Companions of Paradise (36 page)

He coughed, his face clenched.

“Please
don't die, Nur Rahman,” she begged. “Don't leave me alone here.”

There was nothing unsavory about him now. He was her lifeline.

“Pray for me,” he repeated.

Still kneeling, she steepled her hands together and closed her eyes. “Heavenly Father,” she began, thinking of her childhood, “I pray for the soul of—”

Fingers clutched at her. “Not foreign prayers,” he gasped. “Pray to Allah.”

“But I
am.
I may be a Christian, but—”

His fringed eyes implored her. She could hear air whistling through the hole in his chest. “You are a good woman, Khanum. The prayer will go from your mouth to Allah's ear. I want—”

She knew what he wanted.
Most of all
, he had told her once,
I long to be made pure again, and to see the face of the Beloved.

“First,” he whispered, “say
La illaha illa Allah, Muhammad Rasul Allah—
there is no god save God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”

Have I asked you to recite the
Shahada,
the attestation of faith?
Haji Khan had asked her on the day Burnes was murdered, his voice rising.

No
, she had replied.

Then I have not asked you to embrace Islam
, he had said.

In Munshi Sahib's story of the king's messenger, wise words had set Muballigh free to return to his homeland. Perhaps these Arabic ones would do the same for Nur Rahman

She glanced skyward. “Dear Lord,” she whispered, “Haji Khan told me that You and Allah are the same. If You are not, please forgive me.

“La illaha illa Allah,”
she intoned,
“Muhammad Rasul Allah.”

“Now say it twice more,” Nur Rahman croaked. She did as she was asked.

There, she had done it.

Imagining the horror on her father's face, she looked down, expecting the boy to smile, but he was already fading.

She bent over him. “O Allah Most Gracious,” she shouted over his rasping breath, “forgive Thy servant Nur Rahman, and reward him with the sight of Thy face. Give him loving companions of his own age, and let him drink from the fountain of—”

He stopped breathing.

“—Salsabil,” she finished, and dropped her face into her ice-cold hands.

O
thou soul,”
Safiya Sultana recited, her Qur'an open to the marked page where she had left off the previous day.

After murmuring the proper blessings, she folded the book into its silk wrappings, and stood up.

As she lifted it to its accustomed place on a high shelf in her room, a terrified wail came from the end of the corridor, where the children were waiting for their breakfast.

A moment later, a twelve-year-old girl pushed Safiya's door curtain aside, and carried Saboor into the room.

His screams were deep and throaty. His face was slick with tears. His eyes were focused inward. Beads of perspiration dotted his hairline.

He did not seem to notice Safiya bending over him. He stared through her, as if she were not there.

She made no effort to soothe him. Instead, while his trembling cousin held him, she gripped him by the arm. “Who is it, Saboor?” she demanded, shaking him. “Is it your Abba? Is it Hassan?”

His mouth stretched wide, he shook his head.

“Is it your An-nah?” she insisted. “Is it Mariam?
Speak
, Saboor.”

He nodded.

“Put him down, Ayesha,” she ordered.

When he was on his feet, she took his hand. “Come, child,” she said decisively, “we have work to do.”

Only then did Saboor stop screaming.

“Call all the ladies and older girls,” Safiya ordered, as she led him, still gulping, into the sitting room. “I need all of you.”

The women crowded around her, staring at the child. “Why do you need us, Bhaji?” they asked. “What is wrong with Saboor?”

Without replying, Safiya took her accustomed place on the floor and drew the child down beside her.

When the ladies had seated themselves, murmuring with curiosity, she cleared her throat.

“Today,” she announced, wrapping a stout arm about Saboor's shoulders, “we will perform the Uml of Lost Persons for Saboor's stepmother Mariam.

“Because Saboor is, by Allah's grace, able to see what we cannot,” she added, “we have come to know she is in danger.”

The ladies cried out. Safiya gestured for silence.

