Part 18 (1/2)

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.