Companions Of Paradise Part 18

The quilt Yar Mohammad was offering, Nur Rahman knew, was the only one he had.

"The king's clothes were poor," Muns.h.i.+ Sahib went on, "and his beard reached to his waist.

" 'What do you want?' he demanded.

" 'I have come,' replied Muballigh, 'with a message from my own king, whose country lies beyond the forest of thorns.'

" 'Impart your secret quickly then,' snapped the king. 'I have better things to do than listen to useless messages.'

"Muballigh bent toward him. 'True happiness,' he murmured tenderly, 'lies only in the faithful heart.'

" 'Is that all you have to say, O Foolish Messenger?' scoffed the king. 'How little you know! There is no happiness or faith in this kingdom, only treachery of a king's brother, who has stolen everything the king held dear.'

"Tears rolled down his cheeks. 'Leave me,' he wept, 'and take your useless secrets with you.'

"Muballigh did as he was told. Directed by the ragged doorkeeper, he found a dusty road that led out of the city, across a barren plain. As he followed it, a rus.h.i.+ng sound came from above his head, and the ragged bird stood before him once again.

" 'O Messenger,' it asked, 'will you return home, now that your secret message has been wasted on the King of Despair?'

" 'No, Bird,' Muballigh replied sadly. 'That I may only do when the message has been well received.'

"The bird spread its wings. 'If you wish me to carry you over this waterless plain to the next kingdom, you need only tell me your secret.'

"When Muballigh shook his head, the bird flapped away, leaving him alone again.

"And that," the muns.h.i.+ concluded hoa.r.s.ely, "will be enough for today."

AFTER HER muns.h.i.+ and Nur Rahman departed, Mariana stared out of her window.

Caught up with Haji Khan's durood, she had so far given little thought to her muns.h.i.+'s story, but today, aware of how raptly the four men outside her door were listening, she had attended.

But perhaps her teacher was offering all five of them a lesson. After all, he never spoke without a purpose.

Happiness lies only in the faithful heart, he had said. But surely that was not all he had to say. In this dangerous time, it seemed perfectly childish to insist that faith and joy were the same.

All the faith in the world could not provide happiness to this besieged cantonment surrounded by hostile tribesmen, with food enough for only two days, the camels dying, the wounded lying in agony, and the native camp followers falling ill in droves.

And that sad truth did not apply only to the present. Belief in G.o.d had not spared her grieving parents after illness had carried off her two small brothers and her baby sister. Faith might have saved them from madness or despair, but it had certainly not brought them happiness.

She s.h.i.+vered. In just over a year, Saboor would be the same age her precious brother Ambrose had been when he died of typhoid, all shrunken and bald, his flaccid little hand in hers.

She had loved him so, her small, admiring brother who never criticized her, who never told her she was clumsy, or that she talked too loudly. Ambrose had listened, enthralled, to her stories about frogs and fairies. He had smacked his lips when she brought him ripe peaches to eat Tears spilled over her cheeks. This cantonment was not home. Why was she not with the people she had loved the most, Ambrose, her father, Saboor, Ha.s.san?

She wiped her face, remembering Muns.h.i.+ Sahib standing in her tent that afternoon at Butkhak, one day's march from Kabul. His hands folded behind his back, his face intent, he had recited from the Qur'an.

"Thou shalt surely," he had quoted, he had quoted, "travel from stage to stage." "travel from stage to stage."

She had certainly done that-traveling from England to Calcutta, then Lah.o.r.e, and now Kabul, from girlhood to wherever she was now.

What would happen to her at this cold, cheerless stage?

She turned from the window and its harsh, never-changing mountain view. Months earlier, Muns.h.i.+ Sahib had offered her that Qur'anic quotation as an antidote to her dream of a funeral procession. Now he was relating the story of the king's messenger. Since he never spoke idly, those two offerings must contain messages for her, although what they were she could not guess.

NUR RAHMAN sighed as he cleaned Muns.h.i.+ Sahib's oil lamp. How, he wondered, would his dear teacher survive a siege during the bitter Kabul winter?

Villagers from nearby Bibi Mahro had come that morning with enough grain to last the camp for two days, but who knew if or when they would return. If they did not come again very soon, sixteen thousand people would be put on half rations, then quarter rations, while the British sent their men into the countryside on the risky mission of buying food.

