by Tamim Ansary
“Start a fight over what?”
“Sorkhab is planning to take more water from the river. If I let them, our fields will shrivel and our children will starve, and that will be my fault. I don’t know what to do, Malang-jan. They are putting the whole decision in my hands and they will certainly blame me if things go wrong—as they will.”
Abruptly the malang began to sing. He let go of his knees and leaned back to let his chest expand. His voice sounded like two voices singing in harmony.
This creature with a thousand heads
grows a thousand more when you’re not looking,
grows a hundred thousand heads
for each one harvested.
When I ask my hundred-thousand-headed friend
Where are you from? Who sent you here?
My Friend replies with tongues of grass
I descended from the sky.
I erupted from your heart.
Grieving dreamers by the river
know what flows to heaven through these seas.
The love that brims from every wound
is me, and every wound a kiss,
and every kiss a memory of that first intoxication,
just you and me and me and you,
the night the great dome was colored blue.
Ibrahim lost all sense of the world as he listened, felt himself drowning in a stream of sound. When the singing stopped, he had no idea what the malang had just sung, but he was thrilled.
“Did you write it down?” the malang demanded breathlessly. “What did I say?”
“I didn’t have a pen,” Ibrahim confessed humbly.
“Next time, scratch in the soil with a stick,” the malang commanded. “If it’s dark, if you have neither stick nor soil, open a vein, Malik! Use your blood to write on stones if you must. Now, go home and recite namaz. Be with your family. In the morning, bring the men back, let’s complete the work.”
“Sheikh-sahib,” Ibrahim choked out. The time had come to speak about Khadija. “I have one question.”
“The answer is yes,” the malang cut in.
“But the question—”
“Last week,” the Malang interrupted again, “when I told you what land I wanted, you argued with me. Your friend said I had reasons, but you doubted me. Ibrahim!”
“My friend was so quick to give in to you because he didn’t want to give up any land. Ghulam Dastagir accepted your decision out of greed,” Ibrahim said.
“You know his reasons. Good. Have you plumbed your own reasons?” Then suddenly the mystic added, “I came to this village to meet one person.”
“One person—?” Was the Sheikh about to anoint him as his acolyte?
“It wasn’t Ghulam Dastagir,” said the malang, “It wasn’t Ghulam Haidar. It was none of those fellows. If they benefit from my presence, those men, Allah be praised. But I came here because my Beloved whispered in my ear and guided my footsteps. I confided as much to your blessed boy when I arrived.”
“Well, he did report—but I thought you meant—”
“What exactly did he say? Think back.”
Ibrahim bit his lip. “That you were on your way to meet your bride.”
The malang nodded solemnly. “My bride is here.”
“Oh,” said Ibrahim. So this had all been foreseen. Grief lapped inside him but there was no turning back. By relinquishing her forever he would exalt them both. Grieving dreamers by the river know what flows to heaven through these seas.
“My brother who was malik before my time—”
“Our Prophet tells us to care for widows. You have done your part, Ibrahim. Now it’s time to lay down your burden and let me take over.” The malang set a hand as heavy as a haunch of lamb on Ibrahim’s shoulder. Ibrahim looked into the malang’s large gray eyes and saw himself reflected in those mirrors.
“I should go,” he murmured. “Tomorrow, I will bring you a new turban.”
That night, he told his wife quietly, “I proposed the marriage. Malang-sahib agreed. Tell Khadija. We’ll plan how to announce the news.”
Khadija served dinner that night without meeting his eyes. He couldn’t tell if Soraya had talked to her yet. Men from other compounds were visiting—kinfolk all, but still, with outsiders about, the women were staying in the shadows. He longed to sit with Khadija and explore how she felt about the news and what it would mean. He wanted to reassure her, in case she had heard about the cave: he would build her a compound, even if the malang didn’t want one. He would muster all his cousins. He would work on it with his own hands. It didn’t matter if the rest of the village joined in or not. He would never let Khadija live in a cave. He wanted her to know this, but how could he tell her anything if they could not sit side by side and talk? And in that crowded compound, they could do no such thing. How would it look if he pulled her aside for a private conversation when visitors were about? What scandal it would raise!
