Dust on the Paw

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘I have something to tell you which will make you change your mind.’

  ‘Nothing you or anyone else could ever tell me would make me do that.’

  ‘What if I were to tell you I was already married? Do not smile so quickly, my dear. We Moslems, you know, are allowed three wives.’

  She kept smiling, and it occurred to him that perhaps she was thinking that a quarter of an hour ago he had hardly performed like a man with three wives.

  He laughed. ‘No, I am not married. But be realistic. After I married you, I might want to marry someone else, someone younger, someone who would not think that making love is shameful.’

  ‘I do not think that, Abdul.’

  ‘But you feel it. Please listen to this, Laura. I have a lot to tell you. After you have heard you will certainly change your mind about wanting to marry me.’

  Then he began to tell her, or rather sing to her, so impassioned and shrill was he, about his schemes to have Mussein and Siddiq not only removed from their posts but also banished to bleak villages, of his membership in the Brotherhood although previously he had despised its aims and secrecy, and of his obsequious association with dangerous bullies like Dr Habbibullah.

  ‘The truth is,’ he said, in anguished conclusion, ‘I have found that I am the same kind of Afghan as the rest. There is no other kind. Trees do not grow on those hills. Neither does idealism grow in our hearts. We are all dust on the lion’s paw.’

  Tears were in his eyes when he finished. I am not a scientist after all, he thought; like Moffatt I am a poet.

  Laura was squeezing his hand. ‘You are being unfair to yourself,’ she said, and her voice was like the voice of every wife. ‘You deserved promotion. You are far too sensitive about such things. If these men were corrupt and inefficient why shouldn’t they have been dismissed? You have fine qualities, darling. At last they are being recognized. You can be a leader of your country.’

  For a few moments he considered that optimistic view, wishing to accept it; but he remembered Maftoon, with the fanatical eyes and the three infants. No, the truth was much more complex than she, with her woman’s mind, could conceive: corruption, fanaticism, fatherhood, love, fear, idealism were all ingredients, and there were many more.

  There was half a minute’s silence.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t feel too well, dear,’ she murmured. ‘Shall we go back?’

  ‘To the Moffatts’?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We may have to walk a little before we find a taxi.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. As long as I have your arm to lean on.’

  As he was about to open the gate she stopped him.

  ‘Please kiss me, Abdul.’

  He was about to seek some excuse for refusing when in her eyes he caught sight of an appeal that had concentrated in it the dozens of times he had kissed her before, in faith, love, laughter, and hope. The wicked part of him, the astute self-interested part, which he had believed to be the most influential, stood by advising him not to kiss but to make instead out of the denial the first step in the necessary withdrawal. The rest of him appreciated that advice as sound now, and likely to prove still sounder afterwards, but nevertheless, with a tenderness so genuine that tears now came into both their eyes, he took her head between his hands and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘No one is worthy,’ he found himself murmuring, ‘no one at all.’

  ‘You are,’ she replied, and though he smiled and kissed her again he was aware she did not and could not understand. This sadness which he was feeling, provoked by the realization of the unworthiness of all, could not be experienced by the female, by the maternal mind. Women loved idlers, rogues, brutes, deceivers, tyrants, adulterers, murderers even; and all the moralizing in the world would not diminish their love.

  Twenty-Two

  A MOTHER’S love is seldom diminished by disapproval of its object; indeed, it is just as likely to be increased, though the addition may be rather sharper than the rest.

  Wahab’s mother had, he suspected, nomadic blood in her. Two hundred years or so ago her forebears had made those heroic journeys of hundreds of miles every year, in winter down into the warm plains, and in summer up to the cool foothills. She showed it as much by her restlessness about the house as by her swarthy strong face and simple violent emotions. She was not fat, but massive; she had startled more than one coolie into obedience by herself picking up the burden about whose back-breaking weight he was making such a song. Even when seated on a cushion on the floor, which she preferred to a chair, she had presence and authority. In her youth she must have been an exciting girl, which made it a mystery that she had ever agreed to marry Wahab’s father, who now in gray-haired middle age was still cultivating the stooped meekness he had had in early manhood. Bespectacled, for consolation, he kept moving his lips, as if reciting to himself passages from the Koran. But really, as Wahab had long ago discovered, what his father was inwardly whispering was some nameless instinctive appeal. He was a fairly responsible official at the Ministry of Mines where his salary, after twenty years’ service, was about half that of an English bus conductor’s.

