The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

  “What sort of banter,” Burnes inquired. “What exactly did they say?”

  “Oh, that I can’t tell you,” Whitman shrugged. “I lack the language. But the mood was unmistakable.”

  “Shame on you,” Burnes said without courtesy. “Take some trouble with the language, young man.” His severity took the whole company aback, and Burnes tried to soften his scolding. “We are living in a land not our own,” he continued. “We should show a decent regard and learn the local tongue. It would not be asking too much. If we wish to civilize this country, we should at the very least conduct ourselves as civilized guests!”

  “Guests!” Colonel Oliver exclaimed in amazement. “I hardly see myself as a guest here, Burnes. You show the native too much deference.”

  “Oh dear,” Lady Baldwin lamented. “We’re all on edge tonight. Perhaps the stars are misaligned, or the moon. Can the moon be misaligned? Let us take our pudding in the drawing room. I hope you won’t think it too informal to retire as one single party, ladies and gentlemen together—we live in a wild country, after all!”

  She led a procession back to the drawing room, where scented candles now added perfume and color to the lamplight. Gecko lizards could be seen, clinging to the screens over the windows. Servants brought out individual bowls of rice pudding with warm milk and cinnamon. There was cognac too, but Rupert made do with green tea.

  “Well,” said Oliver, “If we are making headway quelling these troublemakers—and I think we are—we have young Oxley to thank, in part. I dare say, he’s brought in one of the worst of them. Congratulations, Mr. Oxley. I mean that fellow from Charikar, of course—what a bad sort! Charikar, was it not?”

  “Char Bagh, actually. A tiny village further north. Quite a bit further, sir—closer to Baghlan, actually.” The praise brought color to Rupert’s cheeks and confusion to his heart. He felt the eyes of the whole room upon him. He dared to look directly at Amanda and found her looking right back at him, her green eyes sweet with admiration. He saw opportunity there. He quelled his hopes. Dignity, he thought. Leave the married Englishwomen alone, Burnes had said, and he must comply, for he was a man of parts now. His conduct reflected on others—on his mentor Mr. Burnes, for example. And yet, how he yearned to sneak his fingers onto Amanda’s lap, where her own small white hand nestled.

  To his dismay, Lady Baldwin said, “Can’t we take up a more cheerful topic?”

  Rupert could think of no topic more cheerful than his own glory, but he could not be the one to keep himself on stage. Someone else must do it. And then Havelock blurted the worst possible thing: “I hear that fellow is a sort of holy man to the Afghans.”

  “Where do you get that?” Rupert demanded. Surely, he had captured a dangerous rebel mastermind, not some ha’penny holy man!

  “It’s servant’s buzz.” Captain Havelock replied.

  “And how do you come to hear servant’s buzz?” Macnaghten inquired.

  Havelock’s modest head sank between his shoulders. “I have a little Farsi, and I do make a point of chatting with the cleaning people. They take our reputation into the country, you know, so I try to imprint a good impression.”

  Indignation swelled in Rupert’s jealous heart. He knew who the blackguard meant by “cleaning people” and how he did his “imprinting.” Shameless hussies! Rupert could afford his lofty scorn, for he had broken himself of those beastly habits. Not once since Char Bagh had he so much as touched any of the barracks whores. A man who hopes to command others must first command himself. “Supposing he is a holy man, what of it?”

  “Exactly,” Oliver chimed in. “What of it? Many a fakir has a knife hidden beneath his cloak!”

  “In fact,” said Macnaghten, “the czar seeks out just such holy beggars as his agents. Why not? They roam the landscape freely. What better couriers in a country like this? I’ll hear of no exemptions for holy men. If this one has nothing to hide, let him say so. His silence speaks volumes.”

  “Very possibly,” said Burnes, “And yet I should like to know more about this man. If he’s really a mystic—well…I take an interest in that sort of thing.”

  Rupert flinched. If his mentor abandoned him, all the pleasure he had taken from Colonel Oliver’s praise and the Envoy’s endorsement turned to ash. Burnes mattered more than all the others put together. Guilty doubts about his own achievement began to squiggle in his heart. He was relieved to hear Harriet Baldwin intervene.

  “Amanda dear, we must distract the men from politics. Will you play something?”

