1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

15
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
“Is your food not to your taste, father?” Gul Begum asked as she went
outside and joined him as he sat in the shadow cast by the tower across
the court.
“The food’s right enough,” he said, “but this is not a time for much
eating; fetch me some water, or no, is there any tea? Make me some
tea, Gul Begum!”
“Something is wrong,” the girl muttered, as she disappeared inside the
dwelling; “there is something more than thunder in air; it isn’t that he
is not hungry, he had forgotten to take his food though he was sitting
there in front of it,” and as she came out with a tray in her hand she
knew that she had guessed aright, for he was eating; whatever was the
matter it was not sufficient to spoil his appetite.
“Will you take your food first, or shall I pour out your tea?” she asked.
The Vizier pushed the dish from which he had been eating from his
with a sigh.
“That’s enough,” he said, “give me the tea, ah, good girl, I see you
have remembered, that’s capital! To be worth anything tea must be
piping hot.”
Gul Begum had removed the thick coloured quilt, which, in obedience
to her father’s instructions, she had made and thrown over the tray and
its contents.
“Two cups, I notice!” the father went on, smiling; “ you are cultivating
your father’s taste for tea, I see. Pit y you were not a boy, Gul Begum;
you ought to have been a boy, you have the size of a man, and the
strength and endurance of a man, and, yes, I think I ma y say the wits of
a man.”
“If I have the wits of a man, tell me what is the matter, and why you
forgot to eat your dinner ?” his daughter asked, sitting down beside him
coaxingly; “what trouble is there in the air?”
“Ah, there you show something more than the wits of a man,” he said,
laughing outright; “those are the wits of my dead mother appearing
again in you; she was a strange woman, Gul Begum, and none of us
knew rightly where she came from, she did not know herself, but she
was a fine woman, the finest woman I have ever seen in these parts;
there was nothing of the Hazara in her.”
“There is not much of the Hazara in you ,” the girl said boldly.
“Now there you are wrong,” the Vizier replied hurriedly. “I’m a hazara
to the backbone, but it’s m y mother’s blood in me, perhaps, that gives
me a love of adventure and travel, and makes me hate to see my
countrymen mere beasts of burden, animals, with no thought beyond