Companions of Paradise

by Thalassa Ali

  Best of all, in her talkative, hunched-over servant, Dittoo, Ghulam Ali had found a man he could trust. Later, he had added Yar Mohammad to that short list.

  Ahead of him a concentrated haze stood in the distant sky. They were nearing the Gateway to India, the old high-walled city of Peshawar.

  An hour later, the Hindu traders led their animals through the shouting congestion at the city's Kabul Gate, whose name needed no explanation. To their left, in the street of goldsmiths, stood Mahabat Khan's grand mosque, from whose topless minarets the Maharajah's enemies were thrown daily to their deaths. Before them ran the broad Qissa Khwani, the Street of Storytellers, home of Peshawar's tea shops and caravanserais, where all the news of the world was told.

  Like all caravanserais, the one they stopped at was no more than a great open square, its perimeter lined with gaping, three-sided sheds with bare rooms above, where a traveler might find shelter. Its huge courtyard was already filled with shouting men, grunting animals, and great heaps of bales and bundles. Ghulam Ali yawned. With luck he would find an empty corner in an upstairs room. With no luck he would sleep with the donkeys.

  Abandoning his merchants and their charges, he set off to drink at the courtyard well. After that he would buy something to eat and a moment to himself to consider his situation.

  The Englishwoman's letter must be important, for she had sent it all the way from Kabul. But whatever news that letter contained, it was nothing compared to the critical information that he, Ghulam Ali, must now deliver. As soon as he had filled his stomach he would hurry to the market, find a scribe, and dictate his own letter, telling Hassan of the dangers threatening his wife and her family.

  He would then hurry to the hilltop citadel of Ghor Khatri at the center of the city, where the Maharajah's appointed governor had built his palace, and find an official relay runner going to Lahore. He would then bribe the man to put the lady's letter and his own into the pouch, for delivery to Hassan.

  A good qasid could get it to Lahore in three days.

  Then, without stopping to enjoy the city's fruits or its chappli ka-babs of ground mutton cooked in its own fat, he would find a way to return to Kabul, where he would offer what aid he could to the lady and her family.

  Since the British army had already fought with the Ghilzais in the passes near Kabul, she must know of the coming rebellion. He hoped she was not too frightened.

  If Allah willed, Hassan Ali Khan would arrive to rescue them before it was too late….

  As he drank from the dipper at the well, Ghulam Ali sensed eyes upon him. Three tattered-looking men watched him from a makeshift tea shop. Knife handles protruded from the coarse sashes wound around their waists. Jezails leaned against the wall behind them. They spoke together, then glanced at him again.

  They were dressed like the Ghilzais he had left behind on the Jalalabad plain. From the way they looked at him, they knew who he was. Cursing his white skin and yellow beard, he returned the dipper to its place and left the well, forcing himself not to hurry.

  I would have killed you after you left us. He had been a fool to leave the Ghilzais, but if he had stayed, he would never have succeeded in keeping up his lie, for they had watched his every move, had seen him sweat at each of their questions, each of their glances.

  In the end it had made no difference. Leaving them so abruptly and without good-byes, he had given himself away.

  Desperate to escape, he hurried between piles of baggage, herds of goats, and dozens of kneeling camels. All that mattered now was that he preserve his life long enough to help the English lady.

  At the entrance to the caravanserai, he pushed through the crowded gateway and onto the main street.

  He stepped onto the road and turned toward the street of goldsmiths. Surely he would find a scribe near the mosque. There was danger in each hurried step he took, but he had no choice. Surely, the Ghilzais would not bother to follow him into a place of prayer….

  After spending an hour in the mosque, dictating his letter to an eager young scribe, Ghulam Ali hurried up a dusty hill, toward the massive gate of the Ghor Khatri, the great walled caravanserai that was now the residence of the governor.

  “I have business inside,” he barked impatiently to the uniformed guards at the gate. “I am a courier for the Assistant Foreign Minister.”

  A Sikh infantry officer in a steel helmet and chain mail vest looked him unhurriedly up and down. “You say you are Hassan Ali Khan Sahib's courier?”

  “I am.” Ghulam Ali hunched his shoulders against the man's inspection.

