by Thalassa Ali
The little Keeper of Shoes opened his mouth, then closed it again.
A guard jerked his chin toward the hunchback. “I know this man,” he added, over the din of hammering fists. “Take him over there and give him food.”
“May Allah protect you.” The little man saluted Mariana before he was led away.
Another guard pointed to Mariana. “What shall we do with her?” he asked carelessly.
“She can wait here,” the first guard replied. “When we opened the door,” he shouted to Mariana, as if she were deaf as well as dirty, “we were expecting to find a lady of our house. Have you seen anyone who—”
“I am a lady of this house,” she snapped. “I have been waiting outside this gate for hours.”
Chilled to the bone, she tugged her chador more closely over her head and strode on her filthy, bandaged feet toward the inner courtyard.
As the guards stared after her, a small figure arrived at the bottom of the stairs.
“An-nah, An-nah!” Saboor shouted as he hurtled toward her. “You have come!”
The upstairs corridor with its filigreed shutters was nearly as cold as the outdoors, but a brazier of hot coals stood in the center of the sitting room. As Saboor dragged Mariana to the door, a score of ladies and several older girls looked up from their conversations.
The gap-toothed aunt stared. “How has a beggar woman gained entry to the house on this day of violence?”
“It is An-nah!” The only person who had recognized Mariana danced up and down, still grasping a handful of her chador.
She had no shoes to remove before entering. Instead, drooping with exhaustion in the doorway, she lowered Akhtar's chador from her face.
“Forgive me,” she murmured, not for the first time, swallowing nervously as Safiya Sultana pushed herself to her feet.
“She has come back!” Saboor panted, tugging her into the room with all his strength.
Beyond him, the room with its innocent, seated women appeared so peaceful that it might have been a dream. Mariana reached dizzily for the doorframe, wondering how to explain herself.
As Safiya Sultana approached, a deep frown between her eyes, all the ladies began talking at once.
“Why did Mariam leave the house?” they cried. “Where did she go? Why is she wearing such dirty clothes? Look at her feet!”
“Akhtar, Firoz,” Safiya called over her shoulder as she approached the doorway, “bring food for Mariam Bibi, and heat water for her bath.”
She nodded to Mariana. “Peace,” she offered in her man's voice. “How long have you waited outside?”
“Since early this morning,” Mariana whispered.
“Hai Allah, how she has suffered!” chorused the ladies. “But why did she leave us? Why?”
So they knew at least part of her story. But what did it matter? Mariana must offer her confession here. She must tell these ladies that she had unjustly accused Hassan of plotting murder. She must beg them all to forgive her….
“It was wrong of me to run away,” she murmured faintly. “I have made many terrible—”
“Not now.” Before she could say more, Safiya lifted a silencing hand. “Mariam has endured much,” she intoned. “We will hear her story later. Saboor is right to be happy,” she added, nodding seriously toward the dancing child as she laid an arm about Mariana's shoulders and guided her toward the brazier. “You might easily have been killed. Several times we sent men to look out through the front windows, but they could see only the corpses of the dead. When something seemed to move on the ground below, the men opened the door, thinking an injured man might be seeking shelter with us. Come.”
Fighting tears, Mariana nodded and stepped onto the covered floor, Safiya treading heavily beside her.
“Akhtar tells me that your uncle is unwell.” Safiya pointed to a place before the brazier.
“He is ill with cholera.” Mariana sniffled as she sat down. “Someone told me that you had a cure.”
She glanced up anxiously as Safiya, too, lowered herself to the floor. Oh, please, let it be true. Let her at least be able to save Uncle Adrian….
“Sit with your back to the brazier,” Safiya ordered. “What is his condition?”
“Early this morning the heaving and purging had ceased, but he still had a raging thirst and horrible cramps. I left him just after sunrise.”
Afraid to hear the truth, Mariana lowered her eyes.
