by Thalassa Ali
“I rocked to and fro,” Mariana recited slowly, her forefinger following the words on the paper, “that the child, my heart, might become still.
“A child sleeps when one sways the cradle.
Give my heart-babe milk, relieve us from its weeping,
O thou, that helpest every moment a hundred helpless like me.
The heart's home, first to last, is Thy City of Union:
How long wilt Thou keep in exile this forlorn heart?”
How well those lines described her feelings
Her teacher nodded. “Very good. You have captured the soul's pain at its separation from the divine.”
Mariana smoothed the paper on the table's surface, searching for the proper words to ask him, but nothing came.
If her teacher recognized how desperately she wanted to know Hassan's feelings, he gave no sign of it. Instead, he rocked on his heels beside her, his hands still behind his back, his gaze far away.
She gathered her courage. “Munshi Sahib,” she began as she had done several times before, then faltered, tongue-tied once again, when he turned his mild gaze upon her.
Why was this so difficult? Why did the subject of her feelings cover her with such shame and confusion? What prevented her from asking him such a simple question?
“And now, Bibi,” he said, taking a paper from his clothes and laying it on the table, “here is tomorrow's poem.”
She glanced distractedly at the page, covered with lines of Persian handwriting. She must discover the truth about Hassan from someone else.
Another mystic would know—someone as advanced as Munshi Sahib or Shaikh Waliullah would know at once what Hassan was thinking. She would have no reason to feel shame in front of a stranger whom she would never see again
“I wonder, Munshi Sahib,” she said casually, fingering the new page, “if there are any Followers of the Path like yourself here in Kabul.”
“Yes, of course there are, Bibi.” He pointed to the paper. “And now, this poem concerns—”
“And are they as wise as you?” Please let them be even wiser. She looked up into his face, hoping.
He withdrew his hand. “There have been learned men in Kabul for more than a thousand years, Bibi,” he replied. “Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi himself was born to the north of here more than six hundred years ago. He would have remained here all his life had Balkh not been laid waste by Genghis Khan.”
“But do they understand men's hearts as you do, Munshi Sahib?” she persisted.
“Ah, Bibi,” he sighed, “no man can encompass all that is to be known. The wisest among us can hold no more than a mustard seed's weight of knowledge in his heart. But nevertheless, each Follower of the Path has his own particular understanding, and each person's understanding has value.”
“Who are these men?”
Her teacher looked over her head, his eyes far away. “If you will give me time, I will find many practitioners hereabouts, but as of now, I know only one, for he came here long ago, from India.”
“He is a Follower of the Path?”
The old man nodded. “He is called Haji Khan. As a young man, he traveled from his home in Bengal to Arabia, to perform the great pilgrimage that is required of all Muslims. On his third day in Mecca, he dreamed that he must travel to Kabul and remain there for the rest of his life. He was obliged to forget his family in Bengal. He was not permitted to work. His only duties were to pray, and to remember God.”
Mariana stared. “But however did he survive in a strange city, knowing no one?”
“People saw who and what he was. They brought him food. Someone gave him a room to live in, and brought him warm clothes and fuel when winter came. The people gave him the title of Haji, for he had been no ordinary pilgrim, and they added Khan to his name out of respect. He has lived in the same room near the Char Chatta Bazaar for twenty-six years.”
Mariana nodded seriously. “Will you take me,” she said carefully, “to meet Haji Khan?”
Her teacher nodded. “That can be arranged.”
But the walled city was forbidden to her. You must not go there, her uncle had decreed.
“But does he ever leave the city?” she asked him sharply. “Does he ever visit another place?”
Coughing erupted outside the drawing room window. In Nur Rahman's opinion, the coughing announced, her lesson was over.
Munshi Sahib smiled at the sound. “We will speak of Haji Khan another time. And now,” he asked, “may I have your permission to depart?”
There was no point in trying to make him stay. Mariana nodded disappointedly, then watched her teacher step into the passageway and push his bare feet into a pair of worn leather slippers.
