobedient. Do you think our newborn intellect knew anything by the name of sin back then?” Her tone brims with ambivalence.
Adam puts down the magnifier. “It’s true. Our minds couldn’t comprehend the concept of sin, but we’d received God’s command. The conceited serpent regarded its purpose as sacred and worked to achieve it. I only wish we too had considered our purpose. We should’ve obeyed God’s laws and sacred commandments. We shouldn’t have succumbed to greed, and we shouldn’t have left a seed on Earth that spreads corruption and destroys lives. Our greed is the root of all sins!”
Eve is very sensitive to what Adam says in the last sentence. Every day it makes her shudder and tests her patience. But she continues to endure it. Up until now she has remained silent. But how long should I put up with this, she thinks.
She wholly believes in God’s fairness and this has fed her resolve to remain patient until the Day of Judgment, but she is reaching her breaking point.
“Enough! I refuse to accept, I don’t want to shoulder the burden of everyone’s sins and accept that our greed has led to the creation of a world rife with injustice, I must get to the truth!” She trembles with anger as she hurriedly braids her hair. She stands up straight and throws her plait behind her head.
“I’m going!” Her will is strong.
Adam stares at Eve. “Where?” He knows her soul can leave Purgatory any time.
Eve’s cheeks turn red with anger at his question and, like a volcano erupting she starts talking in a heated rush. She’s running out of time and is in a hurry to pour out all her pain.
“From that first day on Earth. From that day of the Fall. From that cursed day of the Fall. In life and death. You and I are at each other’s throats. From that first day until now, through all of these countless years, we’ve both seen our sin as the cause of all future evils of mankind, but that belief is wrong, I refuse to accept it. This argument must be settled.” She takes her head in her hands and continues, “I’m tired of spinning in this continuous cycle. I’m weary from this endless debate. I need to get rid of the idea that you and I are the origin of all sin and find peace. I’ll either succeed or fail but I refuse to put up with this any longer!”
She turns around and disappears.
When Eve next opens her eyes she is at the beginning of a narrow street surrounded on both sides by many shops. There is not a soul in the market and she’s surprised to find the shops abandoned, the fruit and vegetable carts deserted. She shields her eyes with her hand and looks around carefully. At the end of the street she spots a large crowd. It is roaring thunderously.
She heads towards it, moving slowly. She wonders whether her old age or the sedentary nature of Purgatory is responsible for her current state. Breathlessly, she arrives near the crowd of people standing in a circle. But she’s still unable to see what’s happening in the center. She enters her physical form and turns to the man standing nearest to her.
“What’s going on over here?”
He is picking his teeth and greedily swallowing food crumbs. “Madar jan, this is not a place for you, people will push you and you’ll break your bones. Go on your way,” he says, a foolish smile on his face. Eve doesn’t like this child of hers at all; his behavior reminds her of Cain.
“Cain-hearted,” she whispers with sadness, and steps into the crowd.
She brushes past several people to reach the center. There she sees a woman sitting on the ground, holding a child tightly in her arms. Her appearance is disheveled, her clothes are dirty and tattered, and her hair is in disarray. She holds a stone in one hand and is aiming it at those around her; without getting up she is spinning in place to fight the mob, which wants to take her child.
The child seems to be two or three years old and appears to be sleeping. Not moving at all. His skin is pale and his mouth is half-open. Like his mother, the child also has a disheveled look, his clothes are in tatters, his shoes are torn, and it’s as if his face is deliberately blackened with lampblack.
The woman screams at the top of her lungs, “Don’t take away my child, he’s mine, he’s my son.” Some men, who are nearest to her, want to take him but she squeezes the child tightly in her arms. She isn’t ready to give him up. With all the strength she can muster, she fights the hands that are trying to grab her child.
“I won’t give him, he’s mine,” she shouts. But the hands don’t stop.
Eve wonders what the men want with the child.
A voice says in anger, “Strike the crazy woman and take the child by force, he’s dead and will start to smell in the woman’s arms, we need to bury him!” Another with a voice full of hostility says, “All these men here and yet they can’t take on one crazy woman, we should’ve killed her the moment she gave birth, she’s insane but she knows how to commit adultery and engage in prostitution.”
Eve can see the woman is mentally ill. Everyone wants to take the child away from the woman by force. No one is even thinking about trying compassion and kindness.
“You’re crazy, I’m not, pipe down, my child is sleeping.” And the woman goes quiet. Maybe her mind is coming to grips with what the word adultery means. After a few moments, as if simply to give the man an answer, she says, “You yourself are adultery, you’re prostitution.”