* * *
The malang’s hut was empty. He was already up in the hole the men had dug the day before. He waved and boomed a greeting. His unkempt hair looked moist, and his hands were covered with soil. Had he been working all night? The men didn’t know. They climbed up to his level and stood there, shuffling sheepishly. The malang gazed over their ranks like a king inspecting his troops. “Alhamd-ul-illah,” he said finally. “You have all pledged to help me, but today you must take turns because I extended our tunnel during the night and it’s so tight in there that only two men can work at one time. You and you—” He pointed to Ibrahim and Ghulam Dastagir. “Go first.”
Frowning but obedient, these two men followed the malang through the mouth of the cave single file. Inside, the malang had enlarged the tunnel into a room just big enough for the three of them to stand side by side. “Start at the very back,” the malang instructed. “The tools are there.” He retired to the mouth of the hole, and his body partly blocked out the light, so that the men had to feel their way into the tunnel blindly.
When they reached the back, they found it surprisingly muddy. At that moment, a notion began to dawn on Ibrahim, but he said nothing.
“Dig,” the malang barked out. “I’ve worked all night, it’s your turn now, Allah be praised. Don’t bother with the sides, just keep tunneling in. Go deeper into the mountain, boys, deeper. Deeper! Deeper into the heart of the mountain!”
Ibrahim’s shoulder pressed up against Dastagir’s. They could not swing their picks in a space this tight for fearing of hitting each other, but the soil was soft enough to dig out with hand trowels. The men said nothing to each other but didn’t have to. The cave smelled of water. They both knew now. They knew the malang had chosen them to witness and complete a miracle. They plunged their tools into the soft soil as easily as plunging spoons into lard. They were scooping the mud out with bare fingers now. After a time it was no longer mud, but muddy water. Soon after that, the back of the cave was oozing moisture so abundantly, they were standing in a growing pool. The malang moved out of the doorway and in the shaft of light that shone through the opening, the men could see a trickle of clean, siltless water bubbling out of the hole into which they were still reaching mud-smeared arms.
There would be no battle with Sorkhab, after all, no need for it. Char Bagh had a kahrez of its own, a spring that would pour abundantly out of the mountain, water enough for all their wants, water they could collect in deep wells all year long and distribute throughout the village as needed—a fountain from the “worthless mountainside” the village of Char Bagh had just bestowed upon their dear malang.
Khadija would have a dowry, after all, and her dowry would be life itself: this wet abundance.
21
In mid-July, Kabul welcomed another large convoy from India. It brought several dozen more wives and a surprising number of unmarried women—sisters, maids, second-cousins and the like. By this time, Rupert had found his stride here in the frontier. In the early morning, he often climbed the hills near Cantonments and
took in the view. Sometimes, of an afternoon, he roamed the Grand Bazaar, thrilling to the sense of storybook adventure all around him. But if he didn’t want to brave the public streets, he never had to. The British garrisons, compounds, and cantonments formed a complete world in themselves. There was plenty of work to be done in there, and the work was fulfilling enough in its way; but there was also polo to be played in the afternoons, dinner with pals, cards after dinner, and sometimes—if he was lucky—invitations to social evenings hosted by one of the officers’ wives. Had it not been for the loneliness that never left him, Rupert might almost have described life in Kabul as…fun.
The new convoy set off a particular flurry of tea parties and dinners. One day, Colonel Johnson’s wife stopped Rupert in the yard and told him she was going to stage an actual ball at her husband’s mansion east of cantonments one week hence. “Only quality invited,” she confided. “No bumbling sergeants stepping on their partners’ toes! Will you come, Lieutenant?”
Rupert bowed, delighted to know that he was considered quality—and rightly so: he could certainly be trusted in a cotillion.