“Come, dear Father,” she heard Nur Rahman say, as they rounded the corner of the bungalow. “You must rest now, before the asr prayer. You spend so much of the night on your prayer mat”
September 23, 1841
Iwant an exact copy of this gown,” Mariana announced, holding up her favorite sprigged cotton to the man who squatted on a sheet of cloth in the verandah, a pair of scissors beside him. “And make sure, Ravi, that you do not cut the sleeves too tight this time. I can hardly get into the pink muslin you made for me last month.”
“Yes, Memsahib.” The tailor gestured with a long finger at the bolt of white cotton in front of him, “And are you adding any decoration? Any lace?”
As Mariana was about to reply, Nur Rahman flitted around the side of the house, humming a strange-sounding melody to himself. He paused in front of the verandah, his eyes on the cloth.
Seeing him there, she remembered something she had noticed the previous day—a woman walking behind a man with a loaded donkey, covered from head to foot in a billowing white cloak that fell over her shoulders and back from a fitted cap, while a long veil in front dropped to her waist, pierced by a latticework peephole.
Of course.
She could not travel openly to the city, but with stealth, many things were possible.
She bent and handed her sprigged cotton gown to the tailor. “No lace,” she said hastily, then hurried down the front step and into the garden, gesturing for Nur Rahman to wait.
“That cloth could be used for an Afghan woman's chaderi, could it not?” she inquired.
He nodded.
She glanced over her shoulder. “If I have one made for myself,” she half whispered, “will you take me into the city?”
His eyes widened. “Oh, no, Khanum, never! If I am discovered in Kabul, I will be killed.”
Of course he would be killed. That was what his panah had been about.
She felt her shoulders droop. She should have known that if she wanted to enter Kabul, she would have to go alone.
But she would do it, even if it meant searching among the alleyways of the city, perhaps without success, for Haji Khan.
As she turned away from the boy, he brightened. “But, Khanum,” he whispered, “if you will make another chaderi for me, I will take you there.”
He sighed dramatically, his arms spread out. “In spite of its danger for me, I have missed my Kabul. It will do my heart good to see it again, even if I must do so as a woman.”
THE NEXT morning, weighed down by the woolen riding habit she wore beneath her newly stitched chaderi, Mariana struggled to balance a bundle of twigs on her head as she hurried after Nur Rahman, avoiding the loaded pack animals of a nomad kafila that took up most of the roadway.
She peered through her latticework peephole. In front of her, Nur Rahman covered the ground swiftly, his white skirts billowing around his legs.
Her own yards of cotton had trapped the morning's heat, causing her hair to plaster itself to her neck and face. Her twigs dug painfully into her scalp; her arm ached from holding them steady. In the half-mile they had covered, she had dropped them twice, once into the path of an oncoming donkey, once among a herd of goats.
“You must carry something,” the boy had insisted as he retied her kindling into a neat bundle for the second time. �
��Without a good reason, why would a woman like you be walking along the road? And you should hold your chaderi closed in front, so people do not see those heavy black clothes you are wearing.”
For all its present discomfort, this visit to the city had not been difficult to manage. Mariana had ridden out after breakfast as usual, accompanied by Yar Mohammad and a young under-groom substituting for the absent Ghulam Ali, but instead of taking her usual route toward the mountains, she had stopped at a mulberry garden a mile from the city, where Nur Rahman had been waiting as planned. There she had dismounted, handed her veiled top hat to the young groom, unfolded her chaderi, and ordered both men to wait for her return.
Yar Mohammad's weather-beaten face had bunched in dismay as she dropped the yards of white fabric over her shoulders. “If you wish to see the city, Memsahib,” he had said in his resonant voice, “you should do so with honor, from the back of your mare. And you should not,” he had added, gesturing with his chin toward Nur Rahman, “be trusting such a young person to guard your safety.”
