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123<br />
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR<br />
“Are you going to get us away from here, Gul Begum?” Shereen asked<br />
after a time.<br />
“Don’t ask me any questions,” her cousin answered shortly, “only let<br />
us get near the water channel and we will put some of this gre y mud<br />
upon our faces, so that if Ferad Shah should see us, he may think us<br />
old and ugly and send us away, let us hope to some lowlier and less<br />
cruel household,” and then to terrify her cousin into submission, she<br />
added rather pointedly: “This is no place for people who cannot hold<br />
their own tongues, for it would appear that there are those here who are<br />
willing and ready to hold them for them.”<br />
Gul Begum saw she had produced the desired effect, not only on<br />
Shereen, but also on her aunt, who expressed great anxiety as to what<br />
would become of her <strong>daughter</strong> if she could not learn to control her<br />
insatiable desire to know more than her eyes could tell her.<br />
“Go with Gul Begum,” she said, “and do as she bids you, and, for<br />
God’s sake, keep your mouth shut and don’t get us all into trouble.<br />
Thank God we are outside on set of walls. Let us see if we can’t get<br />
outside the next set.”<br />
When the two girls returned from the water channel they were hardly<br />
recognisable, so skilfully had Gul Begum applied the greasy gre y mud,<br />
a piece of which she had almost unconsciously carried off with her<br />
from the Bibi’s hum hum.<br />
“Khuda-a-a!” said her mother, prolonging the final a in the way<br />
common to all Afghans when they wish to express astonishment. “How<br />
poor a thing is beauty when a scrap of mud the size of a marble can<br />
efface it all.”<br />
Quite late in the evening there was a sound of horses’ hoofs, a barking<br />
of dogs, and a sort of short sharp yap peculiar to Ferad Shah’s much<br />
dreaded wolf dogs. Gul Begum shuddered. The awful trial was drawing<br />
very near, how would it end? The turtle doves fluttered in their nests<br />
above her, quarrelling, she supposed, by the feathers that came<br />
scattering down all round her. There seemed no peace, no rest<br />
anywhere, not even in this garden of Eden with its flowers-scented<br />
atmosphere. Tents were soon pitched in every direction, and a regu lar<br />
camp established under the trees; only the master and several women,<br />
easily recognisab le as <strong>Hazara</strong> prisoners, went inside the second<br />
enclosure.<br />
When all was quiet again the Derwan came and spoke to Gul Begum:<br />
“There is no good in my speaking of you to Ferad Shah to-night. He<br />
will be taken up with Bibi and the other ladies, and showing them what<br />
he has brought from the war, and telling them of the great deeds he has<br />
done; besides, he is tired and will go to rest early. But what have you<br />
been doing to yourselves?” the old man went on, noticing the change in
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