1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

46
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
“Cease, brother, cease, your words cut through me like a knife. This
man means no marriage; besides, he has forty wives and more, and if
he had none and meant to make Gul Begum a queen, I would rather see
her dead than given to such a fiend. Ferad Shah is not a man, nor would
I dis-ho nour the creatures God has made by calling him ‘brute.’ He is a
devil in the guise of man, there is nothing human in him. I would kill
Gul Begum with m y own hand rather than let him have her.”
“What shall we do, then?” the chief asked impatiently. “How are we to
get rid of this difficult y? The whole village can’t be sacrificed to just
one girl. What do you suggest?”
“Me? I suggest that as you are so anxious to provide this monster with
another wife that you should send him Shereen. She is a nice girl and a
good one. Tell him Gul Begum is married, but as you are proud to be
connected with so great a man, you send your daughter to him instead.”
The little man was very wroth. It was not often his cousin spoke to him
in such bitterness. “He does not mention Shereen, knows nothing of
her,” he said. “Fortunately, my girl is a modest girl, and I have made
no public boast of her good qualities, so when there is danger she is
passed over unnoticed, while the proud and haught y ones find
themselves in difficulties. I am a Mohamedan and know what a
woman’s place is, and keep her in it.”
“This is no time to quarrel, Wali Mohamed,” the man he called his
brother said more quietly. “You know the Ameer’s story of the cats.
Don’t let this monkey run off with our prize while we are fighting. We
must think how best we can frustrate this colonel – how best we can
answer him. I look to you for help in this trouble.”
The little man was mollified; this was as it should be. His advice, of
course, ought to be asked – was he not the chief?
“If you had given Gul Begum in marriage as I wanted you to do ,” the
girl’s mother said testily, “we should not be in this trouble now. She
has had plent y of suitors and she is of an age to be married. We have
our other children to consider. If you don’t like this colonel for a
husband for her, give her to some one else, and send a message saying
she is married; that would settle the question once and for all as far as
we are concerned. She would have a husband whose business it would
be to protect her.”
“I’ll tell you what I might do,” Ghulam Hossain said thoughtfully,
ignoring his wife’s remark. “There is that Mohamed Jan down in the
next village. His father asked Gul Begum’s hand in marriage for him
some time ago; he is certainly not the man I would choose for her – not
of our class at all. I have not seen him myself since he was a boy, but
the father was a good old man, though ignorant and obstinate.”