Companions Of Paradise Part 8

"We must give him something-attar, honey from the Safed Koh, or a bag of walnuts. He lives," he added, "on the offerings of people such as yourself."

As they prepared to continue their journey, a long file of camels with bulging loads pa.s.sed by, each animal swaying from side to side, in the manner of a kafila on the move. Uzbeks in striped silk chapans chapans strode alongside their swaying charges, frowning as they marched, as if walking itself were a serious occupation. Like everyone else on the road, they gave no sign of having noticed Mariana and her companion. strode alongside their swaying charges, frowning as they marched, as if walking itself were a serious occupation. Like everyone else on the road, they gave no sign of having noticed Mariana and her companion.

"Why are you walking like an old lady?" Nur Rahman demanded a quarter of an hour later, as they crossed a narrow pedestrian bridge leading directly over the Kabul River and into the city. "Everyone is looking. They can see your big foreign boots."

"I did not ask to cross this horrible bridge," Mariana snapped as she advanced wide-legged across the trembling planks, her twigs clutched in cloth-covered arms. She jerked her head. "Why have we not taken the brick one over there?"

"You complained so much," he replied reasonably, "that I took the shorter route."

By the time they entered the city, Mariana was too hot and irritated to speak. In front of her, Nur Rahman flitted along the wall of an enormous walled garden; he hurried from twisting street to street, his twigs balanced gracefully, moving easily past the doorways of houses and through the city's various bazaars, where goods were displayed in colorful heaps.

The crowds were dense. Slight men in embroidered caps walked shoulder to shoulder with wild-haired country folk and n.o.ble-faced old men in elaborate turbans. Donkeys, horses, and camels pa.s.sed by, loaded with riders or goods. A few women pa.s.sed, some holding brightly colored shawls over their faces, some in chaderis, all following a few paces behind their men. Two tall men in dark blue strode past, the skins of snow leopards thrown over their shoulders.

For all Mariana's annoyance, it was fortunate that Nur Rahman had agreed to come with her. Without him, she would have needed Theseus's ball of string to find her way about this labyrinthine city.

After pa.s.sing through the wood market with its sounds of rhythmic chopping, they turned into a long, straight bazaar full of armorers, saddlers, and bookbinders, and a shop selling tiny bottles of heavily scented oil. There they stopped. At Nur Rahman's direction, Mariana bought the most expensive one. A trace of it perfumed the back of her hand, where the shopkeeper had put a single drop. Its complicated sweetness made her think of Ha.s.san.

They turned a sharp corner, pa.s.sed through a medieval-looking doorway with great metal studs, and entered a lane so constricted that the sunlight did not reach the dusty cobblestones, although it was only eleven in the morning. If she reached out, Mariana could have touched the walls on both sides of the alley. She held her skirts aside from a burbling waste gutter that ran at the alley's edge.

"We are in the mohalla mohalla of Bagh Ali Mardan Khan." Nur Rahman's voice lifted with happiness. "This is where I used to live. Haji Khan's house is close by here." of Bagh Ali Mardan Khan." Nur Rahman's voice lifted with happiness. "This is where I used to live. Haji Khan's house is close by here."

Mariana peered right and left through her peephole. The buildings were made of unbaked mud bricks between tall wooden uprights. Many had elegant balconies, held up by wooden posts, and elaborately carved doors. All had latticework window shutters that moved up and down. The upper windows stood open in the heat. A shadowy figure appeared in a doorway, then drew back inside. A battered-looking, long-haired cat slunk along one wall. Mariana smelled sewage, charcoal smoke, and burning fat.

A moment later, Nur Rahman stopped short. "This is the house." He pointed to a high wooden door with a heavy lintel.

He hammered on it, balancing his twigs with one hand.

For a time, no one came. Fearing someone would appear asking questions, Mariana glanced behind her. "Perhaps we should have-"

Nur Rahman's only response was to hammer more energetically.

The door swung inward. An old man wearing broken shoes looked them up and down. "Peace," he offered, a hand over his heart.

"Peace," Mariana replied, craning to see inside. The man stepped back and let them into a small, cobbled courtyard. A cow stood tethered to a tree in one corner. A nightingale in a wicker birdcage swung from a branch above its head. It was not a rich man's courtyard, but it offered peace, along with the smell of cow dung.

