1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
shall be told that it is excellent, well-devised, and carefully worked
out, but that the time has not yet come to do these things, that there are
other matters to be attended to first. It is all useless, and yet this report
is one of my chief duties, and what can be more important to any
country than education? Year after year I prepare these things, and year
after year there is nothing done. It is enough to take the heart out of
any one. Then here again is a matter to which I have devoted much
time and thought – the best and most economical way of treating the
prisoners. Thousands of them in this country, who have committed no
special crime, but have been reported as having done so, are sent to
prison to await their trial and are then forgotten. The y have no money,
poor wretches, wherewith to bribe their jailers to bring them forward,
when the heads of the police go round, so there the y sit year after year,
eating up Government food and learning to become lazier even than
they naturally are. But I might as well have left it all unwritten. These
poor fellows will go on sitting there degenerating and degenerating,
and the roads and reservoirs will continue unmade. What can I do?”
“Why, take a holida y, of course. Come home with me this winter, and
if you wish, return to Kabul in the spring. But I don’t like this country.
Why should you stay slaving here? It is a country of horrors and of
terrors. You have lands of your own, lands which, if properly managed,
instead of being allowed to go to rack and ruin, would yield you more
than a sufficient income to live in ease and comfort, or if you must
work, work for the British Government. The pay is small, but it is
secure, and the position is indisputable. You must get leave to come
home with me. You need fix nothing definitely about the future now,”
he went on, seeing the official shake his head despondently. “Get a
month’s leave and let the events that occur while you are at home
decide what your next step is to be.”
“I know the Ameer, he would not understand my wanting to leave him.
He would think m y interest in his cause was flagging. M y enemies
would put all sorts of false reasons before him, and I should probably
find myself in prison,” the Chief Secretary said sadly.
“Nonsense, the y would only be too glad to see your place empty.
Nothing would please them better than to get rid of you and have a
chance of holding your appointment. I wonder how they’d like it when
they got it, eh?” and the guest, though grieved, could not help smiling
as he thought of the work that went hand in hand with the honour of the
office of Chief Secretary.
“You don’t know these people,” the official said again. “One has to
live among them to understand them. They are not satisfied to hold the
office and draw the salar y of a rival, they want his downfall, his utter
ruin, his death. That is the Kabuli nature.”
“Then I’ll speak to the Ameer about it myself,” his brother said boldly.
“I’ll tell him there are urgent private family affairs that can only be