A Beggar at the Gate

by Thalassa Ali

  At the sound of his grandson's name, the Shaikh ran a hand over his face in a gesture so like Hassan's that Mariana nearly cried out.

  Her legs barely carried her to the sitting room. As she stood in the doorway, the women and girls stopped whispering.

  “It is Hassan, is it not?” asked someone, her words piercing the ringing in Mariana's ears.

  Nodding mutely, Mariana looked for Saboor, and found him hiccupping miserably in the fat girl's lap.

  He had seen her. “Abba is hurt!” he sobbed, running to her and catching at her clothes. “We must help him! No, no!” he insisted, struggling when Mariana scooped him wordlessly into her arms. “We must go and find Abba!”

  “Two men have already gone to look for him,” Mariana replied carefully. Her arms tightened around his squirming body. “We must wait for them to return.”

  God help her, she must find the courage to tell him the truth.

  At Safiya's door she let him down, took his hand, and stepped through the doorway.

  Saboor pulled away from her and ran to his grandfather. “Lalaji,” he cried urgently, “my Abba is hurt. We must hurry and find him!” “Ah, my darling, the men will bring him. Yes, they will bring him.” While Mariana stood, mute, in the doorway, Shaikh Waliullah raised his head and looked bleakly into her eyes.

  The gap-toothed aunt had begun to beat herself again, her closed fist thudding rhythmically above her breasts. Waves of grief rose and fell around Mariana as the ladies rocked in their places on the floor.

  Word of Hassan's death must already have spread through the city. Even on this perilous night, the Shaikh's torchlit courtyard was filling with male mourners. Looking down, Mariana could see the Shaikh, swathed in shawls against the cold, sitting upright on his platform, surrounded by a sea of silent men.

  Unnerved by the vocal agony of the ladies, Mariana slumped against the sitting-room wall, wrapped in the shawl Hassan had given her, unable to make a sound, wishing senselessly that his funeral were being held in church.

  There, at least, all these people would be forced to restrain themselves.

  Mariana was no stranger to funerals. By the time she had sailed for India three years earlier, her family had already buried two of their babies and a five-year-old son, one of her uncles, and Mariana's two favorite grandparents.

  Unlike Safiya Sultana, who now groaned rhythmically at Mariana's side, Mariana's mother had not used her lace handkerchief once on those occasions, not even at the funeral of little Ambrose, who had died when Mariana was twelve. Mama had even sung all the hymns, including the saddest ones, in her usual clear soprano.

  Mariana's father had been equally brave, his wobbling chin the only indication of his pain as his child's coffin was lowered into its grave.

  But here, pained voices filled the haveli to bursting, leaving little room for Mariana to think, or to express her own despair. Helpless to offer solace to anyone, even Saboor, who lay open-eyed across her lap, she sat, tearless and paralyzed, waiting for the nightmare to end.

  “Abba is hurt,” Saboor repeated mournfully.

  “Oh, darling, I am so sorry” was all she could think of to say.

  She looked out at the sky. She did not know what time it was. The night must be wearing on, punctuated by the ladies’ sighs; but what if it did not? What if it stood still instead?

  Perhaps from now on Qamar Haveli would be perpetually dark, with no bright days to end the blackness, nothing but the flickering of dim lamplight against these sad sitting-room walls.

  Saboor stirred on her lap. All night he had lain heavily against her, his energetic little body turned sodden and hot, but now he sat up and looked into her face, his eyes clear and wide.

  “Dilly,” he said emphatically. “There was a dilly. There was a—”

  “No, my love,” she whispered. “Diddle. You remember our poems—

  “Hey diddle diddle

  The cat and the fiddle

  The cow jumped over—”

  “No, An-nah.” He shook his head firmly. “Dilly. There was a—”

  “Sleep, my darling,” she murmured as she shifted him to a more comfortable position. “Sleep. Everything will be better in the morning.”

  But he would not sleep. Instead, he turned his face from hers and crooned sorrowfully to himself, as if his small heart were breaking. “Dilly,” he wept. “There was a dilly, there was a—”

  That high, despairing little sound cut into Mariana like a knife. “Please sleep, Saboor, sleep,” she whispered.