  Mrs. Hartley nodded, demure dimples appearing above her broad chin. She gathered her skirts and made her way to a battered harpsichord in the corner, for no pianos had been carried over the Hindu Kush yet, but Amanda’s somewhat stubby fingers drew a serviceable sonata out of this humbler instrument.

  Suddenly a frantic banging sounded at the outer gate. Amanda stopped playing and cocked her head. The gate was distant and the sound faint, but a raw tension surfaced so instantly, it must have been simmering down there all along.

  A servant came in with a folded note. Lady Baldwin reached for it, but the servant took it to Amanda Hartley.

  “What is it?” Lady Sale inquired anxiously. No one attended to her. All eyes were fixed on Amanda, who had risen for the note and now, having read its contents, fumbled for a chair. Oxley, alive to every fluctuation in this woman’s state, sprang to catch her and lower her to a sofa.

  “What is it, dear?” The affectionate word escaped him unintended, but nobody marked it, for all sympathies strained so strongly toward Amanda that Oxley’s tenderness only gave voice to a unanimous solicitude in the room.

  “It’s James,” she stammered. “My God, it’s James this time!“

  Macnaghten retrieved the note and read it with darkening eyes. “Madame! My deepest, deepest condolences!”

  Oxley snatched and scanned the note. His life given for the cause he served…cowardly attack on the road from Kohistan…Major Hartley and two others felled…bodies brought back for burial…Fine gentleman… unlikely to see his likes again…. The civility of General Burnett’s language did nothing to alleviate the brutality of his report: Amanda’s husband was dead.

  He met her stricken gaze. While the others fussed about her person, he poured her a glass of sherry at the sideboard. She took the glass, her lips forming noiseless words of gratitude. He bowed, and with their two heads close, he murmured, “Your servant, dearest Amanda—forever.”

  Even later, he could not fault himself for his utterance. It was no attempt to thrust himself into the sudden vacancy in her life. He spoke from affection and unmitigated concern. He could never fault himself for his passion.

  Nor did she, for she said out loud. “Rupert, you are kind.” Then she struggled to her feet. “I must go home and see to this.”

  “Home! In this state?” Lady Sale protested. “After all our talk? I won’t allow it. You will stay here tonight. Mrs. Baldwin has beds enough, I’m sure. I will stay with you.”

  “Let’s not lose our heads,” Macnaghten broke in huffily. “The city streets are secure. We’ll escort Mrs. Hartley home. The men who did this thing will be hunted down, but let’s not forget this mischief happened in the hills. Here in Kabul, all is well. You shall see.”

  But Amanda shocked them all by shrieking at the envoy: “All is well? All is well?” Her shriek shattered all pretense of normalcy. Suddenly, Rupert saw the whole company as savage animals incongruously clad in frocks and topcoats—and not as wolves and lions, but as rabbits and antelopes and mice—as prey. “Because the Governor must have it so?” Amanda screamed. “All is well? Will you never stop saying that? Progress, progress, every day? My God! No one tells the truth anymore! Not here.”

  “Amanda—”

  “I should hold my tongue? No, I will not hold my tongue. I won’t be still. No! Sergeant Finnegan stabbed in the face—all is well! Dr. Farley’s servant killed—all is well! My husband…all is well! ALL IS WELL!”

  H
arriet Baldwin took her arm. “Now, now,” she whispered. Amanda shook her off, but Colonel Baldwin himself restrained her. “Dry your tears, dear. You need to rest,” said Harriet. “Come lie down. Don’t fret, this house is well-protected. Lady Sales will stay with you tonight. Whatever needs doing can wait till morning.”

  And so the ladies clustered together, and so the Baldwin household rallied to comfort Amanda, but the dinner party was ruined and the guests had to find their own way out.

  32

  On their fifth day with the hat merchant, the men of Char Bagh suffered a setback: little Karim went missing. No one noticed at first, because no one kept track of the boy. He did what he wanted dawn to dusk. Once or twice Ghulam Dastagir asked if anyone had seen him and someone said oh, he’s around, he’ll turn up.

