1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

51
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
direct refusal, we should have had those brutes here as his next
messengers – he said as much in his letter to your uncle – and half our
children would have been torn to pieces and mangled by them. It is so
all over the country. We are being exasperated into war by this t yrant.
It is unavoidable.”
“Father, that may be so; but what is the use of men if they are afraid of
a few dogs or wolves, or even tigers, or any mere animal? You have
rifles, you can shoot. It would be a benefit to the whole countrysid e if
you could rid it of those brutes.”
“I wish we could shoot, or trap, or by any possible means destroy
them,” her father said thoughtfully. “But how? You must remember
these are not wild jungle beasts acting on their own instincts and the
laws of nature, which we know. They are cross-bred brutes, unnatural
in ever y way, and trained to work destruction in the plan and on the
order of a man as unnatural as themselves. The y come one knows not
whence nor at what hour. No clatter of horses’ feet, no bullet whizzing
through the air, announces their advent. They may come at cock-crow,
or at noontide, or at milking time, and we can know nothing of them
till the y are on us. It has always been so wherever the y have been sent.
But our men are gathering on the hills. You will hear the all to arms
and the shots from their rifles soon enough. We shall have to go and
meet our foes. I shall not even be here to protect you. It is only as a
married woman that you will be safe from outrage.”
“Father, that is not necessarily so,” she said, pleading her cause with
all the arts that she knew would appeal to her father. “When these
Afghans and Turcs come harr ying our countr y, they are not particular
as to whether it is a wife or maid they carry of. What do they care,
these savages? It is all one to them. They are but little better than
Kafirs when it comes to pillaging.”
“There you are both wrong and right,” her father said quite patiently,
stroking her gleaming black hair lovingly. “There are bad men among
ever y people, Mohamedan as well as o thers, but the bulk of them have
some conscience, and, besides, that is hardly the question. I am saving
you from their colonel by this pretended marriage, not from the people
generally. A thorough libertine is this Ferad Shah, and if he hears you
have already become the property of some other man, and have,
perhaps, learnt to bask in the sunshine of your husband’s smiles and
favour, he will commence bullying elsewhere. It is not you he wants,
dear child. He wants your uncle’s niece, my child, the pride of our
nation. He would fain stir up all our hatred – our most undying
passions, laying violent hands on all we hold most precious – by
destroying our darling’s chances of lawful and happy marriage. He
knows we should resent it if we are men at all. That is the meaning of
this demand of his. He is not in want of wives, he has dozens. He only
wants to insult us, and drive us into a war, which he is pleased to call
rebellion, that he may treat us as rebels and make us slaves. Now, my
sweet child, my comforter, be reasonable. I would keep you with me if