1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

22
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
appeal to that sense of injustice and right for which you have already
so great a name among the followers of the one true God and of his
Prophet. We are your sincere friends, well-wishers, and allies, etc.,
etc.’
“Has any one any objections to make to that ?”
“Yes, we are neither his friends nor his well-wishers, nor his allies,
cursed be his father, and his father’s father,” said one little man, in no
wise distinguished from the rest of the group, unless by an even greater
ugliness, and more specially nodulated head.
“Let him first make us restitution for all that his people have taken
from ours since he came to the thro ne,” cried another.
“Let him rather pay us taxes,” suggested a third. “Cursed be the father
of his taxes, who talks of taxing a free people?”
The Sayad had been sitting still, playing with some little lumps of dry
clay, which he had broken off and was still arranging in a sort of
pattern, but he looked up and said authoritatively: “Let that letter
stand. It is just and reasonable, and choose out three men who shall
take it to Kabul, carrying with them sheep , and goats, and cloth,
presents to the Ameer. I nominate Ghulam Hossain as one who shall
go; who do you choose?”
“You, Sayad, you,” called out several voices all at once.
“No, I will not go; there is nothing to say to the Ameer that is not in
the letter. – Yet, stay! Yes, I will go, I may find something to say, yes,
I will go, it will suit me well.”
There was much discussion about the third member, but he was at last
appointed, and the little group broke up. It was not often that a Hazara
council ended in so satisfactor y a manner. The business they had come
to discuss had actually been got through – a course of action been
decided upon, and each member was waddling about smiling and
giggling, congratulating himself on the important part he had taken in
the new plan of action. Only the two men who had guided them, or
rather, over-ruled them, did not congratulate themselves, but retired
into the Vizier’s house, and there remained deep in conversation, far
into the night.
“With money all could be managed ,” the Vizier said; “we could bribe
the men of this own household.”
“By firing them with religious zeal all shall be managed. I will prove
that the ally of Christians is no Mohamedan, and that his own subjects,
therefore, owe him no allegiance, his own bodyguard shall turn against
him.”
“He knows the Koran, he will defeat you. I have myself heard him
justify this alliance from ‘The Book,’ which says, ‘There are of those