  “He's gone out.”

  “Gone out? Is he here in Peshawar?”

  The officer snorted. “How are you his courier, if you do not know where he is?”

  “Where has he gone?” Ghulam Ali demanded. “When is he coming back?”

  The officer waved an uninterested hand. “How should I know? They go to the chaikhanas and the Englishman's house. Hassan Ali Khan has his own—”

  He stopped speaking, for Ghulam Ali had already turned on his heel and started down the hill, toward the crowded warren of alleys below the Ghor Khatri.

  His throat was dry with fear, but he did not stop at the ancient Shabaz Well whose waters were icy cold, even in summer. Instead, he hurried through colorful bazaars and cobbled lanes, past mean little doorways and great houses with lovely carved balconies, past merchants and rich men, beggars and thieves, gamblers, cutthroats and starving dogs, until he arrived once again in the Street of Storytellers.

  There, he stopped short.

  The Qissa Khwani was broad enough to accommodate five passing kafilas at once. Lines of pack animals carrying bales of goods took up its dusty width, all accompanied by hordes of armed men. Up and down the street, a hundred tea shops beckoned, their canvas awnings sheltering travelers from the sun, each customer with a pot of tea before him. Ghulam Ali took in the smells of animals and cooking meat, of burning incense and sewage.

  He had no idea where to find Hassan in this busy thoroughfare.

  Certain he would know where to look, he had allowed instinct to drive him this far. Now, confused by the crowd, he stood at the side of the road, uncertain, hungry, and afraid for his life.

  Why should Hassan have come here after he left the Citadel? Why should a man of his station spend his time in this busy, dirty street, when he could be visiting some dignitary in his house, leaning on silk cushions, eating white grapes, and drinking water perfumed with roses?

  Ghulam Ali frowned. Had the officer on guard started to say that Hassan had his own accommodation in the city?

  He looked about him nervously. Fearing to stand out in the open, he climbed two stone steps into a small, crudely built tea shop, and looked for a place to sit. He had enough money left to sit on a chaikhana's small, carpeted platform and drink a pot of sweet tea while he made up his mind what to do. Later, he would satisfy his hunger with a princely meal of bread and kababs bought from a street vendor.

  He settled himself near the tea shop's great, hissing samovar, signaled to a small boy for his tea, and recognized a horseman's familiar back, passing on the street outside.

  There was no mistaking Hassan Ali Khan as he rode past the shop accompanied by half a dozen servants on foot. Who else sat with such grace, or wore such clothes—a yellow durahi turban, a striped sash about his waist, and elegantly embroidered slippers? It was only his horse that Ghulam Ali did not recognize, a startlingly beautiful gray Turkmen mare.

  Before Ghulam Ali had time to rise from the tea shop carpet, Hassan reined in his mare, dismounted, and signaled to one of his servants to look after her. A moment later, his back still to Ghulam Ali, he opened his arms to greet someone.

  It was the tall, pale-eyed Afghan trader who had rescued him from the Hazuri Bagh, then carried him to the house near the Delhi Gate where Ghulam Ali and the English lady had found him in the middle of the night, bloody and ill.

  The two men embraced three times, chest to chest and bearded cheek
to cheek, first on one side, then the other, then back again, in the manner of men whose hearts can never be separated.

  Giddy with relief, forgetting his fear, Ghulam Ali lurched to his tired feet and stumbled down the tea shop steps.

  “Her name is Ghyr Khush,” Hassan was saying as Ghulam Ali approached. “It means ‘gray bird’ in Turki. Yusuf bought her a few days before he died.”

  Seeing the deep grief on his face, Ghulam Ali lowered his eyes. “As-salaam-o-alaikum, peace be upon you,” he offered to each man in turn.

  The Afghan responded somberly, but Hassan's face brightened. “And peace upon you, Ghulam Ali,” he returned, smiling. “It is good to see someone from home. You have been traveling hard, I see.”

  Ghulam Ali nodded, aware of his dusty beard and filthy, unwashed clothes. “I have brought a letter to you from Kabul. But there is other news. I must—”

  “Give me the letter.” Hassan held out his hand.

