by Thalassa Ali
The men moved aside without speaking to let her pass. The blind man pointed to a straw stool beside him.
The room was very hot. Not knowing what to do with her tiny gift, she laid it hesitantly on a square of cloth beside him. She groped for her handkerchief and mopped her face under her veil.
“May peace be upon you, Haji Khan.” Nur Rahman's pleading voice came from the doorway. “May I pay my respects?”
“Pay them from where you are standing. You have no need of me. But you, Khanum,” the blind man turned to Mariana, “you have something to ask me.”
For all the harsh sound of his voice, the man wore a benign expression. He tilted his head, as if he could imagine her face by listening to her breathe. Behind her the Afghans shifted and murmured. The pipe beside her gave off a bitter smoke.
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Confusion, not embarrassment, stopped her from asking, in that male and public company, whether Hassan still loved her, and if he did not, whether she should marry Fitzgerald. Those questions, so urgent when she had embarked on this adventure, now shrivelled to nothing before the sightless Bengali in his odd, perfumed chamber.
Prompted by Haji Khan and his surroundings, another more pressing question arose in their place. Powerful and inarticulate, it tugged at her, begging to be asked.
She had no idea what it was.
Haji Khan closed his eyes. “You are not yet ready, Khanum,” he said, moving his head to and fro, “to know the answer to your question. But do not worry. It will come to you of its own accord, at the proper time.”
Your question. Which one? She opened her mouth to ask, and saw that he had turned away from her.
Behind him on the wall hung an open cupboard, divided into small compartments, each one containing many small rolls of paper. He felt among them, his fingers fluttering, then pulled out a paper and laid it next to Mariana's little bottle of perfume.
“Read this eleven times every morning, and every evening,” he said as he drew back his hand. “Your answer will come in due course.”
But which answer was that? “Haji Sahib,” she asked quickly, “please tell me—”
“You may visit me again,” he added, as if she had not spoken.
Had she been dismissed? Mariana took the little paper and glanced behind her. Nur Rahman beckoned urgently from the doorway.
But they had only just arrived
She stood and made her disappointed way to the door.
“And now, Hashmat,” she heard him say as she pulled on her boots, “you must stop this nonsense of yours. Whatever you may believe about killing those who are not Muslims, there is no quick route to the Garden, especially not through murder of innocent people, who may very well believe in Allah, although not in the same way as you. Victory is not a camel to be bought with a single transaction. It comes only after a long struggle against our own vain desires.
“If you want to go to Paradise,” he added firmly, “then offer your prayers and give charity to those in need.”
“What did Haji Khan mean by saying I have no need of him?” Nur Rahman blurted out after the outer door of the house had closed heavily behind them. He hunched his shoulders inside his chaderi. “I am as good as anyone else.”
“He probably meant that you already have Munshi Sahib.”
“But you have him, too.”
“Not in the same way.” Now that she could not see his face, Mariana felt herself warming toward the boy. “He is my language teacher, but you serve him day and night. As you care for his comfort, perhaps he will care for your soul.”
“Do you think so?” Nur Rahman's voice brightened. “More than anything,” he went on confidentially, “I want to go to Paradise after I die. I have heard that it is easy, that all I have to do is kill an Englishman, but now Haji Khan has said that is not true.”
“Kill an Englishman?” Mariana stared at him from beneath her twigs.
“I myself would not do it. I would not even kill one of your Hindu servants, because you have offered me panah, and I have eaten your salt. But others will, because the English are all infidels, like the Hindus.”
They had turned from Haji Khan's narrow lane into a wider street lined with shops and lean-tos selling fruit and vegetables. “Come,” he added over his shoulder. “I will show you the bazaar. It is very beautiful.”
“Wait, Nur Rahman!” She hurried after him, her riding boots thudding on the packed earth. “ Who has been saying that we are infidels, that men will go to Paradise for killing us?”
