by Thalassa Ali
“And so Mariam is to blame for Yusuf's death?”
“No, Bhaji.” He sighed again, heavily. “My anger is to blame, for I allowed it to impair my judgment.”
Safiya nodded. “And what do you propose to do about her now? Do you still wish to divorce her?”
“I propose nothing.” He reached with his good hand into a pocket in his clothes. Safiya heard the faint crackling of paper between his fingers.
She frowned. Perhaps Mariam's behavior had driven him past some invisible point. She had seen this happen with others in the past, over lesser matters. Once Hassan turned his back on a person, that person was finished for him
He took his hand from his pocket. “Mariam and her family will, Inshallah, return from Kabul within a few months. The British will use their army to keep Shah Shuja on the throne there, but they will not need her uncle, who is a civil officer. When she returns, the future will be decided.”
“And what of poor little Saboor, who waits for her?”
“Bhaji, I do not know. It pains me to see him longing for her so, when I—” His voice trailed away.
“You should act,” Safiya decreed. “There is no sense in making the child wait. Whatever your decision, you might as well take it now.
“But before we speak any more of your marriage,” she decided, “we must dispose of your remorse over Yusuf's loss. Whatever you may believe at this moment, neither you nor Mariam is to blame for what happened to him. It is time for you to hear the story of my mother's death. It has meaning in your case.”
“As you well know,” she began, “your father and I are twins. At the time of our birth, Wali came out at once, but I, who was second, hesitated. As the attending women tried to drag me out, one of them made an error that caused our mother to bleed severely. The most experienced women were called, but she died within hours.
“Your father and I were turned over to the family ladies. As you are aware, our older cousin, who later married your grandfather, treated us as her own children. But when we were a little more than three years old, I stopped eating. Our cousin used to follow me from room to room, trying to tempt me with milk and sweets, but I would not touch food. Wali was fat and healthy, but I became so weak that the ladies feared I would die.”
“You were weak, Bhaji?” Hassan stared. “Thin?”
“I was,” Safiya intoned, “for I believed I had killed my mother. Because of that belief, I suffered from a stomach pain that stopped me from eating.”
He drew in his breath.
“The story of our birth and her death had been told and retold in my hearing. Over and over again, people pointed to me. It was she, they said, who caused her mother's death. People can be cruel to children. I was not deaf; nor was I stupid. By the time I was three, I could no longer live with my agony.
“In despair,” she continued, “our cousin sent me to your greatgrandfather, Sheikh Abd Dhul-Jalali Wal-Ikram. He, of course, used to sit, as your father does now, on a takht in the courtyard, surrounded by his followers. I vividly remember burying my face in my elder brother's shoulder as he carried me out into the courtyard, for I could not bear to see my grandfather's hatred.”
She sighed at the memory. “His beard was pure white, and his mouth drooped on one side. I was too frightened to speak when I was handed to him, but he needed no words from me. He took me onto his lap and smiled with such luminous kindness that the pain in my stomach began to melt away. In that moment I understood that there was no blame on me for my mother's death.
“He recited something, then he blew into a tumbler of water and gave it to me to drink. I was told later that he had prayed all the previous night for me. That I cannot confirm, but to this day I remember the relief I felt the moment I was brought into his presence.”
“And was that when you decided to become a Follower of the Path?”
Safiya nodded. “It was. But I have more to say. You, Hassan, are suffering as I did then, from a grain of truth. In my case, while it was true that my stubborn refusal to be born had brought the careless midwife whose action killed my mother, it was she, not I, who made the fatal mistake. In your case, your anger drove you to the garden, and then your inability to shoot a child assassin began a chain of events that led to Yusuf's death. But it was the guards, not you, who killed him.
“We must not allow ourselves to be led into despair by a grain of truth, for a grain can become a boulder that crushes the soul. Perhaps you were foolish to go to the Hazuri Bagh, my dear,” she added, “but the truth is that the bigger fool was Yusuf, may he rest in peace, for he allowed you to come with him and then, at the critical moment, asked you to do the impossible. After all, he had known you since childhood.
