1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

52
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
I could, but at this moment I am powerless. The call to arms, I may tell
you secretly, has gone forth. In a week or two, none worthy of the
name of patriot will be found among these hills. As the wife, or
affianced wife, of Mohamed Jan, the obscure, the peasant, you will be
unnoticed and unknown. As Gul Begum, my daughter, the Hazara
beauty, in your own home, you are exposed to ever y danger. Try to
understand my difficult y, and to help me to overcome. I do not ask you
to wed this man. I have had other and very different plans for you, but
try and fall in with my views. You need not associate with these people
over much, and I will pay them well for housing and feeding you, so
that you need not work for them. You have only to accept their service
gracefully and graciously, remembering that you are my daughter, and
can command whatever rewards it may be in my powers to give to
those who serve you well.”
“Father, I will obey you,” the girl said, weeping quietly. “I will do the
little I can to set your mind at ease. But oh! It is very hard to go among
these strangers. Oh, why was I not a boy, or why can you not treat me
as a boy and let me go out and fight with you and my uncle. In the old
days, father, women did these things, why not to-day? I am as strong as
many a man, and hard y too.”
“Yes, child,” he said quietly, “and stronger. Prove that you are strong
enough to wait and watch. That is far harder to a brave, active woman
like you than the rush and excitement of war and strife.”
“Are you coming to prepare your things to accompany your
grandmother to-morrow morning, or does your father expect me to do it
all for you?” Halima asked, interrupting the tender leave-taking
between her husband and her daughter.
“It is late,” Ghulam Hossain said sadly. “Gul Begum can stay the night
with me. She may not see me again for many months.”
“I have got my clothes read y to start anywhere at any time, mother,”
the girl added hurriedly. “The y are fastened in a cloth in the recess. I
have nothing to do but send them.”
“Are you going to take all those clothes with you ?” her mother asked
peevishly. “Are you then going to remain permanently at this
peasant’s, this Mohamed Jan’s? or do you wish to show his women that
Ghulam Hossain has so much more money than he knows what to do
with, that he gives his daughter more clothes than she knows how to
wear? That’s just the way to do if you want your father to pay away
ever ything he possesses to these people in return for the extraordinary
favour he is asking them.”
“Let her take such clothes as she has,” Ghulam Hossain replied,
answering instead of his daughter. “She may need them all, and they
will be at least as safe there as here. I can spare a pony to carry the
bundle and her bedding, besides her grandmother’s pony and her own.