Dust on the Paw

by Robin Jenkins

  The Prince’s house, half of marble, half of sandstone, stood in a private garden of flowers. To reach it Wahab had to pass two more policemen, both armed, and each time the uttering of his name had produced that miracle of respect. Perhaps, behind his back, they sneered at one so obviously out of place there, so poor, so down at heel, and wearing the cheapest kind of karakul hat; but to his face they were marvellously respectful, or rather to the Prince’s for the time being reflected in his. That thought made him wonder again what motive the Prince could have in inviting him. Once, during an examination in his student days, he had been faced with a question which try as he might he could not answer, and he had felt then the same dizzy despair that he was feeling now. Failure at that stage might have meant the end of his scholastic career, and now if he did not satisfy the Prince in whatever it was he had to satisfy him, there would be the same dreadful danger. A word from the Prince to the Minister, and Abdul Wahab, patriot and dispassionate disciple of Newton and Einstein, would have his microscopes, pupils, and ideals torn from him, and he would be given a clerk’s job in some dark poky Government office where there would never be a shade over the electric bulb and where if the bokhari smoked it would be sealed with mud. What would become then of his dreams of happiness for himself and Laura? What, indeed, would become of Laura? Moffatt would have his wish. She would stay at home in Manchester, and marry some Englishman after all, who would, it must be admitted, be a much less hazardous husband.

  He was so confused by these miserable forebodings that when he suddenly awoke out of them he found himself standing among flowers and gathering a large bunch of them. ‘For Laura,’ he kept murmuring. Then, struck by guilt as forcibly as by a policeman’s fist, he whimpered and let the flowers drop on the grass. The trouble partly is, he told himself, I have not eaten for six hours; I am therefore rather lightheaded, because the supply of blood to the brain is not sufficient.

  He tiptoed out of the flower bed, picked up his bicycle, and humbly finished his journey to the broad marble steps of the house.

  A servant in a white uniform embroidered in red came out. He was as brawny and contemptuous as a policeman. He grinned rudely at Wahab and at the crown of his hat where, indeed, the fur had grown thin. As Wahab entered he wasn’t sure what he should do with his hat, whether to wear or carry it. The Prince had spoken English and it was of course the polite English custom to remove one’s hat on entering a house; but this was Afghanistan, where a man kept his head covered even in a mosque. He decided to take it off, and discovered with relief he had made the right decision, for in the big, quiet, sunlit room into which he was shown the Prince was standing, bare-headed, wearing trousers and shirt of immaculate white, and dark glasses so large they gave the impression he had three faces, two smooth and one by contrast very wrinkled. Or at least they gave Wahab, so embarrassed he could scarcely force one knee past the other, that impression. His trouble was, as he informed himself in the tiny chamber of his mind where only the truth was spoken, despite fear of subservience or despair outside, that a kind of shame was clamped round each leg like an iron band. Here he was, in a Prince’s presence, that was to say, more accurately, in the presence of a man whose grandfather had become king through a successful military coup, and he was being as abject as the most illiterate coolie in the bazaar. As a scientist, as an Afghan, as Laura’s future husband, he should have his shoulders back and his head high, he should have felt his knees glide past each other with smoothest confidence, and his hand should have gone out frankly to take the Prince’s as one honourable man to another. Instead, he slunk, he gaped at the floor, he skidded on the marble, his knees clanked, and his hand, stretched out as if to a red-hot fire, was as flabby in the Prince’s as a lump of new bread. In the midst of his humiliation too, he heard Laura cry: ‘I hate a man with a flabby hand.’ When he had first heard her say that he had gone home to his lodgings and for half an hour had rubbed his palm with the back of his hair brush. Indeed, he had made that a habit for weeks afterwards. Now he was betraying her, as well as himself, with the worst display of flabbiness in his life.

  The Prince was inspecting him. ‘So you are the famous Abdul Wahab?’

  ‘I am Wahab, Highness, but I am afraid I am far from famous.’

  ‘But you may be some day. Please sit down. You look tired. You must be exhausted cycling in the sun. We shall have tea.’

