Dust on the Paw

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘Ah, at last.’ This must be the secretary; no prince would sound so rude.

  ‘I am sorry to be so late. I was teaching.’

  ‘On the top of a mountain?’

  ‘No, in a laboratory.’ But to explain would have been more exhausting than to climb a mountain. Once he had climbed a hill with Laura; she had surprised him with her agility.

  ‘You have not been keeping me waiting, you understand. You have been keeping His Highness waiting.’

  ‘I am very sorry.’

  By this time the Principal had come in and was standing by the desk, fidgeting with a long melancholy finger at his lips. The gesture confused Wahab still more; he did not see how he could speak even to a prince if he were also to remain silent. Behind him the clerk moaned.

  ‘Well, I shall inform the Prince. Do not go away.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘In this country—’ But the secretary did not finish it. A moment later he said, with such a change of tone, all cordiality now, that Wahab was almost astonished into handing the instrument to the Principal: ‘Here is His Highness to speak with you now.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Wahab.’

  So English the words and voice, Wahab gaped in stricken nostalgia. If he waited a little longer at this street corner Laura would come along. The Principal had to poke him with a finger conscious of its altruism.

  ‘Good morning, Your Highness.’ Wahab spoke in Persian.

  ‘I say,’ said the Prince, again in English. ‘Do you mind if we speak in English? I like to practise as much as I can, and I have reason to believe you are in a similar position.’

  What did that mean? Had those great men, chief mullah and prince, been conspiring against him behind his back? But why should they? Though in his own dreams valiant and important, he knew that in reality he was insignificant.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ he whispered, ‘English would suit me.’

  But it did not suit the Principal, whose second language was French. He believed himself deliberately and cruelly excluded.

  ‘I hope this call out of the blue hasn’t upset you, Mr Wahab. You see, you and I have a mutual acquaintance.’

  Impossible, thought Wahab; he knew no one who frequented palaces.

  ‘Yes, his name is Harold Moffatt,’ said the Prince cheerfully. ‘He’s an Englishman. He teaches at the University here.’

  ‘I have met Mr Moffatt.’

  ‘Like yourself, he is an admirer of Afghanistan.’

  ‘Sir, it is my native country.’

  ‘It is mine too.’

  ‘But it is not Mr Moffatt’s.’

  ‘He speaks our language pretty well.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘He is on our side, Mr Wahab.’

  Wahab smiled sadly and shook his head. ‘He is not on mine, I am afraid.’

  ‘Have you any special reason for thinking that?’

  ‘He said something to me, sir; but really it is not very important.’

  ‘Yes, it is. I want to have a chat with you, if you don’t mind.’

  Wahab blinked. ‘It would be a great honour, sir.’

  ‘Nonsense. It will be a pleasure for us both. I am in my town house. It’s in the Palace grounds. Enter by the side gate near the mosque.’

  Even at the side gate the guards were huge and fierce. ‘I shall be on a bicycle, sir.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Just give your name. I’ll see that you are expected. By the way, I’m assuming you will be along this afternoon. Is that all right?’

  It wasn’t really – it was very inconvenient – but Wahab murmured: ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Good. When does school finish?’

  ‘Twenty past one.’

  ‘I’ll expect you then about two.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘That’s fine, then. There may be someone else coming who is in a position to give you some valuable advice.’

  ‘I should be grateful, sir,’ he said, although he had no idea what kind of advice was meant. As he replaced the telephone he saw on the road a donkey being whacked by a white-bearded old man; some children stood by, jeering. Any one of those, he thought in a fit of pessimism, the donkey, the cruel old man, and the vicious children, was in a position to give him advice; everyone in the world was, for surely he was the stupidest man alive. He had dreamed that because of his endeavours and those of men like him Afghanistan would soon leave all its cruelty, poverty, ignorance, and disease behind; he had dreamed too that Laura would come and help in the flowering of the desert. He too was flogging a donkey, only in his case it was dead.

  He became aware that the Principal’s melancholy brown eyes were gazing into his. He could not resist holding out his hand.

