Part 35 (1/2)
He nodded in return, then started away.
DARKNESS HAD fallen by the time Mariana awoke. The scent of food wafted up the stairs, but no one came to fetch her. Too exhausted to care, she went back to sleep.
By the time a pair of girls arrived to announce that dinner was ready, male voices were audible elsewhere in the house. The family must have kept the food waiting until its fighters had returned.
As the men laughed and shouted in the room below, Mariana sat warily in a small room with a sandali in the center, watched closely by several women and children.
How many soldiers and camp followers had died of cold and hunger today? she wondered, as she stared without appet.i.te at the mountain of mutton and rice before her on the table, and warmed her feet beneath the family sandali.
How many of the retreating force had Aminullah, and those men downstairs, slaughtered today? How many had Aminullah killed after he left her at this house and galloped away?
She nodded politely to her hostesses and rose to her feet. As she pulled on her boots outside the door, one of them pulled the door curtain aside.
”Make ready,” she ordered, in accented Farsi. ”You are to leave here soon.”
”Leave here?” Mariana hesitated. ”Would it be possible for me to go to Kabul? Someone is expecting me there.”
Please, please let them take me to Haji Khan's house ”Kabul?” The woman grimaced and shook her head. ”You cannot go there. We are sending you to the British fort at Jalalabad. A kafila will be taking you over the Lataband Pa.s.s. You are to join their camp tonight.”
Voices shouted up the stairs.
”Get your poshteen,” the woman urged Mariana. ”They are waiting.”
The cold was stunning. A camel knelt in the narrow street, its driver wrapped to his eyes in a shawl. Mariana climbed onto the camel's back and clutched the saddle as it jerked to its feet.
Perhaps Ha.s.san had not died, she told herself as she rode out through the gate of the town, the camel's ankle bells c.h.i.n.king with every step. Perhaps one day she would reach Lah.o.r.e, and find him waiting.
The landscape sloped away in folds, hill upon snowy hill. It had been here that she had asked Muns.h.i.+ Sahib if she would ever see Ha.s.san and Saboor again.
Swaying on the camel's back, miserable with cold and loss, she closed her eyes and dreamed fitfully of her time in India. She relived her rescue of little Saboor, and her first, moonlit meeting with Shaikh Waliullah. She remembered Safiya Sultana's story about the prince who became a beggar, and her own terrifying afternoon alone on the violent streets of Lah.o.r.e. She recalled Muns.h.i.+ Sahib's fable of the king's messenger and Haji Khan's beautiful, evocative durood.
She thought of Nur Rahman, begging her to recite the Shahada Shahada, the attestation of the faith they all shared.
All of them had been her teachers. Surely their lessons meant something. Surely they fitted together to make a whole She opened her eyes. A full moon shone through the latticework of her chaderi. It hung before her, its light falling on snowy ground so pale that it could have been desert sand.
Camel bells c.h.i.n.ked. The moon beckoned her forward.
They were turning. The moon, no longer in front of her, was now at her shoulder. This was wrong. They were going the wrong way.
Dismount from the camel. The voice in her head was so clear and so commanding that Mariana looked over her shoulder, to see if someone behind her had spoken. The voice in her head was so clear and so commanding that Mariana looked over her shoulder, to see if someone behind her had spoken.
She bent forward to look at the camel driver. Hunched over against the cold, he trudged on.
Dismount, repeated the voice, and follow the path of the moon. and follow the path of the moon.
They were heading downhill, traversing a snow-covered slope. Soon the moon would be behind her, not in front.
Follow the path to peace, ordered the voice.
Each of her teachers, the Shaikh, Safiya Sultana, Muns.h.i.+ Sahib, and Haji Khan, had spoken of journeys and homecomings. Even Nur Rahman, who had danced for her in the snow, had offered the same lesson-that although the way might be difficult, the goal was beautiful beyond imagining.
Follow the path. She ceased thinking. Moving as if under someone else's volition, she slid one leg over the camel's saddle. Timing her fall so she would not be kicked, she took a deep breath, and let herself slide to the ground. She ceased thinking. Moving as if under someone else's volition, she slid one leg over the camel's saddle. Timing her fall so she would not be kicked, she took a deep breath, and let herself slide to the ground.
She landed jarringly on her side. Her thumping fall must have been startlingly loud in that silent place, but by the time she gathered herself and looked up, the camel was already beyond her, striding away as if its driver had heard nothing.
This was madness. If she did not run after it, shouting, she would be- It was too late. The camel had vanished around a pile of rocks.
She was entirely alone.
Follow the moon.
She pushed herself to her feet. Weighed down by her heavy posh-teen, she turned to face the moon, then began working her way toward it, making a new, uphill path through the knee-deep snow.
Had this been a mistake? She stopped to catch her breath, aware that she was tiring rapidly. Had her mind played a trick on her, counterfeiting that voice with its compelling instructions? Unable to go any farther, would she die here on this slope, with only the moon for company?
”I call to witness,” her muns.h.i.+ had recited here, at Butkhak, on the day before she entered Kabul, her muns.h.i.+ had recited here, at Butkhak, on the day before she entered Kabul, ”The ruddy glow of sunset; The night and its homing, and The moon in her fullness; Thou shalt surely travel From stage to stage.”
All the lessons she had learned had brought her to this moonlit landscape where there was no sound but the wind in her ears.
Nur Rahman had longed for the companions of Paradise, but she had found Ha.s.san. He would be her companion here on earth, if they lived to meet again. And there were others-her teachers and Ghulam Ali and Yar Mohammad, and b.u.mbling, talkative Dittoo.
If she did not survive the night, perhaps they would all meet one day in Paradise Look up, ordered the voice.
A fire glowed in the distance.
Her exhausted breathing echoed in her ears, but hope offered her new strength. Whoever these people were, she thought, as she started toward their beckoning fire, they would not refuse her warmth and shelter.
The moon shone down on a small encampment. Jezails leaned, steepled together, in the snow. Pack ponies and mules blew and stamped. Tents cl.u.s.tered near the fire. In one, there was light. The silhouettes of two men moved against its wall.
A third male figure huddled at the fire, its light playing on his face. Delirious from cold and exhaustion, Mariana imagined that his pale beard belonged to someone she knew, but that could not be.
He did not see her approaching.
One of the silhouettes stood. A man emerged through the opening of the glowing tent, his head covered in a shawl. He stepped toward the fire.
”Ghulam Ali,” he ordered, ”go to your tent. Do not punish yourself by staying outside in this cold.”
The first man shook his head. ”Your wife is lost,” he crooned, rocking back and forth. ”Bibi is lost, and I am to blame.”
”No,” Ha.s.san Ali Khan said. ”It was my fault from the beginning.” He stared into the fire, as if he had forgotten the other man's presence. ”I learned too late what she offered me,” he went on, his voice breaking. ”I did not see clearly-”