Now, perspiration pricked Mariana's upper lip. Grit cracked between her teeth. Yar Mohammad had been correct. Walking along the road with a load of kindling on her head was certainly less dignified than riding a horse, and she missed the safe company of her groom.
A dignified-looking male goat with tall, curved horns crossed a nearby field, followed at a distance by a jostling herd of she-goats, while a boy with a stick rounded up the stragglers. Mariana watched them without interest as she struggled along. The city across the river, with its high-walled fortress, had looked so near when they started walking
“We must stop and rest,” she croaked.
“Not yet,” the boy replied over his shoulder.
She sighed irritably inside her chaderi. How had Nur Rahman come to be in charge of this expedition? If they had not been in the open, with strangers listening on all sides, she would have given him a lesson in the proper comportment required of a servant. But then, he was not exactly a servant. In fact, he was no servant at all.
“Are you certain that you know Haji Khan's house?” she asked him a little later, as they sat side by side beneath a dusty tree.
“Of course I know where he lives.” The boy's eyes glowed behind his veil. “I know everything about Kabul.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“No, but everyone knows he is a great man of Kabul. Even the Amir's family used to visit him at his house.”
“They did not call him to their palace in the Bala Hisar?”
Nur Rahman lifted his chin. “Haji Khan is too great a man to go here and there at people's beck and call. Have you brought money?”
“A little.”
“We must give him something—attar, honey from the Safed Koh, or a bag of walnuts. He lives,” he added, “on the offerings of people such as yourself.”
As they prepared to continue their journey, a long file of camels with bulging loads passed by, each animal swaying from side to side, in the manner of a kafila on the move. Uzbeks in striped silk chapans strode alongside their swaying charges, frowning as they marched, as if walking itself were a serious occupation. Like everyone else on the road, they gave no sign of having noticed Mariana and her companion.
“Why are you walking like an old lady?” Nur Rahman demanded a quarter of an hour later, as they crossed a narrow pedestrian bridge leading directly over the Kabul River and into the city. “Everyone is looking. They can see your big foreign boots.”
“I did not ask to cross this horrible bridge,” Mariana snapped as she advanced wide-legged across the trembling planks, her twigs clutched in cloth-covered arms. She jerked her head. “Why have we not taken the brick one over there?”
“You complained so much,” he replied reasonably, “that I took the shorter route.”
By the time they entered the city, Mariana was too hot and irritated to speak. In front of her, Nur Rahman flitted along the wall of an enormous walled garden; he hurried from twisting street to street, his twigs balanced gracefully, moving easily past the doorways of houses and through the city's various bazaars, where goods were displayed in colorful heaps.
The crowds were dense. Slight men in embroidered caps walked shoulder to shoulder with wild-haired country folk and noble-faced old men in elaborate turbans. Donkeys, horses, and camels passed by, loaded with riders or goods. A few women passed, some holding brightly colored shawls over their faces, some in chaderis, all following a few paces behind their men. Two tall men in dark blue strode past, the skins of snow leopards thrown over their shoulders.
For all Mariana's annoyance, it was fortunate that Nur Rahman had agreed to come with her. Without him, she would have needed Theseus's ball of string to find her way about this labyrinthine city.
After passing through the wood market with its sounds of rhythmic chopping, they turned into a long, straight bazaar full of armorers, saddlers, and bookbinders, and a shop selling tiny bottles of heavily scented oil. There they stopped. At Nur Rahman's direction, Mariana bought the most expensive one. A trace of it perfumed the back of her hand, where the shopkeeper had put a single drop. Its complicated sweetness made her think of Hassan.
They turned a sharp corner, passed through a medieval-looking doorway with great metal studs, and entered a lane so constricted that the sunlight did not reach the dusty cobblestones, although it was only eleven in the morning. If she reached out, Mariana could have touched the walls on both sides of the alley. She held her skirts aside from a burbling waste gutter that ran at the alley's edge.
