The Second Achmed Abdullah Megapack

by Achmed Abdullah

  But Yar Khan, South-bred though he was, did not feel the sleety, grained mountain chill; his heart seemed flushed with a hot June prime, and he raised his right hand with an exuberant gesture as he stepped into the council of the villagers who were squatting around a flickering camp-fire—behind every man his wife, unveiled, proudly erect, her hand on her lord’s shoulder, and everywhere the sturdy children of the hills: boys of twelve and thirteen who were already trying to emulate the fierce, sullen swagger of their sires, little bold-eyed girls, fondling crude dolls made of stones and bits of string and wood, and wee babes, like tiny gold-colored puff-balls, playing about their fathers knees or munching wheaten cakes with the solemn satisfaction of childhood.

  “I have come—” began Yar Khan, and then he was silent and his heart sagged like a leaden weight. For no sound of greeting rose from the villagers, and the bearded faces which were turned toward him seemed impassive and cruel and slightly mocking.

  Yar Khan felt like an intruder; there was something like a crash in his brain, and suddenly he realized that he was longing for Cairo, for the busy, motley crowds, the gay cries of bazaar and market-place, and the dancing, red-flecking sunlight of the Southern sky.

  He stood still, embarrassed, undecided what to do; and then a clear voice called to him. “Ho, cousin!”—it was the voice of Kumar Jan.

  He looked.

  She was standing behind a massive, white-bearded man who was squatting at the head of the durbar, evidently her father, Rahmet Ullah, chief of the tribe; and Yar Khan’s flagging spirits rose, and he walked up to Rahmet Ullah, kissing the hem of his robe in sign of fealty.

  Then—and often in his thoughts, since he had rid den out of Bokhara, had he enacted the scene—he threw the goatskin bag at the feet of the chief so that the gifts which he had brought tumbled out on the barren gray ground.

  “Presents for all of you, my cousins,” he cried; “silks from Bokhara and sweetmeats from China…”—suddenly he was silent. A hot red flushed his cheeks.

  For the uncomfortable thought came to him that he was praising the gifts as he had praised bartered wares across his father’s dusty counter in the Gamalyieh; and there was a tense pause while some of the men and women stooped leisurely and fingered the presents, with now and then a short grunt of wonder at the touch of the glittering Northern silks, but with never a word to him—of thanks or joy or pleasure.

  Even Kumar Jan, to whom he had given a fine Khivan shawl with his own hands, took the offering in a matter-of-fact way. She threw it about her shoulders without a word, and Yar Khan was hurt and saddened; his soul seemed charged to the brim with an overpowering loneliness, and terror came to his heart—the terror of the mountains, of the far places which he did not understand.

  His lips quivered. He was about to turn, to leave The Hoof of the Wild Goat, to rush down the steep path and to take the trail the long trail, to Bokhara, to Cairo—when the voice of Rahmet Ullah cut sharply into his reverie.

  The chief welcomed him into the tribe with a few simple words, and, indicating the whole assembly, he added: “These be thy cousins, Yar Khan, son of Ali Khan! Their laws be thy laws, their customs thy customs, their weal thy weal, their woes thy woes, their feuds thy feuds! Thou art blood of our blood and bone of our bone! Whatever is ours is thine!”—and, one after the other, the villagers rose and walked up to him.

  They greeted him, pressing palm against palm, coldly, impassively, with short, rasping “Salaam Alekhum’s” and now and then a graybeard’s querulous reflection as to manners learned among foreigners and infidels—reflections spiced and sharpened with Afghan proverbs.

  “If a man be ugly what can the mirror do?” croaked a battle-scarred grandfather who walked heavily with the aid of a straight-bladed British cavalry saber doubt less stolen during a raid across the Indian border; another chimed in with the even, passionless statement that the cock went to learn the walk of the goose and forgot his own, while a third—gaunt old warrior with the bilious complexion of the hashish-smoker—inquired of the world at large why it was that in the estimation of some people the strings of their cotton drawers rivaled in splendor the Emir’s silken breeches.

  The girls and the children tittered at the last remark; and when the younger tribesmen came up to salute their cousin there were open sneers, and finally a loud, insulting question from Jehan Hydar who asked Yar Khan, pointing at his peach-colored Cairene waistcoat, if he had ever considered what a pig could do with a rose-bottle.

