1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
message. “The women must wait in the enclosure, and some food would
be sent to them while a room was being cleared for their reception. It
was late, the Bibi would see them on the morrow.”
“That’s well,” the door-keeper said, addressing them; then in an
undertone which obviously was meant to create a lasting impression,
“I’ve done m y best for you, but for me you would have had to sleep out
in the dew to-night. You will not forget to recall m y services when
Agha returns, he will be back in about a week, I expect, but really we
never know, especially since the war began.”
Then he retired, and the women were left alo ne, or at least temporarily
alone, for presently o ne woman came up, and then another, just to have
a look at them and then pass on.
“I wish the y would bring in some food,” Halima began.
“I feel as if my thirst could never be assu aged,” Shereen went on, and
she stooped and drank some of the water from the stream that ran
through the enclosure. “That’s better,” she said with a sigh. “This
Ferad Shah must be a rich man! M y goodness, look at his garde n, look
at his house, and look at his servants! What mone y he must have to
clothe and feed them all.”
“God grant it that we ma y have peace here,” her mother said
reverently.
And then the food was brought. One large dish of mutton and rice with
cranberries mixed up in it, and two small ones containing two different
kinds of green vegetables. “That is all that is ready just now,” the girl
said. “It is not much, but you were not expected.” A very dirt y cloth
was laid upon the ground, and the women sat round it hungrily. None
of them had had such a meal in all their lives, so well-cooked, so
delicate in flavour, and yet the girl who brought it had made a sort of
apology for it, as though it had been insufficient.
“I’d sta y here for ever and work my fingers to the bone to get such
good food,” Halima remarked, when first she paused in her endeavour
to satisfy her hunger.
“What rice!” her sister-in-law went on. “They must have some different
way of growing it here. I have never seen the like.”
The two girls had less to sa y, but both ate greedily. The y had had
nothing but a piece of bread to eat since about that hour the night
before. After the meal was over, it was long before any one came near
them. The night was growing chilly and the moon stood high in the
heavens when the slave girl they had first seen on their arrival came
towards them.