1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
was the weeping of the children, the crowds of half-clad sleep y girls
exposed to the night wind, that went most to Gul Begum’s heart. Her
little brother, the youngest of the family, she had folded in a great
shawl, and soon hushed to sleep upon her breast, even among the noise
and confusion that ever ywhere prevailed. Her youngest sister, a little
child of barely nine, Gul Begum herself in miniature, clung to her
sister’s skirt’ in terror, but she had ceased crying and kept looking
about, wondering what was the matter. Fatma, the elder girl, wailed
loudly, hardly knowing why she cried. Then suddenly the order was
given to march, and the who le crowd was driven down the hill and on
the way to Kabul. Road there was none – only the pathway that had
been made b y the trampling of many feet for many years – but there
they were, these hundreds of human beings, driven like so many sheep
along a sheep-track, the lambs following as best they could.
“My feet, my feet, they are getting all cut, I can’t walk on these stones
barefooted,” a woman kept crying bitterly. “And where are my
children? Will no one find m y children and my mother?”
She was some distance on in front at first, but as she got further and
further behind, owing to the tenderness of her feet, Gul Begum
recognised her mother’s voice.
“Here, mother, we are here,” she cried, “and Shereen and my aunt. I
have given aunt your boots, for her feet were getting cut too, but you
can have mine. I am used to going barefooted and prefer it,” and so
saying, almost without stopping in her walks, the girl pulled off her
long boots and handed them to her mother.
“And I am cold,” the wretched woman sobbed, almost breaking down
now she had got back among her children.
“Here, take the boy and wrap the shawl around you both,” the girl said
again soothingly. “It’s all right now, mother. Whatever happens, we are
all together, so that nothing can be so bad as if we were all separated.”
“Ho! there, no loitering,” one of the soldiers called out. “Who’s that
blocking the wa y?” for it took just a few seconds to effect these
changes, and this time Shereen, the furthest behind of the party, got a
poke in the back with the end of a stick.
Relieved of her burden, Gul Begum was the brightest of the company
and did much to cheer the others on their way, now giving this little
child a lift, now that, and as the light grew brighter the ver y soldiers
noted her handsome form and face, and spoke more kindly to her than
to the rest.
But what a drear y wear y trail of human beings! A few men-servants
and field labourers who had been left behind when the rest of the men
had been called off to take part in the war were to be seen here and