Rasoul or “Raskolnikov” — That Is the QuestionA Look at Curse on Dostoevsky by Atiq Rahimi

Author: Arian Aron
Translated from Persian

Atiq Rahimi has, over recent years, firmly established his place in the world of fiction writing. He has won the prestigious Prix Goncourt¹, his novels have been translated into multiple languages, and a growing number of readers now recognize his name.

Yet, the question remains: to which literary geography should he be linked? This is a question that often remains partially unanswered. Rahimi himself sees and narrates everything through the lens of Afghanistan. Even if his language of choice is foreign, his efforts to tell stories are always grounded from within this society, and his narratives follow suit, even if his language is not his mother tongue. His writing in French has been debated before, and many tend to believe that he should not be counted among Afghan writers.

On the other hand, it is not easy to read a work authored by a fellow native-language speaker only to find it labeled as translated from another language and then discover that this translation has issues and does not fully align with what you imagine or expect.

Anyone engaged in the craft of storytelling inevitably categorizes all necessary elements while reading a story: the narrator’s point of view, the style of narration, how characters enter the plot, how the subject is developed, how these elements weave together, the overall theme, and other aspects such as the interplay of time and place, the verisimilitude of the story, its setting, and the language employed.

One point that initially compelled me to write about this novel was precisely the matter of its setting and language.

To depict a story’s setting, we need a language capable of shaping the place and events in our mind through narrative, dialogue, and signs. This mental image essentially embodies the event and its location. What unfortunately distances us from the Curse on Dostoevsky is the translation’s failure to harmonize with the story’s language and setting. Every moment in Kabul is described to us using the vernacular spoken in Tehran, and this duality—born of the translation—delivers a significant blow to the novel. This is precisely what slightly disenchants the reader in the first pages. Here, apart from the undeniable differences between the languages of Iran and Afghanistan—which are not even up for debate—it is the story’s narrative language and the specific local idioms of a place that give it beauty. This beauty lies in the language and dialect native to the story’s location.

The book is translated by Mehdi Ghabraei, and there is no doubt he is a talented translator. He has translated some of the world’s greatest authors such as Haruki Murakami, Romain Gary, Faulkner, José Saramago, and others—works that are certainly challenging to render into another language. Ghabraei has also translated Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner into Persian, which shows his familiarity with stories set within Afghanistan’s geography. Nonetheless, his previous translation of Atiq Rahimi’s The Thousand Rooms of Sleep and Oppression—originally written in Persian, translated into English, then retranslated into Persian with an Iranian dialect by Ghabraei—sparked controversy.  This step was arguably unnecessary.

Translating a work is the re-creation of that work, and this re-creation means breathing life into the work within the heart of a language. It was not expected that the translator would render it in the Kabul dialect, but it would have been possible—by preserving the original names of certain places and faithfully maintaining some expressions—to bring the translation closer to the reality of the story’s setting, or at least to avoid detaching the story from its locale. Unfortunately, this is not strongly evident in this book. The narrative unfolds in Kabul, yet the translation is printed in the widely spoken Persian dialect of Iran. This occurs even as the story retains numerous references and markers of Kabul, and at times the translator’s effort to “Kabuli” the text is weak and inconsistent, resulting in a language that is neither authentically Iranian nor genuinely Kabuli.

My initial encounter with the translator’s errors began with a familiar yet strangely named poem cited by Atiq Rahimi on the page before the book’s start. It was a verse from the poem Zamin by Hafiz Arash Azish¹, but the translator mistakenly wrote the poet’s name as “Hafez Azish.” From that moment, as I turned more pages, I found many such errors piling up, reflecting the translator’s lack of familiarity—not only with embedding the narrative in Kabul’s essence, which I later understood he had tried to do—but also with many local expressions and place names.

For example, the “Asemai Mountains”³ became “Kuhestan-e Asmai,” “Salang Passes” were rendered as “Langwat,” and “Kabul University,” known and spoken in Afghanistan by its Pashto name Pohantun-e Kabul, was translated as “Pohantun Kabul,” losing the original pronunciation and meaning. The name “Ghazi”⁴ was replaced by “Qazi,” and “Amir Salam” became “Amer Salam.” In one passage, Sofia says, “They threw me out of the maqbara,”⁴ meaning she was expelled from a shrine, but the translation rendered it literally as “graveyard,” which misses the cultural context. The name “Shah Do Shamshira”⁵ was mistranslated as “Lis ibn Qais,” among other inaccuracies. Correctly translating these elements alone could have polished the language of the novel and re-created it faithfully and without errors.