“As to your wife,” she said after a moment's pause, “for all her outrageous behavior and her mistrust of you, she has saved both Saboor's life and your own. That is no small thing. Perhaps in the end you will reach some accommodation.
“It is clear that she does not fit into our household, but it also seems that she fits in no better with her own people. A person with no real home always thirsts to belong somewhere. I believe that with encouragement and training, she may learn to belong here.”
He had watched her steadily throughout her story. Now he dropped his eyes. She watched his chest rising and falling beneath his long, embroidered shirt.
Irritated by his silence, Safiya pointed an upturned hand at his chest. “If you do not like your wife,” she said crossly, “then why did you send her your gold medallion with the verses from Sura Nur carved into it? Why send her such a powerful token of your regard? And why have you never taken off the silver taweez she took from her own neck and gave you when you lay wounded?”
“I do not know, Bhaji.” He reached up and touched the small silver box on its black cord, then stared out through the curtained doorway, his gaze far away.
A moment later, his hand returned to his pocket where the hidden paper crinkled again.
It would be a pity if he did not forgive the girl. Saboor would certainly suffer without her, but so would Hassan, wifeless for the second time in less than three years.
Mariam was certainly in desperate need of training, but she had courage and a good heart. And although Safiya herself gave little importance to outward appearances, it was clear that with her creamy skin, soft brown curls, and broad, transforming smile, the foreign girl was as beautiful as any young woman in Lahore, or would be if she paid more attention to herself.
Safiya sighed. There was no more to be said. She craned her neck, searching for a helpful child among the whispering groups in the sitting room. “Mehereen,” she called, “go and tell them to bring the food.”
An olive, she said to herself, remembering the verse inscribed on Hassan's gold medallion, neither of the East, nor of the West…
April 15, 1841
As a horse and rider approached, Nur Rahman Khan sprang up from his vantage point beside the Residence's guarded entrance gate, and narrowed his eyes. To his relief, it was the foreign lady, returning at last from her outing. Sitting sideways in her saddle, dressed in heavy black with a veiled riding hat, she walked her fine mare unhurriedly toward him, ignoring the misty rain that had turned the Kohistan Road to mud. Behind her strode the same pair of Indian servants who had accompanied her when she left: one man tall and long-legged, the other burly and pale-skinned beneath his turban, with a beard the color of corn silk.
Nur Rahman stepped into the horse's path on his quick, dancer's feet, his slender body taut with tension. He must time his move exactly. If he approached the lady too early, while she was too far from the gate, he would risk being set upon by the servants before he could get inside. If he waited too long, she might ride through the entrance without him, leaving him outside to be manhandled by the pair of aggressive-looking sentries who stood by the gate, smart in their red woolen coats and white cross belts.
Later, friendless and without shelter or safety, he would be hunted down
From th
e day of her arrival in Kabul, Nur Rahman had included the lady in his plan. The polite greeting she had offered to Painda Gul on that first morning had caught the young dancer's attention, for only an extremely courteous person would have addressed such a man at all. Later, Nur Rahman had learned in the bazaar that the woman and her uncle were two of only a handful of English people in Kabul who spoke any local language.
One of the foreign women, they had said, speaks both Farsi and Pushto.
What a pity, they had added, that of the few foreigners who can speak to us, one should be a woman!
Her uncle, the gossip ran, was an intelligence agent. Nur Rahman knew this to be the truth, for on his very first day in Kabul, the old man had gone straight to the bazaar, where he had questioned several shopkeepers in rusty, accented Farsi.
Wherever he went, he had inquired about Wazir Akbar Khan.
Only this newly arrived Englishman, people said over their glasses of tea in the chaikhanas of the city, asks about the son of our true Amir, who even now waits to wrest his father's throne from the hands of the unbelievers. Only this man knows what is in our hearts.
Only he, agreed others, understands the danger to his people.