  The Afghan hitched his two long-barreled jezails higher on his shoulder. Hassan hesitated for an instant, then without even glancing at it, pushed the paper into one of his pockets. As he did so, Ghulam Ali heard a faint crackling, as if another letter already occupied the same place.

  “You need food.” Hassan took a silver coin from his purse. “Eat, keep whatever is left.” He pointed an upturned hand toward a nearby tea shop. “When you are finished, come to that chaikhana and tell me your news.”

  “Yusuf's father insisted I take the mare,” he said with a sigh as Ghulam Ali left them. “Ah, Zulmai, how I miss him!”

  A kababchi sat outdoors, frying his wares in a great iron pan. As Ghulam Ali started toward the fragrant promise of food, he remembered to be afraid, then changed his mind, straightened his shoulders and lengthened his stride. For the first time since he left the caravanserai, he did not bother to look behind him for pursuing Ghilzais.

  As he sat on an upturned stone, wolfing down a thick oblong nan and several chappli kababs, he studied Hassan's mare, and thought of his friend Yar Mohammad.

  The groom, a true lover of horses, should have been here to see Ghyr Khush, as she stood quietly, surrounded by Hassan's protecting servants. Long and slim of line, with a high-set, nearly vertical neck, a narrow breast, and clean, slender legs, she attracted appreciative glances from every man who passed by, and rightly so, for she was an Akhal Tekke: a breed that had been favored by kings for as long as anyone remembered.

  Yar Mohammad, who had dreamed all his life of caring for an Akhal Tekke, had described the horses to Ghulam Ali, his hands moving in arcs and arabesques as he spoke. They were beautiful to look at, but their proud elegance was only one of their features. Bred for the desert, Akhal Tekkes could withstand extremes of heat and cold, and were capable of going without water and with very little food for as long as four days at a stretch. To carry three men to safety across shifting sands after sustaining a battle wound was nothing to an Akhal Tekke, for their stamina was unsurpassed by any other breed of horse. They jumped like cats, and their speed had been likened to that of a falcon on the wing.

  Ghulam Ali smiled, picturing his friend's face when he saw the mare for the first time, and realized that this perfect silver-gray animal belonged to the very family he served.

  When he had eaten, Ghulam Ali crossed the road, dodging men and animals, entered the chaikhana, and squatted down a respectful distance from Hassan and Zulmai, who were deep in conversation on a carpeted platform, gesturing over pots of tea. A smoking chillum stood between them.

  Only his left hand, with its missing finger, indicated that Hassan had suffered harm in the Hazuri Bagh. He appeared as calm and elegant as always, his broken nose prominent in his open, fair-skinned face, but Ghulam Ali, a perceptive interpreter of the moods of others, thought otherwise.

  Something in Hassan's posture revealed that he was angry.

  He frowned at Ghulam Ali. “When you were in Kabul,” he asked, “did you hear that the British were cutting their payment to the Eastern Ghilzais?”

  “Yes, Sahib.” Ghulam Ali nodded eagerly. “That is what I have come to tell you. The British have cheated them, and they are very angry. They have begun stopping caravans in the passes near Kabul. They are saying that a ‘night of long knives’ is to begin soon.”

  Zulmai nodded. “So it is true.”

  Hassan leaned forward. “Were you in danger on the road?”

  A silver taweez, a powerful talisman, doubtless the work of Safiya Sultana, swung from his neck on a thick black thread. He would soon need all its power of protection, thought Ghulam Ali.

  “I was in danger.” Ghulam Ali nodded. “By Allah's grace I reached Jalalabad before the passes were closed, but some Ghilzais here know I am a servant of British people. I fear they will—”

  Zulmai waved a careless hand. “You have nothing to fear now. They will also block the road south between Kabul and Kandahar,” he added, turning to Hassan.

  “So,” Hassan said grimly, “with the roads to India cut, the British are trapped in Kabul.”

  British. Hassan's shoulders seemed to tense when he spoke the word. That was it, Ghulam Ali thought. Hassan was angry with the British. Of course he was. The British were fools.

