1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

152
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
“Is there not a woman in all m y establishment who can serve a meal
properly?” he asked peevishly. “Ever y day there is something wrong.
My house is like a river-bed after a storm.”
“Gul Begum is more accustomed to serve meals than I,” the o ld woman
said, “and she is younger and more able. Shall I send her?”
“Send any one who knows their work,” he said, “I don’t care who it
is.” So Gul Begum was reinstated in the high office of serving her
master’s meals.
At last, worn and feeble, the invalid rose from his couch.
“Go help Agha to dress,” Gul Begum said, addressing Sardaro again,
“that really is your business. I expect some of his clothes, too, need
buttons and repairs of some sort. If you will look them through, I’ll do
the sewing.”
Dressing her master was an even more difficult task than taking him
his meals. “Your hands are like calves’ feet, Sardaro,” he said, “send
Gul Begum here,” and so Gul Begum went.
As he grew better he began to ask for his papers. He was able to do
some work, though he was not able to go to Durbar.
“Nam-e-Khuda, Gul Begum, go and see about Agha’s papers,” Sardaro
begged. “I can neither read nor write. What good am I among papers?”
so that task, too, fell on Gul Begum, but she never presumed, never
took the procedure that by rights went with the offices she performed.
One service which she had taken upon herself from the first, the girl
offered to no one. It was she who spread the master’s prayer-carpet and
brought the water for his Voozoo (religious ablutions), a nd it was she
who roused him for his pra yers. Only Sardaro kept the purse and
ordered the provisions in from the bazaar.
Shereen was quite happ y. She had no position, but then she had no
special work. That was just what she liked. She was not much worse
off than she had been at home. She was fed, clothed, and housed, and
but little noticed, except when she told stories. She was an excellent
raconteuse, and she had plent y to tell to these other women, who had,
poor souls, all been born within some harem walls, and had never
known the joy of freedom. Besides, there were all the incidents
connected with the war to relate, and the awfu l sights and scenes she
had there witnessed formed endless themes, to which the Afghan
women are never tired of listening.
Old Miriam, too, and her prophecies, and their subsequent fulfilment,
were of boundless interest. Shereen sat with her hands before her and
told stories, while the others sewed or hushed the children to sleep.