To her left, under a vine-covered portico, a door stood open. Beside it, a pile of discarded shoes indicated the presence of a number of men. A few long-barreled jezails with curved, decorated wooden stocks leaned against a corner. Two or three fierce-looking knives lay on the portico floor.

A rasping voice came from within. "What you have not understood, Hashmat Jan," the voice decreed in Persian, "is that Paradise is for the soul soul, not the body. body."

"True." A different, warmer voice intoned a few verses of rhythmic Arabic, then s.h.i.+fted to Persian. "In Sura Ha Mim Sura Ha Mim, it is written: "Therein shall ye have All that your souls Shall desire; therein Shall ye have all That ye ask for!"

"I already know what I desire," put in a third, young-sounding voice. "I have been promised virgins and wine-"

"Virgins! Wine! You, Hashmat, are a fool," rasped the first voice.

"Haji Khan," the doorkeeper announced, "guests have come!"

"Oh, you who stand outside," said the voice, "enter."

Mariana put down her twigs and pulled off her riding boots. She had intended to tell Nur Rahman to wait outside while she met privately with Haji Khan, but such a meeting was clearly impossible. Judging from all those shoes and weapons, the room was full to bursting with Afghan men.

She would never be able to ask her question now.

She stepped over the threshold on stocking feet, and found herself in a windowless chamber, whose only illumination came from the open doorway behind her, and from a small, filigreed copper lamp at the back of the room.

The lamp shone weakly onto the faces of a dozen turbaned men who sat shoulder to shoulder upon a floor covered with layers of tribal rugs. Some of the men looked like the fierce, ragged men she had seen walking on the road. Others, who wore clean, starched clothing, looked like Afghan versions of Ha.s.san's family members. One or two of the group seemed to carry a special authority. Perhaps they, too, were Followers of the Path.

She hesitated in the doorway. The gatekeeper had failed to say she was a woman. Was she really welcome among all these men?

Certain she was not, she glanced quickly about her, taking in as much as she could before she was asked to leave.

Embroidered hangings of every conceivable hue, some new, some rotting with age, covered the walls of the room. One or two of them were decorated with great wheel-like patterns. Others were thickly covered in triangles of bright silk st.i.tching. Still others had been sewn with small, irregularly shaped mirrors that gleamed in the lamplight.

A heavy, sweet scent, akin to the one she had bought in the market, hung in the air, eclipsing the smell of the courtyard.

At the back of the room, a spa.r.s.ely bearded man sat cross-legged upon a string bed. His face was soft-featured, not sharply boned like those of the men who crowded around him. A smoking chillum stood beside him on the floor.

Where his pupils should have been, his eyes were white.

He beckoned to her. "Come closer," he ordered.

The men moved aside without speaking to let her pa.s.s. The blind man pointed to a straw stool beside him.

The room was very hot. Not knowing what to do with her tiny gift, she laid it hesitantly on a square of cloth beside him. She groped for her handkerchief and mopped her face under her veil.

"May peace be upon you, Haji Khan." Nur Rahman's pleading voice came from the doorway. "May I pay my respects?"

"Pay them from where you are standing. You have no need of me. But you, Khanum," the blind man turned to Mariana, "you have something to ask me."

For all the harsh sound of his voice, the man wore a benign expression. He tilted his head, as if he could imagine her face by listening to her breathe. Behind her the Afghans s.h.i.+fted and murmured. The pipe beside her gave off a bitter smoke.

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Confusion, not embarra.s.sment, stopped her from asking, in that male and public company, whether Ha.s.san still loved her, and if he did not, whether she should marry Fitzgerald. Those questions, so urgent when she had embarked on this adventure, now shrivelled to nothing before the sightless Bengali in his odd, perfumed chamber.

Prompted by Haji Khan and his surroundings, another more pressing question arose in their place. Powerful and inarticulate, it tugged at her, begging to be asked.

She had no idea what it was.

Haji Khan closed his eyes. "You are not yet ready, Khanum," he said, moving his head to and fro, "to know the answer to your question. But do not worry. It will come to you of its own accord, at the proper time."

Your question. Which one? She opened her mouth to ask, and saw that he had turned away from her. Which one? She opened her mouth to ask, and saw that he had turned away from her.

