1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
The girl sighed. “But the children? The y will never stand this march,”
she said, “and just look at my feet. The y are better now, but by
tomorrow night I shan’t be able to put them to the ground.”
“Can’t help that,” the soldier said again. “Why did you give away your
boots? You had some on when you started.”
“Oh, it was to my mother I gave them,” the girl answered simply. “I
could not walk in boots and see her feet bare.”
“As you please,” the man answered carelessly. “It’s not much of a
matter that to my wa y of thinking.”
They halted at night in a village, and were packed as tightly as they
could be squeezed into the rooms, or rather sheds, allotted to them. It
was a terrible night. Many of the children had a touch of sun fever, and
in addition to this the mulberries had disagreed with several, and made
them sick and restless.
“Give me some water – water,” Gul Begum’s little sister kept crying,
“I am so hot and thirst y.”
“Ah, God, my darling is ill,” the elder girl moaned. “God make you
well, my sweet one,” but still the little thing wailed and cried, “Give
me some water, sister mine (Khwar-e-m), I am so thirsty. Water,
water.”
All night the girl sat by her and tried to soothe her, and when day
dawned she slept. Then Gul Begum put down her head and slept too.
She could do no more; she was worn out.
The child seemed better in the morning, but languid. Towards noon,
when the sun again broke out in all its fury, she got worse. The fever
returned with redoubled strength, and the child could not drag her poor
wear y limbs along.
“Oh God,” Gul Begum cried, “have pit y but there seemed no God to
hear, only the sold iers, and the y hurried on the laggers behind and
plied their sticks – not mercilessly, however – on those who seemed
too weary to drag themselves forward. Gul Begum tried to carry her
little sister, but her own feet were sore, she lagged behind in her turn
and had a stick laid across her back just as though she had been a sheep
straying from the flock. She borrowed her boots back from her mother,
but found she could not get them on, her feet were so swollen. At last
they halted again for the mid-day rest, but Gul Begum got no repose,
the suffering child kept crying and could not sleep or eat. But why
dwell on events so painful, so harrowing? The next night but one Gul
Begum’s darling died, died in a raging fever, and two nights later the
boy died too. Oh, the wailing and the weeping throughout the camp!
Dozens of little children perished on that long burning road, and so