The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

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  After the marriage, Ibrahim settled into his discipleship. Others might study at the malang’s feet and aspire to learn from the great man, but a true sheikh makes one of his students heir to his vocation, and Ibrahim was this chosen one. Everybody knew it, and everybody now acknowledged what Ibrahim had known all along: the malang of Char Bagh was a learned Sufi sheikh, a mystic of the highest order. Ibrahim visited him every day and never stopped marveling at how this man without a stick of possessions could recite whole books from memory and explicate the meaning of any line Ibrahim recited, even though his explanations were often more cryptic than the original—and just as fruitful to explore.

  What Ibrahim appreciated most was not any specific wisdom his master imparted but those moments when the malang burst out singing. Ibrahim kept all his writing supplies at the malang’s house and traded a bundle of treated goatskins to Mullah Yaqub for that man’s entire supply of paper. Mullah Yaqub could always get more paper, he had family connections in Baghlan. Ibrahim could have gotten his own paper through those channels, but it would have taken time, and he didn’t want to risk waiting. He wanted to be sure he had all the paper he might need, close at hand.

  He could congratulate himself on his foresight one night in the month of Saratan when the malang burst into a fountain of free-flowing song. Ibrahim had spent the evening at his house, keeping his eyes, mind, and heart off Khadija, who hovered about the room cleaning up, listening in, and serving food and tea—Ibrahim could mingle with her freely, for Malang-sahib treated him as a member of his private family.

  On that particular evening, he and his sheikh had eaten dinner and performed namaz and were drinking a final pot of tea when suddenly the malang began to breathe raggedly, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. Incoherent melodic sounds began to issue from his lips and throat. Khadija quickly brought the box of writing supplies over. Ibrahim snatched a sheet of paper, smoothed it out, and dipped his pen in the ink bottle that Khadija had hastily set before him. By then, the malang’s moans had resolved into words, so Ibrahim began to write. He missed the first few lines, but after that he blazed away. Khadija kept his supplies in order, organized the pages as he filled them, handed him fresh sheets as needed, kept a reed pen sharpened against the moment when his own broke or wore out, and generally relieved Ibrahim of every duty except taking dictation.

  The malang sang all that night and all the next day and on into the following night. Dawn came again but nothing staunched his flow. Ibrahim kept writing in blind haste. Khadija fed him morsels of bread dipped in soup to relieve him of distraction. He scarcely noticed her loving fingers sliding between his lips as she fed him. Over the course of those exhausting, exhilarating, astonishing days, he wrote down over 10,000 couplets, a sizable book, taken directly from the mouth of his ecstatic sheikh. By the end of that first night, Ibrahim himself was in a kind of trance. The master’s voice filled his ears, filled his soul. The universe of all things he could touch or see, the walls around him, the mud, the reed, the table, the pen, the shadowy motions of Khadija nearby, all—all!—were transformed into richly swelling music.

  When the malang stopped singing at last, Ibrahim let the pen drop from his hand, his head slumped, and he fell asleep where he sat. When he awoke it was evening. His last memory was of daylight, so he guessed that he and the malang had both been asleep for half a day. But Khadija corrected him. He and the sheikh had slept through one whole day-and-night cycle plus half a day.

  During the marathon, Soraya sent messengers to find out what had happened to her husband, and Khadija sent them back with a warning not to let anyone else come up to the malang’s house. She told the boys the malang and Ibrahim were engaged in a spiritual ceremony that must not be interrupted or disrupted. At that news, Soraya wrapped her scarf around her head and came trudging up the hill to see for herself, but what she saw so bedazzled her that she began to weep, cuddled in a corner of the room, and then she simply watched and dozed, woke and listened, dozed and woke and watched.