  Yar Khan flushed an angry purple. This—he thought—was the fair measure of honor which he had expected, this the home-coming—and he had traveled the many weary miles, he had bought presents for them purchased with the bitter gold of exile, he had given them of his best in loyalty and desire and free-handed generosity!

  He was silent. He felt Kumar Jan’s eyes resting upon him, wonderingly, expectantly—and what could she expect? He had gone to the hills in search of freedom, and now he was forfeit to the customs of the hills. He had gathered the swords of humiliation under his armpits, and the feeling of it was bitter and vain.

  He looked up. Jehan Hydar was still standing in front of him, a mocking smile playing about his thin lips and in his oblique eyes a light like a high-eddying flame.

  “Cousin,” he drawled, and the simple word held the soft thud of a hidden, deadly insult, “cousin to me, to all of us! Yet do I declare by the teeth of Allah,” here his eyes sought those of Kumar Jan, who stood close by, her whole attitude one of tense expectancy, “yes! I declare by mine own honor that thou seemest more like an Egyptian, a foreigner, an eater of fish from the South—of stinking fish, belike,” he added as an insulting after-thought; and there was mocking laughter all around, high-pitched, cruel, rasping; but clearest and sharpest rose the laughter from Kumar Jan’s red lips.

  It was then that Yar Khan’s good-humor suddenly broke into a hundred splintering pieces. His rage surged in deadly crimson waves. He forgot that these men were his blood-kin. He forgot the yearning of the swinging years. He only saw the sneer which cleft Jehan Hydar’s bold face; he only heard the laughter which bubbled from Kumar Jan’s lips, and he stepped up close to the other.

  “Better dried fish in the South,” he cried, “than a naked dagger in the hills,” and his knife leaped out with a soft whit-whit. But he had no time to strike, to stain his soul with the blood of kin; for, even as he spoke, even as the knife left the scabbard, a dozen stout arms were about him, hugging him close—and there were laughter and frantic shouts of joy. Bearded faces touched his; the children crowded about him and hailed him with shrill cries; the women bowed before him with a clank and jingle of silver ornaments; and again, clearest, sharpest, rose Kumar Jan’s laughter—but this time it was not the laughter of derision.

  Suddenly, Yar Khan understood. They had tested his manhood after the manner of the hills and they had not found him wanting; and so, when he walked away from the camp-fire with Kumar Jan by his side, the hard, pent rage which had bitten into his heart disappeared like chaff in the meeting of winds.

  He was home, home!

  He said to himself that these men were his kin, that their woes were his woes, their laws his laws, their feuds his feuds—and he knew why there had been no thanks when he had emptied his goatskin bag at the feet of the chief. Yes! Whatever was his was theirs—thus the law of the hills—and then something in his heart seemed to flame upward.

  He looked at Kumar Jan.

  She, too, had spoken of the law of the hills the law which says that cousin shall aye mate with cousin; and she—she was his cousin.

  And then, thinking epically as hillmen do in moments of great emotion—he said to himself that the stroke and slash of his dagger were hers, that hers was his brain, hers the eloquence of his tongue, hers the strength of his body and the golden dreams of his soul.

  He gripped her hand—and he knew that he had come home.

  THE DANCE ON THE HILL

  Behind him the Koh Haji-Lal, the “Mountain
s of the Red Pilgrim,” closed like a ragged tide. In front of him the snowy peaks of the Gul Koh pointed to the skies in an abandon of frozen, lacy spires, while ten miles the other side Ghuzni dipped to the green of the valley with an avalanche of flat, white roof tops, huddled close together beneath the chill of the Himalayas. The English doctor lived there, mixing his drugs and scolding his patients in the little house at the end of the perfume-sellers bazaar, in the shadow of the great bronze Mogul gun which both Afghans and Lohani Sikhs called the Zubba-zung.

  Mortazu Khan thought of him as he came down the mountain-side, his rough sheepskin coat folded across the smalt of his back to give free play to his lungs; his short, hairy arms, sleeves rolled to the elbows, moving up and down like propeller-blades. He walked with the suspicious step of the hill-bred who reckons with inequalities of ground, lifting his rope-soled sandals gingerly over timberfalls and crumbling granite slides, putting on extra speed when he crossed a wide spread of rust-brown bracken that covered the summer hue of the slope like a scarf, again warily slowing as he forded a swift little stream bordered with scented wild peppermint and chini stalks and gray, spiky wormwood.