  The Principal took it. The gesture meant nothing. In a day a man might shake hands fifty times; not once would it indicate cordiality; that would be indicated by embracing, and perhaps not even then. The Principal did not feel like embracing Wahab who was obviously plotting to oust him from his position. In a struggle between his own relative, the Minister of Education, and Prince Naim, third son of the King, there was no doubt who would win. The Minister, wisely mindful of his own place, would yield at once.

  ‘I really do not think,’ said the Principal, in a sad defeated voice, ‘that this country will ever be civilized.’

  Then with as much dignity as he could manage he scooted from the room.

  Wahab waited. In another five minutes the bell would ring – No, to be accurate, in another five or six or seven or eight or even twenty minutes the urchin whose job it was would appear downstairs in the hall and strike with a stone brought in from the playground the metal disk suspended from string. That would be the signal that the fourth lesson was over. The pupils would stream out into the sunshine. It was as he imagined them there, laughing, playing, or gravely discussing, that he was able to throw off his own gloom. Yes indeed, his country would be civilized one day. If he did not live to see it his children would; and they would all have blue eyes.

  The clerk groaned on the sofa and pressed his hand against his head. Someone, he gasped, had driven a nail into his brain.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Wahab. ‘You have a headache.’ He felt in his pocket and took out the small bottle of aspirins he always carried. He spilled two into his palm and did not let them fall in dismay at seeing how brown by comparison with their whiteness that palm was. No, his hand remained steady. ‘Please take these,’ he said, and forced them into the clerk’s mouth. ‘Swallow them quickly, or they will have an unpleasant taste. Here, drink some water.’ He got the water out of the large earthenware jar that stood leaking in a corner. The cup was a beer can to which a tin handle had been soldered. Many others had drunk from it. Besides, the water itself would have given an Englishman sickness and diarrhoea in less than an hour. Here were microbes in millions. Nevertheless the war against them would in the end be won.

  ‘Keep your eyes closed for a little while,’ he told the clerk. ‘The pain will soon go.’

  ‘I shall die.’

  ‘Do not be foolish.’ Wahab was scornful. Since his return from England he had made up his mind never again to humour this readiness on the part of his countrymen to succumb to despair and tears. Nevertheless, as he looked down at the clerk’s dark unhappy face, with its three days’ growth of beard (this was forgivable, razor blades were dear, and in the hovel which a clerk’s salary could afford hot water would be hard to come by) his own breast heaved with compassion. His and this clerk’s ancestors, in the past wars against Moffatt’s imperialistic Britain, had slaughtered many thousands of those arrogant usurpers. Well, such massacres of history were regrettable, but still the insolent Mr Moffatt must not be allowed to forget them. What ought to remind him daily was, not the violence, but rather the brave forbearance of the present-day Afghan. Next time he met Moffatt he was going to stand up to him, not with any hysterical resentment but with the calmness of a man strong in the confidence that God, if there was a God, was on his
side. After all, what right had Moffatt to object to his marrying Laura? Was not the fat fair-haired Englishman married to a woman whose skin was yellow and whose eyes were narrower than a Mongol’s? (At this point Wahab turned so that the sunlight shone on his hand; once again he saw that his skin could easily be taken for that of a European, nicely sunburned; indeed, he had seen many Europeans much darker.) But as he kept turning his wrist his sneer of triumph suddenly changed to a frown of dismay. Here he was, in the way that British history books described as characteristic of his nation, making a cowardly attack on a woman because he felt himself incapable of tackling her husband. He had no reason to despise Mrs Moffatt; rather he had reason to admire and be grateful to her. In any case how ridiculous for him, whose skin was brown, wishing to marry a woman whose skin was pink, and at the same time having contempt for another woman whose skin was yellow. Surely, if any man should, he should regard the colour of a person’s skin as of supreme unimportance. Yet was it not true that, though shuddering at the risks involved, he intended to walk about the bazaars of Kabul and show off his wife’s fair skin, as a man from Mazar might flaunt the carpet that he and his family had taken months to make?

