A God in Every Stone (20 page)

– Until your English shredded it to ribbons with their laws, Qayyum Gul, in order to create a class of landowners loyal to the Crown. My grandfather lost all rights to the land he’d lived on his entire adult life, and since then my family has had to pay rent for the land we work to a man who knows as much about fruit trees as a fish knows about mountains. All Kalam’s life he heard me say this – and then he joined the Army so he could bleed for the English. We deserve the yoke we wear. Of your generation, only Ghaffar Khan is a true Pashtun.

– Who?

The old man was silent for a while, then nodded firmly as if a decision had been made.

– After you’ve helped me plant the cane fields, you’ll go and find Ghaffar Khan. He’ll teach you what you need to know.

– And what do I need to know?

– How to remove your blindfold, and see your place in this world.

Once you caught the scent of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan you could follow it through the Peshawar Valley. Wadpagga, Sardaryab, Charsadda, Utmanzai and points in between. Twenty-five years old and already he knew how to place a light in the eyes of old men, how to make young boys whisper pieces of his story as though they were couplets of love. Within a few hours of setting out on Kalam’s father’s instructions Qayyum felt he was chasing the story, not the man, finding different pieces of it across the Valley: Ghaffar Khan gave up his Commission in the Guides when he saw an Englishman insult a Pashtun officer; he almost set sail for England but his mother’s tears held him back; Haji Sahib of Turangzai sought him out when he was barely past twenty and together they set up a programme for education and reform; when Haji Sahib declared jihad their paths diverged, and now one was a fugitive in the tribal areas and the other travelled all through the settled districts setting up schools where the Pashtuns could find education untainted by the superstition of the mullahs and the brainwashing of the English.

On the third afternoon, between Utmanzai and Mardan, winter rain was beginning to fall when Qayyum entered the mud-walled complex to which a man on the road had directed him. The sound, familiar but unplaceable, which greeted him was fat raindrops falling on a large blue tarpaulin which four tall men held at each corner, shielding the gathering in the courtyard. A square of sky between the rain and the men. Qayyum ran across the courtyard, ducked beneath the tarpaulin, which the men held up high over their heads though they were tall and the assembled men were seated and their arms must be aching. But it was for him, for Ghaffar Khan, that the extra inches were necessary. Like an angel or a djinn in height, Kalam’s father had said, and Qayyum, six foot tall, found he had to turn his eyes upwards to Ghaffar Khan who stood beneath the other end of the tarpaulin. A smile of welcome for Qayyum sat between the eagle nose and close-cropped beard, even as Ghaffar Khan continued explaining how blood feuds and revenge were eating up the Pashtuns from within. As he spoke a blur in the rain resolved itself into the figure of a boy who had run from one of the doorways surrounding the courtyard to stand just a little distance from the young Khan; filled with excitement or anticipation, the boy stood on one foot, reached behind him to squeeze the other foot in the palm of his hands. A flamingo-boy; the ancient sculptors of Gandhara would have carved him into stone.

A babble of voices, a field of hands rose up when Ghaffar Khan finished speaking, but he turned his great frame towards the boy first:

– Do you bring a question?

Qayyum understood the boy was intermediary between this gathering and the women behind doors. He turned his body sideways, so no one might think he was looking in the direction of the women now that he knew where they were.

– Why didn’t you join Haji Sahib in his jihad?

A number of the men looked at each other, scratched their chins, sighed a little. The question wasn’t new to them.

– Taking up arms after your lands have been conquered is like building a well after your house has caught fire. The sword in tribesmen’s hands will not cut this yoke from our necks. No sword will cut this yoke from our necks. If we want any chance of advancement we must . . .

And though he’d been speaking in Pashto, he switched to an Urdu idiom to end the sentence and the man holding the tarpaulin leaned towards Qayyum and said:

– What was that? What did he say?

– He said we must get rid of our wrong ideas. We must wake up from this rabbit’s dream.