For this lovely old man to go without a full stomach in summer would be difficult enough, but in winter it could be deadly. He was already suffering from the cold As he reached sadly for the lamp oil, Nur Rahman remembered something Muns.h.i.+ Sahib had said that afternoon.

Wrapped in his cloak, he had said, telling his story. A dusty city. A dusty city.

Those words rang in the boy's imagination. He smiled. Why had he not seen that he, of all the members of this household, might travel unnoticed among the horde of armed men that now filled the dusty Kohistan Road? How had he failed to recognize that, shuffling behind the disguised Yar Mohammad, he could pa.s.s the King's Garden where the besiegers had begun to gather, then cross the Pul-e-Khishti and enter the roiling, bloodthirsty city?

Tomorrow he would put on his white chaderi. Safely, a few paces behind the tall groom, he would go to the city. There, in the leather bazaar, he would buy his teacher a poshteen poshteen, a long sheepskin cloak to keep out the cold.

But that was not all he would do. He would bring medicinal fruit for Muns.h.i.+ Sahib's cough, and live chickens for the English lady and her family. Later, he would bring more poshteens, one for everyone in the household-even for himself. He would go again and again, for sweet red Kabuli carrots, for onions, for turnips and hot bread, fresh from the bakers, for live goats. It did not matter that the commissariat fort had fallen, and that all the British food stores were stolen.

He had no money, of course, but he had only to ask the English lady. If she and her family ran short of money, he would barter. Their house was full of imported goods that would bring a price in the city.

Later, if necessary, he would steal. After all, he had stolen before. But before it came to that, he would see to the old man's comfort.

He began to sing for the first time in days, a mournful, minor air that filled him with joy. For all that he was trapped in the endangered British cantonment, he had never felt so purposeful, or so happy.

When Yar Mohammad arrived, a worn, cotton-stuffed quilt under one arm, Nur Rahman took him aside.

"As you have given Shafi Sahib your rezai," the dancing boy said quietly, holding out his own tattered quilt, "please take this."

When Yar Mohammad shook his head, the boy smiled crookedly. "I took an unused one from the English lady's family this afternoon. As I am sure you do not approve of borrowing, I will use it myself. And there is something I must ask of you."

November 11, 1841 We hear wonderful things of Paradise," the youngish man with a pockmarked face offered that same afternoon, from the crowd surrounding Shaikh Waliullah's platform.

"And much of what you have been told is nonsense." The Shaikh surveyed his visitors, then returned his penetrating gaze to the man who had spoken. "I suppose, Rahmat, you have been led to believe that Paradise consists of an endless supply of wine and virgins?"

It was a pleasant afternoon. Bright sun illuminated the courtyard wall and fell upon those members of the crowd who had come too late to sit beneath the painted portico where the Shaikh sat, his wrinkled face amused.

Rahmat dropped his eyes. The Shaikh bent toward him, his starched headdress nodding. "Do not be ashamed," he said kindly. "These mistakes are common among our people. But from now on, you must not listen to what ignorant mullahs tell you. Remember, instead, the saying of our Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, who said: 'Paradise is what the eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, nor has ever flashed across the mind of man.' "

He raised an instructive hand. "Keep in mind," he added, lifting his voice, "that the descriptions of Paradise, even those in the Qur'an, are only by way of example. For how else can the indescribable be described? As to those virgins- "The Companions of Paradise," he intoned, he intoned, "are not what you have been told. "are not what you have been told.

"They are the cupbearers of the Infinite.

They will give you to drink from the fountain of Salsabil; They will lead you to the treasure-gardens of the Beloved, And offer you the greeting of 'Peace.'

"That poem offers us something in the way of description," he decreed. "In any case it is better than all that nonsense about drink and women. And now, Saboor," he added, turning to the little boy who shared his platform, "you must go upstairs. Bhaji will want to give you your milk-"

"Look, Lalaji!" The child pointed toward the gate.

A Hindu in a loincloth and an unclean turban had entered the Shaikh's courtyard. He cut an odd figure among the Shaikh's guests with his short spear in one hand, and his jingling whip in the other.

"I am looking for Shaikh Waliullah Sahib," the stranger announced.

THE FOLLOWING morning, several hours before a group of armed strangers arrived at Qamar Haveli and asked politely after the Shaikh's little grandson, a commodious old palanquin was already on its way north to Sialkot. It traveled with an armed escort and a full complement of twelve jogging bearers, four of them carrying the oblong box's long poles on their shoulders, and the rest awaiting their respective turns. A donkey minced along behind, pulling a cart full of bundles, rolled-up quilts, and baskets of pomegranates and blood oranges. Several servants perched on top of the load.

