1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

13
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
sunshine – unwilling at first, perhaps, but yielding by slow degrees to
her gentle laughter and soft, winning ways? Ah! What must she be
like? Raven hair, of course, and eyes – laughing, mischievous eyes, and
a skin – oh, so fair, with roses on her cheeks, and hands, little soft
hands that knew nothing of work, all dimples and chubbiness. What
nonsense! What a wife for such a man! No! she must be tall. I wonder
if she is taller than I? And the Hazara beauty drew up her stately head
and squared her broad shoulders. She must be a big woman, the
Ameer’s wife, tall and graceful, lithe and active, severe as he, proud as
he, and as relentless, cruel too perhaps, for women are sometimes more
cruel than men.
Strange stories reached the Hazara hills of the Kabul harems, those
walled-in houses, where hundreds of women lived together, and not
alwa ys in peace. Ah, that must be dreadful, no roaming about, free,
over hills and dales, no paddling in cool streams on a sunny day, no
sitting under the shade of bushes, which to Gul Begum’s mind –
because she knew no others – seemed like great forest trees. Yes, that
would be intolerable there was no doubt about that.
Those other women had a better time, those washed-out women, who
lived down south, in the hot, burning plains. Kafirs, of course, and
therefore outcasts, outcasts in the next world, but not in this. Certainly
those women had their paradise in this world. What was to be their
portion in the next? She had heard of them from her father : - women
who remained seated while their husbands stood, women who were
waited on by men-servants as well as maids, women who drove and
rode about with men.
Then there was that strange story about the great field, where men rode
races on horses, and races on camels, and races in vehicles, some sort
of cart on two wheels, but light – ver y light – and beautifully polished
and bright. How did they get that polish? What could make wood shine
like that, so that you could see your face reflected in it ? What skilled
workmen they must be, and all for what? Why, that the winners of
these races might go up to a tent – a great white tent – from which fine
cloths of red and white and blue were suspended and fluttered in the
breeze, and there with uncovered heads receive their reward – from a
chief, a general, think you? No, nothing of the kind; from a woman, a
woman with hair like gold , polished, shining gold. That must be a
wondrous sight – golden hair! But what made it gold? What a position!
What a glory! Those men who had won, bareheaded before her, proud
to be worthy so to stand. And Gul Begum sighed. Kafirs, of course, or
such things would be impossible, for women are born to be in
subjection to men, to wait upon them and serve them. Must the y for
ever be in subjection? Why? Because it was God’s law and there was
no disputing that.
But she had known one woman, years ago, when she was quite a little
child, a woman even Hazara men looked up to, and loved, and waited
on. It was her grandmother, her father’s mother. “I am something like