Safiya nodded. “Then there is hope, provided that he did not relapse badly during the course of the day. I have a store of crystals that were sent to me by a European doctor. They are quite effective, but they may only be given by someone with proper training. I will gladly send our man to Shalimar, but we must wait until it is safe for him to travel.” She sighed. “Even though your uncle is now a member of our family, I cannot risk our man's life.”
A member of our family. What was Safiya thinking beneath that powerful serenity of hers? Surely she knew of the terrible scene Mariana had made
Unable to bear the suspense any longer, Mariana hugged herself inside her chador. “Is Hassan at home?” she heard herself say.
“No. He left late yesterday afternoon. His friend Yusuf came, then his two Afghan traders arrived and the four of them went off together. Hassan told his father he was going to see Sher Singh.” Safiya signaled Akhtar to approach her. “Bring the ewer for Bibi to wash her hands,” she ordered, “and then take that disgusting chador away.” She turned to Mariana. “I do not know where Hassan and the others have gone,” she said, seeing the unhappiness on Mariana's face, “but you must eat now. While you are eating, you will tell us your story.”
Mariana swallowed nervously as she sat in front of the tray of rice and dopiaza, one arm around Saboor, her unspeakable feet tucked out of sight beneath her. “I left the house yesterday for two reasons,” she offered, so softly that the ladies around her nudged closer in order to hear. “First, my uncle was unwell, and second, I mistakenly believed there was to be an attack upon the English camp at Shalimar.”
“An attack on Shalimar?” Safiya frowned. “Who told you such a thing?”
“No one told me,” Mariana replied lamely. “I overheard someone talking outside the windows, and thought they were discussing a plot to kill the English people. I was wrong to believe it,” she added, dropping her eyes.
Why did Safiya say nothing? Surely she knew of Mariana's fight with Hassan, and his decision to divorce her?
“Bhaji!”
As Mariana struggled over what to say next, a young girl with a braid to her knees turned breathlessly from an open window in the verandah. “The alley outside is full of soldiers!” she cried. “They are crowding about the back door. They are shouting something about ‘the enemies of Prince Sher Singh’!”
“Come away from there, Khadija!” implored one of the ladies.
Her mouth full of rice and curried goat, Mariana sat straight.
“Girls, leave the room,” Safiya ordered over the clamor of voices. “Nadir,” she added, deftly collaring a small boy, “you must go quickly and call Yahya from downstairs.
“I made the guards practice yesterday.” She turned to Mariana, and gestured for her to continue eating. “First they are to call every man, woman, and child in from the kitchen courtyard, and then they are to bring the old elephant doors and close off the kitchen from the rest of the house. My grandson, Yahya, is to give the signal. But why,” she asked, “are those soldiers calling us Sher Singh's enemies?”
As the little boy dashed off, several adolescent girls hurried into another room and closed the curtain. A moment later, a leggy youth with a weak little mustache appeared in the sitting-room doorway. Safiya motioned for him to enter.
“Soldiers are outside the back door, Yahya,” she told him. “You must go to the stables and tell the men to put the elephant doors in place.”
“Wait,” Mariana said urgently as the boy prepared to leave them. “What of those windows?” She pointed past the sitting-r
oom door to the verandah whose balconies overlooked the narrow alley below. “If the soldiers bring ladders, they can easily get inside.”
She turned to Yahya. “There were some long wooden planks downstairs, near the stables. Are they still there?”
He nodded, his widening eyes traveling to the verandah and back again.
“We will need one for each window,” Mariana told them.
“And how will we use these planks of yours?” Safiya inquired, after a single nod of her head had sent the boy hurtling away and down the stairs.
“If the soldiers try to climb inside, we can use the planks to push them out again, even without the help of men,” Mariana replied, as confidently as she could, aware that all the ladies had stopped talking and were now listening to her.
As Safiya nodded thoughtfully, something landed heavily outside the sitting-room door.
“They are throwing bricks through the verandah windows!” a woman cried out.
Where was Saboor? Mariana pushed away her tray, leapt to her feet, and raced out through the curtained doorway.
