The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

  The emperor. So this new king was one of “Papa” Ahmad Shah’s many grandchildren. Ibrahim thought the whole stinking brood had killed one another off long ago. This one must have been hiding somewhere like a cockroach all this while, biding his time. Ibrahim kept the fulsome praises flowing from his lips while struggling to calm his private thoughts, because he had to stay cool, he had decisions to make and they had to be cool ones. He couldn’t broach the issue of the river, not now, that was clear, not in the presence of these mighty lords. In fact, he had to get himself and his men out of here before the lords started talking taxes.

  “In short,” Ibrahim wrapped up,. “we send our prayers to his majesty. His triumph will live forever in our stories. We just stopped in to say salaam. Now, with your permission—”

  But the headman of Sorkhab was already telling the great lords, “These friends of ours come from Char Bagh, your excellencies. It’s a pleasant village downstream from ours.”

  “Char Bagh.” Four Gardens. The plump lord fingered his beard. He obviously liked the sound of that name. “Is your village as lush as it sounds?”

  “Oh, hardly, your Excellency. We are small and poor, a poor village only half the size of Sorkhab. Less! We’re descended from soldiers, four of them, stranded here from the armies of Babur three hundred years ago—they weren’t farmers, they tried to scratch a living from the soil but in vain! They nearly starved. People called their settlement Char Bagh as a sort of joke. And things have never gotten much better for us. We scarcely have one garden, much less four. And the river has been shrinking of late, our fields are drying up. We barely have two hundred souls anymore, counting babies. We can barely feed ourselves.”

  “Hmm.” The lord continued to squeeze his beard. “Well, we shall judge of all that for ourselves. Let me repeat what I just told your friends. A new king reigns in the capital, he’s taking a new look at every village. That scoundrel Dost Mohammed let the country go to seed. He gathered taxes badly. He filled his armies with his own tribesmen, cuckolds and pimps one and all—how long since this valley sent any of its sons to serve in the king’s army?” He cocked an eyebrow at Ibrahim. “Just as I thought. No wonder that scoundrel failed. Well, the new reign will be different—stern but fair is our vow. Everybody owes their welfare to the king,” he warned. “Everybody will give the king his due. No favoritism, no excuses. Everyone will pay. These elders of Sorkhab have agreed to donate a hundred donkey loads of wheat a year, plus fifty hides and fifteen able-bodied young men for the king’s draft. This good man Malik Mustapha has told me, ‘Whatever the king needs, take. He is my father, everything I possess is really his.’ Such loyalty! What say you men of Char Bagh? Can you match his loyalty?”

  Ghulam Dastagir asserted himself. “Your Excellency, we’re thrilled to meet a representative of the King’s justice. This village of Sorkhab, which you praise so highly, is doubling its fields at our expense. No wonder they offer so much. They can afford it, they plan to grab all the river water and let us just dry up and die—they don’t care! In the name of our hungering people, we call on his majesty for help. Poor folk depend on the king’s sword for justice, God praise his highness Shah Shuja! God accept him into the ranks of saints.”

  “Did I hear you correctly?” The lanky lord’s words whistled through a split in his lip, probably some old war wound. “This village pledges unlimited loyalty to his majesty . This village is the king’s friend. And this village is your enemy, you say? The king’s friends are your enemies?”

  “Not at all!” Ibrahim burst in, chuckling so hard it raised his sweat. Chuckling was always easier than laughing when he felt no mirth. “Sorkhab and Char Bagh are like brothers. My companion is just distraught, sir. Anxiety makes his tongue wander. He has sick children at home. Ignore him, Excellencies, come to our village, we beg of you, assess what we can give. Our granaries belong to the king—I too look to his majesty as my father. If he asks for my very life, show me the abyss, I will fling myself into it! We’ll hasten home now to prepare for your visit. Come to us soon,” he urged. “Char Bagh is not far away, just four hours by foot, less on horses. Do you have a doctor in your retinue? I dearly hope so. Great men like you always travel with scholarly doctors. We long for such a one. A plague has seized our village, you see: our children—well, it’s not just the children, to be frank! Men, women, everyone—the illness isn’t choosy! Black sores, your highness. Lumps that grow, then burst—we came here to consult with Sorkhab’s mullah—we don’t have our own, you know—we’re too small, too poor—we came for amulets, but if you have a doctor—”

  “Black sores?” the lord whistled.