The mob bursts into laughter. The woman also laughs. Maybe she loves to see and hear laughter because she has always received stones and insults from them; or maybe she’s satisfied with her answer.
“Listen to the words of the crazy woman, she knows how to commit adultery but she doesn’t know what the word means,” says a voice from the crowd. Another man, tall in stature with a bulging stomach, a bald head, and a butcher’s knife in a leather sheath strapped across his body, shouts at the mob to be quiet.
“This is the second time she has given birth to a fatherless child, your courage has also waned! We must slaughter this woman so it becomes a lesson for everyone and bury her together with this child,” he says.
His speech incites the retreating mob and they roar even louder.
“Kill her! Kill her!”
The woman is now scared, and tries to defend herself by hopelessly asking the child for help. She calls on him as a witness to save her from the people.
“Wake up, they’re going to kill me, open your eyes, tell everyone that you were sleeping, hurry up, hurry up!” and shakes him.
But the child doesn’t open his eyes, and in response to the shaking his lifeless hands fall to his sides. The men once again demand loudly that she give them the child, but the woman still insists on keeping him
“I will not give him up, I left my first son for one day and he drowned in the river, you pulled him out and buried him in the dirt. When I went to his grave, no matter how many times I called for him he didn’t wake up and didn’t come out of the grave. I tried to dig him up but you took me away from the graveyard, now you want to take this one too, I won’t give him to you! I’ll never ever give him to you, you’ll just bury him in the dirt,” she growls.
Eve is distraught. Where am I? What kind of people are these? Why are they torturing a mentally unwell woman? How did a mentally ill woman get pregnant in the first place? A flood of questions rushes through her mind.
Amid the deluge, Adam’s face appears like a light. He has entered her mind and with a strange smile and watches her.
“Where have I come?” she asks.
Adam holds onto his smile “You’ve come to a place where you can find your answer. There are countless sins here and the reason for all of it is the greed of these people,” he replies.
The children’s voices call loudly and relentlessly, “Crazy Reza Gul, give us the child, crazy Reza Gul, crazy Reza Gul.” Their roaring laughter brings Eve back to herself and Adam’s face disappears.
Out of nowhere, a stone is pelted by a child and hits the woman in the head. Blood begins to flow from her hair and onto her face. She doesn’t move to defend herself. Eve watches as Reza Gul wipes away the blood with the back of her hand to stop it dribbling into her eye.
An old respectable man wearing a white coat enters the circle. He appears to be a health worker. As if seeing a savior descend from the sky, Reza Gul turns to him.
“Doctor, they’re trying to take my son. Come look he’s not dead. Please tell them to leave me alone,” she begs.
The doctor appears to become upset, and reassures Reza Gul with a lot of nodding.
“The doctor is here now, he won’t let you hurt me.” She cries out to the crowd, relieved. The doctor turns to the people: “Fear God, if that woman is crazy at least you are sane, have pity, don’t hit her, leave her be.” His voice is kind. So different to that of the violent mob.
The butcher, who considers himself to be the representative of the people without having been elected, comes forward.
“Don’t take her side, Doctor, every day she does something new, one day she gives birth to a fatherless child, another day she is caught in the act of adultery, and now too her child has suffocated because of the smoke from the bathhouse kiln but she won’t let us bury him,” he says, gently. The tone has shifted from the harshness he used moments ago.
The doctor listens with a patient smile, and then whispers something in the butcher’s ear. The butcher, who was more determined than anyone to take the child and slaughter Reza Gul, softens, nods his head in agreement, and in a very different voice to the one he used minutes ago, asks the people to let Reza Gul be.
At first, they don’t want to leave; they don’t want to miss the rest of the show. The butcher hardens his voice, invites them to leave again and to go about their business. They are now persuaded, perhaps because of their natural fear of the butcher, or because of the power of the sharp knife he wields above his head forcing them to obey.
The mob disperses, leaving the injured Reza Gul and her dead child alone in the square. Eve gazes at her. Fatigue is etched on the woman’s face. Her lips are dry and cracked. The blood from her head wound has drawn furrows on her forehead, drying in her eyebrows.
Eve is deeply distraught. She is ashamed for being a spectator at the suffering of one of her daughters. She wishes there was a way to know how Reza Gul feels. She wants to better understand this woman.
Suddenly Eve feels exhausted. Her whole body aches for one moment of rest. Her stomach is growling and her lips are dry. Her heart feels squeezed by grief but in that river of sadness, a being is laughing out loud. Surprised. She looks at her hands, dirty, and with long nails. A repulsive smell comes from her clothes. She’s holding something. She panics. It’s the lifeless child of Reza Gul. She is in Reza Gul’s body.
