1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

17
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
us from his subjects in the future. If we won’t pay he won’t insist on
his subjects discontinu ing their raids, and yet he says he will burn our
villages and destroy our crops if we make raids on them. What sort of
justice is that?”
“Father, ‘twould be a good thing if these laws of retaliation were done
away with. If we kept our flocks, and herds, and women, and boys, and
they kept theirs. I never could see the use of these perpetual thefts and
pillagings; both sides must lose in the long run. There’s no sense in
them.”
“That’s just what your grandmother would have said, and it is all true
enough. Let there be peace, I sa y too. Let us make a mutual compact.
The chiefs of the Hazaras being free with the chiefs of the Afghans and
their Ameer, they also being free. Let us agree each of us to force our
subjects to keep the peace, and if either side had cause for complaint,
let the injured side appeal to the chiefs of the country at fault for
compensatio n and restitution of stolen property.”
“Yes, that is simple enough; here comes my uncle, arrange it with
him,” and Gul Begum moved off, leaving the two men to discuss the
affairs of the nation.
It would have been difficult to find two men more unlike than were
these two cousins. Wali Mohamed, the chief, was a t ypical Hazara,
short, bullet-headed and pig-headed, but with a certain shrewdness, and
an e ye to his own interests, which made him ver y difficult to deal with.
Ghu lam Hossain was made in an altogether different mould, Gul Begum
had not been far wrong when she said he was no Hazara. Tall, erect,
active, intelligent, there was nothing but his massive frame, powerful
hands, and certain, but much modified flatness about the face, to
remind one of a Hazara, and yet he was a patriot. A man with deeprooted
devotion to the people of his forefathers and the land that had
given him birth.
The discussion was a long one, but seemed to terminate satisfactorily
to both parties. Ghulam Hossain called to Gul Begum to give them
some more tea, and while she poured it out, he told her that they had
agreed to call a meeting of the chiefs of the whole of their nation, and
suggest than an envoy, bearing presents of sheep and butter and cheese,
and some of their finest hand-woven cloth, should be sent to Kabul to
the Ameer to express the willingness of the chiefs of the Hazaras to
order their subjects to cease from the petty warfares and raids now
carried on between them and the Afghan Maliks, and to beg the Ameer
to order a similar truce on the part of his subjects.
“That will be all right,” the Vizier’s daughter said, “he is a just man,
though severe, he will listen to what is reasonable and right.”
“He will not listen,” her father said shortly, “there will he war, a cruel,
devastating war.”