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Behind
the curtain CHARLOTTE
BAILEY Atiq Rahimi
THE PATIENCE STONE Translated by Polly McLean 136pp. Chatto and Windus. £12.99. 9780701184162
The
nameless woman at the
centre of Atiq Rahimi's novel The Patience Stone, which won the
Goncourt Prize in
2008, does not provide a straightforward account of life in an The
woman is in her home at
the bedside of her husband, "the man", who is lying in a coma after
being shot in the neck by a fellow soldier. She is reciting prayers for
his recovery,
mesmerized by the twisting of her beads. Consumed by her vigil, she is
desperate
for the man to show a sign of life. As she sits, the passing of time is
measured by the man's breathing, the slow drip of the salt water
keeping him
alive and the calls to prayer in the street outside. Looking back on
her
marriage, she gradually finds the words to express herself uncensored. Her
husband becomes her sang-e saboor, the mythical black
patience stone to which you can tell your sins until it explodes,
delivering
you of pain and suffering. The routine with which the woman replaces
the saline
drip and moistens the man's eyes, replenishing him with life, gives her
control
over something that once controlled her. The
water is suggestive of
the fertility her husband lacked; along with her fascination with pure
and
impure blood and with her own desires, it seems to give her power over
the
essence of life. She uses it to her own advantage, pouring out her
love, hate,
desire and hope, but this is only a precursor to the revelation of her
great
secret. While outside "They shoot awhile / Pray awhile / Are silent
awhile", the woman fights her own mission within her home, determined
to
find justice. She begins to break out from traditional restrictions,
coming and
going between her house and her aunt's, where she has placed her two
daughters
away from the city's fighting, and offering sanctuary to a young boy in
need of
affection. Polly
McLean's translation
captures the novel's use of linguistic experiment to convey
self-exploration.
The woman's voice is distant, yet trusting and candid. Her frugal,
fragmented
monologue winds in and around the calls to prayer and the sound of
gunfire,
twisting the conventions of a linear narrative to allow for an
exploration of a
new, freer voice. The text is rich in symbolism: indoor colors
oscillate between
serene green and fiery red,; outside, the world has a grey, smoky hue.
Windows
and curtains conceal and reveal, marking the frontier between public
and
private life, truth and lies. At the end of the novel, the birds, which
are
frozen in a pattern on the curtain, take flight as the woman is
delivered from
her shackled life. All secrets have been told and the patience stone
finally explodes.
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