Atiq Rahimi, like me, was born and raised in this geography, nurtured by this land, and his language is my language. That he feels comfortable writing in another language is his choice, and no one can dictate to a writer what or in which language to write. Each person writes best in the language in which they think most comfortably, the language that brings them closest to their goal—this is beyond reproach. Yet, within a novel of such scope, I wish that instead of “Vel kon baba” (loosely: “Let it go, man”), there had been expressions I could read in the Kabul vernacular at the height of the story’s beauty and climax. Or instead of “How are you, cousin?… Thank you, brother… May God repay you… Hey Rasoul! How long do you think you can run away?” and hundreds of other examples that erase Kabul—the story’s setting—at every turn, and take you further away from the people who are supposedly in Kabul but are not truly there, I could have read their genuine Kabuli equivalents. None of these dialogues belong in Kabul. People in Kabul do not speak as they do in Tehran. This disconnect deprives the narrative of the vivid language found in Rahimi’s other works such as Ashes and Dust, The Patience Stone, The Sleepers in the Valley of Oppression, or The Stone of Patience. I have read Rahimi in his own language, and I am familiar with it; when that language speaks through the people of this land, I know exactly what it means—even when it curses, that curse sounds beautiful and familiar to me.

Blessed Be Dostoevsky⁷ is, for me, Atiq Rahimi’s most distinctive work to date. In terms of content, structure, and narrative, it holds greater power because Rahimi ventures here into the world of Dostoevsky and brings one of his greatest novels and most iconic characters to the heart of Kabul.

The novel begins where Raskolnikov²—the most famous character of Russian literature—is introduced. Over time, Raskolnikov has become a symbol of many things, and he is the figure that gives life to the protagonist of Blessed Be Dostoevsky⁷ in Kabul. Rasoul, the novel’s main character, is born from that event and narrative.

The moment Rasoul raises the axe to kill Naneh Aliya, the spark of the novel ignites in his mind. Suddenly, he sees himself as Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, transforming into the novel’s well-known character. From this point on, alongside other events, Rasoul strives to live out the story of Crime and Punishment itself. Most of his thoughts echo those of Raskolnikov throughout Dostoevsky’s novel, and they both share a common suffering in two different eras. Yet what separates them is Rahimi’s own narrative voice, which accompanies Rasoul like a background music. This narrative, itself, is Kabul—the sound of bullets, successive explosions, and the smoke of hashish.

However, despite all this, what Rasoul does gives the novel a more allegorical dimension. An allegory whose scenario is set in Saint Petersburg, yet has been performed twice in Kabul, with the entire stage being Kabul itself — a war-torn, devastated Kabul, and Rasoul, who has now become Raskolnikov.

When I say the novel becomes allegorical, it is because all the characters in this novel, with their very traits, have been reborn in Kabul and have re-emerged at the heart of a story — something akin to a forced return to the world.

The characters from Crime and Punishment in Kabul, with these nominal similarities, have surfaced anew: Raskolnikov/Rasoul; Alyona Ivanovna/Nana Aliya; Sofia Semyonovna or Sonia/Sofia; Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister/Donya, Rasoul’s sister; Razumikhin/Razmuddin; Porfiry Petrovich/Parviz; and so forth.

In Damn Dostoevsky, the resemblance of characters’ names is far from coincidental. Their likeness and stories bring the atmosphere of Crime and Punishment into the present, and it can be said that Atiq Rahimi has accomplished this task skillfully.

Rasoul and Raskolnikov are in fact symbols of personalities whose consciences are caught in a struggle over guilt and innocence, a tribunal that, despite deep disbelief that their actions could be criminal, demands judgment. Both are fully aware that the murder they committed was out of necessity — and the person they killed was one whose absence is far better than their presence. Both understand how these two women, Alyona Ivanovna and Nana Aliya, like parasites, suck the blood of others. Nana Aliya has taken Sofia’s mother’s gold hostage and sexually exploits the girls who have no choice but to comply, handing them over to others. This, to some extent, helps Rasoul assume the role of “Raskolnikov,” contemplating whether he has killed a human being or a harmful insect.