  “Black as a dog’s eyeball, sir. At first it’s a hard lump, but after a few days, the lump bursts, pus runs out, and after that, you have a week to live if Allah favors you. We’re eager for your visit, my lord. Famous men like yourselves may lift this curse from us just by visiting. When may we expect you?”

  “Alas, our host here is too powerful,” the portly lord rumbled, nodding toward the headman of Sorkhab. “Escaping his hospitality will be difficult. And the king expects us back by the crescent-moon. One cannot keep a king waiting, you know. We’ll visit your village next year. Did you say you were leaving now? Well, if you must, you must.”

  “By next year, we may all be dead,” Ibrahim said mournfully

  “Allah forbid. Allah is merciful. We must not keep you. If you’re going, go.”

  “Well, with your permission…” said Ibrahim.

  Malik Mustapha walked them to the gate. As they passed through the courtyard, Ibrahim took the opportunity to mutter, “We came about the water, you know. How could you lay such plans? Are you out to kill us?”

  “What can we do? We’re growing,” Mustapha Khan wheedled. “We have children to feed! And now this plague of officials. I was planning to inform you soon.”

  Ibrahim looked to see what Ghulam Dastagir made of this, but the older man had stormed ahead. “If you take more water, some of us will certainly die. You will have killed them.”

  The malik of Sorkhab looked at the sky, the ground, at everything but Ibrahim. “The king’s men have found us. What can we do? We must increase our yield. I just hope they won’t find you. Let’s not quarrel about the river. I’ll protect Char Bagh from their curiosity. These men from Kabul are a threat to us both. Our two villages share a single beating heart.” His cordial tone did nothing to hide the threat he was leveling.

  “They’ll find us no matter what you do,” said Ibrahim.

  “God provides. We must have faith,” Mustapha uttered piously.

  “God provides, but God places limits too, on mortal greed. One must not plant more than one can water. All must accept the limits placed by God Almighty.”

  “Those limits, we accept,” the malik of Sorkhab came back at him coolly. “What we don’t accept are the limits other men try to force upon us.”

  Ghulam Dastagir would have hit the man for this. “We’ll talk again,” Ibrahim warned. “Starve a dog, expect to feel its teeth.” But his counterpart met his stare with eyes as hard as kiln-fired clay.

  On the road home, Ghulam Dastagir fumed and seethed. “This time I held my tongue, but next time? By God? And you let that man walk all over our faces, Ibrahim.”

  “It was the wrong day to squabble with Sorkhab. We’ll come back.”

  “Your way of coming back be fucked,” Ghulam Dastagir growled. “I’ll come back my way. Knife in one hand, sickle in the other. Damned water thieves!”

  “Water is not our only problem anymore,” Ibrahim said. “The king’s men know about us now. That story about the black sores won’t hold them back forever.”

  Ghulam Dastagir gave him an appraising look. “That was a good story,” he conceded. then he looked up at the sky and clutched his cloak shut at his throat. “Let’s hurry, boys. We don’t want night to catch us on the road.”

  11

  A commotion had started in the bazaars along the road that entered Ka
bul from the southeast. Storekeepers climbed out of their stalls and joined curbside idlers to peer at the great billows of dust in the distance. Gossip went buzzing from stall to stall until everyone knew what was raising the billows. The new king and his retinue were returning from their winter sojourn in the warm southern city of Jalalabad.

  The royal procession approached at a stately pace. Not until the front of it had passed into the shadow of Maranjan Hill could shoppers in the Grand Bazaar begin to hear the noise: the baying of camels, the whinnying of horses, the grunting of mules carrying great boxes of houseware that had provided for the king’s comfort in the south.

