Companions of Paradise

by Thalassa Ali

  “I am sorry,” was all she could manage.

  Afraid to lose Nur Rahman in the darkness, she clutched a handful of his chaderi.

  “I think we have found the rear of the column,” he whispered. “It is too late to make our way to the front.”

  “What should we do now?” Despairing, she looked about her. “There is snow everywhere. We cannot stand up all night.”

  “There is only one thing to do.”

  His chaderi rustled as he pulled it off his shoulders. “We must take off our poshteens and spread one of them on the snow. Then we must lie down on it, and put the other one over us. That is how we will survive until the morning.”

  An hour later, shivering against the snoring Nur Rahman, she listened to the screams of the wounded and the groans of the freezing, until her eyes closed.

  AT THE front of the column, an exhausted-looking captain put his head around the door flap of the only standing tent. “Is there room for anyone else?” he inquired politely.

  “No.” Lady Sale pointed to the bodies cramming the floor around her upright chair. “You can see for yourself that there is not a square inch remaining. Is it really true,” she added, turning to her son-in-law, “that only this tent has survived the march, of all the ones we brought from the cantonment?”

  “I would not be surprised,” Captain Sturt replied painfully. “The insurgents fell on our pack animals the moment they left the gate.”

  “We need only to manage for six more days,” Lady Macnaghten offered from her place between Sturt's wife and Charles Mott.

  “If your raisins have not been stolen,” Mott suggested, “we might have them now.”

  “You will find them in a leather bag inside the door,” she replied, “but do not give me any. I have no appetite at all.”

  Outside the tent, soldiers lay in heaps, trying to keep warm. Officers called out, trying to find their regiments in the darkness.

  “I doubt,” groaned someone from a corner of the tent, “that many of us will reach Jalalabad alive.”

  “Croaker!” retorted Lady Sale.

  MARIANA STIRRED, as light penetrated her eyelids. Why was her room so cold? Why was her head covered in cloth? What was that sound that vibrated all around her?

  With a sharp intake of breath, she realized where she was. The sound she heard was an army on the march.

  She shook Nur Rahman. “Wake up,” she ordered. “The column is moving.”

  It was barely dawn. Shuddering from the cold, they tied on their sheepskins, pulled their chaderis over them, and took in their surroundings.

  The corpse of the previous night's sepoy lay a dozen yards from where they had slept, its lower extremities as black as charred wood. In the distance, a ragged crowd followed the bloody path of the retreat, past the carcasses of fallen animals, past their own dying, their own dead.

  Mariana shaded her eyes. Far ahead of them in the distance, a concentrated mass of marchers moved over a hill, toward a glorious pink-and-orange sunrise.

  Some of the stragglers around them were native soldiers, their faces contorted from the pain of their wounds. Some were unarmed camp followers staggering on frozen feet. Still others were native women, their eyes dazed, their long hair falling down their backs, many carrying babies and small children, most wearing only flimsy shoes and thin shawls. How any of them still lived, even after one day, was a mystery to Mariana.

  None of them would be able to keep up with the column. All were doomed.

  Not a single British officer was to be seen.

  Twenty yards from Mariana, a team of exhausted-looking bullocks dragged a nine-pound gun up an incline, their hooves slipping, while a dozen native artillerymen struggled to push the gun carriage from behind.

  The bullocks meant that this was not Harry Fitzgerald's horse artillery. But where was the wheeled limber with supplies for the gun? Where were the officers who rode beside their men, barking orders, seeing that everything was done properly?

  Had they run away, and left these poor gunners to their fate?

  Perhaps they had. Nothing, no amount of incompetence or neglect would surprise Mariana now.

  Two loud thuds echoed behind her. One artilleryman, then another, spun about and toppled to the snow.

  The Ghilzais had returned.

  “We must get away,” Nur Rahman cried urgently, tugging at her. “Come quickly! We must hide! The Ghilzai horsemen will be here soon. They will do more than shoot. They—”

  She did not hear a word he said, for swaying with exhaustion on a gaunt horse, Harry Fitzgerald was trotting toward the lumbering gun and its frightened men.