  As a consequence, the house where they lived, in a grubby dusty suburb inhabited by similar lowly paid professional men, was smaller, much dilapidated, and far less comfortably furnished than that rented by Wahab for himself and Laura. Nevertheless it housed, in addition to his parents and Wahab himself, Gulahmad his brother and his fat girl-wife and their ten-month-old baby daughter, and his two sisters, Karima, aged twenty-two, and Sediqa, still a schoolgirl. Besides these, in the slum-like outhouses lived Yakub with his wife and four children. These were very distant relations, kept as servants; they gave their services with an outspoken grudgingness that outraged pride and paltry wages were considered to justify.

  To this scene Wahab arrived home that evening of Laura’s arrival in Kabul. He had left her at the Moffatts’ in a state of tearful laughter; Mrs Moffatt had diagnosed excitement; Laura herself had bravely blamed a touch of sunstroke; but Wahab knew the unsatisfactory losing of her virginity was most probably to blame. She had gone to bed and soon, dosed with aspirins, had fallen asleep. He had walked the three miles home, loving her steadfastly all the way, but finding that love a burden that grew heavier but could not be put down for a rest, even for a moment. Certainly it could not be discarded on the rubbish heap not twenty yards from the gate. He had not yet told his family about Laura; after all, she might so easily have changed her mind on the journey, and turned at Rome, say, or Beirut. Now that she had arrived he must tell them, but it would be, he anticipated bitterly, like throwing a lump of bloody meat into a cageful of wolves. He was especially afraid of his mother.

  In the compound, where there was hardly a blade of grass, two of his little cousins were playing. As usual they wore shirts only, and their behinds were bare. On previous occasions he had stood watching them, until a love, or at least some positive affection, had been forced up out of the desert of his heart. This evening he stood again, but had to dig deeper than ever for that spring of love.

  Suddenly from around the noisome corner where the outhouses were their mother darted. Much younger than Laura she was already wizened and witchlike. Seizing him with her talons, she began a long sing-song lament about some work that Karima, his sister, had unfairly ordered her to do. He felt sure her complaint was justified, for Karima each unmarried month grew vainer, lazier, and more embittered. But there was nothing he could do, except sympathize. This was considered so inadequate that as he left her to approach the house her wailings turned against him. Who but a fool, she bleated, would supply the money and tolerate contempt?

  The terrace was small, and had dangerous holes in the concrete; but on it, kneeling on a rug, his father was saying his prayers. This piety was customary, and, Wahab believed, genuine; Ahmad though was convinced it was resorted to as a respite from their mother. The latter did not nag; she merely glowered. This evening Wahab felt like getting down besid
e his father. There were so many things to ask for; but, putting himself in God’s place, he saw no reason why any of them should be granted. A man must not beg, even from God; besides, his problems were so complicated that even if he were able to describe them intelligibly, God might not be able to follow; it was not for nothing many parts of the Koran, as of the Christian Bible, were obscure.

  Yet as he stepped carefully past his father’s stockinged feet he remembered how long ago as a crawling infant he had used to tickle them, and how his mother would snatch him up and cry that he would become a great mullah some day. For years afterward he had thought of those solemn bearded men like Mojedaji as ticklers of feet.

  In the living room his mother was seated on her cushion, with her eyes closed. Gulahmad’s wife, Racha, embroidered with her baby on her plump lap. Ahmad read a newspaper. Karima sulked with scarlet lips. Sediqa lay on the carpet, studying. There was the heavy oily smell that had distressed him ever since his return from England, but this evening it was at its most repulsive. Seconds after he entered he wanted to rush out again, shrieking that he was never going to return; especially as he could tell from the way they all gave up what they were doing to look at him, that they had been waiting for his return. Even the baby rolled its black eyes in his direction.