“His gift also allows us to act swiftly on her behalf, so we may hope that our help arrives in time.

“While the preparations are being made,” she went on, “you will all learn a phrase in Sindhi which is part of the uml. It does not matter whether or not we speak the Sindhi language, but we must pronounce the words properly.

“If we perform the uml correctly, we will, Inshallah, save Mariam from whatever peril she is facing. In any case, we will, in due course, learn the truth of her circumstances.”

Safiya's gap-toothed sister-in-law spoke for the ladies. “Never before,” she said formally, “have we been asked to participate in an uml. We are proud to do so, and will try our very best.”

“In the meanwhile,” Safiya announced fiercely, “no matter how curious we may be to know his story, we may
not
upset Saboor by asking him what he has seen.”

Two servants were sent to bring a tall spinning wheel from one of the downstairs storerooms. Under Safiya's direction, it was set up in an unused chamber, and prepared with a continuous skein of cotton leading from the big wheel to the small wheel, and back again.

Other servants found a heavy curtain and hung it in the doorway, to shut the room off from the rest of the ladies’ quarters.

A straw stool was set in front of the wheel.

As soon as room and wheel were ready, the ladies began their work.

One by one, instructed by Safiya Sultana, they drew the curtain aside, slipped into the room, and took their turns at the wheel, whispering the strange message that called the lost person home. One by one, after their long, difficult turns, concentrating on their recitations, never allowing the wheel to stop, they withdrew to lie down until their turn came again.

“How long will it take?” asked Hassan's gap-toothed aunt, when her turn was finished.

“I do not know, Rehmana,” replied Safiya, “but I can tell you this. For Mariam, the result of our work may come quite soon, but since she is far away, the news of her whereabouts and condition may take time to reach us. Until then we must perform the uml without stopping. It is difficult work, but it must be done.

“And now,” she added, “let us wash for our afternoon prayers.”

FIFTY FEET from Nur Rahman's body, two Indian soldiers had fallen together, their arms and legs entwined in death. What might be a bundle of rags near them was, Mariana knew, a frozen woman with an infant in her arms.

Nur Rahman's chaderi was still beneath his head. Mariana removed it and spread it over his body.

An elderly red-coated straggler toiled past her, his head drooping. He was a native officer with gray, snow-encrusted mustaches. He looked old enough to be Mariana's grandfather.

Beyond him lay Harry Fitzgerald and the now-abandoned gun.

Before she could go to Fitzgerald, half a dozen Afghan riders appeared from a grove of leafless trees and trotted toward the old sepoy, who trudged on, ignoring them.

“Look out!” she cried, but it was hopeless.

The first horseman bent casually from his saddle, and in one graceful, backhanded motion, sliced the old soldier nearly in half.

He fell, spurting blood, without uttering a sound.

Numb with terror, Mariana watched the horsemen cut down another male marcher, then another. One by one, freezing, starving, and ignored, the wailing women sank to the snow.

Desperate for a place to hide, Mariana turned back to Nur Rahman's shrouded corpse. She threw aside his chaderi, then tugged at his body, her teeth gritted, until she had wrested it out of its sheepskin cloak.

She spread the poshteen open on the snow, then took off her own, covered herself with it and rolled into a lonely, frightened, poorly hidden ball.

If she survived, she would find her way back to the city. To do so, she would have to retrace the army's bloody march, and risk being killed by pursuing tribesmen. But even if no one cut her down, how would she fare, alone in this bitter cold? It must be at least six miles to Kabul. Her hands and feet had already lost their feeling. She had not eaten since the previous afternoon.

Desperately cold and frightened, she waited for someone to come, snatch away her protecting sheepskin, and cut her throat, but in time, the shots ceased, and the cries of the wounded tapered off.

The horsemen seemed to have gone, perhaps to follow the column, looking for more people to kill.

When she sat up, an icy wind burned her ears. She got back into her sheepskin; then, in spite of Nur Rahman's warning, she flung her chaderi over her head, needing its thin cotton to keep out some of the cold.