In Rahimi’s novel, not only does he bring these characters with their essential traits to Kabul, but he also integrates them into the fabric of this city and among other people. The Russian Raskolnikov, when he becomes the Afghan Rasoul, is as much a Russian Raskolnikov as he is a Kabul resident.

Crime and Punishment is undoubtedly one of Dostoevsky’s finest works. This novel and its protagonist — a symbol of the godlike world created by Dostoevsky — like other masterpieces of this great Russian writer, have their own world. A world where conscience is the greatest human court, and the human being is the most significant witness and judge of their own deeds. This novel ranks among Dostoevsky’s top five works. The argument Dostoevsky presented in this novel laid the foundation for a certain school of thought that greatly influenced the ethics and social behavior of his time in Russia.

But what Rahimi enacts in Kabul, beyond reviving the theme of Rasoul’s guilt or innocence as Raskolnikov, weaves in other themes as well.

The story, largely composed of Rasoul’s internal monologues, unfolds events that once occurred in Crime and Punishment and are now being reborn in the heart of Kabul. Rahimi endeavors to delve into the depths of the war-torn and destitute people of Kabul and to narrate their plight.

The narrative tells of people compelled by circumstances who have nothing to accept but death and nothing to lose but life. For many, the most basic needs are a piece of bread and a crutch.

Honor, service, patriotism, and such values have lost their meaning. Rahimi shows how war robs even “honor” from people and drags them to the most notorious places they have spent a lifetime fleeing. How war forces people to resort to any means. War makes killing easy. The death of an ill old woman, which torments Rasoul deeply, is alongside countless other killings the author depicts. If conscience were truly a court, even this arguably “less wrongful” killing could be fatal. But war understands none of these arguments, and at every moment in Kabul — where Rasoul seeks his punishment for killing a woman whose presence or absence hardly matters — dozens of people die under gunfire, rockets, or collapsing rubble, and dozens more search for their missing loved ones, who are surely dead.

Rasoul, who once worked at the university library, commits murder. This too is the work of war. Sophia, a student from an educated family, is forced to serve a disreputable woman and even compelled into prostitution—this is another burden imposed by war, which has caused most people to lose their dignity and themselves.

Another key aspect of this novel is the “Russian nihilism,” a phenomenon whose counterpart we have experienced for years without naming it: chaos, lawlessness, fragmentation, murder, indifference, fleeing from oneself, retreating into a dark corner, mocking life, fearlessness of death, and dozens of other such features. In this novel, when these unfold in the setting of Kabul, they take root and become a lived reality. The skillful distinction between these issues and the main theme of nihilism embedded within Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a commendable achievement of Atiq Rahimi’s Curse on Dostoevsky, where these elements flow through the novel’s intricate language and the lives of Kabul’s inhabitants.

Aside from the damage inflicted by some translation issues, there are moments in the novel that compel the reader to think Rahimi has struggled to master or convincingly present certain elements. One example is the dialogue between Commander Parwiz and Rasoul, where both, amid war and other narratives, suddenly take on the guise of philosophers. Although Rasoul is well-read and intimately familiar with Dostoevsky’s work, Parwiz—without any indication of such awareness—unconditionally begins to philosophize and reason with Rasoul in a manner that is not easily accepted by the reader. The speeches attributed to Parwiz often exceed what one would reasonably expect from him, sometimes adopting the style Dostoevsky frequently employed in his writings.

Parwiz, who appears here in the role of Porfiry Petrovich—the investigator in Crime and Punishment—fails to live up to what Dostoevsky’s character accomplished when trying to convince Rasoul. Between pages 199 and 202, the novel revolves around Rasoul’s crimes, but what could have been rendered in simple, elegant sentences is instead forced into a philosophical tone reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s style—yet without the same success. Each sentence in its place serves a purpose, and one cannot overlook that Dostoevsky, regarded by even the greatest philosophers as a rare phenomenon, wrote Crime and Punishment in the world and setting of St. Petersburg. This is why what Porfiry says there is fitting: behind him stands Dostoevsky himself. However, in this novel, Atiq Rahimi might have improved this section by simplifying the discussion and adapting it more fittingly to Kabul’s context, as he has in other parts of the novel.