  Animosity and greed made hateful every familiar countenance. Oh, to be able to live like his mother’s simple ancestors, and sit in a black tent with only the bleatings of his fat-tailed sheep to disturb him.

  His father came hurrying in, carrying his shoes. In the doorway stood Yakub and his wife, cackling and leering. There was no doubt that a conference had been arranged to begin as soon as he arrived.

  ‘Sit down, my son,’ said his mother.

  She was in many ways so like Laura, he thought; physically they were altogether different, the one stout, the other frail, but both were strong-willed and domineering. Yet, he remembered in awe, Laura that afternoon had become gentle. All her life his mother never had been; at his conception and birth she must have been hearty and robust. Why then had he been born with so many misgivings?

  A cushion was flung to him; he ignored it, and sat down on a stool.

  ‘What is this we have heard?’ asked his mother.

  He looked at those well-known and well-loved faces; yes, they were like wolves; in each one greed was savage. He looked for, and soon saw, pointed ears, dripping jaws, and cruel eyes. Even his younger sister Sediqa, whom he loved most, was transformed. His father, fresh from prayer, had the foolish grin of the last in the pack, which would eat after the rest had feasted. This is not peculiar to Afghanistan, he told himself; it is the same everywhere; in England too a man’s family rends bloodily at his good luck.

  ‘What have you heard, mother?’ he asked.

  ‘We know you have become the Principal of the School,’ said his mother.

  ‘You should know. I told you myself.’

  ‘We have not yet seen any of the extra money you are paid.’

  ‘The explanation is simple. I have still to draw my Principal’s salary. These things take time.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ his brother said gloomily, ‘they take too long a time. I knew a man who was promoted for six months, and still was given the same salary. When he asked for the increase he was put down again.’

  ‘That is not unusual,’ agreed Wahab, with a shudder.

  Their father smiled and shook his head. ‘Promotion is often given to a man because his abilities are such he should be doing the more important work. It does not always follow he must be paid more money.’

  ‘It should follow,’ said Gulahmad.

  ‘If we want foolish speech,’ observed their mother grimly, ‘we shall fetch in a donkey from the street. In the meantime the money does not matter; we can wait for it. But is it necessary for us to wait for this new house? For of course, Abdul, what we have learned is that you have rented a house in Karta Char. Today Gulahmad and I went to see it.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘We are not long back.’

  So they must have missed Laura by an hour or so.

  ‘We had no key to get in to see it properly, but we sat on the ghoddy and saw over the wall. We saw enough. It is a good house, much better than this. When do we move in? It is foolish paying rent for an empty house.’

  Then the others all cried out at once. So alert his brain, he heard every single cry. Sediqa yelped that some of her wealthiest school friends lived in that district; Karima loudly thanked God that at last like civilized beings they would have a W.C. and a bath; Gulahmad growled sourly that at long last he and his wife would have a room completely their own; and Yakub, backed up by his wife, wailed that surely he would be given his rightful place as a member of the family; his father sighed that it was progress for the son to supply what the father had failed to do, after a lifetime of honourable but unrewarded work; and even the baby whimpered that in such a modern house, with flowers in the garden and hot water in the pipes, it would be able to grow up into a civilized man.

  He felt like the hero in the legend who, with only one piece of meat for the whole tribe, ate it himself. If he starved, who would carry on the race?

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Wahab. ‘But you are all mistaken. This house belongs to a friend of Prince Naim’s. It is true he has offered it to me, at a reasonable rent, but he has made it clear that if it becomes overcrowded he will take it back. This is written in the contract.’

  ‘There are only fifteen of us,’ said his mother. ‘He cannot call that overcrowding.’

  Yakub and his wife applauded; with their fingers they had made sure she had included them and their five children.

