Death and Compassion Among the Taliban
This week's long read is an intriguing short story in Granta magazine. It's about a man in Afghanistan, sympathetic to the Taliban, whose job is to care for the bodies of slain combatants—including American soldiers. He believes it is his duty as a Muslim to honor the dead in this way, even as the Taliban leaders remain unsympathetic to his work. It begins,
My wife will tell me I smell of death tonight. She will leave two plastic tubs of water beside our door, one for my clothes and the other to bathe myself. She does not allow me to enter our home on nights like this, until I have shed the odor of the dead.
My friends snicker when they see the steaming tubs of water, which she heats to break the chill. They laugh because my wife tells me when I must clean myself. My neighbors respect me, though it is true that a woman directing a man is unusual. But these men do not know what I owe her.