“We are in the mohalla of Bagh Ali Mardan Khan.” Nur Rahman's voice lifted with happiness. “This is where I used to live. Haji Khan's house is close by here.”
Mariana peered right and left through her peephole. The buildings were made of unbaked mud bricks between tall wooden uprights. Many had elegant balconies, held up by wooden posts, and elaborately carved doors. All had latticework window shutters that moved up and down. The upper windows stood open in the heat. A shadowy figure appeared in a doorway, then drew back inside. A battered-looking, long-haired cat slunk along one wall. Mariana smelled sewage, charcoal smoke, and burning fat.
A moment later, Nur Rahman stopped short. “This is the house.” He pointed to a high wooden door with a heavy lintel.
He hammered on it, balancing his twigs with one hand.
For a time, no one came. Fearing someone would appear asking questions, Mariana glanced behind her. “Perhaps we should have—”
Nur Rahman's only response was to hammer more energetically.
The door swung inward. An old man wearing broken shoes looked them up and down. “Peace,” he offered, a hand over his heart.
“Peace,” Mariana replied, craning to see inside. The man stepped back and let them into a small, cobbled courtyard. A cow stood tethered to a tree in one corner. A nightingale in a wicker birdcage swung from a branch above its head. It was not a rich man's courtyard, but it offered peace, along with the smell of cow dung.
To her left, under a vine-covered portico, a door stood open. Beside it, a pile of discarded shoes indicated the presence of a number of men. A few long-barreled jezails with curved, decorated wooden stocks leaned against a corner. Two or three fierce-looking knives lay on the portico floor.
A rasping voice came from within. “What you have not understood, Hashmat Jan,” the voice decreed in Persian, “is that Paradise is for the soul, not the body.”
“True.” A different, warmer voice intoned a few verses of rhythmic Arabic, then shifted to Persian. “In Sura Ha Mim, it is written:
“Therein shall ye have
All that your souls
Shall desire; therein
Shall ye have all
That ye ask for!”
“I already know what I desire,” put in a third, young-sounding voice. “I have been promised virgins and wine—”
“Virgins! Wine! You, Hashmat, are a fool,” rasped the first voice.
“Haji Khan,�
�� the doorkeeper announced, “guests have come!”
“Oh, you who stand outside,” said the voice, “enter.”
Mariana put down her twigs and pulled off her riding boots. She had intended to tell Nur Rahman to wait outside while she met privately with Haji Khan, but such a meeting was clearly impossible. Judging from all those shoes and weapons, the room was full to bursting with Afghan men.
She would never be able to ask her question now.
She stepped over the threshold on stocking feet, and found herself in a windowless chamber, whose only illumination came from the open doorway behind her, and from a small, filigreed copper lamp at the back of the room.
The lamp shone weakly onto the faces of a dozen turbaned men who sat shoulder to shoulder upon a floor covered with layers of tribal rugs. Some of the men looked like the fierce, ragged men she had seen walking on the road. Others, who wore clean, starched clothing, looked like Afghan versions of Hassan's family members. One or two of the group seemed to carry a special authority. Perhaps they, too, were Followers of the Path.
She hesitated in the doorway. The gatekeeper had failed to say she was a woman. Was she really welcome among all these men?
Certain she was not, she glanced quickly about her, taking in as much as she could before she was asked to leave.
Embroidered hangings of every conceivable hue, some new, some rotting with age, covered the walls of the room. One or two of them were decorated with great wheel-like patterns. Others were thickly covered in triangles of bright silk stitching. Still others had been sewn with small, irregularly shaped mirrors that gleamed in the lamplight.
A heavy, sweet scent, akin to the one she had bought in the market, hung in the air, eclipsing the smell of the courtyard.
At the back of the room, a sparsely bearded man sat cross-legged upon a string bed. His face was soft-featured, not sharply boned like those of the men who crowded around him. A smoking chillum stood beside him on the floor.
Where his pupils should have been, his eyes were white.
He beckoned to her. “Come closer,” he ordered.