"Stones to my left," droned the sirdar sirdar bearer from his position in front, relaying the conditions of the road to the three men who trotted blindly behind him. "Hole in the road to my right. Bullock cart coming toward us. I am moving to my left." bearer from his position in front, relaying the conditions of the road to the three men who trotted blindly behind him. "Hole in the road to my right. Bullock cart coming toward us. I am moving to my left."

Neither of the sirdar palanquin's occupants was happy.

"But I do not want want to visit my cousins in Sialkot," Saboor wailed as he sat beside Safiya Sultana in the cramped box, his high voice drowning out the bearers' voices. "I want to stay at to visit my cousins in Sialkot," Saboor wailed as he sat beside Safiya Sultana in the cramped box, his high voice drowning out the bearers' voices. "I want to stay at home home!"

"Quiet, Saboor," snapped his great-aunt. "Stop shouting into my ear."

Although she did not say so, Safiya Sultana, too, wished she were still at Qamar Haveli. Leaving her home, even for a short time, inevitably plunged her into aching homesickness. Today she had felt the first pang before they were out of the walled city.

She s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably on the palanquin's pillows, hoping that while she was gone, the cousin she had chosen would care properly for the health of the large Waliullah family and all its servants. Humaira must see to the coughs and fevers among the children and inspect the hand of the cook who had cut himself. Of course she must also go up and down the kitchen stairs each morning, to measure out the spices and fruits to be eaten that day and later to count the hundred-odd rounds of hot bread for each meal. But would she properly supervise the was.h.i.+ng of the clothes?

Safiya sighed. Until she returned there would be no one to tell the children her special instructive stories, or to help the women who arrived unannounced from all parts of the walled city complaining of illnesses, of infertility, or of cruel treatment by their husbands or mothers-in-law.

No one, not even her twin brother, could perform the umls umls, the secrets of the Karakoyia Brotherhood, that she knew. Wali, who enjoyed speedy results, had done the necessary recitations to be able to cure snakebite and scorpion sting by mystical means, and he also knew how to cool fire, but those umls solved only practical problems. Safiya's specialties were the more subtle cures, like the powerful one that quelled envy, one of the greatest evils of family life.

And what would they do if someone went missing? She had never taught her brother how to find a lost person...

She had planned to send Saboor to her niece in Sialkot with one of the family men, but had given up that idea when Saboor had flatly refused to travel without her.

Her presence, however, had not improved his mood.

"Azim and I were playing a new game in the courtyard," he pouted. "Poor Lalaji will have to meet all his guests without me, and-"

"Enough!" she grunted. "Leave me be, Saboor. Open the side and look at the pa.s.sing sights, but do not lean out. And you must close the panel again if there's too much dust."

The sun had beaten down on the moving palanquin's roof since morning, turning it into a long, pillow-filled oven. Safiya mopped her face. With G.o.d's permission they would arrive at her cousin's house in Gujranwala by late afternoon.

She did not look forward to this visit. The last time she had stayed in that large household, her cousin Khalida had looked after her well enough, offering her fine food, excellent fruit, and a comfortable bed, but she had unkindly neglected a maidservant who was clearly suffering from fever, and had gossiped about other family members until Safiya thought her head would burst.

"And as to the girl my dear nephew Shamoun is engaged to," Khalida had cried in her high, penetrating voice, "she let her dupatta dupatta fall from her shoulders to her lap right in front of me. I saw the shape of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with my own eyes. Have you ever heard of such immodesty? Why, the girl might as well be from the lowest of families. If I were the boy's mother, I would have broken the engagement at once." fall from her shoulders to her lap right in front of me. I saw the shape of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with my own eyes. Have you ever heard of such immodesty? Why, the girl might as well be from the lowest of families. If I were the boy's mother, I would have broken the engagement at once."

Safiya sighed. They would have to remain at Khalida's house for at least a fortnight, as it would be unthinkable to stay there only a day or two. But at least in that disorganized household, Saboor would be protected from the Governor of Peshawar's long reach.

As soon as I learn that Saboor is safe, Ha.s.san had written, I will arrange my departure for Kabul. I will arrange my departure for Kabul.

She sighed. That statement had pacified Saboor for the time being.