  “Let him grieve.” Safiya Sultana, red-eyed, laid a hand on her knee. “It's better.”

  Worn down by exhaustion and by the agony around her, Mariana began at last to weep aloud.

  SHE MUST have cried herself to sleep, but she had not dozed for long, for when she awoke, remembering what had happened with a sickening lurch, the scene around her was unchanged except that Saboor now slept beside her, his brow furrowed as if by terrible worry.

  As she shifted against him, a scene appeared in her mind's eye. As still as a painting but strong and vivid, it offered her a single, unchanging scene, of a walled city street. Empty of people or animals, the street curved, so that only three small havelis were visible to her. They stood in a row, each one with an elaborately carved balcony and a pair of heavy double doors. The doors of the middle one were painted yellow. As she watched the scene before her, she felt an urgent need to knock on the yellow door.

  At the end of the little curved lane, past the third haveli, rose the arched bulk of—

  The Delhi Gate, the Delhi Darwaza. Dilly. There was a—

  Hassan was there, at the Delhi Gate. Saboor had known. What vision or dream had he seen, that he tried to tell her? How wrong she had been

  She bent over the child's sleeping form. “Do not worry, my darling,” she whispered, as she lifted him from her lap and wrapped him in her quilt. “I will go now to the Delhi Gate and find your Abba at the house with the yellow door.

  “I only pray,” she added softly before she rose to her feet, “that he is still alive.”

  Mariana reached up and touched the carved silver box that still hung about her neck on its black cord. In her dream, she had stood alone outside the house with the yellow door. Her taweez had kept her safe before. …

  The weeping ladies still showed no sign of sleep, but even so, no one asked where Mariana was going as she slipped out of the sitting room and searched among the row of discarded shoes for a comfortable-looking pair of slippers.

  She found Akhtar's chador lying on the floor of her room where the little servant must have dropped it earlier in the day. She picked it up gratefully and returned to the verandah, then crossed to one of the windows and leaned out of it, listening intently.

  The city outside the haveli was silent. No sounds of firing or shouting echoed in the streets below. Holding her breath, allowing herself no time for fear, Mariana flitted past the sitting-room door and down the stairs, leaving the sounds of exhausted grieving behind her.

  It would take some time for the ladies to realize that she was gone. By that time, if she was fortunate, she would have found Hassan still alive and returned with the good news. If, God forbid, he had already died, at least she would have found him

  At the bottom of the stairs, she drew Akhtar's foul chador once again over herself, and then crept along the courtyard wall, away from the light of the torches, past the silent, hunched figures surrounding the Shaikh's platform.

  Why had she not listened to Saboor? The poor baby had tried for hours to make them understand. No wonder he had wept so forlornly. …

  Taking care not to be seen, Mariana passed through the low gate and began to negotiate the stable courtyard, with its groups of shrouded, sleeping figures, all refugees from the servants’ quarters by the kitchen.

  She would need a guide.

  Guards had been posted at the gate. They squatted together around a small brazier on one side of the high brick entranceway, their hands hel
d out over the coals. They looked up, frowning, as she approached.

  “I need to find Ghulam Ali, the courier,” she announced in a whisper.

  “Why? Who has sent for him?”

  “It does not matter. Call him,” she replied, raising her voice a little, hoping an imperious tone would make an impression.

  “Ghulam Ali, oh, Ghulam,” one of them called out, without bothering to stand.

  One of the bodies in the courtyard stirred, then sat up. But for his beard, the albino was nearly unrecognizable, with a woolen shawl pulled closely over his head. When he came near, she signaled him to move out of earshot of the guards.

  “It is Memsahib,” she whispered, lowering the chador from her face. “Peace be upon you.”

  “Peace.” He returned her greeting doubtfully, peering at her through the darkness, his voice thick with sleep.

  She cleared her throat. “Do you know a haveli with a yellow door that sits in a curving lane near the Delhi Gate?

  “Of course I do. It belongs to this family.” He shifted his shoulders as if he was about to leave her and return to his place on the ground.