Qayyum stepped back into the diminishing rain, head angled back, and all the noise of the world was replaced by the plink of water droplets on a glass eye, the unexpected music of heaven.

October–November 1915

Viv raised her bow, strung with an arrow, and looked down the length of the shaft to the tip pointing directly at the minarets of Mahabat Khan Mosque. The Italian mercenary Paolo Avitabile had used the minarets as gallows to hang anyone who broke his laws, and as the moon shone on the white marble Viv thought she saw body-shaped shadows – the ghosts of those who had swung to their deaths above the eyes of all Peshawar's inhabitants. In the surrounding streets of the Old City, seventy years after Avitabile's governorship ended, children were still threatened into good behaviour with warnings that the terrible Abu Tabela would come for them in the night. It was Avitabile who had widened the streets, erected the Old City walls, brought security to Peshawar during its period of Sikh rule with the most iron of fists. They still fear him and revere him, an old major had said to Viv; he showed us the only way a man of Europe can rule the Pathans. But Remmick had disagreed – we are here to civilise, not to lose our own civility, he'd said. Then he pointed to Viv and added, some of us in large ways, and some of us in small. On certain days, Remmick was almost a friend.

Today, he wasn't among the revellers gathered at the broad walkway on top of the Mughal gateway of Gor Khatri, the highest elevation in the Walled City. The invitation cards to ‘Olympian Night at Gor Khatri' had come with a handwritten note instructing each guest which Greek god he or she would play for the evening. Viv was Artemis, the Virgin Hunter. An unsubtle joke reflecting the widespread certainty that the only reason for a young Englishwoman to come to Peshawar was the quest for a husband. Someone should explain that means finding someone who isn't already a husband, Mrs Remmick had pointedly remarked in her hearing, but since no one particularly liked Mrs Remmick or believed that Viv would choose Remmick-the-Red-faced when there were handsome bachelors around, the comment had only endeared Viv to many of the other British wives who enjoyed nothing more than an opportunity to pick sides.

She lowered the bow and arrow, placed it on the thick wall of the fortified gateway, and plucked a glass of iced sherbet from the tray of a passing bearer. The end of the summer season had transformed the sleepiness of Peshawar, bringing the British back from Simla with balls and picnics and hunts in tow. And the rapidly cooling weather brought with it the possibility of further distractions: a boat-ride down the Indus; the Taj Mahal; the Caves of Ajanta and Ellora; Taxila, where John Marshall had invited her to visit the excavations. And in the spring, the famed Peshawar Vale Hunt which, the regulars of the Peshawar Club insisted, Viv absolutely must stay for. Why suffer through Peshawar's summer and then leave just as it turned delightful? What sense did that make?

No sense at all, Viv agreed. She didn't see any need to mention that Remmick had promised he was working on sorting out the leasing problem with Shahji-ki-Dheri but it might be early in the new year before everything settled and excavation became possible.

She looked down at the tangle of the Old City, laid out beneath. From up here it was possible to see the rooftops of all the houses, enclosed on four sides but open to the sky – or to the Olympian gods of Gor Khatri. It was like looking into a honeycombed jewellery box, many of its compartments lit up with lanterns, revealing something bright and glittering: a woman in a tunic of green and pink, sewing mirrorwork onto a shirt; a man on a rope-bed reading from a book, children at his feet; a woman combing the long hair of a shirtless man, who Viv guessed to be Sikh, her hand on his shoulder. Which one was Najeeb's house, Viv wondered. She knew so little about his world.

Dionysus touched her elbow. The Anglo-Indian band had finally made it up the stairs with their bulky instruments and now led off with ‘For Empire and for England'. Artemis joined Dionysus in a dance along the roof of Peshawar, a bright moon overhead. Sometimes she lost track of whether she was using the Peshawar Vale Hunt as an excuse to stay in Peshawar long enough to dig deep for Tahsin Bey's dream or using Tahsin Bey as an excuse to stay for the Peshawar Vale Hunt.