The child s.h.i.+fted against her, his face to the open side panel. She patted his back, hoping Ha.s.san's plan to rescue his wife had been prompted by more than simple duty.

Ha.s.san's letter had also made it clear that the whole of Afghanistan had now taken up arms against the British, and that one of their senior officers had been murdered.

G.o.d willing, Ha.s.san would not meet with ill fortune on this perilous journey. If he had not forgiven himself for Yusuf Bhatti's death, his danger would increase.

Self-loathing would make a dangerous companion now.

She laid her head back, allowed her eyes to become heavy, and abandoned herself to other thoughts.

It had been two years since the family had learned to their surprise that the future of the Karakoyia Brotherhood rested on Saboor's small shoulders. Until that moment, it had not occurred to any of them that such a thing might happen. It was uncommon for a Sufi Shaikh to be succeeded by one of his relatives, and that unusual circ.u.mstance had already occurred nearly thirty years before, when her twin brother had been made Shaikh after the death of their grandfather, the great Shaikh Abd Dhul-Jalali Wal-Ikram.

Perhaps, with Allah's help, Saboor would grow to be as wise as her grandfather had been.

Saboor's father was another matter. For all his courtly manner, Ha.s.san was a sensible man, and a good manager. As practicality was always in short supply among the dreamers and storytellers of Qamar Haveli, the management of the family's farmlands and fruit gardens had fallen entirely to him.

Safiya had no idea how she would do without her nephew. The thought of her brother trying to manage the family accounts made her shudder.

She opened her eyes. The next Shaikh of the Karakoyia Brotherhood was tugging at her sleeve. "I cannot see anything," he complained. "All I can see is running legs."

"Shut the panel, then," she told him, and closed her eyes again.

She had not always been close to Ha.s.san. Fearing the strong bond between her husband and his twin sister, Ha.s.san's mother for years had kept her little son from his clever, unglamorous aunt. Even after he learned to walk, Mahmuda had kept him to herself, insisting that he remain by her side night and day.

Safiya, of course, had not been blameless, for she had failed to see Mahmuda's desperate loneliness, separated as she was from her own generous, artistic family. Spartan in her own approach to life, Safiya had not understood the taste for lovely things that had been Mahmuda's legacy to Ha.s.san, and perhaps even to Saboor.

It was a pity that Mahmuda had died when Ha.s.san was only nineteen.

Safiya's opportunity to approach her nephew had come when he was four. Called away to attend to her father in his last illness, and suffering herself from recurring fevers, Mahmuda had been prevailed upon to leave her son behind.

After his mother's departure, Ha.s.san had crouched alone in a corner of the sitting room, then wept himself to sleep.

The next morning, Safiya had called the family children together, and announced that she would tell them a story. Pretending not to notice Ha.s.san in his corner, she had launched animatedly into a tale her grandmother had often told her.

The story had taken four mornings to tell. On the second morning, Ha.s.san had crept shyly toward his cousins. On the third morning, he had sat shoulder to shoulder with them, his mouth open, his eyes fixed on Safiya.

He had come to her on the fourth evening.

"Bhaji," he had whispered, lifting her hair away from her ear, as Saboor so often did now, "may I sleep with you tonight?"

A cloud of dust rushed into the palanquin, filling Safiya's lungs. She started up, wheezing. "I told you to close the panel, Saboor," she snapped, flapping her hands in front of her face. "Close it this instant!"

"But what shall we do now, Bhaji?" he asked, after he had banged the panel shut. "What shall we do?"

She smiled into his mournful little face. "Come, Saboor," she intoned, patting the mattress beside her. "Come here and listen to the story of the King's Messenger. It is a long story, and so I cannot tell it all today.

"In a kingdom very far from here..."

A HASTILY dispatched messenger had arrived in time to warn Khalida of her guests' impending arrival. Waiting men had hurried to push open the tall, double doors of her s.p.a.cious house and admit the palanquin and its escort into a broad courtyard containing a fountain and several dusty trees. When Safiya and Saboor were shown into the ladies' quarters, Khalida had offered them shrill cries of welcome.

After lunch two days later, as she and Saboor rested against a pair of bolsters in Khalida's sitting room and the other family ladies snored around them, Safiya began the third part of the story.

"Muballigh," she began, whispering in order not to disturb the sleeping ladies, "left the bitter king's sorrowful country behind him and set off to find another king to receive his message.