In the crowd at the horse races, Nur Rahman had seen the English lady getting into her palanquin. Calling out to her in the Pushto of his people, he had rushed to her side. She had not dismissed him then, although she had not understood him. He had realized too late that the bazaar gossip had been wrong, that she understood only Farsi. Her bearers had carried her away by that time, but he had known then what he must do.
It was she, he realized, and no other person in all of Kabul, who might, in the proper circumstances, save his life.
It was a gamble, of course, but he was Afghan, and used to gambling, and the odds were not entirely against him. Perhaps, if she were as kind as she appeared, and if Allah Most Gracious willed, she would accept his request for panah, the hospitable asylum that must be given to those who ask properly, even those who have committed unspeakable offenses.
She, of course, was not Pashtun. She might fail to understand this ancient duty, but he had no better hope at this terrible moment than a young, black-clad Englishwoman and her newly built, well-guarded fort.
As her horse approached the gate, Nur Rahman kept his distance from the guards. He knew what they thought of him. Somehow, what he had become was written plainly on his face. But it was not his fault. He no longer remembered clearly how Painda Gul had enticed him away from the safety of his family when he was very young. Perhaps the older man had offered him sweets, perhaps a new kite. It no longer mattered. What had mattered was the desperate grief he had suffered, torn from the love of his mother and small sisters and the protection of his father and brothers. Now, even if he knew the way back to his ancestral village, he could never return there. How would his family, even his mother, receive him after the terrible shame Painda Gul had forced upon him night after night, until he no longer recognized himself?
He was a dancing boy now. Trained with beatings and curses, he whirled and stamped, dressed as a woman, at weddings and the births of other men's sons. He himself would never have a son, although his beard was starting to grow. Who would give his daughter to a grown-up child-slave of Painda Gul?
At last, after all his years of rage and waiting, Nur Rahman was armed and free. His patron's cruel knife with its ten-inch blade lay hidden in his clothes, still streaked with the blood of its former owner. With that same knife, Nur Rahman would defend himself from further harm, perhaps even from the insults he endured wherever he went. He might be a dancing boy, but he had his pride.
But now he needed help, for at this moment Painda Gul lay, eyes staring, his throat slit, in the same city hovel where he had first brought Nur Rahman as a child of six. When his body was discovered, no one in Kabul would doubt the boy's guilt. After all, who had not known the story of the wolf-faced Painda Gul and his bacha?.
“Ya Hafiz. Ya Hafiz,” the boy whispered. “O Protector, come to my aid.”
The lady had nearly reached the entrance. Her servants trailed behind her, relaxing their vigilance as she approached the sentries.
“Khanum, oh, Khanum!” Forcing himself to breathe, Nur Rahman flitted to her side.
She started in her saddle, her eyes wide behind the veil that hung from her stiff black headdress.
He reached out and gripped her stirrup. “Panah,” he murmured.
Her eyes widening, she kicked out at him. “Let me go!” she cried.
Ignoring her dismay, he took the hem of her heavy skirt in his other hand and raised beseeching eyes to her face. “Panah,” he begged again, tightening his grip as the mare jerked sideways. She must know what the word meant.
Her servants were already sprinting toward him, shouting unintelligibly, their heavy sandals slapping the wet mud. The sentries stared from the gate.
“Only three days.” He held on, gasping with pain as she brought her riding crop down upon his wrist. “Three days, Khanum, I swear it.”
The pale-bearded servant arrived first at Nur Rahman's side. Seizing the boy's fingers, he began to pry them from the leather strap. When their hands touched the lady's boot, she cried out again, her voice filled with outrage.
The tall servant arrived. “Rokho, Ghulam Ali,” he said. When the first man moved aside, he stepped behind Nur Rahman and seized him in a long-armed grip, dragging him away from the woman and her mare, forcing him to loosen his hold on the stirrup.
“Wait,” Nur Rahman gasped, “I mean no harm, Khanum-Jan! I ask only for protection from my enemies!”
