Companions of Paradise (21 page)

November 11, 1841

W
e hear wonderful things of Paradise,” the youngish man with a pockmarked face offered that same afternoon, from the crowd surrounding Shaikh Waliullah's platform.

“And much of what you have been told is nonsense.” The Shaikh surveyed his visitors, then returned his penetrating gaze to the man who had spoken. “I suppose, Rahmat, you have been led to believe that Paradise consists of an endless supply of wine and virgins?”

It was a pleasant afternoon. Bright sun illuminated the courtyard wall and fell upon those members of the crowd who had come too late to sit beneath the painted portico where the Shaikh sat, his wrinkled face amused.

Rahmat dropped his eyes. The Shaikh bent toward him, his starched headdress nodding. “Do not be ashamed,” he said kindly. “These mistakes are common among our people. But from now on, you must not listen to what ignorant mullahs tell you. Remember, instead, the saying of our Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, who said: ‘Paradise is what the eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, nor has ever flashed across the mind of man.’ ”

He raised an instructive hand. “Keep in mind,” he added, lifting his voice, “that the descriptions of Paradise, even those in the Qur'an, are only by way of example. For how else can the indescribable be described? As to those virgins—

“The Companions of Paradise,”
he intoned,
“are not what you have been told.

“That poem offers us something in the way of description,” he decreed. “In any case it is better than all that nonsense about drink and women. And now, Saboor,” he added, turning to the little boy who shared his platform, “you must go upstairs. Bhaji will want to give you your milk—”

“Look, Lalaji!” The child pointed toward the gate.

A Hindu in a loincloth and an unclean turban had entered the Shaikh's courtyard. He cut an odd figure among the Shaikh's guests with his short spear in one hand, and his jingling whip in the other.

“I am looking for Shaikh Waliullah Sahib,” the stranger announced.

THE FOLLOWING morning, several hours before a group of armed strangers arrived at Qamar Haveli and asked politely after the Shaikh's little grandson, a commodious old palanquin was already on its way north to Sialkot. It traveled with an armed escort and a full complement of twelve jogging bearers, four of them carrying the oblong box's long poles on their shoulders, and the rest awaiting their respective turns. A donkey minced along behind, pulling a cart full of bundles, rolled-up quilts, and baskets of pomegranates and blood oranges. Several servants perched on top of the load.

“Stones to my left,” droned the
sirdar
bearer from his position in front, relaying the conditions of the road to the three men who trotted blindly behind him. “Hole in the road to my right. Bullock cart coming toward us. I am moving to my left.”

Neither of the sirdar palanquin's occupants was happy.

“But I do not
want
to visit my cousins in Sialkot,” Saboor wailed as he sat beside Safiya Sultana in the cramped box, his high voice drowning out the bearers’ voices. “I want to stay at
home
!”

“Quiet, Saboor,” snapped his great-aunt. “Stop shouting into my ear.”

Although she did not say so, Safiya Sultana, too, wished she were still at Qamar Haveli. Leaving her home, even for a short time, inevitably plunged her into aching homesickness. Today she had felt the first pang before they were out of the walled city.

She shifted uncomfortably on the palanquin's pillows, hoping that while she was gone, the cousin she had chosen would care properly for the health of the large Waliullah family and all its servants. Humaira must see to the coughs and fevers among the children and inspect the hand of the cook who had cut himself. Of course she must also go up and down the kitchen stairs each morning, to measure out the spices and fruits to be eaten that day and later to count the hundred-odd rounds of hot bread for each meal. But would she properly supervise the washing of the clothes?

Safiya sighed. Until she returned there would be no one to tell the children her special instructive stories, or to help the women who arrived unannounced from all parts of the walled city complaining of illnesses, of infertility, or of cruel treatment by their husbands or mothers-in-law.

No one, not even her twin brother, could perform the
umls
, the secrets of the Karakoyia Brotherhood, that she knew. Wali, who enjoyed speedy results, had done the necessary recitations to be able to cure snakebite and scorpion sting by mystical means, and he also knew how to cool fire, but those umls solved only practical problems. Safiya's specialties were the more subtle cures, like the powerful one that quelled envy, one of the greatest evils of family life.

And what would they do if someone went missing? She had never taught her brother how to find a lost person…

She had planned to send Saboor to her niece in Sialkot with one of the family men, but had given up that idea when Saboor had flatly refused to travel without her.

Her presence, however, had not improved his mood.

“Azim and I were playing a new game in the courtyard,” he pouted. “Poor Lalaji will have to meet all his guests without me, and—”

“Enough!” she grunted. “Leave me be, Saboor. Open the side and look at the passing sights, but do not lean out. And you must close the panel again if there's too much dust.”

The sun had beaten down on the moving palanquin's roof since morning, turning it into a long, pillow-filled oven. Safiya mopped her face. With God's permission they would arrive at her cousin's house in Gujranwala by late afternoon.

She did not look forward to this visit. The last time she had stayed in that large household, her cousin Khalida had looked after her well enough, offering her fine food, excellent fruit, and a comfortable bed, but she had unkindly neglected a maidservant who was clearly suffering from fever, and had gossiped about other family members until Safiya thought her head would burst.

“And as to the girl my dear nephew Shamoun is engaged to,” Khalida had cried in her high, penetrating voice, “she let her
dupatta
fall from her shoulders to her lap right in front of me. I saw the shape of her breasts with my own eyes. Have you ever heard of such immodesty? Why, the girl might as well be from the lowest of families. If I were the boy's mother, I would have broken the engagement at once.”

