1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

6
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
who considered herself anything below the average in the scale of
beauty. Nor were they, according to the accepted standard of their
tribe, for they were Hazaras. Broad, squat little persons, with faces like
full-moons and heads like rugged bullets, all bumps and nodules,
covered with straight, coarse, lank black hair, which only halfconcealed
the curious outline of the skull. Moreover, they had tiny,
sunk-in eyes, high cheek bones, flat noses, sallow complexions, feet
and hands like their persons, short, broad and powerful, and when they
walked it was with a heav y, plodding gait.
They dress, too, seemed specially adapted to emphasise these
peculiarities. It was made of print, wadded throughout, and consisted
of a bod y and full skirt, made separately, but sewn together at the
waist, where there was a thick piping, to give substance enough to
support the heavy skirt. There was no attempt at shaping or fitting. The
sleeves even were quite straight, narrowing gradually from the
shoulder to the wrist; only the gathers of the thick wadded skirt made
the waist look narro wer than the hips, and gave to these curious little
people a certain grotesque, picturesque appearance.
Their surroundings were picturesque, too. A perfectly pure blue sky – a
sky we know nothing of in England, clearer, if possible, even than a
Monte Carlo sky – and the whole atmosphere was dear too. Everywhere
around stretched undulating hills and dales, all beautifully green with
spring grass, dotted over with innumerable cows and sheep and goats
and a few camels, while away far in the distance, against that
wonderful clear blue sky, rose the white tops of the higher mountains,
which were still covered with snow, for it was spring, and the snows
had not melted yet. Close behind the girls, and forming their immediate
background, rose a mud tower, which might have been called twostoreyed,
but that the place where the lower room ought to have been
was filled up by a solid mass of mud, baked hard by the sun of many
summers, so as a matter of fact it contained just one room, capable of
holding about a dozen persons closely packed together; this room and
the flat roof above it being reached by a steep, winding staircase, no
two steps of which were the same height. Some were so high that only
a very active person could have climbed up them, others so low as
hardly to be worth calling steps at all, so that a stranger unaccustomed
to these irregu larities was apt to get a shock when, having raised his
foot almost up to the knee of the other leg preparatory to making a
huge step upwards, he suddenly found it drop almost to the level of the
one on the lower step. Of these slight inconveniences, however, the
village inhabitants were blissfully unconscious.
This was The Tower, a place of the greatest importance in the village.
At night it was occupied by some dozen men, all fully armed, who took
it in turns to sleep on the roof, so as to be able, themselves protected
by a rampart about ten inches high, to keep watch on the countr y round
about, and, if necessar y, sound the drum to summon all the male
villagers to protect the flocks and herds and you ng spring crop from
Turkoman tribes, who were continually making raids on them, laying