  But straight through he kept up a steady clip, averaging well over five miles an hour, up-hill or down.

  There was peace with the Suni Pathans who squatted on the upland pastures and so he had left his rifle at home, carrying only a broad-bladed dagger. He was glad of it, for a rifle meant weight, weight in the hills meant lack of speed, and speed was essential. All last night his wife had moaned terribly, and the village wise-woman, at the end of her remedies, had told him that he needed the English hakim’s skill before the day was out if he wanted his wife to live: his wife, and the little son he hoped it would be a son—whom she was bringing into the world with such anguish.

  Three hours he figured to Ghuzni. Three back. Rather a little more, since the foreigner was not hill-bred. Thus he would safely reach his village before the sun had raced to the west; and by night his wife would hold another little son in her arms.

  Of course there would be a wrangle with the hakim, Mortazu Khan thought—and smiled at the thought.

  First was spoken the ceremonious Afghan greeting, cut short by the Englishman’s impatient, “Why haven’t you come sooner?” and his reply that his wife was a stout hill woman who had borne children before this; also that he had called in the wise-woman.

  “What did she do?”

  “She gave her fish sherbet to cool her blood. She put leeches on her chest. She wrote a Koran verse on a piece of paper, lit it, and held it smoking under Azeena’s nose—”

  And then the hakim’s furious bellow: “Of all the damned—! Good God! man, let’s hurry, or your wife’ll go out before we get there!”

  At the end of the imagined scene Mortazu Khan’s smile twisted to a lop-sided frown. The doctor would be rightly angry. He should have gone to him yesterday. He should not have called in the wise-woman. He had given her five rupees— He shrugged his shoulders. Tomorrow he would make her eat stick and force her to give back the money—

  He increased his speed as he reached the edge of the slope where it flattened to a rock-studded plateau, with here and there little gentians peeping from granite splits and opening their stiff, azure stars. He bent and picked one to put in his turban for good luck, and as he straightened up again he smelled a familiar odor and saw two small, reddish eyes glaring at him from a clump of thorny wild acacia.

  He stood quite still. Instinctively he fingered across his left shoulder for the rifle—which was not there. Then he walked on. At this time of the year the blue-gray, bristly haired mountain bears were not dangerous. They were busy filling their sagging bellies with prangus leaves and mulberries against the lean season. He would leave the bear alone, he decided, and the bear would leave him alone.

  But when a moment later he heard the animal give tongue—a low, flat rumble growing steadily into a sustained roar, then stabbing out in a squeaky high note that sounded ridiculously inadequate, given the brute’s size—Mortazu Khan, without looking over his shoulder, jumped sideways like a cat, cleared a heap of dry twigs, and made straight for a stout fir-tree that towered in lanky loneliness a dozen yards away. He reached it and jumped behind it. His hands gripped the rough, warty bark.

  “Some cursed fool of a foreigner must have burned her pelt with a bullet of pain.” He spoke aloud, after the manner of hillmen. “And now Bibi Bear has a grouch—”

  He completed the sentence just as the bear tore out of the acacia clump and made after him with a huge, plumping, clumsy bound and a whickering, whinnying roar.

  “Allah be thanked because He gave me nimble feet!” ejaculated Mortazu Khan. “And praise to Him furthermore because He made this tree and caused it to grow thick!” He finished his impromptu prayer as he slid rapidly to the west side of the fir while the bear lunged, big flat paws clawing, gaping mouth showing the crimson throat, the chalk-white teeth, the lolling, slobbering tongue, ears flat on the narrow head—like the head of a great snake.

  The bear missed the hillman by half a yard and, carried away by her weight and impetus, she landed, paws sprawling, head down, on a bed of ochre moss studded with needle-sharp granite splinters. Her pointed muzzle, bumped smartly against the ground, was torn by the ragged stone edges, and plowed a painful furrow through the moss so that it rose to either side in a velvety cloud.