Fearing he had lost his chance, he reached out to her, tears welling in his eyes.
She frowned behind her veil. “If you wanted protection, why did you not say so?”
“But I did,” he protested. “I—”
Silencing him with a wave of her riding crop, she spoke sharply to her two servants. The tall one released Nur Rahman. The pale one set off toward the gate, signaling outrage with every movement of his stocky body.
“You are fortunate,” she added, returning to Farsi and glaring at Nur Rahman, “that we did not turn you over to the guards.”
Hope flickered in the boy's heart. For all her obvious annoyance, the lady's face was full of curiosity.
But her expression held something else as well. She wrinkled her nose. “Do not touch me again,” she ordered, turning her mare aside.
“We will remain here,” she added, her eyes averted, “until someone comes who can tell me what all this is about.”
Nur Rahman stood motionless, his eyes lowered, afraid to breathe. Surely if the lady had intended to send him away, she would have done so at once. But who were they all waiting for, the lady sideways on the mare in her strange-looking saddle, the tall groom watchful beneath his untidy turban, the red-coated sentries glowering from beneath the brims of their tall, black uniform hats?
After a long interval, during which Nur Rahman glanced fearfully several times up and down the road, the lady's servant reappeared, followed by an elderly Indian gentleman in a golden qaraquli hat and a pair of woolen shawls.
As he stepped unhurriedly through the gateway, the old man brought with him a wave of peace so powerful that it seemed to perfume the air around him. Nur Rahman filled his lungs with it. “May peace be upon thee, Father,” he offered giddily, a hand over his heart.
“And upon thee,” the old man replied kindly. “What is your name, child?”
“Nur Rahman,” the boy breathed.
The lady bent over her mare's neck. “I am sorry to disturb you, Munshi Sahib,” she said in Farsi, her voice soft with respect. “This boy has been clutching at me, begging, I think, for asylum. I need your advice.”
“Ah.” The old gentleman turned to Nur Rahman. As he did so, the dancing boy's heart came near to breaking, for there was no disgust in that gentle gaze, no turning away. If Nur Rahman had had the courage, he would have thrown himself right then at the old man's fee
t.
“And is it panah that you want?” the old man inquired.
“Yes, dear Father, for I have killed a man.” Nur Rahman swallowed. “I slit his throat this morning. But Father,” he added desperately, putting his stained hands out of sight behind his back, “by my head and eyes, it was necessary. He was evil. He had, he had—”
Nur Rahman turned away, his throat closing. It was no good. For all that he seemed to know the meaning of panah, it was clear that the old gentleman was no Pashtun. Why, then, should he honor the code, especially for a murder whose cause was too shameful to relate?
Without the truth, Nur Rahman could expect no asylum, no mercy, but how could he reveal his agony in front of this female foreigner? How could he describe the events of the past month, when the hair had lengthened on his face, and the city barbers had called out to him that it was time for the dancing boy to shave his beard? His patron had become more brutal than ever during that month, swearing he would throw Nur Rahman out, threatening him with that terrible knife, telling him he had grown too old, too old
Sweat trickled down the dancing boy's spine.
He had made up his mind only two days before, in Istalif, where he and Painda Gul had gone to entertain at a wedding. As Nur Rahman danced for the men in his shiny woman's clothes, his arms moving sinuously over his head, he had seen his patron talking to a little boy, a lovely child of five or six years, who gazed, wide-eyed, into Painda Gul's grinning face. Turning from the child, Painda Gul had glanced at Nur Rahman.
At that instant, the dancing boy had understood. That sweet little boy was to be his replacement. Soon, perhaps tomorrow, Painda Gul would return, stealthily, to Istalif. Soon, abducted from his confused and grieving family, the child would lose his innocence in Painda Gul's bed. Like Nur Rahman, he would spend his childhood weeping for his lost family.
And what of Nur Rahman, who had been Painda Gul's boy for the past eleven years? How would he survive, thrown out of Painda Gul's hovel, alone on the cold streets of the city?