Behind him on the wall hung an open cupboard, divided into small compartments, each one containing many small rolls of paper. He felt among them, his fingers fluttering, then pulled out a paper and laid it next to Mariana's little bottle of perfume.

"Read this eleven times every morning, and every evening," he said as he drew back his hand. "Your answer will come in due course."

But which answer was that? "Haji Sahib," she asked quickly, "please tell me-"

"You may visit me again," he added, as if she had not spoken.

Had she been dismissed? Mariana took the little paper and glanced behind her. Nur Rahman beckoned urgently from the doorway.

But they had only just arrived She stood and made her disappointed way to the door.

"And now, Hashmat," she heard him say as she pulled on her boots, "you must stop this nonsense of yours. Whatever you may believe about killing those who are not Muslims, there is no quick route to the Garden, especially not through murder of innocent people, who may very well believe in Allah, although not in the same way as you. Victory is not a camel to be bought with a single transaction. It comes only after a long struggle against our own vain desires.

"If you want to go to Paradise," he added firmly, "then offer your prayers and give charity to those in need."

"What did Haji Khan mean by saying I have no need of him?" Nur Rahman blurted out after the outer door of the house had closed heavily behind them. He hunched his shoulders inside his chaderi. "I am as good as anyone else."

"He probably meant that you already have Muns.h.i.+ Sahib."

"But you have him, too."

"Not in the same way." Now that she could not see his face, Mariana felt herself warming toward the boy. "He is my language teacher, but you serve him day and night. As you care for his comfort, perhaps he will care for your soul."

"Do you think so?" Nur Rahman's voice brightened. "More than anything," he went on confidentially, "I want to go to Paradise after I die. I have heard that it is easy, that all I have to do is kill an Englishman, but now Haji Khan has said that is not true."

"Kill an Englishman?" Englishman?" Mariana stared at him from beneath her twigs. Mariana stared at him from beneath her twigs.

"I myself would not do it. I would not even kill one of your Hindu servants, because you have offered me panah, and I have eaten your salt. But others will, because the English are all infidels, like the Hindus."

They had turned from Haji Khan's narrow lane into a wider street lined with shops and lean-tos selling fruit and vegetables. "Come," he added over his shoulder. "I will show you the bazaar. It is very beautiful."

"Wait, Nur Rahman!" She hurried after him, her riding boots thudding on the packed earth. " Who Who has been saying that we are infidels, that men will go to Paradise for killing us?" has been saying that we are infidels, that men will go to Paradise for killing us?"

"The chiefs who have allied themselves with Wazir Akbar Khan, the son of our Amir. Everyone knows that Abdullah Khan is one, and Aminullah Khan is another."

She frowned. "How do you know this?"

"Afghan people come and go from the cantonment every day. I have heard these things from traders, from Hazard labourers, from everyone.

"The British," Nur Rahman added, "have replaced our Amir Dost Mohammad with Shah Shuja, whom no one respects. He plunders the great chiefs of their lands and their money, and the British uphold his rule with a huge army that buys up all our food, so our own people go hungry. And they have no shame. They have-"

"Be careful!" Mariana caught the boy's arm and pushed him against a wall as a group of boisterous men rounded a corner ahead of them in the narrow street. Muskets resting carelessly on their shoulders, they strode past Mariana and Nur Rahman, talking loudly among themselves, their arms swinging.

There was something actively dangerous about them. "Who were they?" she whispered when they had gone.

"They are relatives of Shah Shuja. These people are full of themselves now. See that man over there?" he added, gesturing toward a dignified-looking gentleman who had pressed himself into a nearby doorway. "He was protecting himself just now."

He pointed ahead of them. "Look," he added, changing the subject. "That is the Char Chatta Bazaar."

In front of Mariana, the street opened out into a teeming marketplace. A little way past baskets of ripe, fly-covered grapes and heaps of pale melons, a heavy stone archway led into a vast covered arcade. This must be the central market of Kabul.

Mariana and Nur Rahman dodged donkey carts and more fruit, then pa.s.sed under the archway and into the great, echoing bazaar, whose broad, cobbled floor was lined with small shops. Birds swooped under the high vaulted ceiling. The inner walls of the market held glittering traces of mirrored plasterwork. Far ahead of them, a sunlit area opened up. Mariana saw trees, followed by a second heavy archway, as if the market's architecture had been interrupted to let in light and air.

