1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
hurry of the Chief Secretar y’s important and manifold duties, whatever
was placed before him was given away, heedless of its value, or of
promises made to others not present at the moment, or of what might
have been acceptable in the harem serai (enclosure for women). This
was the one complaint his wife ever had against him – this reckless
carelessness, this generosit y which in reality amounted to squandering,
for she always heard about the things in time.
“Why did you not tell me you liked stone-marten better than any one
fur? I had such a handsome double sheet of skins sent me only last
week, and a piece of embroidered camel-cloth that would just have
made a suitable covering for a cloak. Now I have given it away; the
Hakim has, I think, taken it to his wife or daughter, I forget which, she
has had rheumatism,” he said, “and wanted one.”
“Good gracious, sheep-skin would have done well enough for them;
and I have had to send to the bazaar for camel-cloth just lately, you
last year’s coat was so shabb y I have had a new one made for the
Durbar. Why did you not let me see these things before you gave them
to these common greed y people?”
“There are plent y in the bazaar,” he would say, and turn awa y and
laugh. But though there were doubtless plent y of good things in the
bazaar, ‘twas little that the careful housewife allowed herself to buy,
nothing, indeed, that was not necessary to her lord; so she it was who
suffered, and not he, by this recklessness of his. Others, too, besides
the Hakim, carried off the spoil; and sometimes a well-dressed lady
would call in her covered palanquin and take a cup of tea, add sit an
hour or so by the Chief Secretary’s sandali. (a sandali is the charcoal
fire round which the Afghans sit to keep themselves warm in the
winter)
“That’s a fine silk you have on, a good colour, too, for wear, as well as
strong,” the hostess might remark.
“Yes, it is very good,” her guest would reply. “I have had it in wear
now these two winters, and yet it is so good I cannot make up my mind
to part with it, though I am almost ashamed wear the same dress so
long. You husband gave the piece to my father; he intended covering a
posteen (full coat) with it, but you see I begged it from him, and I have
made better use of it than he, men are so careless with their clothes. It
is a pity to let them have good things, don’t you think so?”
“Perhaps,” the gentle lady would reply, with genuine satisfaction,
untinged by the faintest taint of jealousy, “I am glad you got it.”
An Afghan woman under such circumstances as these never dreams of
resenting the fact that she is dressed in calico, while her friend, by her
husband’s bount y, is dressed in silk. That is not her form of weakness.
The Chief Secretary’s wife upon such occasions would hold her head a