Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone is a brutally frank, painfully truthful novel, and not a book to be appreciated by readers who believe in Afghans’ own myths about themselves.
Set in the civil war years that followed an illusionary victory over the Soviet Red Army, the book deals with a period that is doubtless the most painful era of Afghanistan’s recent history. A period in which the people of Afghanistan were robbed of their right to take pride in the country’s struggle against the Soviet occupation, and were instead thrown into a fierce but meaningless civil war. The true face of the jihad, as a brutal, meaningless and directionless power-struggle between egocentric men was revealed in that period.
The civil war that took place in that period was devoid of any dignity, moral justification or regard for civilian lives. It lasted for four years, between 1992 and 1996, and uncovered the myths that had surrounded the jihad since its inception in 1978. Courage was revealed as cowardliness; honor turned out to be dishonor; vigor was unmasked as sheer brutality; and God turned out to be a mere excuse for brutality.
The Patient Stone courageously dissects this period of Afghan history, and in doing so, fulfills the purpose of art as a mirror reflecting the collective tragedy of a nation.
Reading the book has a cathartic effect, leaving the reader exhausted and yet relieved. The Patience Stone is a therapeutic book but without the sugarcoating and sentimentalism of Khalid Hosseini’s bestseller novels. As such, Atiq Rahimi is following in the footsteps of Albert Camus, another francophone author and voice of a generation.
But perhaps the most satisfactory aspect of this book is the fact that in this age of obsessive concern with representational authenticity, Atiq Rahimi proves that great art is still about the power of imagination and the capacity for empathy and that in order to write a truthful book about the innermost secrets of female sexuality, the author does not need to be female himself.
As such, The Patience Stone is an homage to the women of Afghanistan, who, like the female protagonist of the book, are fragile yet resilient, oppressed yet courageous. They are the Afghan wars’ most wretched, innocent victims and yet they haven’t lost their capacity for love, truth and understanding. The Patience Stone deserves to be read in silent contemplation but it is not a book for the faint-hearted.
Read more about Atiq Rahimi
- Dialogue with Atiq Rahimi
By Nadia Ali Maiwandi, AfghanMagazine.com, November 2004 - Breaking with the Language of Taboo
By Martin Gerne, Qantara.de
Trailer from Atiq Rahimi’s 2004 film Earth and Ashes adapted from his book of the same title.