  At last the front of the column moved between the bazaar stalls. First came a row of mounted warriors, carrying lances and banners. Behind them cantered more rows of warriors cradling muskets, long barrels pointed skyward but ready to be lowered and fired at a moment’s notice. Behind the warriors came the creaking carriages of the king and his foreign friends, the British officials who had kept him company on his vacation. Behind them all came the wagons. The merchants leaned forward, craning for a glimpse of this long-limbed, red-nosed, silken-bearded Shah Shuja, whom the foreigners had brought with them from India. Everyone remembered his grandfather, the great man who had built the Afghan empire. No one had forgotten how great man’s sons had battled for possession of the empire after his death, nor how the great man’s grandsons, this Shah Shuja and his brothers and cousins, had ripped the land to shreds fighting over the bones and scraps. Everyone had rejoiced when better men drove the lot of them away. But now this one-time flash of a king was back, surrounded by exotic farangis who had put him on his throne.

  The merchants watched the king’s retinue tromp through the bazaar, stamping muddy water onto bystanders as they passed through puddles. Long after the parade had disappeared down the road, a bubble-thin layer of slip was still drying on the fruits, meats, coats, toys, bolts of cloth, and other goods on display in the intricately colorful bazaar, leaving the merchandise glazed with silt.

  The royal procession rumbled along the river on a highway paved with cobblestones, turning left at last to ascend the royal highway to the fortified heights of the Bala Hissar palace complex. The king himself sat in the second carriage from the front, comfortably wedged among overstuffed silk cushions. William Hay Macnaghten, Great Britain’s chief political envoy, sat across from him, gripping a silver-topped cane between his knees. A lovely Hindiu woman sat cuddled next to the king, encircled by his arm, chewing pistachios and raisins, sometimes passing the pulpy mass from her mouth to his.

  Macnaghten turned away from this spectacle with no attempt to hide his disgust. “Your highness,” he grumbled, “your subjects would find your behavior abominable. Will you not refrain until we pass from public view? Have some dignity, sir. Your highness? Sir! Do I have your attention, sir?”

  Shah Shuja snickered. He enjoyed ruffling the pompous pieties of this proper fool of an Englishman. “Mr. Macnaghten, you got to understand the East. Here, a king’s subjects are his slaves. What is the point of wearing a crown if you must tremble before your meanest of subjects? If such things they see it differently in England, I pity your king.”

  “We have a queen.”

  “Yes, yes, I forgot. Well, what can you expect from a country that lets itself to be ruled by a woman, eh? Anyway, this is not England. This country is my property and thirty years away from my royal rights have left me in no mood to kiss and bow to rabble. Samira, my doll, off the cork from that bottle, would you? I feel a thirst.”

  Macnaghten folded his hands in his lap and sighed. He gazed at the corner of the carriage while the King of Afghanistan continued to spoon with his mistress. After a few minutes of moist smooching, the king pulled away from the woman and drew the back of his hand across his lips. “How did you like Jalalabad, Mr. Macnaghten? What a favorite city of mine. How pleasant to be back among one’s own people! But excuse me, you’re not among your own. Poor Macnaghten! Are you lonely among us?”

  “My wife resides in Calcutta, I will see her before long,” the envoy said stiffly. “As for the other Englishmen, they are bearing up. Quite a number have sent for their wives and for their, well, um—their wives and such. They may be on their way to Kabul already—” Macnaghten broke off to stare through the carriage window at a figure swinging from the ramparts of a building they were just passing. “What the devil…?”

  The king looked, then shouted an order, which was echoed by other voices outside, and the whole procession came to a halt. Shuja squinted through the glass. He blinked at the dead man dangling by his neck from the rope. He sniffed. “Shall we see?” He opened the door and called out. A Pushtoon servant came riding to the carriage on his horse.

  “Your highness?”

  Shah Shuja questioned the man in Pushto: “What’s that hanging from the building? Who is that man? Why is he hanging there?”

  “I will find out, sahib.”

  The king sat back to wait. His mistress pulled away and smoothed her skirts. Dust drifted and danced in the hot air.

  Macnaghten said, “Your highness, I will attend to this.” He reached for the door handle, but the king restrained his hand.

  “Don’t trouble your honorable self. My man looking into it.”

  A knock came on the door—the Pushtoon servant again. He and the king muttered together for a few minutes and then Shah Shuja closed the door and sat back, and the carriage began to move again.

  “Well?” Macnaghten glared.

