Part 7 (2/2)

”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.”

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