1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

16
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
the clothes they wear, the rock or the mud that gives them shelter, and
the next morsel the y can get to stuff down their throats.”
“It is their Kismet,” Gul Begum said , “what can they do ?”
“What, indeed? Pa y taxes to the Ameer of Kabul, forsooth, we who are
free, as free as he. Let him pay taxes to us; we do far more for him
than ever he does for us.”
“What is this about paying taxes, father? Who can demand taxes from
us who are free and owe tribute to none?”
“That you may well ask. Who devastated the hillsides for miles? Who
destro yed half the villages around Jellalabad? Who made a tower of
Shinwaris heads? Who does these deeds of blood?”
“Ah, there you are unjust, father; the iron hand that swept these
robbers off the face of the earth brought peace and safet y to thousands
of honest traders and herdsmen; there is nothing to regret in the
destruction of the Shinwaris. We must be just. The wives and mothers
and children of those robbers may have suffered, but for all others in
was a gain. We must be just, I say.”
“True enough,” her father retorted pensively. “The world lost nothing
in the Shinwaris. But the man who overthrew Jadu and Dadu can
overthrow others too, and he will, too, if they oppose him.”
“Who is talking of opposing him?” the girl questioned eagerly, half
guessing the truth.
“I am,” her father said. “I refuse to pay him the tribute he has sent to
demand.”
“Why does he suddenly ask tribute of us, father; what have we done to
gain his displeasure? How have we excited his wrath?”
“What have we done? Just what we’ve done for hundreds of years, no
more, no less; we have lived free among our own hills untrammelled ,
now and again carr ying off some Afghan girls and cattle in return for
some the y have carried off of ours. Just vengeance.”
“Just vengeance, indeed; who would do less?”
“No man, that’s just the point; but this Iron Ameer, he would fain be
the only man in all the land, and bids all the other men be women. He
had forbidden feuds, and vengeance. He is no Mohamedan, he had
forgotten the ancient law, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ and
he says there is to be peace. The men that make raids upon their
neighbours are to be exterminated, root and branch, and because our
neighbours here made a raid down into an Afghan village last week,
and carried off three women, two children, seven cows and some sheep,
he demands restitution, and promises (if we pay him taxes) to protect