  The king waved his fingers. “Nothing to worry about.”

  ”The devil! Who was he? I insist on an answer,” Macnaghten hrumphed.

  The king rolled his eyes. “Mr. Macnaghten, bad elements run through this city. Badmash we call them. How you would say it in English? Bandits! Twenty years of ruling by this Barakzai tribe has left the city rotten full with plotters and bandits. Until every plotter has been dealt with, there is no order. That man was working for Dost Mohammed Khan, the pretender your people have in prison—for which I do thank your queen, your governor, etcetera. Never am I ungrateful, but now I must have a free hand to clear out all the nest of mice. I understand this country. You do not.”

  Macnaghten frowned. “Well…” He subsided back into his seat. “I don’t doubt there are a few conspirators still skulking about.”

  “Oh, Mr. Macnaghten, you have no idea. These people are like children. They require the stern hand. Once they understand who is master, they will be good. Until then, believe me, it is—how do you say it?—a hayfield for the Czar. These people will do any mischief for money, and the Czar spends freely, as you know.”

  “The Czar must never—”

  “I understand. I am your servant in every matter concerning our foreign neighbors. So long as I rule, this city is closed to Russians. Closed to the Shah of Persia. Closed to everyone but your queen and her servants. This makes you happy, yes? In return, sir! You must permit me to deal with my home problems in my own way.”

  Macnaghten shrugged. “I don’t give a hang about your home problems. You know our concerns.”

  “I do. We are in agreement. I am very glad of it.” The king fell into a moody silence, staring at his lap. Suddenly something hit the window, leaving a red splash against the glass—a tomato! Shah Shuja’s eyes blazed, and he pounded on the front wall of the carriage compartment, shouting at his driver in Pushto.

  Macnaghten blanched. “No, no,” he pleaded. “Don’t stop here. Let us make the safety of the fortress walls.”

  “Run from my subjects? Are you joking? You Englishmen! This is some troublemaker, I can not permit him to go unpunished! Let one of these rascals get away with it, all his friends will be at it next week. Do you know nothing about kingship? You brought me here to rule, do not tie up my hands.” The king’s face twisted with contempt and rage.

  The carriage had creaked to a halt by this time. Shah Shuja opened the door. The road was lined with city folk, many people deep, but when the king appear
ed, they surged back, muttering and buzzing. Shah Shuja scowled at them. Five of his guards rode up to flank the royal carriage, cantering slightly on their horses, reins in one hand, rifles in the other. All five were Indian sipahis. Unlike the king’s own treacherous countrymen, these men could be trusted for they were paid by the British and were loyal to their salaries.

  The king climbed onto the running board of his carriage. On that ledge, he stood level with his mounted guards, giving him the imposing air so necessary to royal dignity. The buzzing died away. The crowd stared, thousands of eyes trained on the king.

  “Who threw this tomato at my carriage?” the king asked in Pushto.

  His Pushtoon guard repeated the question in a booming tenor.

  People shuffled in place and glanced around to see if anyone would come forward. Shuja surveyed the crowd. In the front row, a surly young man with a hennaed beard caught his eye. As soon as the king looked at him, he looked away. Shuja made his decision. “That one.” He pointed at the man with the dyed beard.

  Two guards wheeled their horses upon the youngster. He wasn’t hard to catch for the crowd hemmed him in. The guards half-carried him to the carriage. When they let him go, his knees buckled. Recovering quickly, he scrambled up, but the guards had dismounted by then, and held him in place by the arms.

  “Give him a beating,” said the king. He climbed back into his carriage but left the door open so that he could watch.

  Macnaghten said nothing. The Indian woman cowered as far away from the door as she had room to cower, her scarf lifted to her mouth. The young man looked up, bewildered now. The guards were pulling his jacket off. “Don’t beat to kill,” said the king. “Twenty or thirty blows should be enough. Teach him a lesson, teach them all. Herald, tell the crowd what they should be learning from today’s lesson. Woe to anyone who tests the king! Announce it.”

  The Pushtoon nodded and broadcast his message in a ringing monotone. “Slaves of his majesty, learn from this man’s fate. Mischief will not be tolerated.”