Swedish and Farsi/Dari version of the book
The original version of the text by Maria Küchen, the Swedish author, about my book was published in Sydsvenskan newspaper in Swedish. Here, I am sharing the English translation of that text.It is painful to read Mukhtar Wafayee’s “This Blood Bears Witness to God's Wrath”, his first novel and the first to be translated into Swedish. The 29-year-old journalist fled to Malmö from Afghanistan three years ago, after enduring constant harassment in his homeland for his journalism. From 2019-2020, he was Malmö’s city of refuge writer.
The novel is based on real events and personal experiences. The 15-year-old protagonist Mukhtar moves from his poor village to an Afghan religious boarding school, but the conditions at the school become unbearable. Tales of success spread about Iran, tempting the young boy to attempt to enter the neighboring country illegally.
However, the human smuggler he contacts in the Afghan city of Zaranj warns him about the dangers ahead. “Saber Baghban was well-known in Zaranj as a decent and kind-hearted human smuggler.” But Mukhtar still decides to risk the journey through the desert to a place where his life is supposed to improve. He soon bitterly regrets it.
In Iran, Afghans are looked down upon, and “Afghan” is almost a slur. There is no religious school for Mukhtar. Instead, he scrapes by with odd jobs. The work is grueling and underpaid, the employers grumpy and stingy. Someone beats him, someone else cheats him out of his wages. Only the Mashhad native Mohammad, a hard-working farmer, has a heart.
Mohammad notices that Mukhtar enjoys reading and gives him books, but his time with Mohammad is short. Mukhtar continues on with an increasingly heavy heart and a growing longing to return home to Afghanistan. But the way back is closed to him. He has no money, no papers.
Left at the mercy of crooks and scammers, he ends up in the infamous Sefid Sang prison, known as “the Afghan mass grave” among the people. In the 1990s, hundreds of Afghans were said to have been massacred there during a prisoner uprising. Since then, those imprisoned have cowered under oppression. They are beaten and starved. A young boy dies. Mukhtar loses his childhood faith.
"I felt that I wouldn’t regain my sense of security either by holding the book or by reciting Ayat al-Kursi or anything else from the Quran. Something had broken inside me. My heart was shattered."
Until then, Mukhtar’s religiosity had been genuine and heartfelt. But the mullahs do not practice what they preach; they have been corrupted by their hunger for power.
“This Blood Bears Witness to God’s Wrath” is a stark and unembellished story about seeking knowledge of God, but instead learning the hard way about humanity’s darkest sides. The struggle to survive in a part of the world that is currently being torn apart is portrayed matter-of-factly. In the shadow of the horrors that haunt Afghanistan these days, the book about Mukhtar is as painful as it is necessary to read.
Maria Küchen is a cultural writer and author.
August 11, 2021.
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| Sydsvenskan |
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