Companions Of Paradise Part 7

"To me," he had added rapturously, exchanging a glance with Alexander Burnes, "the beauties of the countryside are nothing compared to the pleasures of the city."

As they walked home afterward, Uncle Adrian had shaken his head. "Johnson may enjoy living in the city, but he is a fool to keep Shah Shuja's cash there."

In a moment the bra.s.s gong would sound, announcing lunch. Mariana straightened her back and returned to her desk. She snapped open her writing box and withdrew a letter she had written a week before.

It was probably full of mistakes, for she had not asked her teacher to correct it, but the time had come to send it on its way, and then to take the consequences.

I hope you have recovered fully from your wounds, she had written. I ask your forgiveness for my past mistakes. Nothing would make me happier than to know that there is still a place for me at Qamar Haveli. I ask your forgiveness for my past mistakes. Nothing would make me happier than to know that there is still a place for me at Qamar Haveli.

I long to see you and your family once again, and to embrace my dear Saboor.

She had not had the courage to write more. With her first letter greeted by silence, she probably should not have written at all.

If it were meant for an English person, this letter would travel by official courier. Moving swiftly by relay in a pack of official dispatches, it would reach Lah.o.r.e within ten days. But this letter, whose graceful, right-to-left Urdu script was intended only for native eyes, must be carried on foot.

She took in a long breath. It was now or not at all. She put her head round the door and shouted for Dittoo.

"Call Ghulam Ali," she ordered.

She emptied her cash box onto her bed, then, fearing the pile of coins would not be enough, she added to it two gold rings that had once belonged to her grandmother.

"Make certain you give it into Ha.s.san Sahib's own hands," she said a few moments later.

"I do not need the rings," the courier declared brusquely, waving a sunburned hand. "I know how this work is done. Will you need a reply to your letter?" he added, almost kindly, his pink eyelids narrowing in the bright light from her window.

She felt herself blush. "Yes, if possible."

She watched him tuck the letter into his clothes and leave her.

A moment later, the gong rang.

What would happen now, she wondered, as she shut her door and marched down the tiled corridor toward the dining room.

Only Muns.h.i.+ Sahib could tell her. From the poetry he chose for her lessons, it was clear her teacher often read her mind. If he read hers so easily, then surely he could read Ha.s.san's, for what barrier was distance to a soul in flight, especially that of her muns.h.i.+, the great interpreter of dreams, and also, it seemed, of thoughts?

But she had never found the courage to ask him if Ha.s.san had read her first letter, if he longed for her as he waited for sleep, if he loved her still.

"And now, Bibi," her teacher said, two hours later, in his instructive voice, "read me your translation from yesterday."

Before she began to read, Mariana looked warily toward the dining room window.

Her muns.h.i.+'s visits had lost some of their l.u.s.ter in recent months, for he no longer came alone from his small room near the servants' quarters. Instead, he was accompanied on that short, daily journey by the disturbing young Afghan asylum-seeker, whose three days of asylum had since lengthened to five months.

Each day they approached the bungalow together, the boy clinging to the old man like a well-meaning limpet, gripping his ancient elbow, frowning with concern as he pointed out loose stones along the pathway.

In the beginning, Mariana had waited impatiently for Nur Rahman's three days to end. Unnerved by the pollution on his face, wondering how the muns.h.i.+ could bear his presence, she had looked away whenever the boy hurried past her in the garden or on the avenue, carrying plates of fruit or pots of hot tea to the old man's room.

Her servants had appeared to feel the same. Dittoo had pretended the boy did not exist. Ghulam Ali had spat onto the ground at Nur Rahman's approach. Tall Yar Mohammad, whose former place at Muns.h.i.+ Sahib's side had been usurped, watched the boy with unreadable eyes.

On his third afternoon, when he accompanied Muns.h.i.+ Sahib to her lesson, Mariana had thought Nur Rahman had come to say good-bye.

"I hope all will be well with you after you leave here," she had offered when he greeted her as usual, a hand over his heart.

"I am sure you will find your way," she added, when he raised his head and stared into her face, his fringed eyes filled with curiosity and hope.

Her teacher had raised a wrinkled hand. "There is no need for farewells, Bibi," he had said gently. "Nur Rahman will be staying here."

"But Muns.h.i.+ Sahib," she had protested, horrified at this change of plan, "how can he stay? My aunt is bound to notice him. When she does, she will have him thrown onto the road-" She s.h.i.+fted from Farsi to Urdu and lowered her voice. "I do not want him here."

"He will look after me," her teacher had decreed. "He will sleep outside my door," he added serenely, as if that somehow made all the difference.

Today, as always, the two had arrived together. As always, the boy stayed behind, watching as the muns.h.i.+ entered by the front door, as befitting his station as a learned native, and stopped to remove his shoes before entering the dining room.

Muns.h.i.+ Sahib's real name was Mohammad Shafiuddin. Long ago in Bangalore, he had taught native languages to Mariana's uncle and a number of other young British officers. When Uncle Adrian had rediscovered him twenty years later, walking peacefully along the Mall in Simla, a thousand miles north of the city where they had been teacher and student, he had engaged the old man on the spot to teach Mariana Urdu and Persian, the court languages of northern India.