  She bellowed her disappointment and fury, sat on her hunkers, slid back half a dozen yards, using her fat hams with the speed and precision of roller-skates, then returned to the attack, launching her blue-gray bulk straight for the west side of the tree.

  “Ahi! Pig, and Parent of Piglings!” shouted Mortazu Khan, as he rapidly made the half-circle around the tree to the opposite side.

  “Waughrrrr-yi-yi!” said the bear, very low in her throat and with a certain hurt, childish intonation.

  “Pig!” repeated the hillman, wiping the sweat from his forehead, while the bear, who had again landed head down on the ground, wrinkled her ugly, thin-skinned nose where the warm blood was trickling down into her open mouth.

  Mortazu Khan watched carefully. He knew that he was safe as long as he kept the tree between himself and the brute, knew, too, that he was the more agile of the two.

  Not that the bear was slow, but her body was longer, her bulk larger. She could not make short turns in a whizzing, flying half-circle like the hillman. She could charge—with a thousand pounds of bunched muscle and brutal meat—but when she missed, the best she could do was to use her nose and forepaws as brakes, bump back, twist in a sharp angle right or left, according to what side of the tree Mortazu Khan had slid—and return to the charge. And always the man, keeping tight to the fir, got ahead of her, while the bear, squealing like an angry boar, landed on the ground, hurting her delicate nose and clawing with her paws till the moss was shredded to rags and the sand beneath seemed to look up with scared, yellow eyes.

  Little stones clattered mockingly. Twigs crackled and whined. Somewhere from the higher branches a noise trembled a gurgling, throaty noise. Doubt less the cry of a buvra kurra, a black tree grouse, thought the hillman, cursing the bird because of its place of security, cursing the bear because of her wickedness.

  “Dog! Jew! Drunkard! Illegitimate cow!” he yelled as he danced around the tree, left and right and left again, his fingers scraping the bark and the bark scraping his fingers—“Away! away!”—Bibi Bear after him, roaring, fuming, and always missing her aim.

  The bear’s little, narrow-lidded eyes glowed like charcoal balls. The hair along her back was thick and taut, her ears flat. There was something ludicrous in her appearance, too—something which spoke of iron, sinister resolution.

  Plump! Down on her nose, paws furrowing the ground! Twist and squat and twist.

  She tried to learn from Mortazu Khan, tried to whiz her bulk in shorter circles, to charge straight at her foe. But always she missed. Always she had to brake with head and paws and make sharp angles while the
man danced away.

  “Infidel! Parent of naughty daughters!” shouted Mortazu Khan as the bear missed him by less than a foot.

  His hands were hot and raw. His heart was cold with fear. For back across the hills was the mother of his sons and then he cursed again the little bird which gurgled in the branches. He could not see it. But the gurgle was becoming loud, insistent, blending curiously and malignantly with the bear’s wicked bellow.

  Underneath his duffle shirt sweat rolled in little icy balls. His feet hurt. Moss had been around the base of the tree, but he had worn great holes in it, then long furrows and grooves. Now the whole cover of moss was trampled away, and he was dancing on the naked ground. One of his sandals had split the heel-rope and had flown away and out, while he had stepped through the other so that it was around his ankles. His toes were bleeding—

  And Azeena waited!

  But what could he do with his bare hands, without his rifle? The dagger? He could throw it—yes! And what then? One does not kill a mountain bear with a single thrust of steel. So he kept whizzing around the tree, and his thoughts whizzed along, his fears, his hopes and then, quite suddenly, the bear changed her tactics.

  “Airrrh—whoof—airrh!” she said with low, rumbling dignity.

  “Wheet-wheet!” came the echo from the branches of the tree where the cursed, feathery thing was roosting in safety.

  And Bibi Bear rose on her hind feet, fir needles and moss sticking to her pelt, belly sagging loosely, perspiration rising from her nostrils in a gray flag of steam. Straight toward the tree she walked, forepaws wide extended as if to embrace the fir and the miserable being who was clinging to it for dear life.

  Something like a slobbering grin curled the brute’s black, leathery lips, and Mortazu Khan watched. His skin seemed to shrink. Blue wheels whirled in front of his eyes. A hammer beat at the base of his skull.

  Ahi! There was Azeena—who would not live out the day unless.…