The brick lay on the tiled floor. Near the pile of women's discarded shoes, two little girls huddled, round-shouldered with fright. Saboor crouched between them.
Guttural shouts came through the open window. As Mariana launched herself toward the children, she caught a glimpse of a soldier perched on a ladder across the alley.
He raised his arm. Mariana hurried the children into the sitting room, protecting them with her body as one brick, then another and another, crashed to the floor around them.
Moments later, Yahya appeared, bent double with the effort of dragging three heavy boards up the stairs.
“Please,” he panted, “Allahyar is with me.”
Understanding, Mariana got up and jerked the door curtains shut, shielding the ladies from the eyes of Allahyar, Shaikh Waliullah's personal servant, as the planks clattered to the floor outside, accompanied by more crashes and a muffled curse.
“Nani Ma!” Yahya called through the curtain, his voice thin with excitement. “Do not come out! I am bringing more men to protect you!”
Mariana crossed the sitting room and peered out through the shutters. Below, in the family courtyard, male servants hurried to and fro carrying bedding and foodstuffs, while a crowd of female servants and their children squatted beneath the courtyard tree, as if waiting for instructions.
As Safiya Sultana sat calmly in her usual place against the wall, missiles continued to land beyond the closed curtain, evoking gasps from the ladies, who crouched together in anxious groups, clutching their children.
One daring old aunt had stationed herself with her eye to the gap in the door curtain. “Look!” she cried suddenly. “They are coming inside!”
Mariana hurried to her and peered out.
Empty of any protecting men, the verandah was now littered with thrown bricks. Dust motes danced in the light from the middle window, where, framed by filigreed shutters, the top of a bamboo ladder wavered back and forth. A pair of brown hands grasped the top rung, followed a moment later by the sweating, bearded face of a Sikh infantryman.
“Quickly!” Scarcely thinking, Mariana tore open the curtain, caught hold of the three nearest women, and shooed them through the doorway to where Yahya had dropped the wooden planks. “We must use one of these to push him out,” she ordered, then reached down and began to tug at one of the boards.
The women nodded. Panting with effort and haste, they lifted the long, heavy board and turned together to face the window.
The whole man had now appeared in the opening. At the sight of four uncovered women, the soldier reached, grinning, for the window frame.
“These enemies of Sher Singh are women,” he shouted to his companions below. “This will be easy!”
“When I count three!” Mariana shouted. “Ek, do, teen!”
All four women rushed forward. Gripped between them like a battering ram, the plank caught the soldier so squarely in the chest that he toppled backward, his eyes bulging, and disappeared, just as a loud, effortful sound came from one end of the verandah.
“Ugh-gh-gh!”
Mariana and her companions turned toward the sound.
Framed in the opening of the far window, a second soldier stood poised to enter, a bloodstained tulwar swinging at his side, one foot on the windowsill, the other on a bamboo ladder.
Below him, Mariana saw the turbaned head of a second man.
“Be quick!” the second man shouted.
Safiya Sultana stood alone in front of the window, the end of one plank wedged firmly into her midsection, the other end balanced upon the windowsill.
Before Mariana had time to go to her aid, Safiya threw her considerable weight against her end of the plank.
The infantryman had taken a firm grip on the window frame, but Safiya, who stood squarely, feet apart, on the verandah tiles, had the advantage. Again and again, while he scrabbled, grunting, to keep his balance, she drove her plank into his body. At last, his fingers slipped from the window. The soldier below him let out a cry and the two men dropped, their aims flailing, from sight.
Safiya Sultana laid down her plank and wiped her scarlet face. “Well, that's that,” she decreed.
“Cowards! Owls!” Little, bird-like Akhtar appeared from nowhere, rushed to the window, and spat through the opening. “Attack women, will you?” she shrieked, waving her fist. “You will see how we fight!”