  ‘By civilized standards,’ he replied, ‘it would be considered gross overcrowding.’

  ‘The Russians,’ said Sediqa pertly, ‘often have more than twenty living in the same house.’

  That was well known in Kabul. The Americans, who believed in one house for one family, regarded it as an unfair political manoeuvre.

  ‘And they are civilized,’ she added.

  ‘They do not believe in God,’ murmured the sister-in-law, but no one listened.

  ‘What is your intention, Abdul?’ demanded Gulahmad. ‘I have told them that possibly you have got the house for a very small rent, and you are going to let it to some American for a very high rent. I have pointed out that such a transaction might be very profitable.’

  Argument broke out. His sisters preferred to live in the new house. Gulahmad thought the money better, and Yakub agreed, with the proviso that part of it be used to increase his salary.

  His mother silenced them. ‘Money is not the most important thing. Now that you are Principal and a friend of the Prince’s you will get more money. It is better for us to go and live in this house. Every family of any worth moves up in the world. We have waited too long. It is now our turn.’

  Wahab still felt confident. He was the hunter with many bullets left; the wolves could be driven off. When one was shot the others immediately fought over its carcass.

  ‘You do not seem to understand that I have been given this house because I am going to get married.’

  Uproar again, beaten down by his mother’s voice and clapping hands. Then, addressing him, she wanted to know why she hadn’t been told before, who was the girl, and how much was he having to pay for her. She hoped he wasn’t going to be so inconsiderate as to put the whole family into debt for years paying off a fabulous sum. Moreover, as his mother she knew him better than he knew himself; he was far too likely to choose some silly little creature with big breasts.

  At that his sister-in-law began to sob and giggle. She had cost fifty thousand afghanis, and so far, as she had been allowed to know, her only assets were her fertile womb and soft bosom.

  Wahab faced his mother.

  ‘I shall tell you how much I am paying for her,’ he said. ‘Nothing. Not one single afghani.’

  ‘Even a she-goat costs something.’

  ‘I thought this family was
opposed to the barbarous custom of paying for a wife.’

  So they had been, too, because of Karima. Vain, lipsticked, crimson-nailed, and thin, she was not likely to fetch other than a shameful price. She was lazy and fierce-tempered. No man buys a lifetime of toil and scratchings; but an eccentric might accept it for nothing.

  ‘Who is this girl?’ asked his mother.

  It was Sediqa who cried out the answer: ‘She is the feringhee.’

  Once the snapshot of Laura had fallen on the carpet. Sediqa had snatched it up. He had asked her to mention it to no one. She had kept the promise until now.

  ‘Yes,’ he said proudly, ‘she is the feringhee. Please remember,’ he added, as the storm rose again, ‘that it is my business, no one else’s.’

  Now they raised their heads and bayed.

  ‘Will she take our faith?’ cried his father.

  ‘Why should she? Thousands of Afghans have forsaken it.’

  ‘How old is she?’ snarled Karima.

  ‘Please mind your own business. I will not answer impertinent questions.’

  ‘I suppose she has blue eyes?’ shouted his brother.

  Once, years ago, Wahab had mentioned a wish in a country of brown-eyed women to marry one with blue eyes. Some tribes in the north, descendants of Alexander the Great’s soldiers, were said to have them.

  ‘Her eyes are gray.’

  ‘Is she rich?’ shrieked Yakub.

  ‘No.’

  ‘All feringhees are rich,’ screamed Yakub’s wife.

  ‘Rubbish. Many are poor men, who have to work with their hands.’

  ‘Silence!’ bellowed his mother.

  Her eyes, he noticed, were already bloodshot. He had feared she would not be reasonable. Well, did he not have his retreat prepared?

  ‘Where is this woman, Abdul?’

  ‘Here, in Kabul.’

  Uproar of astonishment at his having concealed her from them, silenced by his mother’s beating hands.

  ‘How long has she been here?’

  ‘She arrived today.’

  ‘But you have known her for a long time?’