The Honey Thief (13 page)

Another boy of sixteen, a boy with a voice, a boy with a mother, might have spoken to that mother of his feelings, and the mother, if she had good thoughts about the girl, would have spoken to the boy’s father, and by this process, an agreement would be made that in such-and-such a time – perhaps five years – the boy and girl would wed. But a boy without a voice is no prize.

The pain of a Hazara whose love is hopeless is like that of any other person, but with this difference: the pain is to be concealed. The Hazara in their history have not enjoyed the leisure of romance. If you are a Hazara with a broken heart, you do not tell the world. What would you say: ‘I am sick with love, pity me if you will’? You would be scorned. People would say to you, ‘Has the King sent soldiers to steal your land? Have you been turned out of your home with nothing but the shoes on your feet? No? Then calm yourself and go about your work.’ Abdullah told no one. But a plan formed in his mind. When the remaining three years of his promise to the madman were over, he would play the
tula
for Leila, and his music would take the place of the words he couldn’t speak.

The temptation to play the
tula
for Leila before the three years had passed was great. Of course it was. In the winter he barely saw her, and when spring came around again he longed to take a stool and sit at the place where she and her mother sold their fruit and play certain tunes he had mastered that would surely melt her heart. Although he rarely glanced at her, he had seen much to admire. She was modest, she was obedient to her mother, she smiled often. Once in the early days of a new spring she allowed her eyes to meet his for a fraction of a second. But that moment lived in Abdullah’s memory as if he had glimpsed paradise itself.

The madman had a keen eye and it wasn’t long before he noticed the melancholy that robbed Abdullah’s eyes of their brightness. It was Karim Zand’s custom to sit before Abdullah while he practised listening to the music of the
tula
. If the boy made a mistake, he would say, ‘Don’t distress yourself. Play it again.’ But if Abdullah let his concentration lapse, the madman would spit on his hand and use the hand to slap Abdullah’s face. Mistakes were one thing; a wandering mind was another. And it happened that the madman was compelled to slap Abdullah at least once each week in the months after Leila came into the boy’s life. One night after Abdullah lost the thread of a simple
gousheh
, the madman put his hand to his chin and studied the boy in silence.

‘Love has come into your life,’ he said after a minute or more. ‘Love, and trouble. One is the shadow of the other.’

Abdullah nodded his head. The madman, who had already shown the tender side of his nature to the boy on many occasions, reached out and took the
tula
from his pupil’s hand. Then he held Abdullah’s hand in his. He said, ‘You live, you breathe, the time comes when you love. Is it the mulberry girl at the market?’

Abdullah was amazed. How could the master know such a thing? He, who never left his house.

Karim Zand prepared tea for the boy. Then he sat before him again.

‘My wife,’ he said, speaking softly, ‘was of your people. She was Hazara. If you had seen my sons, you would have thought they were your brothers. The plague took them, all three. The doctor would not tend to them. I offered to pay him in gold. He said, “I do not treat Hazara.” This was in Iran, where your people live as slaves, many of them. I buried my wife and my sons in one grave. I travelled for twenty years to lose my sorrow. Then I came here, to the poorest house in the poorest village of my wife’s people. This is where I will die.’

Abdullah put his hand on his heart to show his sorrow.

‘What can you offer the family of the girl?’ said Karim Zand. ‘Nothing but the
tula
. If you play for her now, she will say, “How beautiful!” But that would be a disaster, for your music is not beautiful. You would feel flattered, you would never become a master of your instrument, never. You must hope that she will remain unwed for two more years. Have courage.’

But the madman had something to add. From the hearth of his fire he picked up a smooth stone. Before Abdullah’s amazed eyes, the madman split the stone in two. Within each half of the stone lay golden coins.

‘When the time comes,’ said Karim Zand, ‘these coins will build you a house of your own at the top of the village. You will play the
tula
there for your wife, beetle. Now go home.’

*   *   *

Two passions ruled the life of Abdullah as he passed into his seventeenth year: his love for Leila, and his desire to master the
tula
. Each passion fought a daily battle with the other. He watched Leila grow to womanhood and closer to the time when she would become a wife, and he was powerless to reveal to her and to her mother the voice of the
tula
. Yet he had exceeded the madman’s hopes for him as a student of the
tula
, and he could draw comfort from that, if possible. His fingers danced on the stops of the instrument as if all the life in his body had given itself to the
radif
. He was competent enough to play beside Karim Zand when the madman turned to the
rubab
. The master allowed the boy to lead him through changes to familiar tunes as if making a long and triumphant journey to the far side of the world and back again. The madman saw the boy concentrating with all his will; he saw pride. But he did not see happiness.

The day came, as it was certain to come, when Abdullah could keep what was in his heart to himself no more. He stopped in his labours with the baskets of soil as he passed Leila and her mother selling fruit. He lowered his basket from his shoulder and stood gazing at Leila, against all custom. Courtship amongst Hazara, as amongst all Muslims, is never open. Strong passions may fill a young man’s heart but he masters them and allows his mother to carry out her duty. After months of questioning, months of thinking, the young man’s mother may permit her son to drink tea with the young woman he has chosen. Most mothers would not think that a boy has the brains in his head or the experience of life in his heart to make an intelligent choice of wife for himself. But here on this day, in a village of the Hazarajat, a boy without a voice stood in the market square and without any power of speech, declared his love for Leila. It was only because he had no voice that he was spared a terrible rebuke from the girl’s mother and from the people of the village. But if those same people had watched closely, they would have witnessed something rare, for a smile came to Leila’s lips and she did not look away. Leila’s mother called to Abdullah, ‘Young man, have some manners!’ She would have slapped her daughter as a mother should but Leila whispered to her, ‘No harm is done.’