  The door opened and the Principal stumbled in. He too looked more confident. Downstairs the boy banged the gong again. Pupils streamed back into the classrooms.

  Wahab started to leave. The Principal called, ‘No more microbes of syphilis in the meantime, Mr Wahab, please.’

  ‘That was a lesson for the Twelfth Class,’ replied Wahab. ‘Now I have the Tenth Class. I shall demonstrate to them the principle of Archimedes.’

  The Principal nodded, glanced at the telephone, sighed, and shook his head. He had been thinking that perhaps Mojedaji would consider this principle too, whatever it was, as unfit for Afghan youth. But really, if every lesson Wahab taught had to be so approved, by telephone, life would become impossible. Not only was Mojedaji often hard to find, but it might be that, when found, he was in the Prime Minister’s office, and it was not likely he would be pleased to be interrupted there by such a query. Besides, sometimes when one lifted the telephone one heard the conversation of merchants in the bazaar, discussing the prices, perhaps, of karakul skins. One would wait politely until they had finished, and then two others, from somewhere else, would start talking angrily about German electric pumps. One needed a great deal of patience.

  Eleven

  CYCLING into Kabul, on his way to the interview with Prince Naim, Wahab found himself escorted by a flotilla of Twelfth Class pupils. Unlike him they were all daring and expert cyclists, and took risks that made him nervous; front wheels kept grazing back ones. All the time too they chattered, asking questions whose purpose might have been sincere desire for information but might too have been to make fun of him. On this occasion, laughing like conspirators, they kept dangerously close to him and asked him when he thought Afghanistan would be able to manufacture her own hydrogen bombs.

  ‘Never,’ he replied, and wondered wistfully if he could therefore regard himself as morally superior to Moffatt, whose country made and exploded such bombs. He thought not.

  ‘But, sir, no one will ever consider us civilized if we cannot.’

  ‘I would say, Majid, the converse is true. We will never be considered civilized if we do make such bombs.’

  ‘But, sir, no one will listen to us if we have no bomb.’

  ‘On the contrary. Everyone will listen. They will understand we do not speak out of fear and hatred, but rather out of wisdom and love.’

  For some reason they thought that very funny and shrieked with laughter. Yet at the time they were approaching the narrow bridge over the Kabul, which was the hub of the city’s traffic. The policeman on his stone dais in the centre gave the impression he was up there to be out of danger. He kept stubbornly making the gestures he thought appropriate and blowing his whistle, but no one dared heed him. All – cyclists, bus-drivers, motorists, donkey and camel drivers, pedestrians, and ghoddies – entered into the fray with wits and voices lively, and though collisions were frequent and altercations more so, still most people got safely over. Sometimes Wahab got off and wheeled his bicycle, but today those conquistadors, with hands on each other’s shoulders, whizzed him around with them and even kept up their hilarious discussion of the hydrogen bomb.

  ‘You see, sir, it is like having fireworks. We shall be like the little boy who has none.’

  ‘I cannot agree, Mohammed Ali, that a hydrogen bomb can be compared to a firework. It is estimated that one alone could kill a million people, that is more than twice the population of Kabul.’

  ‘But are there not already too many people in the world, sir? You told us yourself that overpopulation is also a problem facing mankind.’

  ‘Yes, Rasouf, but I do not think that the solution is to kill millions with hydrogen bombs.’

  ‘How do you know, sir? Perhaps that is the best solution.’

  ‘It would be the quickest, sir.’

  ‘I know you are joking, boys.’ Wahab was sweating. In another minute they would turn into the avenue where the side gate into the Palace grounds was situated. He had not been given the leisure to prepare himself, to consider who this other person the Prince had mentioned might be. Still, he had been discussing some of the most urgent contemporary problems with Afghan youth.

  ‘Sir,’ said one called Farouq, a mischievous boy with close-cut hair and enormous whites to his eyes, ‘when you were in England, why did you not marry a wife?’

  ‘They are very cheap and beautiful there,’ said another.

  Wahab felt brave and strong and adventurous. He had indeed gone forth like a conqueror to the West and had returned with one of its beautiful fair-skinned women as a prize.