“Amanda Hartley will be there,” Mrs. Johnson added. “Do you know her?” Then, (strangely enough) she went on to say, “Her husband has just been dispatched to Kandahar. He’s got papers to deliver to General Nott.”
Rupert studied Mrs. Johnson for a moment, trying to puzzle out what she was up to. A journey to Kandahar and back could not be done in less than ten days; on the night of the ball, therefore, Amanda would be, as barracks lingo had it, a “field widow.” Now why did Mrs. Johnson feel compelled to tell him this? Or was she merely passing along a message from…Amanda?
All that afternoon, Rupert banged about the barracks as restlessly as a lovesick hound. Sergeant Hudson twinkled knowingly, mistaking Rupert’s agitation for the ordinary symptoms of a man with unspent needs. From the first week, he had been urging Oxley to relieve the pressure he must feel with the native girl who drew his bath; now, he pressed that option upon him again. “You pays into the collection, sir: you mought’s well sample the goods.”
Rupert had to admit he had noticed the little trollop. She crept into his room with such a coquettish show of hesitance every other day, and she always took her time filling his bath and laying out his towels and his soap. She liked to play the flirt, pulling her scarf over her mouth, hiding all but her eyes, and pausing at the door to squeak out little sounds in her own tongue—God only knew what she was saying! On this day, tentatively, he asked her to stay. She didn’t speak English, but she seemed to understand and she lingered bashfully, looking at the floor while he undressed. He climbed awkwardly into his bath and asked her to rub his back with soap and afterwards to dry him. She obeyed willingly enough. He didn’t know how to ask for more, but she guessed what he wanted and lay down of her own accord and remained unnervingly still as he mounted her. Afterward, just as he had been warned, she kept repeating “Baksheesh. Baksheesh.” Hudson had assured him that the man who brought her to Cantonments each day was well paid from the collection the oafish sergeant took up around the barracks, but “baksheesh” was money the girl kept for herself, so Rupert paid the poor creature willingly.
Pretty though she was, he felt disgusted with himself after the act, perhaps for mixing his oils with those of another race, although none of the other men seemed much troubled about this. Then again, Rupert suffered twinges of self-loathing even after bedding English trollops. Yet what could a man do? In his younger days, Rupert had succumbed to onanism, not knowing that it could drive a man blind. The day he learned about the terrible risk the filthy practice posed, he also realized that his eyesight had indeed been growing weaker! He vowed to reform, but the animal urge overwhelmed him again and again, despite the danger. At last, some older companions escorted him to his first bawdy house and Rupert was saved, but it was a stopgap medical measure at best. He longed to establish a real romantic connection with a woman closer to his own social standing. He thought he had found such a one in Lady Lydia Ashton, but romancing her was what led to all his troubles, even though it was she who invited his advances. Romancing her was the reason he now found himself in Afghanistan. He no longer dwelt on his hopeless longing for Lydia, no longer thought of her at all, but the longings themselves remained: he had transferred them to Amanda now, who was just as hopeless as an object of desire, but much closer.
The Friday set for the ball arrived at last. That evening Oxley rode with several of his fellow officers to the Johnsons’ compound, which lay beyond the neighborhood of the Qizilbash tribesmen, outside the city proper, in an area marked by wheat fields and apricot orchards. The fields were interlaced with trickles of water, which the autumn rains would transform into rushing brooks, but autumn was months away, and the land was pleasantly dry that night. A slight breeze blowing down from the slopes bore a warm chaff of weed-scented pollen. The men led their horses into the yard and gave them to servants to stable. They themselves proceeded into the commodious house and made their way over blood-red Turcoman carpets, through rooms furnished with varnished cherry wood furniture hauled up from India in wagons (nothing so fine was made locally), arriving at last in a stone-tiled “ballroom” lit by a chandelier whose hundred candles shed a warm unflickering light through twice that many glittering bits of cut crystal.