“The chiefs who have allied themselves with Wazir Akbar Khan, the son of our Amir. Everyone knows that Abdullah Khan is one, and Aminullah Khan is another.”
She frowned. “How do you know this?”
“Afghan people come and go from the cantonment every day. I have heard these things from traders, from Hazard labourers, from everyone.
“The British,” Nur Rahman added, “have replaced our Amir Dost Mohammad with Shah Shuja, whom no one respects. He plunders the great chiefs of their lands and their money, and the British uphold his rule with a huge army that buys up all our food, so our own people go hungry. And they have no shame. They have—”
“Be careful!” Mariana caught the boy's arm and pushed him against a wall as a group of boisterous men rounded a corner ahead of them in the narrow street. Muskets resting carelessly on their shoulders, they strode past Mariana and Nur Rahman, talking loudly among themselves, their arms swinging.
There was something actively dangerous about them. “Who were they?” she whispered when they had gone.
“They are relatives of Shah Shuja. These people are full of themselves now. See that man over there?” he added, gesturing toward a dignified-looking gentleman who had pressed himself into a nearby doorway. “He was protecting himself just now.”
He pointed ahead of them. “Look,” he added, changing the subject. “That is the Char Chatta Bazaar.”
In front of Mariana, the street opened out into a teeming marketplace. A little way past baskets of ripe, fly-covered grapes and heaps of pale melons, a heavy stone archway led into a vast covered arcade. This must be the central market of Kabul.
Mariana and Nur Rahman dodged donkey carts and more fruit, then passed under the archway and into the great, echoing bazaar, whose broad, cobbled floor was lined with small shops. Birds swooped under the high vaulted ceiling. The inner walls of the market held glittering traces of mirrored plasterwork. Far ahead of them, a sunlit area opened up. Mariana saw trees, followed by a second heavy archway, as if the market's architecture had been interrupted to let in light and air.
The shops stood side by side on either side of the passageway; each one raised several steps above the cobblestones. Crowds of men from all parts of Asia surged past, while cooks fried tidbits of spiced meat in great iron pans, and merchants hawked goods directly from the backs of donkeys. Mariana could not take her eyes from the wares on display: gold and silver, turban silks and weaponry, brass samovars and Chinese porcelains. Next to a jeweler's shop, a knife-seller's wares had been spread out, temptingly, on a cloth.
The jeweler's wooden cases held crude carved silver and lapis necklaces and cufflike bracelets. As she reached out, steadying herself to step up into the tiny shop, a smooth voice spoke into her ear. “What a lovely, white hand,” it said.
Nur Rahman stiffened beside her.
Startled, Mariana jerked her hand back and hid it beneath her chaderi.
The man had spoken in accented Persian. His tone had been suggestive. Mariana turned and found herself face-to-face with a rotund, smiling, clean-shaven man in a bulky muslin turban and the long, loose clothing of a Pashtun. A showily carved dagger handle protruded from the striped silk sash around his waist. He smiled, his brown eyes dancing with anticipation.
It was Sir Alexander Burnes, the British Resident.
Behind him, also in Afghan dress, his lanky friend Captain Johnson leaned casually against a stone pillar. He, too, offered M
ariana an encouraging smile.
“A hand as graceful and white as yours,” Burnes continued, bending confidentially toward her, peering past the latticework in front of her eyes, “is not often seen in Kabul. I am sure that if you will show me your face, I will find it every bit as lovely.”
The beauties of the countryside, Johnson had said, are nothing compared to the pleasures of the city.
“My house is not far off. I can arrange for you to be taken there with utmost discretion,” Burnes added, his voice becoming oilier by the second.
Fury overtook Mariana's surprise. “Do not,” she said tightly, “come near me.”
Burnes's eyes widened. He stepped backward, smiling uncertainly, his hands raised before him. “I beg forgiveness, Khanum,” he said. “Perhaps I have made a mistake.”
The passing throng had noticed their exchange. Men glanced at her, derisive smiles on their faces.