  Wahab knew it was polite to demur, but he could not; his mouth was too parched with shyness. He did manage to sit down safely on the edge of a bright blue chair with slippery seat, although to bend his legs needed an effort that brought him out in a fresh sweat. Yet the Prince was a small man, in physique punier than Wahab, not much older, and certainly no handsomer.

  A servant came in carrying a tray with tea-things. The cups had handles and had the royal crest in the national colours on them. This, realized Wahab, was an experience he ought to be able to tell his children about with pride; but somehow, as he raised the cup to his lips, he felt that the first sip would prevent those children from ever being born. Unless he quickly recovered his manliness, a sterility would blight him, body and soul. Bravely therefore, he set the cup down again, took another spoonful of sugar, his fourth, crossed his legs, slid back a little in his chair, smiled in Laura’s direction, tasted his tea again, found it sweet enough, and then smiled straight at the Prince.

  ‘Feeling better?’ asked Naim. ‘You were looking awful, you know, when you came in.’

  ‘You will appreciate, Highness, that it came as a shock to me to be asked to come here. You see, I am completely in the dark.’

  ‘Not completely. I told you we had a mutual friend, Mr Moffatt.’

  ‘On that point, sir, I must be candid. Mr Moffatt is not my friend. I should say rather he is my enemy. No, that is too strong, perhaps. He does not wish me well. Yes, I think I can truthfully say that. If he has prayers, he does not remember me in them. Yet I wish him well and his charming Chinese wife.’

  ‘Have you any special reason for thinking he does not wish you well?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir, a very special reason. You see, I have recently returned from England. There I fell in love with a beautiful Englishwoman.’ He paused, gravely, for the Prince was smiling. ‘Laura really is very beautiful.’

  ‘I do not doubt it for a moment. Her name is Laura?’

  ‘Miss Laura Johnstone. What is, I agree, much more incredible, she fell in love with me. I find that very difficult to believe myself.’

  ‘I do not see why. Englishwomen, no matter how beautiful, are still human.’

  ‘Agreed. And Laura is very human.’

  ‘And how does Mr Moffatt come into this?’

  ‘That is what I do not quite see myself. On the only occasion I have met him he made it very plain that he disapproves strongly of my marrying her. I do not see really what business it is of his.’

  ‘Perhaps he thinks that as her countryman he has a duty to protect her?’

  ‘From me?’ Yet Wahab’s smile was eloquent. It meant: from me, so deeply in love with her? From me, so timid an idealist? From me, who would give my life for her? From me, a poor Afghan living with my family in an overcrowded house built of painted mud bricks?

  ‘Yes, Mr Wahab, from you. But not only from you. From me also. From all of us. From Afghanistan.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But here is what he does not understand: Laura loves Afghanistan.’

  ‘Has she been here before?’

  ‘No, but I have described it to her.’

  ‘Truthfully?’

  ‘As truthfully as I could. I admit I spoke also with enthusiasm. Why should I not? I love my country, though I am impatient with its faults. But do not for a moment think, Your Highness, as Mr Moffatt evidently thinks, that I deliberately deceived her with falsehoods.’ He spoke with intense conviction, although he knew he was telling lies. ‘As a scientist, I must revere the truth. Is it true that Mr Moffatt is a poet?’

  ‘He writes poetry.’

  �
�I thought that poets also revered the truth.’

  ‘A different kind of truth perhaps.’

  ‘Sir, there is only one truth.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I do.’ Though really he didn’t. To begin with, he sometimes in that small inviolable chamber thought that Moffatt was right in trying to keep Laura from coming. It was very likely that if she did come the reality would be as Moffatt’s truthfulness pictured it, not as his own extravagant hopes desired. Her life and his would both be ruined.

  ‘Please have another biscuit, Mr Wahab.’

  ‘Thank you, Highness. I shall. They are delicious.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you some questions? No, don’t give me sanction until I have warned you that you may consider them too personal and indeed too dangerous to answer.’

  ‘Sir, I have nothing to hide.’ Another lie. He had as much as any man to hide. Did he not spend a good part of his mental life in hiding from himself?

  ‘You have a clear conscience?’

  ‘If you mean, sir, do I pray and visit the mosque regularly . . .?’