The doctor comes near and asks her to come with him to his surgery. Reza Gul accepts without hesitation. In the panorama of Reza Gul’s memories, Eve sees that the doctor is the only good man she has ever met. In Reza Gul’s mind, where like a battlefield war is waging in every corner, the doctor is an angel of salvation. Whenever people beat and injure her, the doctor comes to her rescue. Unlike the shopkeepers in the market, he never chases her away from the entrance of his surgery. If she’s hungry he will give her food. Unlike the others, he does not grope her or fondle her breasts.
Together, Reza Gul and Eve — in her body — arrive at the surgery with the doctor. He sits her on a chair and puts on his white gloves. He examines her head wound and while complaining about people’s cruelty under his breath, takes out a pair of scissors from his strange group of tools. He cuts some of Reza Gul’s hair and throws it on the floor. She laughs at the sight of it. The doctor asks her why she laughed. Reza Gul doesn’t have an answer. The doctor says he has to cut off her hair so that he can stitch up the wound. He pours a red antiseptic liquid from a small bottle into a container, soaks a cotton ball in it, and then places it on the wound. Eve feels the stinging pain entering Reza Gul’s body. Reza Gul closes her eyes from the pain but doesn’t feel bad. Suddenly the child falls from her arms to the floor. Alarm bells ring in her mind. With unimaginable speed she lifts the child, dry as wood, from the floor and hugs him. She kisses his cheek with motherly love and sits back down on the chair. The doctor draws the content of an ampoule into a syringe.
“Does your head hurt?” he asks. Reza Gul nods. As the doctor prepares to give her the injection, she closes her eyes to avoid seeing the medicine as it enters her veins.
Eve becomes overwhelmed in Reza Gul’s body, and suddenly finds herself on the threshold of the surgery and the street.
Reza Gul has also left the doctor’s, and now sits in the entrance. Eve notices children, with mischief and curiosity, still stalking from a distance, whispering in each other’s ears.
“Go away, you sons of bitches!” Reza Gul says. They scatter.
It’s slowly getting dark. Eve, once again formless, leans against the frame of the doctor’s surgery door. Like Reza Gul she finds herself in a precarious state. She remembers Purgatory where she had a specific place to sit down and live, but now she is homeless on the streets.
The doctor turns on his office light and begins a conversation with a man who has just arrived and appears not to be from this area. Eve is drawn to their conversation.
“Who is this woman and why is she sitting here?” asks the stranger.
“Her name is Reza Gul. She’s been mentally ill since birth. No one knows who her parents were or why she’s wandering the streets. She’s very oppressed and has been abused a lot. Worst of all, it is said she’s been raped many times,” the doctor replies sadly.
The man raises his eyebrows, “Really!”
“I heard this from one of my friends who works in forensic medicine. She’s been raped many times, miscarried three times, and twice gave birth to living children. Her eldest son drowned in the river and according to people, this child suffocated from the smoke of the bathhouse fireplace.”
On hearing that the child in Reza Gul’s arms is dead, the stranger looks frightened.“Why aren’t they burying him?”
The doctor’s answer is hesitant.
“Maybe she is afraid of being alone or maybe the instinct of motherhood forces her to protect her child. Crazy or sane, she’ll carry out the duty nature has placed on her shoulders …”
Innocent of this exchange, Reza Gul sits next to Eve, and heaves a long sigh of exhaustion. Maybe she’s sleepy, or maybe hunger and thirst bring her down. Eve feels the head of Reza Gul, resting against the frame of the door, on her shoulder. She looks at her face: the small eyes are closing. Sometimes smiling, sometimes cursing, and at other times she touches the child with her hand to make sure he is still there.
Eve notices some men, the same butcher among them, slowly getting closer to Reza Gul. They carefully prise the child from Reza Gul’s embrace to take him to the local cemetery. Reza Gul doesn’t wake up. As if putting down a heavy load, she gets herself together, sighs in relief, and starts snoring.
The doctor is locking his surgery door.
As the men walk away, they shake the doctor’s hand to thank him.
Eve looks at Reza Gul who sleeps innocently in the embrace of the street. She is devastated. She has no legs to walk and no strength to stand.
Her mind is tired of thinking. She looks around, hopelessly. The shops have all closed. Not a soul is in the market. She watches Reza Gul sleeping comfortably on the dusty street. Maybe she is still fighting the mob or maybe a man is using her to satisfy his lust. From time to time she laughs, and cries.