  Despite Khadija’s warnings, some of the men came drifting up, because the rumor got out, and curiosity seekers would not be denied. They gathered at the windows because Khadija and Soraya would not let them into the house. From outside, they could not make out the words of the malang’s song. They could merely catch the flavor of his melody and gawk in awe at the sight of the malang singing and Ibrahim writing. When the singing stopped, the listeners staggered away from the windows like men who had been drinking wine, murmuring to one another about what they had seen. The stories spread and soon Sorkhab, too, was buzzing about the event. Mullah Yaqub came to Char Bagh to read Ibrahim’s manuscript. Ibrahim would not let him take the pages away with him. By then he was busy making a legible copy of the couplets he had scribbled, but he would not give this to the mullah either. It was too precious. Finally, having no other recourse, the mullah seated himself next to Ibrahim and began to make his own copy from the one Ibrahim was transcribing. He took this manuscript back to Sorkhab, where it was copied by others, including visitors from larger towns along the road from Charikar to Puli Khumri. Years later, handwritten versions of the malang’s masterpiece duplicated by anonymous scribes during that summer and later could be found for sale in bazaars as far away as Kabul and Rawalpindi. But these unauthorized copies contained many errors.

  As stories about the malang spread, strangers began drifting to Char Bagh to touch his garments, beg for his breath on their injuries, and seek amulets from him. To keep them from the village, Ibrahim oversaw the construction of a rude hostel half a k’roh distant from the village, just over the pass. It was one large room. What did pilgrims need, after all? Just a place to sleep until their visit was over.

  But eventually, some visitors began showing up with womenfolk, who were just as intent on getting amulets to meet their peculiarly female difficulties—infertility, the illness of a child, the hope of a husband, the productivity of their animals, sometimes even the downfall of a rival. It might have seemed odd, the malang’s own wife being barren, but outsiders knew nothing of that, of course; and the villagers of Char Bagh made no comment about it, a miracle in itself, since no other matter related to sex, marriage, childbirth, fidelity and infidelity, health, madness, crime, jealousy, or any other human interaction had ever in living memory escaped the rumor mill. The malang’s intimate affairs were the first topic ever to elude evisceration by gossip.

  Toward the end of summer, the malang said he would see no pilgrims over the winter, because he did not want people trying the snowbound passes merely to see him. Gently, he began to discourage the pilgrims who did show up. He told them he would be open to visitors again next spring, if God willed it. The pilgrims kept coming, but the word spread and gradually choked off the flow.

  24

  “Strangers coming! Get the women out of sight! Hide, hide! Strangers coming!” Karim ran down the mountainside yelling and puffing. Hard on his heels came his new best friend Farid. Women working in the fields looked where the boys were pointing, up toward the notch of Red Pass, but since they saw nobody, they went on with their business. The crone, who was sunning herself outside Ibrahim’s compound, began to ridicule the boys. Then Ghulam Dastagir came out to see what the noise was about. Hearing Karim’s cry of Strangers! Strangers! he shouted at the women to get indoors fast and advanced upon his son. “What’s all this? What is it, boy? Are you lying? You’d better not be lying …”

  “Strangers!” his son hollered. “Coming on horses, Papa! Three of them!”

  Ghulam Dastagir frowned and walked across the village to alert the malik. Minutes later, he and Ibrahim rode out on donkeys. At the foot of the path to Red Pass, they did indeed see three men on horses, coming down toward the village. One looked normal; he was wearing a long shirt and a proper turban—but the other two! Who were they, what were these strange red coats? Ibrahim glanced at Ghulam Dastagir, then kicked his donkey forward. The strangers reined up.
One of the men-in-red barked something, but it wasn’t Pushto or Farsi or or Baluchi or Arabic or any other tongue Ibrahim had heard.

  What was the proper greeting for such men? Nothing in the rules of etiquette seemed to fit. Was their headgear meant to offend? To insult? One wore nothing at all—he was riding about the countryside with his hair completely exposed. The other—it was almost worse!—wore a pot-shaped hat with a shelf attached to the front and a feather poking up from the top. Both creatures had pink skins and chins shaved obscenely bare. Their pants were so lasciviously tight that the shape of their legs showed. Indeed their garments seemed designed for just such a display: Their heavy red jackets were shorter in front than in back, and they had tucked their shirts into their waistbands as if on purpose to make their crotches glaringly visible to anyone looking. In back, their jackets divided into two tail-like segments just above mid-buttock. Ibrahim instinctively brushed his own knee-length shirt down over the capacious pantaloons protecting his privacy. The men were sitting on horses at this moment, but Ibrahim had to wonder: what did they do about their buttocks when they were performing prayer? How did they cover their hindquarters during their prostrations? Or did they simply bend down and—God-forbid-it!—wag their butts for all to see?