Safiya sighed. They would have to remain at Khalida's house for at least a fortnight, as it would be unthinkable to stay there only a day or two. But at least in that disorganized household, Saboor would be protected from the Governor of Peshawar's long reach.

As soon as I learn that Saboor is safe
, Hassan had written,
I will arrange my departure for Kabul.

She sighed. That statement had pacified Saboor for the time being.

The child shifted against her, his face to the open side panel. She patted his back, hoping Hassan's plan to rescue his wife had been prompted by more than simple duty.

Hassan's letter had also made it clear that the whole of Afghanistan had now taken up arms against the British, and that one of their senior officers had been murdered.

God willing, Hassan would not meet with ill fortune on this perilous journey. If he had not forgiven himself for Yusuf Bhatti's death, his danger would increase.

Self-loathing would make a dangerous companion now.

She laid her head back, allowed her eyes to become heavy, and abandoned herself to other thoughts.

It had been two years since the family had learned to their surprise that the future of the Karakoyia Brotherhood rested on Saboor's small shoulders. Until that moment, it had not occurred to any of them that such a thing might happen. It was uncommon for a Sufi Shaikh to be succeeded by one of his relatives, and that unusual circumstance had already occurred nearly thirty years before, when her twin brother had been made Shaikh after the death of their grandfather, the great Shaikh Abd Dhul-Jalali Wal-Ikram.

Perhaps, with Allah's help, Saboor would grow to be as wise as her grandfather had been.

Saboor's father was another matter. For all his courtly manner, Hassan was a sensible man, and a good manager. As practicality was always in short supply among the dreamers and storytellers of Qamar Haveli, the management of the family's farmlands and fruit gardens had fallen entirely to him.

Safiya had no idea how she would do without her nephew. The thought of her brother trying to manage the family accounts made her shudder.

She opened her eyes. The next Shaikh of the Karakoyia Brotherhood was tugging at her sleeve. “I cannot see anything,” he complained. “All I can see is running legs.”

“Shut the panel, then,” she told him, and closed her eyes again.

She had not always been close to Hassan. Fearing the strong bond between her husband and his twin sister, Hassan's mother for years had kept her little son from his clever, unglamorous aunt. Even after he learned to walk, Mahmuda had kept him to herself, insisting that he remain by her side night and day.

Safiya, of course, had not been blameless, for she had failed to see Mahmuda's desperate loneliness, separated as she was from her own generous, artistic family. Spartan in her own approach to life, Safiya had not understood the taste for lovely things that had been Mahmuda's legacy to Hassan, and perhaps even to Saboor.

It was a pity that Mahmuda had died when Hassan was only nineteen.

Safiya's opportunity to approach her nephew had come when he was four. Called away to attend to her father in his last illness, and suffering herself from recurring fevers, Mahmuda had been prevailed upon to leave her son behind.

After his mother's departure, Hassan had crouched alone in a corner of the sitting room, then wept himself to sleep.

The next morning, Safiya had called the family children together, and announced that she would tell them a story. Pretending not to notice Hassan in his corner, she had launched animatedly into a tale her grandmother had often told her.

The story had taken four mornings to tell. On the second morning, Hassan had crept shyly toward his cousins. On the third morning, he had sat shoulder to shoulder with them, his mouth open, his eyes fixed on Safiya.

He had come to her on the fourth evening.

“Bhaji,” he had whispered, lifting her hair away from her ear, as Saboor so often did now, “may I sleep with you tonight?”

A cloud of dust rushed into the palanquin, filling Safiya's lungs. She started up, wheezing. “I told you to close the panel, Saboor,” she snapped, flapping her hands in front of her face. “Close it this instant!”

“But what shall we do now, Bhaji?” he asked, after he had banged the panel shut. “What shall we do?”

She smiled into his mournful little face. “Come, Saboor,” she intoned, patting the mattress beside her. “Come here and listen to the story of the King's Messenger. It is a long story, and so I cannot tell it all today.

“In a kingdom very far from here…”

A HASTILY dispatched messenger had arrived in time to warn Khalida of her guests’ impending arrival. Waiting men had hurried to push open the tall, double doors of her spacious house and admit the palanquin and its escort into a broad courtyard containing a fountain and several dusty trees. When Safiya and Saboor were shown into the ladies’ quarters, Khalida had offered them shrill cries of welcome.

After lunch two days later, as she and Saboor rested against a pair of bolsters in Khalida's sitting room and the other family ladies snored around them, Safiya began the third part of the story.

“Muballigh,” she began, whispering in order not to disturb the sleeping ladies, “left the bitter king's sorrowful country behind him and set off to find another king to receive his message.

“In time, the landscape changed from barrenness to plenty, and Muballigh knew he had arrived in a new country.

“Here were fields of ripening crops and orchards heavy with fruit. Animals grazed the land and people worked in the fields.

“But as he approached them, he was surprised to find that the people he had seen were not cheerful peasants. They looked more like slaves, toiling joylessly on the rich land, carrying huge loads on their backs, bending unsmiling to their work.

“When Muballigh entered a village, he found no children playing. No veiled housewives gossiped at the village well, but through the windows of the houses he saw richly dressed men and women lolling on cushions, laughing, eating, and drinking.

“A dirty-faced child passed him, carrying a tray of sweetmeats. When Muballigh asked her how to find the king's palace, she did not reply, but only pointed a thin hand toward a distant, gleaming city before hurrying away.”

“But why was the girl's face dirty?” asked Saboor. “Why was her hand thin if she had sweets on her tray?”