The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

  “At least, with the Engrayzee, you can sign a treaty. No one can sign a treaty with Chaos. Do you know why I tell you this?”

  “I don’t ask, Wazir-sahib. You honor me by your confidence.”

  “Well spoken, Scribe. But I have my reasons and I would have you know them. In days to come, men will question my deeds, I want at least one man to understand my true motives. You will be that man.”

  “You can speak freely before me, sahib. I’m a nobody.”

  “It’s your best trait. You won’t betray me, because you have no ambition—although I should check on that while we’re on the subject: you don’t want to be king, do you?”

  “No sahib, I just want to liberate my malang.”

  “And you will. You’ll do it, Scribe, because you’re mine. God willing, so long as you pledge unwavering loyalty to me, your malang is saved. I need you by my side. I can’t share my thinking with the chieftains. Chaos is already tickling their chins, you see. Bloody chaos, whispering to each of them, you could be king, you could be king, why not you?”

  “Ten dervishes can share one blanket, but two kings can’t share a country.”

  “Good one, Scribe. You know your way around words.”

  “That one, your majesty, was coined by Sa’di.”

  “He’s good too. Pick up your pen. We have work to do.”

  41

  Ibrahim was filled with misgivings as he watched Ghulam Dastagir ride away, man and horse diminishing to a speck and then vanishing into the distance. Would he ever see his friend again? Ibrahim had never felt close to the man and yet already missed him and feared for his safety. Thunderous rain fell in the days that followed, and snow must have fallen in the passes. Men had no business traveling in such weather, much less in mountains like the ones south of Kabul, where Ghulam Dastagir was riding now. To make matters worse, the prince was often gone on important business, and without his protective presence, Ibrahim felt insecure among all the Pushtoon lords and warriors. Fortunately, one of the prince’s nephews took a friendly interest in Ibrahim. Unfortunately, this boy Sultan Jan was so young his beard had not even reached its full length yet. It was this soft-bearded boy who came to Ibrahim in the courtyard one day. “Wazir-sahib wants you to meet him in Kabul. He left directions. Can you read his handwriting?”

  “Of course,” said Ibrahim. The prince’s unsigned note gave detailed directions to a building in one of Kabul’s more crowded neighborhoods—a squalid area. The note told him to come on horseback, alone, and to make sure no one followed him.

  Ibrahim saddled a horse and rode east. Weeks had passed since he had last seen the city, and those weeks had wrought tremendous changes. Kabul now thrummed with an atmosphere of bloodthirsty celebration. Everywhere he looked, he saw glowing faces. But everywhere, he saw beaten people too, skulking along timidly, ready to bolt into any alley, frightened to be outdoors, hurrying to get to shelter. Here and there, whole rows of empty stores showed blank faces to the world: they had been looted and their owners had fled. Sometimes, Ibrahim saw toothless beggars wearing robes of fur.

  Recently, snow had blanketed the city; then the sun had melted some of that snow; then temperatures had plunged again, freezing the mud. Now, Ibrahim had to pick his way slowly lest his horse slip in an icy rut.

  His way led right past the Grand Bazaar, so he stopped to visit Hakim Shamsuddin, but the hat merchant was not in. “He went home,” said a neighboring hat and turban merchant. “It was last week, and he hasn’t been back. Too much fighting, he said. He’s going to lie low till all this blows over. Abdul Haq is gone too—he returned to Wardak.”

  “What about you?” Ibrahim asked. “Why are you still here?”

  “What can a poor man do?” the other groaned. “I have babes at home. Food is expensive, and firewood too! It’s so cold, wood is so dear! The woodcutters won’t come into the city anymore. They’re frightened. But it’s worst for the tailors, I admit. The tailors have it worst. Trying to sew with freezing fingers.”

  “You’re here because you need the money.”

  “I have no other livelihood, sir. No land, nothing else. If I can’t feed my children, I might as well be in my grave. Alas, not many people shop for hats these days. If only I were selling guns. Did you want a hat, by any chance? A man can always use an extra hat.”

  “Not this man,” Ibrahim apologized. “I’m a traveler and I have just this one head. May Allah be with you, merchant. I have business I must get to.”