  “Salaam aleikum, sahibs,” Ibrahim called out soberly. “Welcome to Char Bagh. How can we serve you? Are you lost?”

  The third member of the party pushed ahead of his red-coated companions. His grin revealed a gold bicuspid. “W’aleikum a’salaam, villagers,” he said and went on in fluent Pushto. “Good health. What a beautiful valley you have here!”

  “We can manage in Pushto,” said Ibrahim in that language, “if that’s what you speak. Are you fellows Pushtoon?”

  “If Farsi is your tongue, let us by all means speak Farsi, Farmer-sir,” the man said in elegant court Farsi. “Is this the world-celebrated village of Char Bagh?”

  “Well…it is Char Bagh,” Ibrahim allowed. “Have you some business with us? Where are you fellows from?”

  “Gardez, my friend, many days south of here. Do you know my country?”

  “We’re not well-traveled,” Ibrahim apologized and then went on to lie politely, “but we have heard your country celebrated in stories. Men speak well of you. Your visit honors us. What of these others? Are they also from Gardez?”

  The Pushtoon turned to his companions and conversed with them for a few minutes in that strange language. The red-coats grinned the whole time as if Ibrahim’s question had been a joke. The translator turned back. “No. These men hail from a tribe called the Engrayzee. This man is Oxley—Officer Oxley. That one is Hudson.”

  “Okusley,” Ibrahim tried out the unfamiliar sound. “Hadasan.”

  “English!” one of the redcoats shouted, standing up in his stirrups. “Englishmen!”

  “Ingriz,” Ghulam Dastagir repeated. “Engriz-mein.”

  “Engrayzee,” the Pushtoon corrected him. “It’s the biggest tribe in the world—enormous. They come from a country much further than Gardez. From the west, my friends.” He pointed toward the setting sun.

  “Closer to Mecca then?” Ibrahim hesitated, not wishing to boast, but then went ahead and stated the important fact about himself. “I have been to Mecca. I went with my father as a boy.”

  The Pushtoon nodded respectfully. “Hajji-sahib,” he acknowledged. Then: “From that direction, yes, but their land lies far beyond Mecca.”

  “Beyond Mecca!” Ghulam Dastagir exclaimed. “What do they want here?”

  “They want to lodge here until the snows come.”

  “Here?” gulped Ibrahim. “With us? By all means. A thousand times. The honor is too great. Really, much too great. You see, we cannot offer such important travelers the luxuries they rightly expect. We can give them nothing but bread to eat and straw to sleep on. This is a poor village, sir. Entirely at their service, such as it is, but all we have to share with them is our misery. Sorkhab is the place for them. Up the river.”

  “No, they’ve seen Sorkhab. This is the place they want. They don’t ask to lodge in your village. If I gave that impression, I beg your pardon. They only mean they would like to set up lodgings near your village.”

  “Why here, particularly?” Ibrahim glanced at Ghulam Dastagir, and was not surprised to see him frowning. Over his shoulder, he could see Ghulam Haidar and two of his cousins approaching. The boy Karim was with them. Word had spread. Soon, many more villagers would be coming to investigate the excitement. They were all in a nervous state already. Every week, something new—the pace was almost unbearable. Pilgrims, okay, but men with red coats and strange headgear from a land beyond Mecca? When would it end? Ibrahim didn’t want his women to glimpse these men with their tight pants and open jackets and naked chins and exposed heads. He certainly didn’t want such men setting their hungry eyes upon his women!

  “These men are doctors,” the Pushtoon explained smoothly. “They are studying illness. We hear that illness has come to your village. These men would like to examine your patients and suggest cures. They have great learning, these men, great learning.”

