Companions of Paradise

by Thalassa Ali

  He gestured with a slick, crimson blade at the carnage around them. “So you have changed your mind. You have decided to die among these infidels after all.”

  He leaned from his horse. “You did not tell me you were married,” he barked. “Where is the husband who has abandoned you to freeze here on this battlefield?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Mariana's feet were like blocks of ice. Too hungry and too desperately tired to think, she lifted her chaderi from her face and looked Aminullah Khan in the eye. “Why,” she asked resignedly, “do you not kill me now?”

  His chin lifted, as if she had struck him. His henchmen looked quickly away from them both.

  “Kill you? Who do you think I am?” He smiled unpleasantly. “You are my guest. Why do you suggest that I would kill you? I am no infidel, like your people.”

  This last was too much to comprehend. Mariana took a step backward, her hands outstretched. “Please do not tease me,” she begged, her knees buckling. “Please.”

  “Come.” He sheathed his dreadful sword, edged his horse toward her, and reached down. “Get up,” he ordered. “You asked panah, and you shall have it.”

  Panah. There was no point in asking where he was taking her. After somehow forcing a heavy, numb leg across his horse's back, she noticed only that he and his henchmen had turned away from the city. As before, he galloped headlong, while she bounced behind him, half forgotten, terrified she would fall, her stiff fingers gripping his cummerbund.

  They stopped at a place she thought she remembered. There was something familiar in the shape of the sloping ground as they approached the small town ahead of them.

  It was Butkhak, the last caravan stop before Kabul on the road from Peshawar, the place where she had seen her vision of the funeral march nearly a year ago.

  How true that vision had been.

  They clattered under a gate, wound through several streets, and stopped in front of a plain mud-brick house.

  Aminullah dismounted, leaving Mariana on his saddle, and hammered on the door. A young boy answered his knock, started back in surprise, a hand over his heart, then disappeared inside, to be replaced by an old, bent man in a huge checkered turban.

  Rapid words were exchanged. Aminullah beckoned to her.

  As before, she was ushered inside by women, and taken to an empty upstairs room with a string bed in one corner.

  A child brought her tea. Never had Mariana tasted anything as good.

  Someone else brought her a quilt and a hard pillow. She pulled off her chaderi and sheepskin, rolled herself into the quilt, and fell deeply and instantly asleep.

  The Waliullah ladies had recited without pause since the early morning. Now, with dinner on the way, they huddled on the sitting-room floor, some conversing in low tones, others resting beneath quilts on the bolsters that lay here and there on the sheeted floor. Occasionally, a man of the family put his head around the doorway, nodded, and then took his turn at the wheel.

  Steps approached from the room where the uml was being performed. A young woman scuffed off her shoes, pushed aside the door curtain, and entered, heavy-eyed.

  “It was difficult, Bhaji.” The girl sighed, as the women made room for her to sit beside Safiya. “My mind kept wandering as I recited. I hope,” she added in a small voice, “I did not make too many mistakes.”

  “Have no fear, child,” Safiya rumbled, a hand on the girl's knee. “You performed with pure intention, and your pronunciation of the Sindhi was good.”

  “How much longer will it take?” asked a young mother with an infant on her lap.

  “It may be weeks before we learn of Mariam's condition, but Saboor may receive a sign before then.”

  “But what if she has died?” The girl reached up and touched her ears to ward off evil.

  “If, Allah forbid, Mariam has already died,” Safiya said carefully, “then we will be told. But we will not consider such a possibility until we must. And now, Asma, go and rest. Lalaji is taking the next turn.”

  As she spoke the curtain moved aside, and the Shaikh entered. He beckoned to his sister.

  “How is Saboor?” he asked, when she had joined him. “Has he seen anything new?”

  His sister shook her head. “Nothing that I know of, but at least he has fallen asleep.”

  She gestured to a corner where Saboor lay wrapped in a quilt, his eyes shut, his lips parted.

  The Shaikh nodded. “I will go in, then. Who will come after me?”

  “I will be sending Rehmana,” she replied.

  The Shaikh's gap-toothed sister-in-law looked up, and nodded solemnly.

