Atiq Rahimi; trans. Polly McLean
The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi, translated from the French by Polly McLean, takes place in a single room in a city in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. It is primarily in the form of a young wife’s monologue to her comatose husband. He has a bullet lodged in his neck and appears to be brain dead. The unnamed woman ministers to his wounds, puts drops in his eyes, bathes him regularly, feeds him through a feeding tube, and prays for him. All the while she talks to him and pleads with him to wake up.
The monologue is punctuated with the sound of explosions and gun shots. The woman enters and leaves the room in periodic intervals to take care of her two young daughters. After two Taliban fighters invade her home, she takes her daughters to her aunt for safe keeping. She leaves her husband in the room with the intention of never coming back. But she always comes back to minister to him.
With each of her returns she becomes increasingly more vocal about the injustices and abuse she experienced from him and from some members of his family. She confronts him with his inadequacies and impotence, revealing this is the first time in their decade-old marriage she has felt she could be totally honest with him. She punctures the inflated egos and hypocrisies of men, including her husband. Once the floodgates of silence are opened, her words gush out in a torrent. Her language is raw and brutally honest. This leads to a perverse intimacy in which she kisses him on the lips—something he had never allowed her to do. Eventually, she claims him as her Sang-e-Saboor, her patience stone to which she can unburden all her guilty secrets. And unburden them she does with shocking revelations about prostitution and sexual infidelity, all of which lead to the final explosive crescendo.
The novel unfolds in sparse, staccato language. The atmosphere is confined and claustrophobic. The fear is palpable. The noise of explosions and gunfire, the Taliban invasions of the space where a defenseless woman huddles in the corner reinforce the terror of the situation. The woman’s many entrances, exits, and movements read like virtual stage directions, giving the novel the feel of a play.
The winner of the 2008 Prix Goncourt, this novella is highly recommended for its compelling treatment of the injustices and grievances experienced by many women in Afghanistan and the desperate measures they take to survive.