  “They are very kind,” Ibrahim replied. He turned to his friend. “Do you see Allah’s compassion, Dastagir-jan? The Almighty has sent us doctors.” Then he addressed the strangers again. “But the illness has already done its work here. Some of our people have died, God forgive them. The rest have recovered. There is nothing here for doctors to treat anymore. Allah bless you for your compassion! Before you move on, have some bread and tea, whatever poor hospitality we can scrape up, an onion perhaps—”

  “Well, but these men,” the Pushtoon cut in. “—these doctors would like to explore your hills a bit. They believe rare medicinal plants grow here, plants with the power to cure terrible illness. If they find such plants, they will show them to you and explain their uses. This is their real mission.”

  “Ah,” said Ghulam Dastagir. “They wish to gather precious plants from our hills and take them away to Kabul to sell. Is that it? What about our wheat crop? Our fruit trees? Would they not like to raid those as well?”

  The Pushtoon kept his composure, but his fingers tightened on his reins. “Hajji-sahib,” he said to Ibrahim, “Where is your headman? It’s him these doctors would like to speak with.”

  “You’re speaking with him now,” Ghulam Dastagir spat out. “The man you’re talking to, that’s our malik. What would you have him know? Speak, stranger. Don’t be nervous. Malik Ibrahim won’t hurt you.”

  “My friend.” The Pushtoon turned to Ghulam Dastagir soothingly. “You all seem angry. Why are you so angry? Don’t be angry with me, I am only a translator. These Engrayzee pay me to help them. And let me confide in you, they have more money than you have seen in your dreams. What’s more, they mean no harm. In some ways, they’re like children! They don’t even ask to set foot in your village. They noticed an empty building on the other side of the ridge and that’s where they’d like to lodge for a time. They have their own supplies. Mules will follow along with their goods. They will pay you, of course, and let me tell you, as one Muslim to another, I’ve squeezed endless cash out of these men and you could too. Take my advice: do not let this opportunity slip past you.”

  “Pay us how much?” said Ghulam Dastagir.

  But Ibrahim inserted himself quickly, “That building you saw is for guests of the village.” He did not wish to mention the malang before these strangers.

  The Pushtoon was undaunted. “Guests of the village. Why, that’s just how they hope to be considered: as respectful guests. Surely, you would not deny travelers the use of a ready-made shelter that stands empty?”

  “How much will they pay?” Ghulam Dastagir repeated.

  “How much are you asking?” said the interpreter.

  “We must have five rupias a day, not one rupia less. Do you hear me?”

  The interpreter paused to talk this over with the red-coats. While they were conversing among themselves, Ibrahim contended quietly with G
hulam Dastagir: “This matter touches the whole village, brother. We can’t agree to anything till I call a jirgah.”

  “Call a jirgah, fine! Who will say no? Maybe we can milk enough out of these strangers to build a water mill. If they stay on the other side of the ridge, what’s the harm? Our own mill, Malik-sahib! Think of it!”

  “And where will pilgrims stay?”

  “Malang-sahib is discouraging pilgrims from visiting him until spring, isn’t he?”

  The interpreter finished consulting with his patrons. “They accept your terms—”

  “They haven’t heard our terms,” Ibrahim cut him off brusquely. “I alone have the authority to set terms. If you take over our guest house, we’ll have to build other lodgings for our usual guests. Our men are busy with fields to tend. This will inconvenience us. We cannot accept less than twenty rupias a day for that building. I’m sorry, but those are the terms.”

  The Pushtoon was grinning again. “They knew you would say that, Malik-sahib. They could tell they were dealing with a man of the world. Well, you can’t blame them for trying to get the best price—that’s the way of the world too—but there’s no putting one over on a man like you. Twenty a day then. Agreed.” He reached down to shake Ibrahim’s hand. Ghulam Dastagir was gaping at the village’s good fortune, but Ibrahim felt uneasy. The man had agreed too quickly; he must have set his price too low. They would have paid twice what he was asking. Now they were congratulating themselves on outmaneuvering a pair of village bumpkins. Yet how could he now reject terms he himself had set?