Uncle Adrian had not known then, and still did not know, that Muns.h.i.+ Sahib was a dear friend of Shaikh Waliullah.

"I rocked to and fro," Mariana recited slowly, her forefinger following the words on the paper, Mariana recited slowly, her forefinger following the words on the paper, "that the child, my heart, might become still. "that the child, my heart, might become still.

"A child sleeps when one sways the cradle.

Give my heart-babe milk, relieve us from its weeping, O thou, that helpest every moment a hundred helpless like me.

The heart's home, first to last, is Thy City of Union: How long wilt Thou keep in exile this forlorn heart?"

How well those lines described her feelings Her teacher nodded. "Very good. You have captured the soul's pain at its separation from the divine."

Mariana smoothed the paper on the table's surface, searching for the proper words to ask him, but nothing came.

If her teacher recognized how desperately she wanted to know Ha.s.san's feelings, he gave no sign of it. Instead, he rocked on his heels beside her, his hands still behind his back, his gaze far away.

She gathered her courage. "Muns.h.i.+ Sahib," she began as she had done several times before, then faltered, tongue-tied once again, when he turned his mild gaze upon her.

Why was this so difficult? Why did the subject of her feelings cover her with such shame and confusion? What prevented her from asking him such a simple question?

"And now, Bibi," he said, taking a paper from his clothes and laying it on the table, "here is tomorrow's poem."

She glanced distractedly at the page, covered with lines of Persian handwriting. She must discover the truth about Ha.s.san from someone else.

Another mystic would know-someone as advanced as Muns.h.i.+ Sahib or Shaikh Waliullah would know at once what Ha.s.san was thinking. She would have no reason to feel shame in front of a stranger whom she would never see again "I wonder, Muns.h.i.+ Sahib," she said casually, fingering the new page, "if there are any Followers of the Path like yourself here in Kabul."

"Yes, of course there are, Bibi." He pointed to the paper. "And now, this poem concerns-"

"And are they as wise as you?" Please let them be even wiser. Please let them be even wiser. She looked up into his face, hoping. She looked up into his face, hoping.

He withdrew his hand. "There have been learned men in Kabul for more than a thousand years, Bibi," he replied. "Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi himself was born to the north of here more than six hundred years ago. He would have remained here all his life had Balkh not been laid waste by Genghis Khan."

"But do they understand men's hearts as you do, Muns.h.i.+ Sahib?" she persisted.

"Ah, Bibi," he sighed, "no man can encompa.s.s all that is to be known. The wisest among us can hold no more than a mustard seed's weight of knowledge in his heart. But nevertheless, each Follower of the Path has his own particular understanding, and each person's understanding has value."

"Who are these men?"

Her teacher looked over her head, his eyes far away. "If you will give me time, I will find many pract.i.tioners hereabouts, but as of now, I know only one, for he came here long ago, from India."

"He is a Follower of the Path?"

The old man nodded. "He is called Haji Khan. As a young man, he traveled from his home in Bengal to Arabia, to perform the great pilgrimage that is required of all Muslims. On his third day in Mecca, he dreamed that he must travel to Kabul and remain there for the rest of his life. He was obliged to forget his family in Bengal. He was not permitted to work. His only duties were to pray, and to remember G.o.d."

Mariana stared. "But however did he survive in a strange city, knowing no one?"

"People saw who and what he was. They brought him food. Someone gave him a room to live in, and brought him warm clothes and fuel when winter came. The people gave him the t.i.tle of Haji, for he had been no ordinary pilgrim, and they added Khan to his name out of respect. He has lived in the same room near the Char Chatta Bazaar for twenty-six years."

Mariana nodded seriously. "Will you take me," she said carefully, "to meet Haji Khan?"

Her teacher nodded. "That can be arranged."

But the walled city was forbidden to her. You must not go there You must not go there, her uncle had decreed.

"But does he ever leave the city?" she asked him sharply. "Does he ever visit another place?"

Coughing erupted outside the drawing room window. In Nur Rahman's opinion, the coughing announced, her lesson was over.

Muns.h.i.+ Sahib smiled at the sound. "We will speak of Haji Khan another time. And now," he asked, "may I have your permission to depart?"

There was no point in trying to make him stay. Mariana nodded disappointedly, then watched her teacher step into the pa.s.sageway and push his bare feet into a pair of worn leather slippers.

"Come, dear Father," she heard Nur Rahman say, as they rounded the corner of the bungalow. "You must rest now, before the asr asr prayer. You spend so much of the night on your prayer mat" prayer. You spend so much of the night on your prayer mat"

September 23, 1841 Iwant an exact copy of this gown," Mariana announced, holding up her favorite sprigged cotton to the man who squatted on a sheet of cloth in the verandah, a pair of scissors beside him. "And make sure, Ravi, that you do not cut the sleeves too tight this time. I can hardly get into the pink muslin you made for me last month."

