The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [333]
Koda Dad frowned at the lightness of his tone, and said with a trace of sharpness: ‘You may laugh, but it would be as well if all those who like myself can remember that first war against the Afghans, and all who like you and my son Zarin Khan had yet to be born, would consider that conflict, and what became of it.’
‘I have read of it,’ returned Ash lightly. ‘It does not make a pretty tale.’
‘Pretty!’ snorted Koda Dad. ‘No, it was not pretty, and all who engaged in it suffered sorely. Not only Afghans and Angrezis, but Sikhs, Jats and Punjabis and the many others who served in the great army that the Raj sent against Shere Ali's father, the Amir Dost Mohammed. That army won a great victory, slaying large numbers of Afghans and occupying Kabul, where they remained for two years and doubtless expected to stay for many more. Yet in the end they were forced to abandon it and to retreat through the mountains – close on seventeen thousand of them, men, women and children, of whom how many think you reached Jalalabad? One! – one only out of all that great company who marched out of Kabul in the year that my son Awal Shah was born. The rest, save for some few whom the Amir's son took into custody, died among the passes, butchered by the tribes who fell upon them like wolves upon a flock of sheep, for they were weakened by cold, it being winter and the snow lying deep. Some four months later my father had occasion to pass that way, and saw their bones lying scattered thick for mile upon mile along the hillsides, as though…’
'I too,’ said Ash, ‘for even after all these years, many are still left. But all that happened very long ago, so why should it disturb you now? What is wrong, Bapu-ji?’
‘Many things,’ said Koda Dad soberly. ‘That tale that I have just told you, for one. It is not so old a tale, since many men still living must have seen what my father saw, and there must also be others, far younger than myself, who took part in that great killing and later told their sons and grandsons of these things.’
‘What of it? There is nothing strange in that.’
‘ No. But why is it that now of a sudden, and after so many years, the tale of the destruction of that army is being told again in every town and village and household throughout Afghanistan and the lands that border upon it? I myself have heard it told a score of times in the past few weeks; and it bodes no good, for the telling of it breeds conceit and over-confidence, encouraging our young men to think scornfully of the Raj and to belittle its power and the strength of its armies. And there is another curious thing: the teller is nearly always a stranger, passing through. A merchant perhaps, or a Powindah, or some wandering mendicant; a holy man on pilgrimage or someone on a visit to relatives in another part of the country, who has asked for a night's lodging. These strangers tell the story well, making it live again in the minds of folk who first heard it ten, twenty, thirty years ago, and had almost forgotten it, but who now retell it to each other and become boastful and full of wild talk. I have begun to wonder of late if there is not something behind it. Some plan… or some person.’
‘Such as Shere Ali, or the Tsar of Russia?’ suggested Ash. ‘But why? It would not pay Shere Ali to embark on a war with the British.’
‘True. But it might please the Russ-log if he should do so, for then he would hasten to ally himself to them so that he might call upon them to aid him. All the Border knows that the Russ-log have already swallowed up much of the territory of the Khans; and were they to gain a firm foothold in Afghanistan, who knows but that they might one day use it as a base for the conquest of Hind? I for one have no desire to see the Russ-log replace the Raj – though to speak truth, child, I would be happy to see the Raj depart from this land and the Government return once again to the hands of those to whom it rightfully belongs: the native-born.’
‘Like myself,’ observed Ash with a grin.
‘Chut! You