 

Najeeb brought her a roll of paper and set it down on the writing table which faced out towards the garden. May I?, he said, and carefully removed the books and typewriter and lamp so that the table was all surface. He placed a paperweight at one end, and unrolled the paper, which blanketed the table-top and trailed off onto the floor.

– The Rock-Edicts of Asoka, Najeeb said. From Shahbaz Garhi.

Viv bent over the rubbing of Kharosthi words, inscribed in a wave-like pattern, following the curved surface of the rock they'd been carved into.

– How did you get this?

– It's on Yusufzai land, he said proudly. This belongs to my tribe.

– Oh yes. The men who fought Alexander at Peukelaotis.

– I can't believe I thought Alexander was an Englishman!

– If he'd been alive today, he would be. I can't believe I thought you were without curiosity. My ignorance is by far the more egregious. Thank you for showing this to me.

– It's yours. I told my brother to bring it for me so I could give it to you. I said it's for my favourite teacher.

– Thank you, Najeeb. I'll treasure it.

His smile was the first gleam of a silver circlet unearthed.

 

Viv stepped from the treasure cave of Avtar Singh's antiquities shop, eyes blinking in the mid-morning sunlight.

– It will devastate my heart, Miss Spencer, to have to sell Hariti to someone else. You must spare me that.

Viv rolled her eyes at the turbaned Sikh; of late it had almost become part of her daily routine to undertake yet another round of bargaining with Avtar Singh for the Hariti statue, closely resembling the one in the Museum, which had the goddess's hand lightly resting on her consort's upper thigh, in a gesture of ownership, fingers wandering. It wasn't the position of her hand alone which made the statue erotic but also the posture of her consort, the great general Pancika, in his short military-style skirt with his legs forming a diamond – spread apart at the knees, with ankles rubbing against each other. Viv knew she didn't really have the nerve to buy such a thing, but there was a pleasure in the bargaining over cups of tea, conversation detouring via other sculptures and coins in the shop, some of which she might really purchase at some point when either she or Avtar Singh worked out how to extricate themselves from this dance around Hariti.

– Bring the price down and your heart will be spared, Mr Singh.

Placing a velvet-ribboned pith-helmet on her head she set off. With no destination in mind she meandered, turning into one alley, then another, making sure she didn't lose sight of the elevated walls of Gor Khatri which served as a landmark. Eventually she found herself in an alley that led back to the Street of Storytellers. The shop advertising BEST ENGLISH SCHOOL UNIFORMS was familiar, and it took her a moment to work out that this was the alley down which Najeeb had pointed when he informed her, without embarrassment, that his father worked there.

Walking down the alley she saw a letter-writer sitting at a table with an inkhorn holder built into it, shaded by a tarpaulin thrown over the spreading branches of a peepul tree. How had a boy like Najeeb sprung up in a Pathan family from the Walled City where the father worked under a tree? The Indian stories of shepherd boys or slaves who become kings only made sense when you met someone like Najeeb. Did his parents have any idea of the life he had stepped into, the extent to which he was leaving them behind? She'd never asked, and suspected not. She could probably walk right up to Najeeb's father and say she was Miss Spencer and receive only a blank look in return. But it quickly became obvious, even though the man had his back towards her, that this wasn't the father of a twelve-year-old boy. His hands, resting on either side of the table, were those of a young man. Perhaps Najeeb hadn't been entirely honest when he said that his father was the only letter-writer who had a desk rather than squatting on the ground. Imagine the circumstances of a life being such that owning a desk was a boast.

Her interest left the man at the table and alighted on the woman in a white burqa who had just stood up from the chair opposite him, very tall, folding up the piece of paper which he had placed on the table before moving his hands well away from it so she could pick it up without encountering his fingertips. The figure in white hurried away, before remembering that she was a woman of Peshawar and nothing in her behaviour should call attention to itself. Her pace slowed, now she was a white sheet drifting along at the tempo of the other white sheets. Viv followed her on to the Street of Storytellers. She had yet to speak to a woman from the Walled City though she had enough Pashto now to make conversation possible.