  The bones stood out on his face. His left arm was still strapped to his chest. He drew rein and shouted an order.

  Deaf to Nur Rahman's entreaties, Mariana watched two gunners unhook a spike from the gun carriage, and hammer it into the top of the gun barrel, while the others worked to free the bullocks.

  They were disabling the gun before they left it behind—the last, most painful action an artillery officer could take.

  Without thinking, she threw back her chaderi and ran toward honest, heroic Harry Fitzgerald.

  “No!” Nur Rahman wailed behind her.

  She had not gone twenty feet before more shots came. A third gunner fell, then a fourth. Fitzgerald jerked in his saddle. His free arm flailing, he toppled to the ground.

  He had not seen her.

  Heart pounding, unable to scream, Mariana ran on, until some instinct made her turn and look behind her.

  Nur Rahman had flung off his disguise. Fully revealed as a young man, he danced, grinning desperately, his feet stamping, his arms above his head, his fingers moving in graceful imitation of a dancing girl.

  He did not stop until another shot thudded from behind a pile of rock. Then, in one motion, he dropped to his knees and fell face-forward into the filthy, trampled snow.

  Mariana stopped running. Her mind a paralyzed blank, she looked from boy to man, and back again.

  Two artillerymen bent briefly over the motionless Fitzgerald, then hurried away to continue their work.

  Nur Rahman's arm lifted briefly, then dropped.

  She turned, scrambled back to him, and fell to her knees at his side.

  He had deliberately attracted the musket ball that had dropped him to the ground. She knew he had done it for her.

  She grasped him by his sheepskin cloak and rolled him onto his back.

  There was blood on his shirt where his poshteen had fallen open. He had been shot through the chest.

  He stared, wide-eyed, into her face. “I am cold,” he whispered, fighting to breathe.

  “Why did you dance like that?” she cried as she closed his poshteen over his chest.

  He shook his head, as if she were asking the wrong question. “Pray for me,” he gasped.

  “You did it to protect me, didn't you?” she demanded as she stuffed his discarded chaderi beneath his head.

  “Take it off,” he croaked, plucking at the folds of cloth on her shoulder. “They believe you are a spy, or a dishonored woman retreating with the British army. They will aim at you again, and I will not be here to—”

  He coughed, his face clenched.

  “Please don't die, Nur Rahman,” she begged. “Don't leave me alone here.”

  There was nothing unsavory about him now. He was her lifeline.

  “Pray for me,” he repeated.

  Still kneeling, she steepled her hands together and closed her eyes. “Heavenly Father,” she began, thinking of her childhood, “I pray for the soul of—”

  Fingers clutched at her. “Not foreign prayers,” he gasped. “Pray to Allah.”

  “But I am. I may be a Christian, but—”

  His fringed eyes implored her. She could hear air whistling through the hole in his chest. “You are a good woman, Khanum. The prayer will go from your mouth to Allah's ear. I want—”

  She knew what he wanted. Most of all, he had told her once, I long to
be made pure again, and to see the face of the Beloved.

  “First,” he whispered, “say La illaha illa Allah, Muhammad Rasul Allah— there is no god save God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”

  Have I asked you to recite the Shahada, the attestation of faith? Haji Khan had asked her on the day Burnes was murdered, his voice rising.

  No, she had replied.

  Then I have not asked you to embrace Islam, he had said.

  In Munshi Sahib's story of the king's messenger, wise words had set Muballigh free to return to his homeland. Perhaps these Arabic ones would do the same for Nur Rahman

  She glanced skyward. “Dear Lord,” she whispered, “Haji Khan told me that You and Allah are the same. If You are not, please forgive me.

  “La illaha illa Allah,” she intoned, “Muhammad Rasul Allah.”

  “Now say it twice more,” Nur Rahman croaked. She did as she was asked.

  There, she had done it.

  Imagining the horror on her father's face, she looked down, expecting the boy to smile, but he was already fading.

