1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
Jan. Ferad Shah’s name has never been mentioned in connection with
her.”
“It is well,” Gul Begum said quietly, noting something of the awe
which the ver y mention of this man’s name had inspired. “It is you who
run the risk of his disp leasure, not I. These,” pointing to the other
women, “are my witnesses that I have protested. It is for you now to do
what you please.”
“What proof have you of this? Have you any one here who is aware
that you have been selected by Ferad Shah?”
“There is m y cousin Shereen,” she said. “ask her, and somewhere you
will find my mother, and these girls they, too, all know that Colonel
Ferad Shah has twice sent special messengers for me to go and join
him. That he is a man who does not care to be crossed I also know, and
probably you know as much of him, or more, that I do.”
The man looked her up and down. It seemed to him not unlikely that
Ferad Shah had chosen this girl. He was a judge of these things, and
knew a fine woman when he saw one.
“All right;” he said to his men, “put her aside to send to Ferad Shah.
Let us hope she will like it when she gets there,” he added below his
breath. “My God, women have strange tastes!”
So the Vizier’s daughter was returned for the moment to her tent and to
her companions, and the other five, with another girl who was chosen
in Gul Begum’s place, were all marched off to the Commedan’s
quarters. But during the day many were the calls paid round the
prisoners’ camp, and many of the girls that were marched off in this
direction and that, henceforth to be the slaves of those who had
selected them. There was nothing u nkind in the way they were treated.
They were quietly told what the y were to do and they did it; only when
mothers and daughters were parted there was wailing and sobbing, and
sometimes an effort on the mother’s part to go with the daughter – an
effort not altogether unavailing in some cases if the mother were you ng
and the child too small to do easily witho ut her. Fatma was selected
during the first hour or two, and sent to the household of the chief man
in one of the neighbouring villages. Halima cried loudly and begged to
be taken too, but was sent back. She was not wanted. Gul Begum began
to wonder what was to be done with her, and what her fate was to be.
Like many another in Afghanistan she had saved herself from the
difficult y of the moment, by placing herself in a far worse plight, had
substituted what might prove a terrible ordeal in the establishment of a
monster for the comparatively ordinar y every-day trouble that had
threatened her; but Hazaras and Afghans, too, never think be yond the
passing moment. When the next difficult y arose she would find some
means of meeting it, she thought, and in the meantime she had a few
hours’ respite.