Three by Atiq Rahimi: Earth and Ashes, A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear, The Patience Stone

by Atiq Rahimi

Three short novels—including Prix Goncourt–winning The Patience Stone —that convey years of Afghan history, heartache, and hope. Never before in paperback.   Atiq Rahimi’s reputation for writing war stories of immense drama and intimacy began with his first novel, Earth and Ashes, about fathers and sons and the terrible strain inflicted on families, when an Afghan village is destroyed by the Russian army.   A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear takes place in 1979, during a period of social and political upheaval in Kabul. On the way home from a night of drinking, a university student named Farhad is arrested and brutally beaten. A few hours later, broken and confused, he slowly regains consciousness, only to find himself in the care of a beautiful woman who has dragged him into her home to protect him.   Winner of the Prix Goncourt, The Patience Stone is the tale of a woman caring for her brain-damaged husband, who was shot in the neck during a petty conflict. After years of living in a society of Islamic fundamentalism, she finds herself strangely liberated by her husband’s condition. She tells him her innermost thoughts and secrets, many of them dark and deeply repressed, never knowing whether he’s able to hear her or not.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Politics

433 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

عتيق رحيمي

Atiq Rahimi est un romancier et réalisateur de double nationalité française et afghane, réfugié de la guerre d'Afghanistan.

Atiq Rahimi is a writer and director of French and Afghan multiple citizenship, refugee from the war in Afghanistan.

https://www.instagram.com/atiqrahimi_...
https://www.atiqrahimi.com

Reviews

[Sonia Francis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Praise for these three novellas by Afghan author Atiq Tahimi.Earth and Ashes,A thousand rooms of dream and fear and The patience stone. The patience stone is my favorite.
I hasten to say that each novella was superbly written with well developed characters and themes centered around the culture and politics of Afghanistan. It is an insight into the fears of the Afghan people.

[Molly Ison]

These were difficult stories to process. In Earth and Ashes, a grandfather struggles with the decision to tell his son about the slaughter of their family members. In A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear, a man whose targeting by the Communist government seems to be disproportional to his crime of being out after curfew has others try to save him while he remains confused about his choices. And in The Patience Stone, a woman tells her secrets to a seemingly comatose husband, revealing the ways she's "failed" to be the invisible and submissive wife.

I thought that A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear was the strongest story, but also the most difficult in form. The description of the stories, both what I've just given and the summaries I read beforehand, didn't prepare me for the formlessness of the story. I was expecting a more linear, objectively descriptive narrative, but the story remains close within the head of the narrator-protagonist. After being nearly beaten to death, he's confused and indecisive and his dreams, day-dreams and memories are treated with the same weight as actual events that are happening around him. (The switching from dreams to waking also occurs in Earth and Ashes). It can be hard to keep track of when he's flowed into a dream. The prose is very focused around what a person might feel at the given moment rather than attempting to give lengthy explanations or descriptions or analysis.

It's worth examining what cultural references we take for granted. Rahimi mentions The Book of Kings, Haft Paikar, Book of the Dead with the casualness that an American writer might reference Huck Finn or Leaves of Grass, assuming that the reader will understand the significance (although the prefaces and appendices do describe the works in brief). It's easy to forget all the things you're missing, although it's wonderfully true that written works can transcend time and culture and translation to transmit something to the reader.

[DesertSlug · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the first books I read in my reading of the world project (Afghanistan). I wish I could give the book 3 1/2 stars, as there are three stories and they are uneven. The Patience Stone is a 4 stars story. The other two I would rate as 3 stars.

All of these stories hurt to read. Although they cover violent topics (the violence of war and violence towards women), they are not gratuitously violent. But they are gut wrenching. These are not hopeful stories. They did provide exactly the type of insight I was looking for by starting the reading of the world project - a view, a culture, a life I will never know personally. This book pulled me out of my comfortable life, and reading my comfortable forms of storytelling, and forced me to consider other more brutal perspectives about humanity. If you read it, and I think people should, find a quiet private place to read so that you are not interrupted or emotionally blind sided in public.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I found it hard to relate to some of the characters, particularly the young man in the middle story, I greatly appreciated the themes tackled in these short stories and the way in which Rahimi plays around with style and voice. A book I likely wouldn't have chosen for myself but am very grateful to have read.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Earth and Ashes

Honestly, I was halfway through this story before I realized what was going on. I think most of that was because of my unfamiliarity with the style. I was also thrown by the way people used brother and father to refer to each other. However, I felt like the set-up for the conflict was way later than it should have been. I had little ties to the main character until ¾ of the way through when you learn about what happened to his village and why the trip to see his son was so important.

This confusion made it really hard for me to connect with the main character. Then once I had finally felt like I understood this man, he just leaves his grandson in the care of a stranger. He does this, then he heads off to the mine to tell his son what has happened. Only he doesn’t even speak with his son. He jumps to these ridiculous conclusions about his son, and just decides to waste all the time, effort, and strain that it took him to get there. It’s not that it makes the story unresolved, it doesn’t. It’s just the disregard of his son that frustrates me.

A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

One of my favorite lines was "You should beware of two things about a woman: her hair and her tears.” It’s amazing because the whole time, Farhad is focused on Mahnaz hair and when she pulls it out of her face. I love that he uses her hair as way to project his own emotions onto her. It is kind of the opposite of the quote above. When Farhad see Mahnaz with her hair covering her face, he can’t see her at all. He only sees his own fear and hopes reflected back at him. It’s like the things you should really be wary of about a women are the projections you (the man) put on her.

Still, Mahnaz really lets her guard down around Farhad. She brings him into her life, briefly, but completely. She cooks for him, she is naked around him. Farhad has only seen his sister and his mother in this level of intimacy. She’s brought this man into her house, where it could ruin her life. Yet, she does it bravely. Not because she loves Farhad, but because he’s someone who needed her help. It’s not a surprise that he thinks he’s fallen in love.

The Patience Stone

There are two wars going on in this story. The actual war happening outside the room and the war inside the wife. She is constantly fighting between what she wants to do and what she should do. You see it as she constantly flips between different methods of care for her husband. The perfect wife who says the names of Allah and does nothing but care for her paralyzed husband. The woman so desperate for escape she plans to leave him there to starve. The woman who is driven mad by the solitude who speaks as if her husband were responding. The woman so weighed down by the carrying the regrets and secrets of a lifetime who just wants someone to listen to her.

As she reveals herself to her husband, she gets closer and closer to freedom. Freedom from herself and her regrets, freedom from her obligation to care for her dying husband, freedom even from the restraints society places upon her. All of this builds and escalates until she finally gets the freedom she begged for

[Peter Edelman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The violence of war is ever present but the violence against women, physically, culturally and psychologically makes for a distressing read, leaving little hope for change in Afghanistan.