  But night fell, the healer sent out for kebabs, and still Karim’s hungry little face had not popped up. Ghulam Dastagir took a stroll down the lane, casually asking strangers if they’d seen his rascal. Some said yes, but none could remember when or where, although one storekeeper claimed he had spotted the lad playing knucklebones with a bunch of bad seeds and another vaguely recollected seeing him wrestling some bulky city boy down by the pumpwell, but was that yesterday or today? He couldn’t recall.

  The kebabs arrived, wrapped in hot bread and smelling of coriander and smoke. Ghulam Dastagir returned to the shop. As usual, some half dozen men had come by to eat with the generous healer. Most were there to meet his guests, for they took an interest in the Sufi path and they had read Turbulence of Love and felt the spiritual longing it provoked; now they hungered to meet the poet’s scribe, hoping to feel the master’s glow second-hand. Gathered around a dinner cloth, they plucked at morsels of meat, elicited tales about the great mystic, clucked about his abduction, cursed the Engrayzee, and shared reports of other rumored abductions: girls lured into the foreigners’ compound, never to be seen again—frightful. Frightful. One name came up again and again: Boornus. . Al-Iskandar Boornus —the worst of them all, people said: a sort of Engrayzee vizier. A frightful glutton for virgins. Had a taste for little boys too, so people said.

  Ghulam Dastagir went outside to scan the lane again. When he came back, he met Ibrahim’s gaze but shook his head and reclaimed his spot in the circle. The dinner guests were now discussing how an ordinary man could get into the palace. The old king used to host a grievance day, they said: anyone could come to court and present a petition; but this new bastard? Not a chance!

  “He’s afraid someone will run a sword through him!”

  “He doesn’t show his face much.”

  “The Engrayzee won’t let him. There’s something wrong with his face.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard. It’s not a human face. He has the snout of a wolf.”

  “Teeth out to here!”

  “Allah preserve us!”

  After the visitors departed, Ghulam Dastagir slapped the wall. “That damn fool of a boy!” he raged. “Where could he have gone to?”

  The healer tried to sooth him. “He’s made new friends. He went home with one of them and found a better dinner, that’s all. It got late, his friend’s people kept him for the night. I would do the same, wouldn’t you? Your son will come home tomorrow morning, inshallah. Who would harm a boy? Allah will guard Karim-jan, never fear.”

  Like he guarded my poor Ahmad? Ibrahim thought when he heard these words. And then he felt sickened by the bitterness that surged up inside him. Was he blaming God now? If so, he was truly lost!

  The healer had a house somewhere in the city and went home to it every night, leaving his shop to his guests. Tonight, he mouthed the usual courtesies as he made his usual preparations for departure: he wanted the men of Char Bagh to consider this store as their own. He was honored to give them a home and a headquarters. He should be thanking them, actually: their presence kept away the brutish thieves who infested this bazaar at night—

  The stricken look on Ghulam Dastagir’s face warned him of his error. He backtracked hastily. Lately the thuggery had dropped considerably—why, the bazaar was practically as safe as a caravanserai these days. He saw himself out, stammering these kindly lies. The men bolted the doors behind him.

  Seven candles were still burning, a profligate indulgence, but Ibrahim snuffed six of them. they sat for a while with their knees drawn up, lost in private thoughts. Ghulam Dastagir broke the silence finally. “Where have you drifted, philosopher?”

  “Nowhere. Just into idle thoughts, my friend.”

  “What thoughts? Share them, Malik-sahib? The night gets so lonesome.”

  “I was wishing I could be a better Muslim,” Ibrahim confessed.

  “Quit worrying,” snapped his traveling companion. “Whatever you’ve done, God will forgive you. You’re a good enough Muslim.”

  “Good enough isn’t…good enough,” Ibrahim sighed.

  Ghulam Dastagir poked a straw into the melted wax pooled around the candle wick. “Yes,” he murmured. “We all know how you feel about that. Maybe that’s why the men choose you as malik. You’re so earnest about all this. Why don’t you go easy on yourself, though, Hajji? You say your prayers, you keep the fast. After you die, you’ll go to heaven. You’re assured of it more than most. More than me.”

  “There’s more to being a Muslim than praying and fasting.”

  “No, there isn’t. That’s all there is, Ibrahim. Everyone falls short sometimes, but we do the best we can, you more than most. And yet you gloom about, complaining that you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough. If that’s what you think of yourself, what must you think of the rest of us? We sense your attitude, Malik-sahib.” He was picking an argument to keep his mind off Karim.