  ‘Here you must save up for ten years.’

  ‘It is a barbarous custom,’ said Wahab. ‘But do not despair. It will soon be abolished, like the shaddry itself.’

  ‘There are no women here, sir, only shuttlecocks!’

  ‘Moving tents!’

  ‘Clothes pegs!’

  ‘Please do not be so disrespectful of Afghan women, boys. They do not want to walk about in these disgraceful shaddries.’

  ‘Oh sir, they do. It gives the ugly ones the same chance as the beautiful ones.’

  Again they laughed. Wahab was terrified. They were bright, intelligent, and eager; but they were also irresponsible. Of course they were still boys, but he had found that most Afghan men carried their irresponsibility with them into manhood, and even into old age. It was easier to laugh than to face up to grim difficulties, and certainly if a man laughed when humiliated it saved him from having to weep.

  He had cycled past the side gate. A guard with glittering helmet and bayonet had been standing there.

  Now he stopped at a corner where there was a pharmacy.

  ‘I must go in here,’ he muttered, ‘for aspirin.’

  ‘We shall wait for you, sir.’

  ‘You forget, Farouq, we live in different directions. Please go home. Think. Keep thinking.’

  ‘What shall we think about, sir?’

  But they were cycling away, without waiting for his answer. He heard one cry: ‘We shall think about girls,’ and for a moment he was bitterly shocked, thinking them lecherous. Then he smiled, because of course for a young man to think about a young girl, even in shaddried Afghanistan, was not lechery. No, no, it was only the surge of the divine life force, irresistible and beautiful, which one day would people their country with children as hopeful as they would be healthy.

  He turned and cycled slowly back to the gate.

  Though it was a side gate it still had the royal crest worked on it in large gilt signs, and the guard’s boots shone like his helmet.

  ‘My name is Abdul Wahab. I have been summoned by Prince Naim. I understand he has advised you that I was coming?’

  He might have been a bird chirping for all the heed the guard paid him, so he began to push his bicycle along the avenue towards the policema
n he could see lurking under a tree. He felt sure he would be stopped this time, and he was right. The big tough-faced policeman shouted so fiercely that Wahab’s heart jumped. Once, years ago, Wahab had had an encounter with the Kabul police which had left him with a permanent fear of them. It was an occasion of holiday in the city and the King was on his way to the stadium to see a game of buz-kashi. To make sure no assassins got near enough to shoot him, as his father had been shot, all the streets which his car took were closed by the police; and as the maximum amount of inconvenience was thereby caused to the ordinary population the police, liking the taste of tyranny, kept the streets closed long after the King’s car had passed. Wahab had innocently turned the wrong way into one of those empty prohibited streets. Instantly half a dozen burly policemen had rushed on him, flung him off his bicycle, had shaken him so that his spectacles dropped off and were broken, had kicked his machine, and then, with hundreds watching in silence, had taken the valves out of both his tires. As he had pushed his bicycle away with its flat tires, hardly able to see for myopia and fright, he had heard the policemen behind him roaring with laughter. When he had got home, after walking for two miles, he had found his bowels loose for days afterwards. Now, this afternoon, accosted by this thug in policeman’s uniform, he felt loose again and was afraid he might have a most demeaning accident. But behold, when he stammered his name, he was astounded to find the big official brute smiling and saluting. Overwhelmed by another kind of terror altogether, Wahab hurried on: this time he was afraid because he himself had for a moment felt the taste of privilege and power and had found it delightful. It was, he saw, quite possible that he too, if he ever rose to eminence, might not use his opportunities for the betterment of his country but rather for his own. He imagined himself a prince’s friend, with a villa by the river and a country estate full of melons and vines. There he and Laura, with their blue-eyed children, would live in luxury, attended by ill-paid servants.

  He had to stop, lean his bicycle against a tree, and wipe his spectacles with his handkerchief. The act was symbolical. He was wiping away not only the steam of sweat but also that vision of temptation. His fingers trembled so much that they could scarcely put his glasses on again; they seemed to have forgotten where his ears were.