“No, Akhtar!” Mariana hobbled forward and caught hold of the girl's arm as the women and girls ran excitedly to surround Safiya Sultana. “Do not throw the bricks yet. We will need them if the soldiers return.”
Male voices echoed up the stairs. The girls hurried away when Yahya bounded up once more, followed by several men, all of whom halted and spun on their heels, their backs to Mariana, who stood, dirty and disheveled, in the center of the verandah, Akhtar's brick still in her hand.
Yahya stared at her, then turned to his grandmother. “What has happened, Nani Ma?”
“The soldiers have been repelled,” Safiya Sultana replied, still breathing hard. “That is all. Go and tell Lalaji that there is no need to worry about us.”
LATER, AS she washed her filthy feet, Mariana imagined what it would have been like to live in this house forever.
How would it have felt, never to meet a strange man face-to-face? How would it have been to know that if she appeared uncovered, men would turn their backs in order not to see her?
How much would she have missed her daily rides, the dinner parties, fetes, and balls she would have enjoyed in Kabul?
She sighed. All that and her own food would have been difficult to part with, but oh, what she would have gained—the indomitable Safiya Sultana, the brave ladies who had also risen to the fight and knocked the first soldier from the window, dear little Saboor who had somehow known that she was waiting outside like a beggar at the gate, and who even now leaned against her, his sticky face turned up to hers, and Hassan, her gentle husband, the only person who had ever called her beautiful.
Oh, Rose, what art thou, he had murmured, in the presence of her lovely face?
Surely, when he came home he would see that she belonged here. Surely, once she asked his forgiveness, he would relent and allow her to stay. Surely, someday he would care for her again.
“Lavender's blue, diddle diddle,” she crooned to Saboor,
“Lavender's green.
When you are king, diddle diddle,
I shall be queen.”
If only it could be so
THE OLD elephant doors still blocked off the kitchen, and so dinner was only rice and boiled dal, cooked in great copper vessels over a wood fire in the courtyard.
The ladies did not mind. Still repeating the story of their triumph, remembering its smallest details, they crowded happily together in the upper room, Mariana in their midst. She sighed with pleasure as many hands patted her and voices elevated her to the station of heroine, second only to the re
doubtable Safiya Sultana. What would her dear, faraway father think of her first battle, the Battle of Qamar Haveli?
The door curtains parted abruptly. Surprised, the chattering women fell silent.
Young Yahya stood in the doorway, bent over as if in pain. “Lalaji is in your room, Nani Ma,” he blurted out, already backing toward the stairs. “He wants to see you.”
Safiya nodded. “Come, Mariam,” she ordered somberly as she rose to her feet. “We must not keep my brother waiting. Leave Saboor here.”
As she left the room, Mariana glanced over her shoulder and saw the gap-toothed aunt watching her silently.
A single voice rose behind the two women as they made their way down the verandah. It began on a low note, then climbed, gaining volume, until it was as high and sorrowful as a muezzin's cry.
God is great. It was Saboor.
Shaikh Waliullah sat on the bed, his knees drawn to his chest.
Without speaking, he made room for his sister and daughter-in-law. When he met his sister's eyes, the dread already clawing at Mariana's middle rose to her throat.
“Hassan and his friend Yusuf have been killed at the Hazuri Bagh,” he said, his voice creaking like an old man's, while Mariana held her breath and Saboor's wails echoed in the verandah outside.
“When?” Safiya asked hollowly.
“This morning.”
“Where is his body?”
“I have sent two men to bring it here, but they have not returned. It could be that the streets are too dangerous. Otherwise …”
Unwilling to guess what he meant, Mariana reached out numbly and steadied herself against the wall as Safiya lowered herself, gray-faced, to the bed beside her twin brother, and adjusted her veil over her hair.
Together, while Mariana watched, stricken, unable to join in, Safiya and the Shaikh raised their cupped hands before them and offered a series of half-whispered prayers.
“Go, Mariam, and bring Saboor,” Safiya ordered when they had finished. “From his cries, it seems he has already guessed this sad news.”