  “Take me there,” she said.

  “It is dangerous,” he replied gruffly.

  “I know.” She glanced toward the guards before bending toward him. “I believe Hassan Ali Khan Sahib lies wounded in that house.”

  Ghulam Ali did not reply. Instead, he gazed over her shoulder as if she had not spoken.

  “Will you take me there, or not?” she whispered fiercely

  “DO NOT leave your posts,” Ghulam Ali told the guards. “We will knock twice when we return, so you will know to let us in.”

  He stopped short as the heavy doors banged shut behind him and their iron bolts slid home, leaving him and the foreign woman to their fates. At his back, Hassan Ali Khan's wife drew in her breath.

  Illuminated by a cloud-covered half-moon, the bodies of the dead lay on the cobblestones, much as they had earlier when Ghulam Ali had peered out through the haveli's front window.

  They were not alone, for the square was now alive with scavengers. Emaciated, half-naked, as stealthy as rats, they crawled in and out among the bodies of the dead, tugging at them, stripping them of every shred of clothing, while dogs skulked in the shadows, waiting their turn.

  But what caused Ghulam Ali to hurry away from the doors while Shaikh Waliullah's foreign daughter-in-law followed behind him was not the scavengers or even the dogs, but the sight of the broad flight of steps that rose toward the entrance of Wazir Khan's Mosque, fifty feet away. For on those steps, like a flock of murderous, resting birds, lay a hundred sleeping soldiers wrapped in stolen shawls and quilts, their muskets and swords ready at their sides.

  Not all were sleeping. Awakened, perhaps, by the creaking of the haveli doors, three of them had sat up. They reached for their weapons.

  Ghulam Ali glanced anxiously over his shoulder as he fled the square, but Hassan Ali's wife showed no sign of flagging. Instead, she hurried behind him, anonymous in her chador, her slippered feet nearly silent in the echoing lane.

  More scavengers appeared, flitting like shadows among the carnage in the alleyways near the Delhi Gate, searching for anything they could use.

  “Sons of shame,” the albino muttered as one of them limped past him on a homemade crutch, a dead man's shawl about his shoulders. “Vermin.”

  At his back, Hassan's wife made a small choking sound.

  In this short journey, Ghulam Ali had seen enough horror for a lifetime of nightmares. Compared to the violence of the Prince's soldiers, even the thugs he had met on the road to Calcutta had been decent. Thugs, at least, showed their deadly intentions only at the last moment. They buried their victims, instead of leaving their bodies in the open, to be stripped naked, then eaten by dogs and crows.

  Ghulam Ali spat onto the wall beside him. Hassan's foreign wife must be made of iron to venture into this unholy atmosphere, even on a mission to find her wounded husband. For all his boastful exaggerating, Dittoo had been right about her nerve.

  If only Dittoo would stay with him in Lahore

  He sighed as he led the lady along a deserted lane, avoiding the shards of broken pottery covering the ground. Brave or no, the woman did not belong in this rescue party. The work of finding Shaikh Waliullah's son should have been left to men. If Hassan Ali Khan were dangerously wounded when they found him, he would be a dead weight to carry. Depending upon his injuries, he might be difficult, even impossible, for Ghulam Ali to lift onto his back. For all her courage, Hassan's wife would not have the physical strength to help her husband when he needed it most.

  They had arrived at the house. In a curving, dimly lit lane, one of the Waliullah's four family havelis stood between two other houses, not a hundred feet from the Delhi Gate.

  Ghulam Ali pointed. “This is it,” he whispered.

  “I cannot see the color of the doors,” Hassan's wife whispered back. “You are certain this is the one?”

  When Ghulam Ali nodded, she took in an audible breath. Then, before he could follow or stop her, she gathered her chador about her legs, climbed onto the haveli's high, stone front step, and rapped smartly on the doors.

  She was making too much noise. Not knowing what might happen next, imagining the dark shapes of soldiers rounding the corner and filling the narrow street, Ghulam Ali started toward her, but he was too late.