If she accused Burnes publicly, he might be killed in front of her. “Have you no shame?” she whispered in furious Farsi. “Have you no decency?”
“Forgive me,” the Englishman repeated, his hands still raised. Behind him, Johnson melted into the crowd.
“I,” she said distinctly, “have never been so insulted in all my life.”
Astonishment dawned on Burnes's face then, for she had spoken that last sentence in English.
NUR RAHMAN leaned toward the English lady as they hurried from one crooked lane to another on their return journey. “I could not speak openly to you of such things, Khanum,” he offered confidentially, “but this is what the British officers have been doing.
“Shah Shuja gives them whatever they want,” he went on. “He is their slave. Only a month ago, he had a man hanged for killing his wife. She, a woman of high family, had committed gunah with one of your Englishmen. It is these things that cause the greatest hatred.”
Seeing her twitch, the boy shrugged. “People have been bringing these stories to the cantonment for months.”
Many women of noble family, it was whispered, had succumbed to the Englishmen. No one knew why. Several had been killed for betraying their families, but others had managed to evade being caught. Nur Rahman sighed aloud, unable to help admiring those who had taken such a deadly risk. Surely, for a brave man or woman, nothing could match the exhilaration of chancing one's life. Even he, in his flimsy disguise, was doing so.
The English lady must have been in a great hurry to leave the city, for heavy black clothes, chaderi and all, she now strode beside him as rapidly as any Afghan.
Perhaps she had heard what the narrow-faced Pashtun had said in the market.
“Now that the men of Kabul are prevented from defending their honor,” the man had observed, “we are seeing how their women behave themselves.”
Nur Rahman felt sorry for the lady. By the time he had run to her for asylum, time had already been growing short for her people. It grew even shorter now.
The price of flour was now so high that the people of the city were going hungry in their own houses. It would not be long before those who suffered, and those who could be persuaded to join them, would take their revenge. Soon, the braggarts who roamed the streets of Kabul with such confidence would pay for their pride.
That was the cycle of life—one was victim, then avenger, then victim.
What would happen then to the woman who had spared his life?
They were curious people, these foreigners. The men dressed in dusty black wool clothing, even in the heat of summer. They wore their stiff hats outdoors, but took them off when they went inside. What an odd thing to do—with bared heads, how could they show one another respect? Their women's dress was even stranger—all of them, even the old ladies, revealed their shapes embarrassingly with their tight, uncomfortable-looking garments. This one, too, wrapped her slim figure with heavy, close-fitting things, even when she rode toward the mountains each day, sitting sideways on her mare.
As she walked beside him, Nur Rahman could see a black hem trailing below the loose folds of her chaderi. He turned his head and glanced behind him through his peephole. People were looking at her. They had seen how oddly she was dressed, but luckily, no Englishwoman had ever been seen in the city, so they were unlikely to guess what she was. And among this polyglot population, nothing seemed strange.
He sighed, picturing the foreign ladies in their evening clothes. Those indecently cut gowns were the best of all. Each day after sunset he made a point of waiting at a corner of the English lady's bungalow, in case the family had been invited out to dinner. It would never do to miss a lamplit glimpse of bare chests and shoulders as she and her aunt passed out through the front door.
He had also observed how the old woman and her husband spoke to their servants, and what food they offered them. Although the husband said little, maintaining a quiet, worried air, the fat woman spoke stiffly, through pursed lips, to their collection of serving-men and under-serving-men, palanquin bearers, sweepers, gardeners, and water-carriers. She even did the same when she addressed the tall, dignified groom. She barely spoke at all to the albino with his blistered skin and pink eyes.
Nur Rahman had also been shocked to discover that while he, his wonderful old man, and all the household servants ate cooked lentils and vegetables, rice and bread, the English people ate meat, prepared for them daily by a peculiar-looking cook in a loincloth.