  She bent over him. “O Allah Most Gracious,” she shouted over his rasping breath, “forgive Thy servant Nur Rahman, and reward him with the sight of Thy face. Give him loving companions of his own age, and let him drink from the fountain of—”

  He stopped breathing.

  “—Salsabil,” she finished, and dropped her face into her ice-cold hands.

  Othou soul,” Safiya Sultana recited, her Qur'an open to the marked page where she had left off the previous day.

  “In complete rest

  And satisfaction!

  Enter thou, then

  Among my devotees!

  Yea, enter thou

  My Heaven!”

  After murmuring the proper blessings, she folded the book into its silk wrappings, and stood up.

  As she lifted it to its accustomed place on a high shelf in her room, a terrified wail came from the end of the corridor, where the children were waiting for their breakfast.

  A moment later, a twelve-year-old girl pushed Safiya's door curtain aside, and carried Saboor into the room.

  His screams were deep and throaty. His face was slick with tears. His eyes were focused inward. Beads of perspiration dotted his hairline.

  He did not seem to notice Safiya bending over him. He stared through her, as if she were not there.

  She made no effort to soothe him. Instead, while his trembling cousin held him, she gripped him by the arm. “Who is it, Saboor?” she demanded, shaking him. “Is it your Abba? Is it Hassan?”

  His mouth stretched wide, he shook his head.

  “Is it your An-nah?” she insisted. “Is it Mariam? Speak, Saboor.”

  He nodded.

  “Put him down, Ayesha,” she ordered.

  When he was on his feet, she took his hand. “Come, child,” she said decisively, “we have work to do.”

  Only then did Saboor stop screaming.

  “Call all the ladies and older girls,” Safiya ordered, as she led him, still gulping, into the sitting room. “I need all of you.”

  The women crowded around her, staring at the child. “Why do you need us, Bhaji?” they asked. “What is wrong with Saboor?”

  Without replying, Safiya took her accustomed place on the floor and drew the child down beside her.

  When the ladies had seated themselves, murmuring with curiosity, she cleared her throat.

  “Today,” she announced, wrapping a stout arm about Saboor's shoulders, “we will perform the Uml of Lost Persons for Saboor's stepmother Mariam.

  “Because Saboor is, by Allah's grace, able to see what we cannot,” she added, “we have come to know she is in danger.”

  The ladies cried out. Safiya gestured for silence.

  “His gift also allows us to act swiftly on her behalf, so we may hope that our help arrives in time.

  “While the preparations are being made,” she went on, “you will all learn a phrase in Sindhi which is part of the uml. It does not matter whether or not we speak the Sindhi language, but we must pronounce the words properly.

  “If we perform the uml correctly, we will, Inshallah, save Mariam from whatever peril she is facing. In any case, we will, in due course, learn the truth of her circumstances.”

  Safiya's gap-toothed sister-in-law spoke for the ladies. “Never before,” she said formally, “have we been asked to participate in an uml. We are proud to do so, and will try our very best.”

  “In the meanwhile,” Safiya announced fiercely, “no matter how curious we may be to know his story, we may not upset Saboor by asking him what he has seen.”

  Two servants were sent to bring a tall spinning wheel from one of the downstairs storerooms. Under Safiya's direction, it was set up in an unused chamber, and prepared with a continuous skein of cotton leading from the big wheel to the small wheel, and back again.

  Other servants found a heavy curtain and hung it in the doorway, to shut the room off from the rest of the ladies’ quarters.

  A straw stool was set in front of the wheel.

  As soon as room and wheel were ready, the ladies began their work.

  One by one, instructed by Safiya Sultana, they drew the curtain aside, slipped into the room, and took their turns at the wheel, whispering the strange message that called the lost person home. One by one, after their long, difficult turns, concentrating on their recitations, never allowing the wheel to stop, they withdrew to lie down until their turn came again.

  “How long will it take?” asked Hassan's gap-toothed aunt, when her turn was finished.

