1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

4
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
fashion, of course, the work of twent y men. He had not only the mere
nominal superintendence of a dozen most diverse kinds of works,
offices, etc., but was responsible for the working, and for the actual
detail of each, and in Afghanistan there is no method. None has an
understudy in case of illness, or to provide for a much needed holiday,
so that if an official is laid up, the whole of his work accumulates, and
he rises from a bed of sickness to meet a task beyond his strength even
when he was well. There is no one whom he can rely for anything.
But besides those works, which were merely extras, the man whom I
have called Ali Mohamed Khan had his Court duties to attend to ; he
was head of what we should call the Intelligence Department, and was
Chief Secretar y to the Ameer. There is no doubt that there is no such
thing as smoke without fire, and it is equally true that there were men
in Kabul who had serious causes of complaint in that their work was
retarded for want of materials, etc. But these were not, as a rule, the
men who had most to say against him. Besides, the real fault lay not in
the man who failed to do the work of twenty, but in the system which
invariably overtaxes the willing horse. There is a popular saying in
Kabul that instead of receiving increase of pay or an additional holiday
for special services rendered, an official is praised and congratulated
in open Durbar, and receives as a reward for his labours an extra
burden of work. That is really what happened in his case.
It may seem to some that Gul Begum herself is an impossibilit y – that
such a country and such surroundings could not have produced a
woman of that stamp ; but this is not so. Here and there, very rarely, I
admit, one meets in Afghanistan a character that stands out alone – a
nature that would be far above the average in the most civilised
country in the world.
Such an one was an old Pir (leader, teacher), who is almost universally
revered as a saint by the highest, as well as by the lowliest, throughout
the country. He reminded me of St Francis both in his life and
teaching. I longed to be allowed to visit him, but, though he would
send me messages, he would go no further. He saw no women except
those of his own family.
There are, too, among the mountains, people of the most absorbing
interest. Men who need but a touch to awaken them to civilisation, so
naturally refined are their minds, so ready are the y to admit that they
are behind other nations, so anxious are they that something should be
done to raise them as a nation. Those are to the people of Kabul what
the Scottish farmer is to the East London loafer. Unfortunately, the
loafer predominates to such an extent, that in one’s daily life in Kabul
one almost loses sight of the other. What I wish to convey is that a man
such as Ghulam Hossain is by no means an anomaly in Afghanistan, but
then neither is Ferad Shah nor yet Mohamed Jan. What ruins the
country in the first place is its disjointedness and its consequent feuds;
in the second place, the fact that the people have no outlet. If a man is
clever and ambitious, instead of taking up some work that makes him