Such behavior was unfathomable to Nur Rahman. How could those English have kept the meat only for themselves? Was this an Indian custom? How could they have failed to offer all their food to their servants, especially to Nur Rahman's dear Shafi Khan, for whom he would readily give his life?
Even Painda Gul, may he roast for eternity in the fires of Hell, had shared his meals, morsel for morsel, with Nur Rahman.
Nur Rahman had not mentioned his distress to the old man. Instead, a few months ago, he had simply waited for his opportunity, and stolen four small mutton chops from a butcher in the bazaar. He had cooked his ill-gotten treasure with a few cloves and black peppercorns and a stick of cinnamon bark slipped from the Englishman's kitchen. When they were done, he had offered them triumphantly to the old man.
Munshi Sahib had looked, unsmiling, at the plate, then at Nur Rahman's flushed face. “My dear child,” he had said, “you have not gained this food with your right hand.”
The smell of the meat had filled Nur Rahman's senses and brought water to his mouth, but the old man's words had cut him to the heart. He should have known that the great Shafi Khan would never put stolen meat into his mouth.
“We must not let any food go to waste,” the old man had said. “Take it outside and feed it to the poor. They are innocent. Eating it will do them no harm.”
Nur Rahman had wept as he held out his fragrant offering to a ragged child. Penniless, he could find no remedy for the niggardliness of the English people, no delicacy to be cooked for his beloved benefactor, who had counseled the Englishwoman to save his life, who now allowed Nur Rahman to sleep outside his door, and to prepare his morning tea.
Later, the old man had chided him gently, saying that food for the body was no more than that, and that the best food of all was food for the soul.
Food for the soul. Nur Rahman stole a glance at the Englishwoman. What, he wondered, was written on the small roll of paper that lay hidden in her clothes? Did it contain the secrets of Paradise? He would give anything to know what he must do to gain the Garden, where all sins were forgiven.
As much as he loved his gentle old man, he could not help wishing that the famous Haji Khan had given him a little roll of paper.
September 24, 1841
The reason you cannot understand these verses, Bibi,” Mariana's munshi explained the following day, “is that they are written in Arabic.”
“And I must recite them in Arabic?”
He shook his head. “Only the prayers must be recited in the original Arabic. These lines may be read in your own language, although of course Arabic is better.”
>
When he first entered the dining room for her lesson, she had hesitated to tell her teacher of her secret visit to Haji Khan, fearing what he would say. In the end she had realized that it would be wiser to tell the truth.
When she had, he had offered her no reproach, only a silent, appraising look.
She stared at the little page, now unrolled on the dining table, its corners weighed down by her inkstand and a candlestick from the sideboard, its surface covered with unintelligible handwriting. What did it say, this talisman from Haji Khan's trove of papers?
Line by line, her teacher translated Haji Khan's paper into English. Line by line, she copied out his dictated words, growing more and more disappointed as she worked.
Shower thy blessings upon our leader and master Muhammad:
Thy worshiper, thine apostle, thy Messenger, the Unlettered
Prophet,
His spiritual descendants, his consorts, his progeny, all:
In number as many as the numerous things created,
As deep as the fulfillment of the soul's longing,
As brilliant as the embellishment of the high heavens,
As powerful as the Affirmation of Faith.
Haji Khan's verses did not describe the durability of love in the face of obstacles, or explain the necessity of abandoning a lost cause. They did not hint at the urgent, veiled question that had pestered her as she sat beside him in his dark, perfumed room.
Baffled, she pointed to the paper. “What does this mean, Munshi Sahib?”
“It is a durood, Bibi, an invocation of Allah's blessings upon the Prophet Muhammad. In offering a durood, the reciter brings Allah's blessings upon himself. Some duroods also protect the reciter from the promptings of evil, or from those who might do him harm.”
“That is interesting, Munshi Sahib, but why has Haji Khan given it to me?”
“I cannot say.” He frowned. “Did he give you any instructions?”
“He told me to recite what is written on this paper eleven times, morning and evening.”
“Then I suggest you do it.”
