1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
“My father sa ys that those who are great and good must always have
enemies during their lifetime,” she would answer. “It is only after they
are dead, and there is no longer any cause for jealousy, that men
remember their good deeds, and would recall them if the y could. You
must not notice these harpies.” And her innocent flatter y would soothe
and comfort him.
More often, though, she would just keep silent, merely answering with
a sigh or gesture that meant quite as much as words – more perhaps.
Then, kneeling down beside him, she would massage his shoulders and
head in the regular oriental fashion, as he sat waiting for a meal or for
the answer to some message he had sent. At other times she would
simply remain sitting in the room where he was writing, waiting to do
his bidding, a silent figure anticipating his wants almost before he felt
them himself. Yet he hardly seemed to notice her – this girl on whom
so much of the comfort of his daily life depended.
“She is m y slave,” he would have said, had any one spoken to him
about it, “that is her duty.” So he received all, and gave nothing in
return.
One day Halima came in with a special budget of news. She had met
Mohamed Jan in the melon market, and he had asked her just to step
into his house, which was quite close. “I tell you, my dear child, his
house is nearly as good as Agha’s; not so well furnished, of course –
where would he get the carpets from? and shawls, and curtains, and
suck like? But he has fine rooms, and what any reasonable person
would call plent y of everything. He has his old mother there too, and
his sister and her husband – quite a family party – and then there are
servants and slaves in plent y.”
“Hazara slaves?” the girl asked, interrupting suddenly.
“Of course, Hazara slaves, the town still teems with them, slaves of all
sorts and ranks. Why, you can buy a slave now for next to nothing, but
they say the Ameer gave Mohamed Jan his slaves, and has offered his
an Afghan wife – a member of his own tribe.”
“Indeed?” the girl answered sarcastically. “A Hazara, with Hazara
slaves! What I said the other day, then, proves to be perfectly true. It is
very easy for a traitor to prosper.”
“Well, traitor or no traitor, he has known how to prosper where others
have been ruined, and I don’t suppose the Hazara nation is one bit the
worse off to-day for his treacher y than it would have been without it.
Had he, like your father, given up everything for what he is pleased to
call patriotism, not one of us would have been one bit the better off,
and he would be all the worse. So where is he to blame?”