  With a jerk, the yellow doors opened inward. Before he could move or the lady could make a sound, a pair of hands, one holding a long knife, reached through the opening and snatched her inside. An instant later, the door opened again, and a shadowy, turbaned figure appeared. In two strides the man was beside Ghulam Ali.

  “Stop, he is our friend!” It was Hassan Ali's wife, crying out a warning. “He is our friend !”

  At those words, the figure halted. Ghulam Ali made out a familiar-looking face beneath the turban. “You're the Afghan trader,” he ventured, his eyes on the knife, now lowered to the man's side.

  The turban inclined. “Wait out here,” the figure said. “We may need you later.”

  Ghulam Ali nodded, then turned away before the Afghan strode off, afraid the man would see his tears.

  He had never cried when he was abused or beaten, not even when he was young. Proud of his toughness, hardened against showing fear or sorrow, he had not even wept at the announcement of Hassan Ali's death. But he cried now, standing in the narrow lane by the Delhi Gate, his shoulders shaking under his shawl, his tears dripping down his sunburned face and losing themselves in his yellow beard.

  Friend, the foreign lady had said. At last, someone had called him friend.

  Zan as! It is a woman!” When a male voice beside the doorway had hissed those Persian words, Mariana's attacker had flung her forcefully away from him as if in disgust, then turned and lunged outside, past the yellow doors and into the lane, a long knife ready in his hand.

  When he returned and stood before her, his shadowed face was unreadable. “Who are you?” he demanded in accented Urdu.

  “Before I tell you,” she replied, still breathing hard through the folds of Akhtar's chador, “I must know if you have hurt that man outside.”

  “I have not. Now, who are you?”

  “I,” she said, drawing herself up as regally as she was able inside Akhtar's filthy chador, “am the wife of Hassan Ali Khan Karakoyia.”

  He took a step backward, a hand on his heart. “My name is Zulmai,” he offered. “Please forgive us. We were not expecting—”

  “Where is my husband?”

  “This way.” He pointed toward a faintly lit doorway fronting the courtyard.

  A rapid clicking sound filled the square, low-ceilinged room where the tall Afghan had pointed. In the center of the floor, a single earthen lamp threw shadows onto the ceiling, its exposed cotton wick burning like a candle flame. Holding the chador across her face with one hand, Mariana stepped inside and saw that the walls of the room were lined with a dozen squatti
ng, heavily armed men.

  The air was heavy with the smell of unwashed bodies. Suddenly exhausted, she looked for somewhere to sit, but there was no furniture in the room other than an occupied string bed in one of its corners.

  Her eyes closed, she begged herself not to give in to the dangerous whirling in her head.

  Beside her, Zulmai shifted his weight, as if he expected her to say something.

  “How badly has Hassan been—” Her own voice seemed to come from very far away. She tried to focus her gaze upon the long figure that lay, shivering, on the bed. She must act, but first—

  An unexpected force suddenly pressed her hard against the wall. Her body felt heavy and immovable. Each of her eyelids seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

  Why did male voices murmur around her, then turn silent?

  One of her wrists had begun to ache. She opened her eyes and saw to her shock that she lay not against the wall, but upon the floor, her cheek resting on bare, gritty tiles. Mercifully, she had not knocked over the oil lamp as she fell. It stood, still lit, beside her elbow.

  She raised her head. Zulmai and the other Afghans must have rushed away in embarrassment when she fainted, for she was alone, save for the man on the string bed.

  Too weak to stand, she crawled to the corner, grasped the bed's wooden edge with her good hand, dragged herself to a sitting position, and studied the trembling figure in front of her.

  For all his wounded lack of elegance, there was no mistaking Hassan Ali Khan. Above his broken nose, his eyes were open, but he did not seem to see her. One leg of his shalwar had been cut off above the knee, revealing a tangle of bandages on his left thigh, from which blood dripped unsteadily onto the floor. The clicking sound she had heard came from the convulsive chattering of his teeth.

  She laid a cautious hand on his forehead. He was not hot yet, but with a wound as severe as this, the fever would soon arrive.

  His shaking, then, was due to his loss of blood, and the icy temperature of the room.