1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
The worst time of all in the harem was when the water in the channel
ceased to run altogether. Then, indeed, things became unbearable. The
frogs, whose everlasting croaking had irritated her more or less all day
and all night long, did disappear certainly. Many of them were dead,
and their bodies doubtless added to the hideous stench that now rose
from the open pool of stagnant, putrid water. The girls could hardly
stir across the yard without feeling sick. The children got fever and
other significant complaints, and throughout the town the mortalit y
rose higher and higher.
The Chief Secretary had the water cleared out and the channel scraped,
but still the smell continued, though it was perhaps a little less
bearable.
“It’s the smell through the channel right into the houses on either
side,” the man who had cleared it out explained. “I can do nothing
more unless I clear out the two next houses as well as yours, and then
how am I to get out the dead rats and frogs in the part that runs under
the house and street?”
“God knows,” the official would say hopelessly, and so the matter was
left. In Kabul there is no Public Nuisance Act, and it would have been
against all etiquette for him even to suggest to his neighbours that their
drains were in an insanitar y cond ition, and must therefore be cleaned
out.
Then the wind would rise and blow a fine powder over everything. The
dust la y thick on every shelf and ever y nich. It filtered through the
cupboard doors and settled on all the clothes packed away for the
winter. It filtered through the covers on the bedding, and got in among
the teased cotton of which it was made, and had they not been regularly
shaken and dusted ever y fibre and every seam would have looked as
though it had been powdered; and then at last the storm would break,
and the blessed rain would fall. Ah, that was the one treat Gul Begum
had – watching the storm as it advanced up the broad valle y. She would
creep quietly up on to the roof and watch. How refreshing to her
burning feet and hands was that icy air that always precedes the final
burst! How thrilling the momentar y hush when even the kites and the
crows are still, and when the wild dogs seek out some temporary
shelter in the rocks or among the faggots b y the roadside cut ready to
bring in to the town for fuel. And then the great finale – the burst itself
– the roar of the cannonade among the mountains echoing and reechoing
from one peak to another. The rending of the rocks above, the
swishing of the rain that fell in torrents, obscuring ever ything but the
livid flashes of lightning that seemed to penetrate through everything.
Then it was that her spirits rose, and she almost felt free again, as
though her soul found something kindred to it in the free soul of the
storm and the wind.