  He nodded in return, then started away.

  DARKNESS HAD fallen by the time Mariana awoke. The scent of food wafted up the stairs, but no one came to fetch her. Too exhausted to care, she went back to sleep.

  By the time a pair of girls arrived to announce that dinner was ready, male voices were audible elsewhere in the house. The family must have kept the food waiting until its fighters had returned.

  As the men laughed and shouted in the room below, Mariana sat warily in a small room with a sandali in the center, watched closely by several women and children.

  How many soldiers and camp followers had died of cold and hunger today? she wondered, as she stared without appetite at the mountain of mutton and rice before her on the table, and warmed her feet beneath the family sandali.

  How many of the retreating force had Aminullah, and those men downstairs, slaughtered today? How many had Aminullah killed after he left her at this house and galloped away?

  She nodded politely to her hostesses and rose to her feet. As she pulled on her boots outside the door, one of them pulled the door curtain aside.

  “Make ready,” she ordered, in accented Farsi. “You are to leave here soon.”

  “Leave here?” Mariana hesitated. “Would it be possible for me to go to Kabul? Someone is expecting me there.”

  Please, please let them take me to Haji Khan's house

  “Kabul?” The woman grimaced and shook her head. “You cannot go there. We are sending you to the British fort at Jalalabad. A kafila will be taking you over the Lataband Pass. You are to join their camp tonight.”

  Voices shouted up the stairs.

  “Get your poshteen,” the woman urged Mariana. “They are waiting.”

  The cold was stunning. A camel knelt in the narrow street, its driver wrapped to his eyes in a shawl. Mariana climbed onto the camel's back and clutched the saddle as it jerked to its feet.

  Perhaps Hassan had not died, she told herself as she rode out through the gate of the town, the camel's ankle bells chinking with every step. Perhaps one day she would reach Lahore, and find him waiting.

  The landscape sloped away in folds, hill upon snowy hill. It had been here that she had asked Munshi Sahib if she would ever see Hassan and Saboor again.

  Swaying on the camel's back, miserable with cold and loss, she closed her eyes and dreamed fitfully of her time in India. She relived her rescue of little Saboor, and her first, moonlit meeting with Shaikh Waliullah. She remembered Safiya Sultana's story about the prince who became a beggar, and her own terrifying afternoon alone on the violent streets of Lahore. She recalled Munshi Sahib's fable of the king's messenger and Haji Khan's beautiful, evocative durood.

  She thought of Nur Rahman, begging her to recite the Shahada, the attestation of the faith they all shared.

  All of them had been her teachers. Surely their lessons meant something. Surely they fitted together to make a whole

  She opened her eyes. A full moon shone through the latticework of her chaderi. It hung before her, its light falling on snowy ground so pale that it could have been desert sand.

  Camel bells chinked. The moon beckoned her forward.

  They were turning. The moon, no longer in front of her, was now at her shoulder. This was wrong. They were going the wrong way.

  Dismount from the camel. The voice in her head was so clear and so commanding that
Mariana looked over her shoulder, to see if someone behind her had spoken.

  She bent forward to look at the camel driver. Hunched over against the cold, he trudged on.

  Dismount, repeated the voice, and follow the path of the moon.

  They were heading downhill, traversing a snow-covered slope. Soon the moon would be behind her, not in front.

  Follow the path to peace, ordered the voice.

  Each of her teachers, the Shaikh, Safiya Sultana, Munshi Sahib, and Haji Khan, had spoken of journeys and homecomings. Even Nur Rahman, who had danced for her in the snow, had offered the same lesson—that although the way might be difficult, the goal was beautiful beyond imagining.

  Follow the path. She ceased thinking. Moving as if under someone else's volition, she slid one leg over the camel's saddle. Timing her fall so she would not be kicked, she took a deep breath, and let herself slide to the ground.

  She landed jarringly on her side. Her thumping fall must have been startlingly loud in that silent place, but by the time she gathered herself and looked up, the camel was already beyond her, striding away as if its driver had heard nothing.