The shops stood side by side on either side of the pa.s.sageway; each one raised several steps above the cobblestones. Crowds of men from all parts of Asia surged past, while cooks fried tidbits of spiced meat in great iron pans, and merchants hawked goods directly from the backs of donkeys. Mariana could not take her eyes from the wares on display: gold and silver, turban silks and weaponry, bra.s.s samovars and Chinese porcelains. Next to a jeweler's shop, a knife-seller's wares had been spread out, temptingly, on a cloth.

The jeweler's wooden cases held crude carved silver and lapis necklaces and cufflike bracelets. As she reached out, steadying herself to step up into the tiny shop, a smooth voice spoke into her ear. "What a lovely, white hand," it said.

Nur Rahman stiffened beside her.

Startled, Mariana jerked her hand back and hid it beneath her chaderi.

The man had spoken in accented Persian. His tone had been suggestive. Mariana turned and found herself face-to-face with a rotund, smiling, clean-shaven man in a bulky muslin turban and the long, loose clothing of a Pashtun. A showily carved dagger handle protruded from the striped silk sash around his waist. He smiled, his brown eyes dancing with antic.i.p.ation.

It was Sir Alexander Burnes, the British Resident.

Behind him, also in Afghan dress, his lanky friend Captain Johnson leaned casually against a stone pillar. He, too, offered Mariana an encouraging smile.

"A hand as graceful and white as yours," Burnes continued, bending confidentially toward her, peering past the latticework in front of her eyes, "is not often seen in Kabul. I am sure that if you will show me your face, I will find it every bit as lovely."

The beauties of the countryside, Johnson had said, are nothing compared to the pleasures of the city. are nothing compared to the pleasures of the city.

"My house is not far off. I can arrange for you to be taken there with utmost discretion," Burnes added, his voice becoming oilier by the second.

Fury overtook Mariana's surprise. "Do not," "Do not," she said tightly, she said tightly, "come near me." "come near me."

Burnes's eyes widened. He stepped backward, smiling uncertainly, his hands raised before him. "I beg forgiveness, Khanum," he said. "Perhaps I have made a mistake."

The pa.s.sing throng had noticed their exchange. Men glanced at her, derisive smiles on their faces.

If she accused Burnes publicly, he might be killed in front of her. "Have you no shame?" she whispered in furious Farsi. "Have you no decency?"

"Forgive me," the Englishman repeated, his hands still raised. Behind him, Johnson melted into the crowd.

"I," she said distinctly, "have never been so insulted in all my life. all my life."

Astonishment dawned on Burnes's face then, for she had spoken that last sentence in English.

NUR RAHMAN leaned toward the English lady as they hurried from one crooked lane to another on their return journey. "I could not speak openly to you of such things, Khanum," he offered confidentially, "but this is what the British officers have been doing.

"Shah Shuja gives them whatever they want," he went on. "He is their slave. Only a month ago, he had a man hanged for killing his wife. She, a woman of high family, had committed gunah gunah with one of your Englishmen. It is these things that cause the greatest hatred." with one of your Englishmen. It is these things that cause the greatest hatred."

Seeing her twitch, the boy shrugged. "People have been bringing these stories to the cantonment for months."

Many women of n.o.ble family, it was whispered, had succ.u.mbed to the Englishmen. No one knew why. Several had been killed for betraying their families, but others had managed to evade being caught. Nur Rahman sighed aloud, unable to help admiring those who had taken such a deadly risk. Surely, for a brave man or woman, nothing could match the exhilaration of chancing one's life. Even he, in his flimsy disguise, was doing so.

The English lady must have been in a great hurry to leave the city, for heavy black clothes, chaderi and all, she now strode beside him as rapidly as any Afghan.

Perhaps she had heard what the narrow-faced Pashtun had said in the market.

"Now that the men of Kabul are prevented from defending their honor," the man had observed, "we are seeing how their women behave themselves."

Nur Rahman felt sorry for the lady. By the time he had run to her for asylum, time had already been growing short for her people. It grew even shorter now.

The price of flour was now so high that the people of the city were going hungry in their own houses. It would not be long before those who suffered, and those who could be persuaded to join them, would take their revenge. Soon, the braggarts who roamed the streets of Kabul with such confidence would pay for their pride.

That was the cycle of life-one was victim, then avenger, then victim.