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158 A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR “It is certainly strange how since that same brother’s departure matters have been talked about that had better have been kept secret,” croaked a third. “And, stranger still, is how the discover y of these private matters seems to upset him,” continued another. “If he were not to blame, why should he care, he looks as if he were gu ilty of something, the consequences of which he fears. I never saw a man so changed. It all dates from his brother’s visit here in the summer, too. There is something distinctly odd about it.” “Ah, you jackals, you never dare to approach an enemy till you smell death about him,” the Ameer retorted, angrily. “Get out of my sight, rogues! Your little-tattling disgusts me. How dare you venture to carry it on in my ver y presence?” So they retired in silence, but they knew that the poison that the y had infused would filter in time, and they were prepared to wait for the direful results the y knew it would produce. CHAPTER XXIX “A KABUL TOWN OF SUN AND DUST” IT was a strange, new life to Gul Begum, this slaver y in a cit y harem, after the freedom of her mountain home. Sometimes she thought that without that awful nightmare of a time she had gone through at Mohamed Jan’s, which made ever ything else seem easy, she would never have been able to have stood it. At first she felt stifled, and longed for a draught of mountain air, or what she called mountain air, for it is hard, on the plain of Kabul, to realise that one is ne arly 7000
159 A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR feet above the sea level. What she wanted was a good climb across rocks – a keen blast from the snow mountains – a wild coursing of the blood in her wind-stirred veins, such as she had enjoyed in the wild days of her girlhood. She had never been cold then, or only for a few minutes. It was so easy for those young and active limbs to get warm with healthy exercise, but in her present confined lie it was different. The snow lying in the quadrangle was soon melted by the radiation of heat from the warm rooms around, and the bright su n above, and became a slush that was very unpleasant to walk in. After ever y fall of snow, this state of affairs was increased twofold, for not only was there the snow that fell from the sky to deal with, there were the heaps of snow shovelled off the roof by the Hazara labourers, who from time immemorial had earned their living winter after winter in this way; preventing the sun-baked mud, of which the Kabul roofs are for the most part formed, from becoming a perfect slush, and then falling in. She often looked at these men – her fellow country-men – at their work, and wondered how they could bear it. The y were not slaves, for these were not prisoners of war. The y and their fathers before them had lived in the cit y for years, but the y were far worse treated than any slaves she ever saw. They were in fact the slaves of slaves, ordered about, struck, and if more obstinate than usual, beaten as though the y had been dogs. And yet these men were free to go where the y chose, but bore all this abuse uncomplainingly, only turning to scowl at their maltreaters when they were well out of their reach. What could it mean? The Hazaras she had known at home were much the same in character – lazy enough, or at least disinclined for regular work, but they had some spirit and would till their own little plot of land, and cultivate it at certain seasons with the greatest assiduity, making it yield abundantly. And so the girl’s mind began working away at one of the great problems of life – the labour question – as it exists in Afghanistan, and saw the difference between the work of the man who has a bit of land of his own that he is cultivating for himself and for his children after him, and the work of the man who merely seeks to provide himself with food, from hour to hour and day to day. The one “possesses the earth,” and with it the jo ys of reaping the direct fruits of his labour, the other, though he earns his daily wage as best, or rather as worst, he can, is practically a slave, and has no interest beyond seeing how little he can do for the money paid him, and if possible leaving enough work undone to-da y to oblige his employers to send for him again on the morrow. A kick or a blow for his idleness he probably would and did get, but what was that? A Hazara’s skin is tough. There was no competition in Kabul, no higher wages for the better workmen. A certain class of work was paid for by a certain daily wage. Why try to do it better than your neighbour? Proficiency brought no better pay. If during the busy season a man had dared to ask more because the demand for workmen was greater, he would have had so
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