  This was madness. If she did not run after it, shouting, she would be—

  It was too late. The camel had vanished around a pile of rocks.

  She was entirely alone.

  Follow the moon.

  She pushed herself to her feet. Weighed down by her heavy posh-teen, she turned to face the moon, then began working her way toward it, making a new, uphill path through the knee-deep snow.

  Had this been a mistake? She stopped to catch her breath, aware that she was tiring rapidly. Had her mind played a trick on her, counterfeiting that voice with its compelling instructions? Unable to go any farther, would she die here on this slope, with only the moon for company?

  “I call to witness,” her munshi had recited here, at Butkhak, on the day before she entered Kabul,

  “The ruddy glow of sunset;

  The night and its homing, and

  The moon in her fullness;

  Thou shalt surely travel

  From stage to stage.”

  All the lessons she had learned had brought her to this moonlit landscape where there was no sound but the wind in her ears.

  Nur Rahman had longed for the companions of Paradise, but she had found Hassan. He would be her companion here on earth, if they lived to meet again. And there were others—her teachers and Ghulam Ali and Yar Mohammad, and bumbling, talkative Dittoo.

  If she did not survive the night, perhaps they would all meet one day in Paradise

  Look up, ordered the voice.

  A fire glowed in the distance.

  Her exhausted breathing echoed in her ears, but hope offered her new strength. Whoever these people were, she thought, as she started toward their beckoning fire, they would not refuse her warmth and shelter.

  The moon shone down on a small encampment. Jezails leaned, steepled together, in the snow. Pack ponies and mules blew and stamped. Tents clustered near the fire. In one, there was light. The silhouettes of two men moved against its wall.

  A third male figure huddled at the fire, its light playing on his face. Delirious from cold and exhaustion, Mariana imagined that his pale beard belonged to someone she knew, but that could not be.

  He did not see her approaching.

  One of the silhouettes stood. A man emerged through the opening of the glowing tent, his head covered in a shawl. He stepped toward the fire.

  “Ghulam Ali,” he ordered, “go to your tent. Do not punish yourself by staying outside in this cold.”

  The first man shook his head. “Your wife is lost,” he crooned, rocking back and forth. “Bibi is lost, and I am to blame.”

  “No,” Hassan Ali Khan said. “It was my fault from the beginning.” He stared into the fire, as if he had forgotten the other man's presence. “I learned too late what she offered me,” he went on, his voice breaking. “I did not see clearly—”

  Both men looked up, startled, when Mariana began to run.

  A moment later, three hundred and sixty miles away, Saboor, the son of Hassan Ali Khan, opened his eyes and smiled.

  To the Governor-General of India

  Government House, Calcutta

  February 15, 1842

  Your Lordship

  I am pleased to report that our intelligence officer Adrian Lamb has arrived in Delhi after surviving the disaster at Kabul.

  He and his wife escaped the cantonment shortly before the retreat, and have come down to India via Kandahar with a group of Afghan nomads. They arrived in Delhi three days ago. Apart from what Mrs. Lamb has described as “the unspeakable squalor” of their journey, they are unharmed.

  Although we have no definite news as yet, it seems very likely that the dreadful rumors we have heard are true: that of the fourteen thousand souls who left the cantonment on the morning of January 6th, only one man, Dr. Brydon, ever reached Jalalabad, where General Sale and the 1st Brigade were waiting. If this proves to be the case, then except for Akbar Khan's thirty hostages, all the others must be presumed dead.

  It is believed, although not confirmed, that General Sir

  William Elphinstone, Lady Macnaghten, Lady Sale, LadyMacnaghten's nephew Charles Mott, and Lady Sale's daughter Mrs. Sturt are among Akbar's prisoners, whose number includes ladies, children, and wounded officers.

  We are, of course, making every effort to procure their release.

  I should mention a curious part of Adrian Lamb's story—his niece, a girl by the name of Mariana Givens, vanished from a caravanserai outside of Kabul while waiting with her uncle for the nomad caravan to depart.