Abdullah went that night to the madman’s house with a note written in the well-formed letters that he was known for. He sat with the madman, drank some tea, then passed him the note. It read: ‘Master, permit me to play for the young woman Leila, I beg of you.’ The madman read the note twice, three times.

‘If you break your promise,’ he said to the boy, ‘you will offend me in my soul and my curse will follow you all your life.’

Abdullah carried his pain about with him for a further week before presenting his note to the madman once more. But the answer he received was the same: ‘If you break your promise, my soul will be offended.’ Abdullah made his request a third time after a full month had passed. But this time, he wrote more words, just as heartfelt. ‘If I cannot make my life with Leila, it would be better for me if I had not been born.’

The madman gave the answer he had given before.

Late in the season of apricots, in the very midst of Abdullah’s suffering, the young woman Leila called his name as he carried wood-ash for his uncle’s orchard through the marketplace.

‘Yes, I know your name,’ said Leila. From amongst the folds of her dress she took an apricot, full of sunshine. She gave it to Abdullah. From behind her, Leila’s mother called out sharply, ‘What, is this a generation without shame? Come to me!’

Abdullah carried the basket of wood-ash to the orchard and emptied it beneath the apple trees. Then he sat and gazed at the apricot. Leila would return to her own small village in another day, and who could say that he would ever see her again? It was more than he could bear. ‘At least,’ he said to himself, ‘let her hear what voice I speak with through the
tula.
’

He ran down the path from the orchard, all the way to the house of the madman. He was prepared to knock on the door, but the door was open, a strange thing. Inside the small house sat Karim Zand with his hands folded on his lap. On a cushion before him sat the
tula
. Abdullah paused for a few seconds. Karim Zand was not looking at him, but at the embers of the fire in the hearth.

‘Master, please forgive me,’ he wished to say, but in place of words he touched his heart. He snatched up the
tula
and ran from the house. He kept running without drawing more than three breaths until he reached the market square where Leila and her mother were packing away the rush baskets in which they offered their fruit. They looked at Abdullah in surprise.

He sat himself on the low wall that divided the little monument to the slaughtered from the market area of the square. A small number of people paused in their packing to see what strange business the boy had come on. It was a bright day, a day of high blue skies and small clouds combed into strips by the wind. Abdullah put the
tula
to his lips without any idea of what he would play, but within seconds the square was full of a music like the singing of bulbuls. Those who had lifted their heads out of curiosity now stood entranced. Hussein Anwari, the rope-maker, said to no one in particular, ‘Now here’s a miracle! The boy has taught himself from the birds!’

Abdullah played on and on. He followed paths through songs he had barely attempted before. So rapidly did note follow note that people began to gesture towards Heaven, as if the angels themselves had blessed the boy. Since Abdullah’s songs had no beginning, he himself did not know where they would end. He saw Leila in her enchantment watching and listening as one person listens to another with a secret to tell. When at last he lowered the
tula
, an agreement between these two, Leila and Abdullah, was complete, more surely than if they had put their names to a contract before the gaze of a mullah.

Joy comes into our lives always within range of sorrow. The two are sisters. It was Abdullah’s task to return the
tula
to Karim Zand once he had revealed his voice to Leila, and to the people of the town. He walked the path back to the madman’s house slowly, fearing that his master would rain curses down on his head. He had betrayed Karim Zand. He could not ever ask for forgiveness.

The door to the house once owned by the wool-dyer who lost his mind stood open, as it had an hour before. His head bowed, his heart torn as if by the winds of a terrible storm, Abdullah stepped inside the house with the
tula
held before him. There he found Karim Zand, bent over a cooking pot on the fire, his back to his visitor. When the madman turned, he looked Abdullah up and down. Nothing was said for a time which may have only been one minute, but which seemed to Abdullah like an hour with his hand in a fire. At last the madman climbed to his feet.

‘After all,’ he said to Abdullah, ‘it is not so difficult to pick up a
tula.
’ Then he bent to the hearth and opened the strange stone. He took six gold coins from inside the stone and placed them in his student’s free hand.

‘Take the instrument home with you,’ he said. ‘Bring it with you tomorrow.’

Abdullah fell to his knees in relief. He attempted to take the madman’s hand, that he might kiss it, but the madman scorned the gesture.

‘Here,’ said Karim Zand, and raised the boy up. ‘Now go home.’

Abdullah took a step to the door, but the madman called him back. ‘So that you know all your life, beetle, remember what I tell you now: God is patient with the obedient, but he treasures the disobedient. Go home, beetle.’

7

The Snow Leopard

He came to Hazarajat from England in the time of the communists when Afghanistan was upside-down. His true name was Abraham, like that of the patriarch in the Holy Book, but in Hazarajat he was called Dobara, short for
dobara khashisk kanid
, which means ‘try again’ in our language of Dari.

When he first arrived in Hazarajat on his great project he brought with him three cameras. One camera made things a great distance away appear close enough to seize with your two hands. The children of the village in which he made his home for three months were permitted to look through the camera, and they thanked God for sending the Englishman to Hazarajat. Equally as strange was another camera that took a picture and made it into a shape immediately. Every person in the village except for the most pious, who said the camera was unholy, was given a picture to keep. Some chose to stand at their own front door for their picture; some stood beside the animals they owned.