  “I’m not judging anyone,” said Ibrahim. “But I see your point.” What he saw, however, was how pointless it was to explain himself to this lunk. Only the malang understood. The loneliness seethed in his breast.

  Ghulam Dastagir would not let the quarrel go. “I’ll tell you what ant your problem is, Hajji. You want to go to heaven before you die. That’s not our lot as slaves of God. Allah commands us to live. He’ll decide when to take us. If we rescue the malang, good. If we fail, we submit to His will and go on living, it’s the only way. Go on living and doing the best we can. There’s no shortcut to heaven.” This wasn’t about the malang. He was ruminating about Karim, of course, and how he’d cope if he had lost the boy. Easy for him to talk: his loss was purely hypothetical at this point. Karim would almost surely come back in the morning. Ahmad was dead forever.

  Ghulam Dastagir clambered to his feet and rolled out his prayer mat. Ibrahim joined him and they began their ritual, standing side by side. Since this was the last namaz of the night, they recited the words silently. Nothing disturbed the perfect stillness except the rustle of clothing as the men moved from one position to another.

  Ibrahim’s anxiety about Karim and his sorrow for Ahmad ebbed to the background like a constant stomach ache. In the stillness, he sensed a voice in his mind, a nuance of sensation so faint he couldn’t tell if it was real or imagined. Sometimes, when he was a little boy playing in the fields at dusk, his family called him home from a rooftop. At first, his ear could not discriminate between the distant human voice and the rumble of the river, the hum of the wind through the leaves—and yet something always made him stop and cock his head, because a voice imparts a flavor unlike any other to the noise of nature: the flavor of meaning. And when he did finally separate a voice from all the other rustle and bustle, what came into focus was never just sound but always words: Ibrahiiiiim…the voice called. Come home…

  And now, amidst the syllables automatically sounding in his deepest mind, he sensed that same faint flavor of meaning, a sensibility not his own, calling to him like a voice from some distant rooftop: Ibrahim … Come hoooome … Surely this was God. Surely he was sensing the call of Allah amongst the thickets of Quranic syllables. The Loving One! The Beloved! His attention went chasing after that hint of divinity, chasing
and searching, but God was too quick for him, as always, eluded him as always. Slowly the syllables turned into mere sound again, he drifted back down to the disappointment of another shallow night laced with human trouble—

  And then small fists started beating on the door and Karim’s voice came piping through the crack. “Papa? Let me in. Hey, it’s cold out here!”

  Ghulam Dastagir slid the bolt back, snatched the door open, and grabbed his son by the ear. “Son of an accursed father! Bastard son of a Goddamned accursed father!” he yelled, dragging the boy over the sill.

  Karim clung to his father’s forearm, trying to lift himself up to relieve the pulling on his ear. “What’d I do? Let me go! Wakh!”

  “I’ll wakh you!” Ghulam Dastagir roared. “Where the hell have you been? Your uncle here was worried sick!”

  “I went spying like you said to do. I found out about the palace!”

  Ghulam Dastagir paused, Karim’s ear still clamped between his fingers. “You what?”

  “Forgive him,” Ibrahim pleaded, “just this once,” tugged at the raging father’s sleeve. “What was that you just said, boy? You learned what?”

  “I was doing what Papa told me!” the boy hollered, smarting at the injustice. “Go find out stuff, he said, so I did! And now he’s hurting me. It isn’t fair!”

  His father let him go. “Grown men don’t know a damn thing about the palace. What could you know? Don’t lie to us, Karim!”

  “Some of the fellows told me. It was Sakhi. You know the one. He follows women around the bazaar. I went with him today, Papa. You should have seen this one woman—oh, what an ankle! Sakhi was funny! ‘Pretty-lady-dear, show me your foot! Show me your pretty ankle.’ We were laughing so hard—”

  “Never mind about pretty-lady and her ankles,” growled his father. Nothing on this trip had been more unsettling than the women. They were everywhere in the city and there was no telling whose women they were—covered from head to foot, to be sure, but a man knew what was moving under those pleated garments. “Shut up about the women! Tell us about the palace—if you have anything to tell.”