  Ghulam Ali dropped his eyes, remembering the English lady's joy when he gave her the little packet he had carried from Lahore and given to her on the road to Kabul. He thought of her blushes when she handed him the letter that now lay in Hassan's pocket.

  Surely Hassan was not angry with her….

  It was difficult to tell. He scowled silently into the street, his elbows resting on his knees.

  “If the shorter route between Jalalabad and Kabul is closed,” he asked at last, “then what of the other routes? What of the Lataband Pass?”

  Zulmai stirred his tea thoughtfully. “The Lataband will not be safe. It will be full of Ghilzai kafilas with women and children on their way to India. For all that they will be avoiding the fighting, their men will be happy to take whatever you have. That is their way. If I were going to Kabul, I would take the route from Thal through the Kurram valley and the Paiwar and Shuturgarden passes, and I would bring an armed guard.”

  “And what is that road like?”

  Zulmai opened his hands. “It is like all roads: good in dry weather, and difficult when it rains. It is steeper than the one you would have taken through Jalalabad, and of course to get to it, you must first travel south to Kohat.”

  Ghulam Ali scratched his head beneath his turban. What a harsh country this was!

  As if he had read the courier's thoughts, Zulmai the Afghan put back his head and smiled, showing white teeth. “Hafiz would remind us,” he said, “not to grieve, for even if the road of life is rough, and the end of it cannot be seen, there is no road that does not lead to the Goal.”

  Hassan's face warmed. “You and your poets,” he said.

  “And you and yours.”

  Zulmai lost his smile. “So you are traveling to Kabul?”

  Hassan spread his hands. “Now that Ghulam Ali has confirmed our fears, I must see to the safety of my uncle-in-law and other family members.”

  Other family members. That, Ghulam Ali knew, was the closest Hassan would come to mentioning the English lady.

  Hassan showed no feeling when he spoke.

  “And you will go by the Kurram River valley?” Zulmai persisted.

  “Since you suggest it.” Hassan's face became still, as if, in his imagination, he was already traveling.

  “You are not going without me.”

  Hassan stared at the Afghan. “But you cannot possibly go back to Kabul at this time of year. What of your kafila? What of your trade goods, your horses, your rubies and saffron?”

  “Habibullah is here. He can do the necessary while I am gone. He knows what will happen to him if he steals from me. And that reminds me.” Zulmai took a leather pouch from among his clothes. “I have brought you something.” Without waiting for a reply, he withdrew a small glass vial from the pouch. “
Musk,” he said as he handed it to Hassan.

  “We must find a large kafila to join,” he added, as Hassan removed the vial's stopper causing the air around them to fill with dark sweetness.

  “But that will take too long,” Hassan objected sharply. “There is no time to waste.”

  “To travel any other way would be madness.” Zulmai jerked his chin toward Hassan's Turkmen mare. “Think of your Gray Bird. Think of what your friend Yusuf would tell you. ‘Yar,’ he would say to you, ‘if you try to take her north without a strong guard, you will be dead within a day.’ ”

  Hassan replaced the stopper on the vial, and laid a hand over his heart. “My friend,” he said soberly, “if you choose to come with me, I will be most grateful.” Then he turned his head and glanced at the street, his expression bleak and worried.

  Ghulam Ali sighed as he watched Hassan embrace Zulmai for the second time. As difficult as the return journey to Kabul would be for all of them, he, at least, would not be alone.

  THAT SAME morning, as Safiya Sultana wheezed her way up the kitchen stairs, a thought struck her.

  How could she have forgotten that when she was the same age as Saboor, she, too, had lost her appetite?

  Over the past week, the child's usual enthusiasm for eating had waned. He had chewed and swallowed his favorite foods dutifully, but without seeming to taste them, his eyes half closed, as if he were looking at something he did not want to see.

  Some persistent worry had clearly robbed him of his appetite, she decided, as she sat waiting for the afternoon meal. Whatever it was, it had also caused the thin cough that did not leave him, even now, as he leaned against her, staring into space.

  “Are you missing your An-nah?” she asked, surveying his broad, worried face.

  He nodded. “I always think of Kabul, where she is.”

  “And what do you know of that place?” Taken by surprise, Safiya looked closely at him. “Who has told you stories of Afghanistan?”