  ‘Well yes, I could mean that too. Do you?’

  ‘No. I do not think I am an atheist, but I find it very difficult to accept the idea of God forced into me in my childhood. Our prayers have become too materialistic. We beg from God and rightly He scorns us.’

  ‘These are unorthodox opinions, Mr Wahab. You do not try to communicate them to your students?’

  ‘On the contrary. I find myself combating their unbelief. They are too young to be disillusioned.’

  ‘Are you interested in politics, Mr Wahab?’

  ‘When I was in England, sir, I studied their Parliamentary system. I even visited the House of Commons.’

  The Prince smiled. This man, he saw, was a fool all right, but an engaging one and harmful only to himself. Perhaps also to his Laura? Harold Moffatt might well be right.

  ‘I meant, the politics of our own country.’

  ‘I did not know those existed.’ Then Wahab paused, saw the enormity which he had let escape from his mind, tried to get it to return by gaping, failed, and waited, with a grin whose foolishness he was well aware of, for this small, prim, wrinkled, three-faced representative of the ruling oligarchy to blast him with anger. In would thunder policemen. They would not beat him there where his blood would sully the beautiful furniture, but they would drag him off quickly through the flowers to some underground cave where in half an hour he would have forgotten Laura and wish only to die. Farewell, my darling. Moffatt, I forgive you. As for myself, I have been mad to bleat out the truth, but it may be that years later when freedom of thought and speech have triumphed in my country my name will be held in honour. A pity, perhaps, that our religion forbids statues.

  ‘Are you a Communist, Mr Wahab?’

  ‘No.’ Wahab lifted his head indignantly. ‘I know there are many who secretly think it would be better for us if Russia took us over, by force if necessary. Yes, they would bring tractors to plow our fields; they would build great irrigation schemes; they would provide food for those of us who often have to go hungry; they would hasten the elimination of disease; they would build schools and equip them with magnificent laboratories. Yes, they would do all those things, but in the end Afghanistan would have disappeared. That is too high a price. I want all those things, but I want them to be Afghan. We must work for them ourselves. We must not pay for them with our souls.’

  The Prince clapped his hands. Ash fell from his cigarette in his long holder. ‘Well said, Mr Wahab. I understand, nevertheless, that you have stated you would have remained in England if you had been allowed to.’

  Wahab scratched his chest ruefully. ‘I was in love,’ he murmured.

  ‘So you were. And now she is coming to Afghanistan, and you hope, with her encouragement, to help to achieve all those fine things you have so fervently described?’

  ‘Laura is more idealistic than I am, sir.’

  ‘You do not associate with politically minded people, here in Kabul?’

  ‘Sir, I am a dreamer. Since I returned I have had very few friends, I am sorry to say. You might think a man dedicated to the improvement of his country would have many friends, but I seem always to be alone.’

  ‘You do not discuss your dreams with others?’

  ‘I used to. I wished as many as possible to share them. But no one was interested, I am sorry to say. So now I keep them to myself. Laura will share them with me.’

  ‘I am sure she will.’ From behind his dark glasses the Prince stared at his earnest, naïve compatriot. He did not know whether to love or hate him for embodying so absurdly all his own enthusiasms and hopes. This reliance upon a woman, too, was ridiculous. Women were sharp in seeing that their menfolk were making dangerous, idealistic fools of themselves, and insistent upon putting a stop to it. What Laura might do the Prince’s mother was already doing; every day she was warning Naim to be content, to accept the ease of wealth and avoid making vindictive enemies. But if Wahab’s Laura stifled his idealism, what could she put in its place? Their life together might quickly degenerate into the hell which Harold Moffatt prophesied and in which poor Mohebzada at present roasted. And if idealists defeated themselves in this way, what victory could Afghanistan ever have?

  The Prince rose and came across to take Wahab’s hand. Wahab rose too, and was astonished by the fervour of the Prince’s clasp. He was not to know of course that inwardly the Prince was resolving, with equal fervour, never to get married.

  ‘I believe you are a sincere patriot, Mr Wahab, and I regret to say there are not many of us. You are one, I too, and my father is a third.’