  “Goodbye,” said the other. “May you keep that one head.”

  Ibrahim followed the prince’s directions to a narrow street he had never seen before. When he knocked at the designated door, a girl answered—a beautiful girl about the age Soraya had been when he married her. She had a scarf and nothing else covering her face. Shocked by the girl’s bold display and embarrassed for her modesty, Ibrahim glanced about for male relatives, fearing that one might burst out of hiding at any moment and attack him for violating the privacy of this household, but he saw no one behind the girl. Ibrahim showed her Prince Akbar’s note.

  “I know who you are,” said the girl. “I was told to give you the message that this is not the place. New instructions have been left for you. Wait here, I’ll get them.” She came back shortly with a sheet of paper folded in thirds and then folded in thirds the other way and sealed with wax. It bore no stamp. When Ibrahim broke the seal and read the note, he found it unsigned, like the other one. It gave directions to a house in another neighborhood, closer to the Lion’s Doorway, the notch between two rocky ridges on the southwestern side of the city. It told him to commit the contents of the note to memory and burn it. Ibrahim asked the girl where he might find a fire, and she led him indoors to a coal-burning stove. He was astounded that the men of this household would allow such a girl to attend a stranger alone, inside the house, in a private room where a dishonorable man might do anything to her. She opened a hatch on the barrel of the stove and Ibrahim tossed both notes onto the coals. He watched until the paper burned to ash and the wax boiled away to smoke. Then he mounted his horse, and headed for the Lion’s Doorway.

  At the new compound, a man opened the door. “What is your name?”

  “Ibrahim the scribe.”

  “You’re expected.” No sooner had he stepped inside the compound, then a girl came to him and the doorkeeper. She held her chador in her teeth to keep it in front of her face, but the cloth was so thin, he could see that she too was young and lovely. “This is the scribe,” the gatekeeper growled. “Take him upstairs.”

  The girl led Ibrahim up a flight of stairs twisting through a narrow stairwell. On the way, Ibrahim noted how shabby the house looked. The chalky paint was wearing off and had rubbed away to bare clay in some places. Through a window at the first landing, he saw a small courtyard below. Three armed men sat on a bench next to a frozen pool. Among the shrubs lining the pool, he saw one stark rosebush. He kept following the girl up and up, his blood simmering at the sight of her buttocks moving under the heavy cloth of her dress, sensations that filled him with both shame and pleasure.

  At the top, she stepped aside to let him into a tiny room. A narrow window facing south let in only a trickle of gray daylight. The only man in the room rose to greet Ibrahim. It was Wazir Akbar Khan. He opened his arms and embraced Ibrahim as close friends might do, as brothers do. “My scribe! The only man I trust! I’m glad you found me. I have a special job for you today. You’re not to write down anything until I give the signal, but listen and remember the whole time. Memorize every word that’s spoken.”

  “By who?” Ibrahim asked uneasily. “Aren’t we alone?”

  “Not for long. But don’t worry, I have armed men downstairs. Sit next to the window there. If treachery breaks out, shout down to the courtyard and my men will come up. Beyond that, just listen and remember until I tell you to write.”

  They sat down and waited silently, each man immersed in his own thoughts. Soon, a knock sounded on the door, and
Akbar said, “Enter.”

  A balding Engrayzee man came in, looking awkward and out of place in Afghan tribal clothes. He glanced from Wazir Akbar to Ibrahim and back again, then said something to Akbar in his native language, and Akbar smiled courteously.

  “Mister Macnaghten.” Akbar stood up and shook hands with the foreigner.

  Three more men crowded in behind the first one. One was Engrayzee, another Afghan. The last man seemed to be Kashmiri, judging by his accent. All four wore nondescript Afghan pantaloons, shirts, and turbans. Except for the pink faces of the Englishmen, they would have gone unnoticed on the streets, and if they swathed their faces in their turbans in the style of the southwestern Pushtoons whose region was prone to savage dust-storms, no one would have looked at them twice. The Afghan said, “You were to come alone, Akbar Khan.”

