Part 7 (1/2)
”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.