— How to remove your blindfold, and see your place in this world.
Once you caught the scent of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan you could follow it through the Peshawar Valley. Wadpagga, Sardaryab, Charsadda, Utmanzai and points in between. Twenty-five years old and already he knew how to place a light in the eyes of old men, how to make young boys whisper pieces of his story as though they were couplets of love. Within a few hours of setting out on Kalam’s father’s instructions Qayyum felt he was chasing the story, not the man, finding different pieces of it across the Valley: Ghaffar Khan gave up his Commission in the Guides when he saw an Englishman insult a Pashtun officer; he almost set sail for England but his mother’s tears held him back; Haji Sahib of Turangzai sought him out when he was barely past twenty and together they set up a programme for education and reform; when Haji Sahib declared jihad their paths diverged, and now one was a fugitive in the tribal areas and the other travelled all through the settled districts setting up schools where the Pashtuns could find education untainted by the superstition of the mullahs and the brainwashing of the English.
On the third afternoon, between Utmanzai and Mardan, winter rain was beginning to fall when Qayyum entered the mud-walled complex to which a man on the road had directed him. The sound, familiar but unplaceable, which greeted him was fat raindrops falling on a large blue tarpaulin which four tall men held at each corner, shielding the gathering in the courtyard. A square of sky between the rain and the men. Qayyum ran across the courtyard, ducked beneath the tarpaulin, which the men held up high over their heads though they were tall and the assembled men were seated and their arms must be aching. But it was for him, for Ghaffar Khan, that the extra inches were necessary. Like an angel or a djinn in height, Kalam’s father had said, and Qayyum, six foot tall, found he had to turn his eyes upwards to Ghaffar Khan who stood beneath the other end of the tarpaulin. A smile of welcome for Qayyum sat between the eagle nose and close-cropped beard, even as Ghaffar Khan continued explaining how blood feuds and revenge were eating up the Pashtuns from within. As he spoke a blur in the rain resolved itself into the figure of a boy who had run from one of the doorways surrounding the courtyard to stand just a little distance from the young Khan; filled with excitement or anticipation, the boy stood on one foot, reached behind him to squeeze the other foot in the palm of his hands. A flamingo-boy; the ancient sculptors of Gandhara would have carved him into stone.
A babble of voices, a field of hands rose up when Ghaffar Khan finished speaking, but he turned his great frame towards the boy first:
— Do you bring a question?
Qayyum understood the boy was intermediary between this gathering and the women behind doors. He turned his body sideways, so no one might think he was looking in the direction of the women now that he knew where they were.
— Why didn’t you join Haji Sahib in his jihad?
A number of the men looked at each other, scratched their chins, sighed a little. The question wasn’t new to them.
— Taking up arms after your lands have been conquered is like building a well after your house has caught fire. The sword in tribesmen’s hands will not cut this yoke from our necks. No sword will cut this yoke from our necks. If we want any chance of advancement we must. .
And though he’d been speaking in Pashto, he switched to an Urdu idiom to end the sentence and the man holding the tarpaulin leaned towards Qayyum and said:
— What was that? What did he say?
— He said we must get rid of our wrong ideas. We must wake up from this rabbit’s dream.
Qayyum stepped back into the diminishing rain, head angled back, and all the noise of the world was replaced by the plink of water droplets on a glass eye, the unexpected music of heaven.
October — November 1915
Viv raised her bow, strung with an arrow, and looked down the length of the shaft to the tip pointing directly at the minarets of Mahabat Khan Mosque. The Italian mercenary Paolo Avitabile had used the minarets as gallows to hang anyone who broke his laws, and as the moon shone on the white marble Viv thought she saw body-shaped shadows — the ghosts of those who had swung to their deaths above the eyes of all Peshawar’s inhabitants. In the surrounding streets of the Old City, seventy years after Avitabile’s governorship ended, children were still threatened into good behaviour with warnings that the terrible Abu Tabela would come for them in the night. It was Avitabile who had widened the streets, erected the Old City walls, brought security to Peshawar during its period of Sikh rule with the most iron of fists. They still fear him and revere him, an old major had said to Viv; he showed us the only way a man of Europe can rule the Pathans. But Remmick had disagreed — we are here to civilise, not to lose our own civility, he’d said. Then he pointed to Viv and added, some of us in large ways, and some of us in small. On certain days, Remmick was almost a friend.
Today, he wasn’t among the revellers gathered at the broad walkway on top of the Mughal gateway of Gor Khatri, the highest elevation in the Walled City. The invitation cards to ‘Olympian Night at Gor Khatri’ had come with a handwritten note instructing each guest which Greek god they would play for the evening. Viv was Artemis, the Virgin Hunter. An unsubtle joke reflecting the widespread certainty that the only reason for a young Englishwoman to come to Peshawar was the quest for a husband. Someone should explain that means finding someone who isn’t already a husband, Mrs Remmick had pointedly remarked in her hearing, but since no one particularly liked Mrs Remmick or believed that Viv would choose Remmick-the-Red-faced when there were handsome bachelors around, the comment had only endeared Viv to many of the other British wives who enjoyed nothing more than an opportunity to pick sides.
She lowered the bow and arrow, placed it on the thick wall of the fortified gateway, and plucked a glass of iced sherbet from the tray of a passing bearer. The end of the summer season had transformed the sleepiness of Peshawar, bringing the British back from Simla with balls and picnics and hunts in tow. And the rapidly cooling weather brought with it the possibility of further distractions: a boat-ride down the Indus; the Taj Mahal; the Caves of Ajanta and Ellora; Taxila, where John Marshall had invited her to visit the excavations. And in the spring, the famed Peshawar Vale Hunt which, the regulars of the Peshawar Club insisted, Viv absolutely must stay for. Why suffer through Peshawar’s summer and then leave just as it turned delightful? What sense did that make?
No sense at all, Viv agreed. She didn’t see any need to mention that Remmick had promised he was working on sorting out the leasing problem with Shahji-ki-Dheri but it might be early in the new year before everything were settled and excavation became possible.
She looked down at the tangle of the Old City, laid out beneath. From up here it was possible to see the rooftops of all the houses, enclosed on four sides but open to the sky — or to the Olympian gods of Gor Khatri. It was like looking into a honeycombed jewellery box, many of its compartments lit up with lanterns, revealing something bright and glittering: a woman in a tunic of green and pink, sewing mirrorwork onto a shirt; a man on a rope-bed reading from a book, children at his feet; a woman combing the long hair of a shirtless man, who Viv guessed to be Sikh, her hand on his shoulder. Which one was Najeeb’s house, Viv wondered. She knew so little about his world.
Dionysus touched her elbow. The Anglo-Indian band had finally made it up the stairs with their bulky instruments and now led off with ‘For Empire and for England’. Artemis joined Dionysus in a dance along the roof of Peshawar, a bright moon overhead. Sometimes she lost track of whether she was using the Peshawar Vale Hunt as an excuse to stay in Peshawar long enough to dig deep for Tahsin Bey’s dream or using Tahsin Bey as an excuse to stay for the Peshawar Vale Hunt.