  “This is my scribe.” the prince replied. He might as well have said, this is my arm. This is my hat. This is my earlobe. He meant: I am alone.

  The conference began. At first, the men spoke in the Engrayzee language, which Akbar Khan seemed to know. Only a few weeks ago, this would have dazzled Ibrahim, but nothing about the prince astonished him anymore. After a few minutes of the foreign tongue, they switched to Farsi. Akbar gave Ibrahim a subtle nod that meant: start listening.

  The Afghan member of the other party said, “The Engrayzee knows you will keep your word, Akbar Khan, but he’s giving up a great deal, and he doesn’t see that you are offering very much at all.”

  “I am offering him his life,” Akbar’s long fingers stroked his beard into a sharp point. “I’ll let him decide if that is worth a lot or a little.”

  “His life isn’t yours to give,” the Afghan countered.

  “Under the circumstances, how can he assume it isn’t?”

  The men went back to conversing in the Engrayzee language..

  Suddenly the Kashmiri demanded, “How can we be certain the Ghilzai will obey you?”

  “Certainty belongs only to God,” Akbar stated.

  “That’s a poor reply,” the Kashmiri complained. “Lord Macnaghten is trying very honestly to reach an agreement with you. Do you wish to make a treaty with him or not?”

  “Tell me again what he is offering. Be specific, please.”

  The Kashmiri conferred with the two foreigners in a whisper, then turned back to Akbar. “All British forces to leave Kabul by summer. You to receive a subsidy of 400,000 rupias a year for the next ten years. Shah Shuja remains on the throne, but with you as his prime minister. Shuja’s army comes under your command. That is his offer. Tell me again what you are offering. Be specific, please.”

  “A written guarantee to let him and his people get out of this country alive. After you British depart, the court in Kabul to receive no ambassadors from the King of Russia. I believe that’s a very generous offer.”

  “If it’s yours to offer,” said the Kashmiri. “Do you speak for the Ghilzai?”

  “I have an envoy in the south at this very moment.”

  “When will he return and what will he bring back?”

  “We must be patient. You know how the passes are in winter. ”

  The room lapsed into tense silence. Suddenly Macnaghten spoke to Akbar in heavily-accented Farsi. “Yes or no I cannot say today. I must ask others, my people.”

  He whispered to his interpreter who now finished the Englishman’s statement. “He expects a promise of safe passage from both Durrani and Ghilzai chiefs. In the meantime, he asks you not to discuss today’s conversation outside this room. If you do, all offers are void. Shah Shuja won’t tolerate every squalid commoner in Kabul knowing that he has been stripped of power. He has his pride, and you must observe his pride. Defer to him in public as if he’s still king. Leave him that shred of dignity. Only on that basis will he cede power. Does Mr. Macnaghten have your word, Akbar Khan?”

  “I can be trusted. Did I not arrange the privacy we enjoy at this moment? But you must be discreet as well.”

  “Mr. Macnaghten’s discretion can be assumed,” the Kashmiri declared stiffly. “He is an English gentleman.”

  “Mr. Macnaghten is one man out of four. The rest of you must pledge as well. And how can I be certain Macnaghten’s people will keep their word? Once they are out of the country, how can I be certain they will pay the subsidy? Payments were promised to the Ghilzais as well, but those were cut off when it suited the English gentlemen. And what if Shah Shuja clings to his throne? What if he denies that you ever made the offer we’ve just discussed?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I want your promise in writing, in Farsi. Write it down in English too, if you insist, and I will sign that too—but I must have it in my own language as well, to guard against double meanings and slippery interpretations. My scribe will write it according to your dictation and make two copies, one for each of us to keep. We will both sign both copies. Agreed?”

  “So long as no one sees your document except you,” said Macnaghten’s interpreter.

  “And you, of course,” said Akbar.

  The two sides glared at each other.

  Then the prince produced writing material from a cabinet, and Ibrahim wrote down the agreement dictated to him, but every word made him cringe. He glanced once or twice at the prince, but Akbar looked blandly undisturbed as if he sold out to foreigners every day. The documents were signed, sealed in wax, and stamped with both the Englishman’s ring and Akbar’s. Then Akbar put one copy of the agreement in his own vest pocket. “You gentlemen must leave first,” he instructed. “We’ll leave later. We must not be seen together or in close proximity.”