As mentioned, many elements here sometimes take on an allegorical character. For example, the peak of the novel’s allegory is when Rasoul enters the provincial governor’s office intending to surrender to the judge but encounters an elderly clerk who compiles the names of those lost in the war. What unfolds resembles a small, dark stage performing a miniature play, where even the dialogues gain a theatrical quality. Yet, these elements do not make the scene of Commander Parwiz’s persuasion or his eventual suicide due to injustice and despair merely a borrowed scenario from Crime and Punishment, nor should they be accepted lightly.

When Crime and Punishment ends and Raskolnikov is exiled, questions remain in our minds: Was he truly a criminal? Had he committed a crime? Should he have been imprisoned? Many such questions arise. In the novel, Raskolnikov even tells his sister Dunya:

“Crime? What crime? I killed a wretched, harmful, and vile louse—an old usurer woman who was useless to everyone and whose death equals the forgiveness of many sins—a woman who had turned the lives of the poor and helpless into hell. Would you call that a crime?”

Elsewhere, he confesses to Sonia:

“I wanted to kill without any logical or ideological reason. I killed for myself, just for myself. I did not commit the murder to help my mother. I did not kill to do good to people after gaining means and power. No, it’s a lie. I killed just for myself.”

In Rahimi’s novel, Rasoul tells Sonia that he killed Naneh Aalia—and did so only for her. This duality of thought behind these characters becomes clear: Dostoevsky aimed to establish a foundation for a type of philosophy that inverts moral ethics, while Atiq Rahimi looks beyond these abstractions to focus on love, mysticism, and war. Thus, Rasoul, his war-torn and wounded Kabul resident, kills solely for Sonia.

Despite all these differences, as we approach the final sections of this novel, the same question arises regarding Rasul: Amidst all the crimes unfolding daily in Kabul and the ongoing war that kills dozens each day, is Rasul still a criminal?

Commander Parviz makes every effort to save Rasul and seeks to make him understand that he is not guilty of a crime; he saved his fiancée and died for his honor, and perhaps no murder even occurred, as the body of Neneh Aliyah⁸ disappears mysteriously, leaving no evidence of a killing. Even if a murder took place, by eliminating a harmful individual, Rasul has served humanity. Yet, despite all this, the issue of Rasul’s crime at the novel’s conclusion was, for me at least, not the ending I had expected. Events unfold too quickly and abruptly, and only at the very end does the author attempt to conceal it with his final sentences. He seeks to claim his own ending and, in doing so, abruptly frees himself from Dostoevsky’s shadow.

In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov awaits the end of his remaining seven years in exile, reflecting on the price he has paid for life—a conclusion that for Dostoevsky is the beginning of another story. As he himself says after recounting Raskolnikov’s fate: “This may be the subject of a new story; our current story has ended.”

However, in Blessed Be Dostoevsky (لعنت به داستایفسکی), the very ending of the novel is actually a new beginning of the same novel. Rasul reads aloud what has happened to the former court clerk, the one who collected the names of the disappeared, and it ends with that clerk’s question. This ending that Rasul reads is in fact the point from which the story began—the moment he took up the axe to kill Neneh Aliyah, the moment the idea of crime and punishment first flashed in his mind, and the moment when, like Raskolnikov, he reenacted the story once again after years and in a different place. But this time, it concludes with the clerk’s question to Rasul: “Why didn’t you take the money?” The story reaches its end, yet this very question spins the cycle around again and revives the question: Was Rasul a criminal?

Foot notes :

¹Prix Goncourt: The most prestigious literary prize in France awarded annually for the best and most imaginative prose work of the year.

²Raskolnikov: The main character of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, known for his philosophical and moral struggles.
³ Asemai Mountains — A mountain range overlooking Kabul, iconic in local geography.
⁴Ghazi — A title meaning “warrior” or “conqueror,” often used honorifically in Afghan history.
⁵Maqbara — Shrine or mausoleum, a sacred place of visitation often confused with a graveyard.
⁶Shah Do Shamshira — A historic neighborhood in Kabul, known for its cultural significance.
⁷Blessed Be Dostoevsky — The novel by Atiq Rahimi, originally titled La Bénédiction de Dostoïevski in French.

⁸Naneh Aliyah: A character’s name “Neneh” is a colloquial term in Dari/Persian referring respectfully to an elderly woman or grandmother figure.