Men stood near the food-laden tables at the end of the room, sipping their chota pegs and nibbling shelled pomegranate seeds from heaping bowls. They conversed in loud voices for the benefit of any ladies within earshot, about military matters, native customs, hunting—anything to make themselves appear seasoned and settled and fearless. The old sweats carried it off, but most of the rookies only managed to sound conceited. Rupert held his tongue, hoping silence would give him an air of strength. He tried to keep his belly sucked in, for it did tend to bulge slightly over his belt. There was nothing he could do about the bulge of his brown eyes behind his round spectacles, but he hoped his strong chin and thick corn-colored hair would counteract any impression of inadequacy his weak eyes might give.
The ladies sat on chairs arrayed along the walls, clad in gorgeous gowns and frozen into postures that must have been arduous to maintain. Some looked like they were sitting for portraits. Those who had been in Kabul for some time conversed easily amongst themselves, but the new ones held their poses, and though they did not turn their heads, any gentlemen passing by could feel their attention turning, as a needle turns to follow a magnet, and any gentleman approaching them could feel the growing tension of their expectation. Clearly, the Fishing Fleet had arrived in Kabul.
Oxley should have risen to the excitement himself. Was this not precisely what he had been hoping for? English women of his own station, unattached and available? Not for marriage, of course, but fellows in the barracks said a man could find prospects among the widows. Even as he approached the row of females, however, he caught sight of Amanda, and all of his enthusiasm for the Fishing Fleet vanished. Amanda’s husband was in Kandahar—he had not forgotten, but the knowledge rushed through him now with tidal force. And she was gazing right back at him! Dressed in a gown of green silk, she looked lighter than summer itself. None of the others could compare. He tasted again the memory of her lips brushing over his in the gorge that wonderful night. Surely that gesture had meant something beyond the moment. What had she said to him, there in the darkness? You were heroic, sir!
His shadow fell across her knees and she looked up. “Mr. Oxley! What a pleasure to see you. You have made yourself scarce lately. Tell me, are those heartless commanding officers of yours working you to the very bone, then?”
“Oh, it is awful! You have no idea,” he laughed. “What refreshment may I fetch you, m’lady?”
“Your company is refreshment enough,” she smiled. “Tell me: what news from home? Any letters recently?”
“Not recently.” The confession gave him a twinge of genuine sorrow. “They’ve forgotten all about me back there, I’m afraid. This is my entire w
orld now.” He opened his arms to include the room, by implication all of Cantonments, all of Kabul.
“Oh, I’m sure they haven’t forgotten you at all,” she assured him. “I’m sure they are still telling stories about your heroism in the gorge that night. And I’m sure they’ll be singing about you the moment another opportunity for heroism arises. You know what faith I have in you.” She bathed him with a smile so luminous it made him blush. It was then that he realized he was entirely and helplessly in love with Amanda Hartley, a most distressing fact. And she loved him too, he could see it in her eyes, hear it in her words. Such a useless fact. Distressing even, because there was nothing to be done about it. Ah, the two of them: Tristan and Isolde, or whatever the devil their names were—he never remember which was the woman and which the man. Doomed to a lifetime of unsated yearning. Unless…into his head sprang an image of himself consoling Amanda after the sad news of her husband’s demise on the dangerous road from Kandahar…
“Do you know Lieutenant Oxley?” Amanda was speaking to her neighbor, a proper memsahib, all shoulders and meaty bosom. “He escorted us from Peshawar. You should have seen him how he stood up these most forbidding tribesmen who burst in upon us, waving rifles—oh! Without his protection, we would all have been massacred, right there. I’m sure you’ve heard the story.”
The matron beamed at him, and Oxley bowed. “Doing my duty,” he murmured.
“Do you hear him? Modesty is his best quality. I hope you will ask me to dance once the ball begins.” He detected a hint of a smile tugging at Amanda’s lips, a deliciously furtive message. “I hear Mrs. Johnson has rounded up something of an orchestra.” He strained for the meaning behind her words. Was dancing the least of what they would do together on this night? Was that her secret message?