  After the English delegation departed, Akbar tapped the pocket where he was keeping the paper and shook his head at Ibrahim. “Not a word about this to anyone,” he warned.

  “I am yours to command,” said, Ibrahim, disheartened by the scene he had witnessed.

  The prince saw his look. “Don’t judge me, Scribe. It’s not how it looks,” he said.

  At the Barakzai fort, Ibrahim said nothing about the events of the day, but that night he couldn’t sleep. Pondering the prince’s secret dealings with the foreigners wore out his brain. His mind drifted back to their exchange about the Ghilzai chieftains. The Engrayzee expected to get through the southern passes peacefully. Akbar’s negotiation rested on that point. But that point rested on his envoys, at least one of whom was surely, even now, telling the Ghilzai tribesmen to load their guns and get ready, because the British were coming.

  42

  On a Thursday morning, Sultan Jan woke Ibrahim out of a restless sleep. “Wash your face and say your prayers. Wazir-sahib wants you in the city again.”

  “What’s this about?” Ibrahim rolled out of his bedding groggily.

  “Wazir-sahib is meeting the lord of the Engrayzees to sign a treaty. This is it, Scribe. The Engrayzee are surrendering today. They’re going to leave. After this, it will only be a matter of how soon.”

  “Does this mean Ghulam Dastagir has come back? Did he bring the guarantees? When did he arrive?”

  “He’s not back. No one has heard from him. He no longer matters. The Ghilzai have sent some chieftains to speak for them. And Mir Musjidee’s son has come from the north. Plus, the entire council of Afghan chieftains will be at the meeting, the highest lords in the land. Best of all, Akbar and Macnaghten will talk face to face, as monarch to monarch.”

  A sizable retinue of soldiers rode out of the fort that morning and streamed toward Kabul. A crowd of commoners had gathered at the Ghazni Gate. Silently, they watched the Pushtoon lords entering the city. It was a cold day, but a bright one. The sun shone on glittering fields of snow, and the horses' hooves crunched as if on crackers.

  The men made their way to an ice-encrusted field between the Kabul River and the foot of Behmaru Hill. The two delegations had agreed on this spot because it was halfway between their respective hilltop strongholds. Neither side could fire into the meeting from the heights it held.

&nbs
p; Both delegations arrived with troops of soldiers but left their armed men behind. Only political officials marched across the open terrain toward the meeting point in the middle of the field. As they marched, all the men held their hands in the air to show that they were carrying no guns, knives, or swords.

  A balding, huffing red-faced man led the British delegation. Ibrahim recognized Macnaghten who had bargained with Prince Akbar in the secret meeting. Ten men accompanied him, and they included the second Englishman from that secret meeting.

  On the Afghan side, Prince Akbar led the way, flanked by Sultan Jan and followed by Ibrahim. The Afghan delegation included the twelve chieftains of the High Council in Kabul, plus another dozen chieftains from various regions. Most of these men had one or two retainers with them, making the Afghan delegation three times the size of the British one.

  The two sides stopped about five paces apart. Macnaghten clasped his hands behind his back, thrust his chest out like a small rooster, and strutted a few paces to the left and right. Then he turned to face Akbar, who was merely waiting.

  “Well, well, Akbar Khan. I see you have all your … lords here,” the Englishman said in Farsi. Fleeting pauses punctuated his speech because in Farsi he sometimes had to search for a word. “I hope this … delegation, has power to sign a … treaty. Any agreement between us this day must … bind, bind all people of Afghanistan.”

  “Macnaghten-sahib, we have come to this meeting in good faith.” Akbar’s voice was metal clanging on metal. “We have come here believing that when you English make a promise, you keep it. When you declare something to be true, your word can be trusted.”

  “And we have all the same hopes of you and your people,” said Macnaghten. “Now. Here are my … terms. In the first place, we require that a military … escort, protect our march from Kabul to Peshawar next summer. This escort must include … soldiers, from the army of every khan present here, and I insist that the chieftains themselves must … accompany—”