  Wahab blinked. The Prince’s father was king. To call him a sincere patriot, on the one hand seemed superfluous, for the country belonged to him; but on the other hand it seemed dubious, because surely if there were many forces which for their own personal advancement kept the country in its medieval backwardness, he was the one with the power and opportunity to sweep them out of the way? Of course it was true that his father before him had been shot by a fanatic for initiating reforms.

  ‘Like yourself I dare to be optimistic,’ said the Prince. ‘It is my belief that if there are enough men of vigour and good will in Afghanistan we can show an example to the entire world, by achieving material prosperity without at the same time sacrificing our spiritual dignity.’

  ‘That is precisely my belief too,’ cried Wahab.

  They were beaming into each other’s faces when the servant entered and announced, with a grin, that Mr Mohebzada had arrived. Behind him came Mohebzada, explaining and even excusing the insolence of that grin.

  Wahab was ashamed for him. It wasn’t just that Mohebzada was shabbily dressed, with the cuffs of his trousers frayed and his left sleeve stained with ink; it wasn’t either that he was unshaven and dusty. No, it was because he looked so cowed, so defeated, so ready to lie down and be kicked. He carried a tattered brief case that, unlike himself, was fat, as if it was stuffed with the appurtenances for his own funeral. He had, too, a mouthful of shockingly bad teeth, reminding Wahab of his own, bad too, but not nearly so bad as these. And yet this pitiable, apologetic specimen of Afghan manhood slept every night with a woman whose breasts were white. That really was why Wahab could neither forgive nor pity him; he was the living, miserable proof that what had been sustaining Wahab’s dream for months was a foolish myth: making love to a Western woman did not confer courage or confidence. This fellow Mohebzada looked as if he had crept out of a kuchi’s tent, or indeed from under a kuchi woman’s filthy skirts.

  The Prince meanwhile was receiving Mohebzada hospitably, inviting him to sit down, and urging him to take tea.

  ‘I am not thirsty, Your Highness,’ said Mohebzada, in a croaking voice. ‘I am also not hungry,’ he added, when pressed to eat a cake.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Mohebzada suddenly, hoarser than ever.

  They looked at him. Tears grew big in his eyes. ‘I am sorry,’ he
kept croaking.

  Wahab was so ashamed he could look no longer. He wanted to rush into a corner and hide his own face. This fellow’s feebleness was, in an inescapable way, his own. It represented, far more than any governmental tyranny, what had kept Afghanistan backward all these hundreds of years; it was the reason for that tyranny.

  ‘My child,’ said Mohebzada, ‘is very sick.’

  Wahab then, as it were, rushed back from the corner where he had been hiding his face, and sat again on the chair by Mohebzada’s side, with a puzzled scowl of sympathy.

  ‘I think he is going to die.’

  The Prince glanced at Wahab. Neither knew what to say. Both were men, but not fathers. The child, wondered Wahab, had it blue eyes?

  ‘And I do not know,’ went on Mohebzada, ‘if my wife wishes him to die or not.’

  ‘But that, my poor fellow,’ said the Prince, ‘is surely wrong?’

  ‘No, Your Highness.’

  ‘Surely she loves her child?’ asked Wahab.

  ‘It is because she loves him that she is not sure whether or not she wishes him to die.’

  ‘This is strange, Mr Mohebzada.’

  ‘If he lives and grows up to become a man, he will be an Afghan.’

  They waited, while he mastered his sobs.

  ‘And she hates Afghans because I, his father, am one. Besides, if the child dies, she will be able to return home to England.’

  Though full of grief for Mohebzada’s sake, Wahab found himself glaring at the Prince. So this was why he had been brought here this afternoon, to meet poor Mohebzada and be terrified into giving up Laura. The Prince was in league with Moffatt. All his talk about sincere patriotism had been deception. It was a cruel plot, and the bitterest part of it was that it had succeeded. Wahab wanted to dash home and write a letter to Laura; it would be wet with his tears and almost indecipherable, so flabby would be his hand, but it would be resolute in commanding her never to be so foolish as to come to Afghanistan or even to want to come. He would be heartrendingly truthful on the shortcomings of his country and of himself. Moffatt would be delighted with that letter. It would be as good as one of his own poems.