Praying that the horsemen would not return, she toiled over to Fitzgerald.

He had been shot through the neck. He lay faceup in a scarlet pool of frozen blood, his beard encrusted with snow, his eyes half open.

He must have died instantly.

Of all the British artillery officers, he alone had thought of those abandoned gunners, and come to their rescue.

He had offered her his hand and his heart.

She knelt at his side. “Dear Allah,” she prayed through chattering teeth, “take this good man's soul to Thy Paradise. And please,” she added, “give him everything Nur Rahman has, but let him be with English people, if possible.”

She touched Harry Fitzgerald's stiff cheek, got to her feet, and started back toward Kabul.

No stragglers approached as she trudged along. Save for the dead, she was alone.

At a noise behind her, she turned and drew in a sharp, frightened breath.

She was far from alone. The horsemen had returned. They rode straight for her.

They would kill her now, of course. Nur Rahman had warned her. But what did it matter? Everyone who still lived would be dead soon. Hassan would never find her here. It was too late for hope.

She did not have the fatalistic courage of the old sepoy. Bent double in her dirty chaderi, nauseous with fright, she waited for the horsemen to arrive, to slice her in half with their wicked, curving swords.

They pulled to a halt in front of her, blocking her way.

“You,” shouted a familiar, hollow voice.

It was Aminullah Khan, coming to punish her for spurning his asylum. She closed her eyes and waited for the bite of his sword.

“Are you my missing asylum-seeker?” he barked. “Speak! Let me hear your voice.”

“I am,” she quavered.

“Hah!” He smiled harshly. “I thought you wanted panah.”

He gestured with a slick, crimson blade at the carnage around them. “So you have changed your mind. You have decided to die among these infidels after all.”

He leaned from his horse. “You did not tell me you were married,” he barked. “Where is the husband who has abandoned you to freeze here on this battlefield?”

“Why do you want to know?” Mariana's feet were like blocks of ice. Too hungry and too desperately tired to think, she lifted her chaderi from her face and looked Aminullah Khan in the eye. “Why,” she asked resignedly, “do you not kill me now?”

His chin lifted, as if she had struck him. His henchmen looked quickly away from them both.

“Kill you? Who do you think I am?” He smiled unpleasantly. “You are my guest. Why do you suggest that I would kill you? I am no infidel, like your people.”

This last was too much to comprehend. Mariana took a step backward, her hands outstretched. “Please do not tease me,” she begged, her knees buckling. “Please.”

“Come.” He sheathed his dreadful sword, edged his horse toward her, and reached down. “Get up,” he ordered. “You asked panah, and you shall have it.”

Panah.
There was no point in asking where he was taking her. After somehow forcing a heavy, numb leg across his horse's back, she noticed only that he and his henchmen had turned away from the city. As before, he galloped headlong, while she bounced behind him, half forgotten, terrified she would fall, her stiff fingers gripping his cummerbund.

They stopped at a place she thought she remembered. There was something familiar in the shape of the sloping ground as they approached the small town ahead of them.

It was Butkhak, the last caravan stop before Kabul on the road from Peshawar, the place where she had seen her vision of the funeral march nearly a year ago.

How true that vision had been.

They clattered under a gate, wound through several streets, and stopped in front of a plain mud-brick house.

Aminullah dismounted, leaving Mariana on his saddle, and hammered on the door. A young boy answered his knock, started back in surprise, a hand over his heart, then disappeared inside, to be replaced by an old, bent man in a huge checkered turban.

Rapid words were exchanged. Aminullah beckoned to her.

As before, she was ushered inside by women, and taken to an empty upstairs room with a string bed in one corner.

A child brought her tea. Never had Mariana tasted anything as good.

Someone else brought her a quilt and a hard pillow. She pulled off her chaderi and sheepskin, rolled herself into the quilt, and fell deeply and instantly asleep.