"Yes, Memsahib." The tailor gestured with a long finger at the bolt of white cotton in front of him, "And are you adding any decoration? Any lace?"

As Mariana was about to reply, Nur Rahman flitted around the side of the house, humming a strange-sounding melody to himself. He paused in front of the verandah, his eyes on the cloth.

Seeing him there, she remembered something she had noticed the previous day-a woman walking behind a man with a loaded donkey, covered from head to foot in a billowing white cloak that fell over her shoulders and back from a fitted cap, while a long veil in front dropped to her waist, pierced by a latticework peephole.

Of course.

She could not travel openly to the city, but with stealth, many things were possible.

She bent and handed her sprigged cotton gown to the tailor. "No lace," she said hastily, then hurried down the front step and into the garden, gesturing for Nur Rahman to wait.

"That cloth could be used for an Afghan woman's chaderi chaderi, could it not?" she inquired.

He nodded.

She glanced over her shoulder. "If I have one made for myself," she half whispered, "will you take me into the city?"

His eyes widened. "Oh, no, Khanum, never! If I am discovered in Kabul, I will be killed."

Of course he would be killed. That was what his panah had been about.

She felt her shoulders droop. She should have known that if she wanted to enter Kabul, she would have to go alone.

But she would would do it, even if it meant searching among the alleyways of the city, perhaps without success, for Haji Khan. do it, even if it meant searching among the alleyways of the city, perhaps without success, for Haji Khan.

As she turned away from the boy, he brightened. "But, Khanum," he whispered, "if you will make another chaderi for me, I will take you there."

He sighed dramatically, his arms spread out. "In spite of its danger for me, I have missed my Kabul. It will do my heart good to see it again, even if I must do so as a woman."

THE NEXT morning, weighed down by the woolen riding habit she wore beneath her newly st.i.tched chaderi, Mariana struggled to balance a bundle of twigs on her head as she hurried after Nur Rahman, avoiding the loaded pack animals of a nomad kafila that took up most of the roadway.

She peered through her latticework peephole. In front of her, Nur Rahman covered the ground swiftly, his white skirts billowing around his legs.

Her own yards of cotton had trapped the morning's heat, causing her hair to plaster itself to her neck and face. Her twigs dug painfully into her scalp; her arm ached from holding them steady. In the half-mile they had covered, she had dropped them twice, once into the path of an oncoming donkey, once among a herd of goats.

"You must must carry something," the boy had insisted as he retied her kindling into a neat bundle for the second time. "Without a good reason, why would a woman like you be walking along the road? And you should hold your chaderi closed in front, so people do not see those heavy black clothes you are wearing." carry something," the boy had insisted as he retied her kindling into a neat bundle for the second time. "Without a good reason, why would a woman like you be walking along the road? And you should hold your chaderi closed in front, so people do not see those heavy black clothes you are wearing."

For all its present discomfort, this visit to the city had not been difficult to manage. Mariana had ridden out after breakfast as usual, accompanied by Yar Mohammad and a young under-groom subst.i.tuting for the absent Ghulam Ali, but instead of taking her usual route toward the mountains, she had stopped at a mulberry garden a mile from the city, where Nur Rahman had been waiting as planned. There she had dismounted, handed her veiled top hat to the young groom, unfolded her chaderi, and ordered both men to wait for her return.

Yar Mohammad's weather-beaten face had bunched in dismay as she dropped the yards of white fabric over her shoulders. "If you wish to see the city, Memsahib," he had said in his resonant voice, "you should do so with honor, from the back of your mare. And you should not," he had added, gesturing with his chin toward Nur Rahman, "be trusting such a young person to guard your safety."

Now, perspiration p.r.i.c.ked Mariana's upper lip. Grit cracked between her teeth. Yar Mohammad had been correct. Walking along the road with a load of kindling on her head was certainly less dignified than riding a horse, and she missed the safe company of her groom.

A dignified-looking male goat with tall, curved horns crossed a nearby field, followed at a distance by a jostling herd of she-goats, while a boy with a stick rounded up the stragglers. Mariana watched them without interest as she struggled along. The city across the river, with its high-walled fortress, had looked so near when they started walking "We must stop and rest," she croaked.

"Not yet," the boy replied over his shoulder.

She sighed irritably inside her chaderi. How had Nur Rahman come to be in charge of this expedition? If they had not been in the open, with strangers listening on all sides, she would have given him a lesson in the proper comportment required of a servant. But then, he was not exactly a servant. In fact, he was no servant at all.

"Are you certain that you know Haji Khan's house?" she asked him a little later, as they sat side by side beneath a dusty tree.

"Of course I know where he lives." The boy's eyes glowed behind his veil. "I know everything everything about Kabul." about Kabul."

"Have you ever seen him?"

"No, but everyone knows he is a great man of Kabul. Even the Amir's family used to visit him at his house."

"They did not call him to their palace in the Bala Hisar?"

Nur Rahman lifted his chin. "Haji Khan is too great a man to go here and there at people's beck and call. Have you brought money?"

"A little."