  “I do not know, Rehmana,” replied Safiya, “but I can tell you this. For Mariam, the result of our work may come quite soon, but since she is far away, the news of her whereabouts and condition may take time to reach us. Until then we must perform the uml without stopping. It is difficult work, but it must be done.

  “And now,” she added, “let us wash for our afternoon prayers.”

  FIFTY FEET from Nur Rahman's body, two Indian soldiers had fallen together, their arms and legs entwined in death. What might be a bundle of rags near them was, Mariana knew, a frozen woman with an infant in her arms.

  Nur Rahman's chaderi was still beneath his head. Mariana removed it and spread it over his body.

  An elderly red-coated straggler toiled past her, his head drooping. He was a native officer with gray, snow-encrusted mustaches. He looked old enough to be Mariana's grandfather.

  Beyond him lay Harry Fitzgerald and the now-abandoned gun.

  Before she could go to Fitzgerald, half a dozen Afghan riders appeared from a grove of leafless trees and trotted toward the old sepoy, who trudged on, ignoring them.

  “Look out!” she cried, but it was hopeless.

  The first horseman bent casually from his saddle, and in one graceful, backhanded motion, sliced the old soldier nearly in half.

  He fell, spurting blood, without uttering a sound.

  Numb with terror, Mariana watched the horsemen cut down another male marcher, then another. One by one, freezing, starving, and ignored, the wailing women sank to the snow.

  Desperate for a place to hide, Mariana turned back to Nur Rahman's shrouded corpse. She threw aside his chaderi, then tugged at his body, her teeth gritted, until she had wrested it out of its sheepskin cloak.

  She spread the poshteen open on the snow, then took off her own, covered herself with it and rolled into a lonely, frightened, poorly hidden ball.

  If she survived, she would find her way back to the city. To do so, she would have to retrace the army's bloody march, and risk being killed by pursuing tribesmen. But even if no one cut her down, how would she fare, alone in this bitter cold? It must be at least six miles to Kabul. Her hands and feet had already lost their feeling. She had not eaten since the previous afternoon.

  Desperately cold and frightened, she waited for someone to come, snatch away her protecting sheepskin, and cut her throat, but in time, the shots ceased, and the cries
of the wounded tapered off.

  The horsemen seemed to have gone, perhaps to follow the column, looking for more people to kill.

  When she sat up, an icy wind burned her ears. She got back into her sheepskin; then, in spite of Nur Rahman's warning, she flung her chaderi over her head, needing its thin cotton to keep out some of the cold.

  Praying that the horsemen would not return, she toiled over to Fitzgerald.

  He had been shot through the neck. He lay faceup in a scarlet pool of frozen blood, his beard encrusted with snow, his eyes half open.

  He must have died instantly.

  Of all the British artillery officers, he alone had thought of those abandoned gunners, and come to their rescue.

  He had offered her his hand and his heart.

  She knelt at his side. “Dear Allah,” she prayed through chattering teeth, “take this good man's soul to Thy Paradise. And please,” she added, “give him everything Nur Rahman has, but let him be with English people, if possible.”

  She touched Harry Fitzgerald's stiff cheek, got to her feet, and started back toward Kabul.

  No stragglers approached as she trudged along. Save for the dead, she was alone.

  At a noise behind her, she turned and drew in a sharp, frightened breath.

  She was far from alone. The horsemen had returned. They rode straight for her.

  They would kill her now, of course. Nur Rahman had warned her. But what did it matter? Everyone who still lived would be dead soon. Hassan would never find her here. It was too late for hope.

  She did not have the fatalistic courage of the old sepoy. Bent double in her dirty chaderi, nauseous with fright, she waited for the horsemen to arrive, to slice her in half with their wicked, curving swords.

  They pulled to a halt in front of her, blocking her way.

  “You,” shouted a familiar, hollow voice.

  It was Aminullah Khan, coming to punish her for spurning his asylum. She closed her eyes and waited for the bite of his sword.

  “Are you my missing asylum-seeker?” he barked. “Speak! Let me hear your voice.”

  “I am,” she quavered.

  “Hah!” He smiled harshly. “I thought you wanted panah.”