  Lamb insists the girl is in Lahore, under the protection of someone called Hassan Ali Khan. Having met the man in Peshawar I can say that I would not put it past him to have taken Miss Givens there. And since our present difficulties would preclude any attempt at her recovery, I suppose that is where she will remain.

  I am Your Lordship's most humble and obedient servant

  Major Horatio Wade

  GLOSSARY

  Note: Four languages appear in this Glossary: Arabic, Urdu, Farsi (Persian), and Pushto. As many of them overlap, I have designated the root language wherever possible. Occasional words from other languages are mentioned specifically.

  A

  Afridi, p. Pashtun tribe living on the border between Afghanistan and India (now Pakistan)

  Akhal Tekke breed of Turkmen horses known from ancient times as the Heavenly Horses, and prized for their beauty and endurance (Turki word)

  Al-Hamdulillah a. Praise be to God

  aloo keema, u. spicy stew of goat meat and potatoes

  amir, a. f king, ruler

  Ammi-Jan, u. affectionate term for mother

  Aryans people from Central Asia who are said to have invaded the Indian subcontinent from 1500 BC to 100 BC

  asr, a. evening; the pre-sunset Muslim prayer is the asr prayer

  As-salaam-o-alaikum, a. “May peace be upon you,” the standard greeting among Muslims

  atta, u. whole-wheat flour

  attar, u. f. p. perfumed oil

  Az barae Khuda, f. For God's sake!

  B

  bacha male child; a Hindi word

  badragha, p. armed escort

  Bala Hisar, f. palace and fort of the kings of Afghanistan

  barat, u. bridegroom's procession that comes to fetch the bride after a marriage

  bazaar, u. f. marketplace

  Begeer, f. Seize them!

  Bhai Jan, u. polite form of address for an elder brother

  Bhaji, u. polite form of address for an elder female relative

  Bibi, u. f. polite form of address for a young lady

  c

  caravanserai, u. f. stopping place for travelers; a large area, enclosed on four sides, with a large open space in the center, and storage sheds and accommodation for travelers along the walls

  chaderi, f. woman's long, gathered cotton cloak that starts
from a quilted cap on the head, then falls over

  the shoulders and to the ground, covering awoman completely; a separate long flap fallsfrom the front of the cap to cover the face—this flap has a latticework hole in front toallow the wearer to see out

  chaikhana, u. f. tea shop

  chapan full-length, long-sleeved coat worn by Uzbekpeople of northern Afghanistan

  chappati, u. f. p. flat whole-wheat bread; in Afghanistan, chappati is a round whole-wheat bread rangingfrom nine to twenty-four inches in diameter

  chappli, u. sandal; also refers to the texture and shape ofthe spicy kababs of Peshawar, made withground meat and dried pomegranate seeds, that are said to resemble sandals

  charpai, u. f. traditional bed with a simple frame and fourcarved legs, strung with rope

  chillum, p. water pipe in which tobacco is burned by hotcoals, and the smoke filtered through water[see also narghile, hookah]

  choga, u. f. p. full-length coat, open in front, worn inAfghanistan and northern India; mid-nineteenth-century ones were made of plainwool, the best being of soft camel hair withsubtle embroidery

  chup, u. p. Keep quiet!

  cummerbund, u. f. sash worn around the waist; literally: to enclosethe back

  D

  dal generic name for split peas, beans, and lentils; aHindi word

  Dera Jat area in India (now Pakistan) along the border of Afghanistan, bounded on the west by the Suleiman Koh mountain range and on the eastby the Indus River

  dhobi, u. man who washes clothes

  dhooli, u. covered chair or palanquin, often used forcarrying the sick

  dupatta, u. long, wide scarf of thin fabric, used by womento cover the head and chest

  durahi silk lightweight Afghan silk

  durood, a. invocation of blessings upon the ProphetMuhammad

  E

  Eskandar Alexander: the name used for Alexander the Great

  F

  Farsi, f. Persian, spoken in both Afghanistan and in Iran

  feranghis, u. f. European

  G

  Ghazi, f. warrior, victor

  Ghaznavids invaders of Turkish origin, who occupiedAfghanistan in the tenth through twelfthcenturies

  gunah, f. p. sin