The Swallows of Kabul

Musarrat is Atiq’s wife. She is characterized by her perceived failure in this role. Musarrat saved Atiq’s life during the Soviet invasion, nursing him back to health. Though Musarrat loves Atiq, she knows that his decision to marry her was not founded in love, but obligation, leading her to feel consistently inadequate. Unlike Zunaira, Musarrat does not appear to be disturbed by Taliban rule, though this is likely due to her illness, which keeps her largely bedridden. As the novel progresses, Musarrat consistently professes her love for Atiq and her desire to improve his life, and, in the end, she decides to sacrifice herself for Atiq to have a chance to live with Zunaira.

Musarrat’s disappointment in herself and firm belief that Zunaira will choose to live with Atiq underpin her internalized misogyny. She judges herself based on her appearance and her ability to provide for Atiq in the home, conditions set and enforced by a patriarchal understanding of marriage. Musarrat reinforces the idea that her illness is not an excuse for failing Atiq as his wife. Her feelings of failure are predicated upon the same system that leads Mirza to encourage Atiq to seek a divorce, a system in which women are treated as objects to be owned or discarded by men at will.

Musarrat’s role in the novel is to show how both men and women are conditioned by society to perceive themselves and others in accord with social values. In the end, as Musarrat chooses to sacrifice herself for her husband, she feels she is fulfilling her role as his wife in the only way she can. She fails to acknowledge her own and Zunaira’s agency and autonomy. In her death, Musarrat removes Atiq’s only source of comfort. She assumes that Zunaira will have no choice but to live with or marry Atiq, failing to understand that she is a complete human being with the right to live and be happy.

Mohsen Ramat is a former diplomat, who studied political science at university. Following the Soviet invasion, Afghan Civil War, and takeover by the Taliban, he is unemployed. Mohsen is an educated man. He considers himself a conscientious objector and struggles to control his feelings of anger and sadness, much like Atiq. Without any way of sustaining himself outside of his home, Mohsen often wanders the city, spending increasing amounts of time in the cemetery as the novel progresses. Mohsen struggles to maintain his marriage with Zunaira, who refuses to participate in Taliban-controlled society because of the way it removes her rights as a woman.

Mohsen fails to retain his oppositional feelings toward the Taliban. Through him, the novel highlights the struggle of maintaining one’s values in the face of immovable and oppressive intervention. Early in the novel, Mohsen illustrates this struggle by participating in an execution, feeling elated when his own stone strikes the woman being executed. This behavior contradicts his disgust toward lynchings, and begins the rift between himself and Zunaira leading to his death. In the home, Mohsen loves Zunaira, though his love is predominantly focused on her beauty; he fails to understand how Zunaira is intellectually deprived, much as he is in Kabul.

Mohsen slowly becomes inseparable from the Taliban he opposes. His role in the novel is to show how oppression can mold and shift the individual living under totalitarian rule. Zunaira realizes how she can no longer separate Mohsen from the thugs she encounters in the streets, even as Mohsen explains that he is powerless to combat the Taliban. Mohsen’s acknowledgement of his lack of efficacy reflects his physical inability to fight off Taliban agents, while also revealing his inability to combat the feelings of rage and melancholy that govern his actions.

Zunaira is a former magistrate. She advocated for women’s rights but has since lost her job due to the Sharia law of the Taliban. Zunaira married Mohsen, whom she met at university, because of his good-natured personality. Through the couple, the novel reverses traditional gender roles in which men work and control the family while women serve them. Zunaira is a complex character, though she remains consistent throughout the novel in her insistence on women’s rights and her own autonomy. Following the takeover by the Taliban, Zunaira refused to leave her home to avoid wearing the burqa, which she sees as an erasure of women’s identities. When she finally leaves her home in the burqa, she and Mohsen are accosted by the Taliban, which leads to the conflict in which Mohsen dies. In this way, Zunaira shows the dangers of resisting oppression, while also highlighting the importance of self-respect and agency.

Zunaira’s beauty is a critical element in the novel. It emphasizes the disconnect between the ways other people perceive Zunaira and how she perceives herself. Zunaira regards herself as a women’s advocate, lawyer, and independent woman, and she does not comment on her appearance beyond her insistence that she does not wear a burqa. However, the other characters in the novel focus only on Zunaira’s physical appearance, revealing how undervalued Zunaira’s intelligence and rigor are in the current system ruling Kabul. As Zunaira pushes Mohsen, leading to his death, she realizes how he, like the Taliban, sees her as only an object meant to be controlled by men. This is inherently a violation of her own self-perception and agency.

Zunaira’s fate is left open, as she leaves the rally unseen and does not appear again in the novel. This ending reflects how Zunaira embodies both beauty and agency, as she realizes she cannot live within the system that oppresses her. Her only options are to leave or die. Prior to Musarrat’s interference, Zunaira appears entirely comfortable with her own execution, noting that the women of Kabul were killed long ago. However, given the opportunity, Zunaira exercises her agency and flees in the ultimate display of independence and resistance.