The Second Achmed Abdullah Megapack. Achmed Abdullah

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      He did not keep shop then, and none knew his business, though we all tried to find out, chiefly I, serving the Emir of Afghanistan in that far city, and retailing the gossip of the inner bazaars from the border to the rose gardens of Kabul, where the governor sits in state and holds durbar.

      But money he had, also breeding, also a certain winsome gentleness of spirit and speech, a soft moving of high-veined hands, well-kept, and fingernails darkened with henna in an effeminate manner.

      He spent many a day in the Khwadja Hills, called poetically Hill A12, C5, K-K61, and so forth, in the Russian and British survey-maps. There he would shoot bighorns and an occasional northern tiger that had drifted down to the wake of the Mongolian snows. This was strange, for an Afghan does not kill for the sake of killing, the sake of sport. He kills only for the sake of food or feud.

      Nor could he explain even to himself why three or four times every month he left his comfortable town house and went into the hills, up and down, following the call of the wilderness; through the gut of the deep-cleft Nadakshi Pass; up beyond the table-lands, pleasant with apricot- and mulberry-trees; still farther up to the smoke-dimmed height of the Salt Hills, where he stained his soft, city-bred hands with the dirt of the tent-peg and the oily soot of his rifle.

      Once I asked him, and he laughed gently.

      “My mother came from the hills,” he replied, “and it is perhaps her blood screaming in my veins which makes me take to the hills, to kill bighorn and snow-tiger instead of killing brother Afghans.”

      “You do not believe in feuds?” I was astonished, for I was young in those days.

      Again he laughed.

      “I do,” he said; “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. A true saying, and a wise one. But what worth is there to me in killing my enemy if my enemy’s son will kill me in the course of time? An unfinished feud is a useless thing. For, tell me, can even the fleetest horse escape its own tail? Can the naked tear their clothes? Can a dead horse eat grass?”

      So month after month he went into the hills, and he came back, his soul filled with the sights he had seen, his spirit peopled with the tales and the memories of the hills. Often I spent the evening with him, and he would digest his experiences in the acrid fumes of his bamboo pipe. He smoked opium in those days.

      Then one day he came back from the hills a married man.

      She was a hill-woman of the Moustaffa-Khel tribe, and her name was Bibi Halima. She was a distant cousin of his on his mother’s side.

      Tall, hook-nosed, white-skinned, with gray-black, flashing eyes and the build of a lean she-panther, not unbeautiful, and fit mother for a strong man’s sons, I saw her often. For these hill-women despise the customs of the sheltered towns; they will not cover their bodies with the swathing farandjés, nor their faces with the chasband, the horsehair veil of the city women.

      Ali-Khan loved her. He loved her with that love which comes to fortunate men once in a lifetime once and not oftener. His spoken love was as his hands, soft and smooth and courtly and slightly scented. He would fill those hands with gifts for her adornment, and he would write poems to her in the Persian manner.

      And she? Did she love him?

      Assuredly, though she was silent. The women of Afghanistan do not speak of love unless they are courtesans. They bear children—sons, if Allah wills—and what else is there for woman in the eyes of woman or of man? Also, since love is sacrifice, can there be greater proof of love than the pain of giving birth?

      No, Bibi Halima did not weave words of love, cunning and soft. Perhaps she thought her husband’s spoken love-words in keeping with his henna-stained fingernails, an effeminacy of the city, smacking of soft Persia and softer Stamboul, the famed town of the West.

      She did not speak of love, but the time was near when she was about to give answer, lusty, screaming answer. She expected a child.

      “May Allah grant it be a man-child,” she said to her husband and to her mother, a strong-boned, hook nosed old hag of a hill woman who had come down into the city to soothe her daughter’s pains with her knowledge “a man-child, broad-bodied and without a blemish!”

      “Aye, by God, the Holder of the Scale of Law! A man-child, a twirler of strength, a breaker of stones, a proud stepper in the councils of fighting men!” chimed in the old woman, using a tribal saying of the Moustaffa-Khel.

      Ali-Khan, as was his wont, snapped his fingers rapidly to ward off the winds of misfortune. He bent over Bibi Halima’s hands, and kissed them very gently, for you must remember that he was a soft man, city-bred, very like a Persian.

      “Let it be a man-child,” he said in his turn, and his voice was as deep and holy as the voice of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. “Allah, give me a son, a little son, to complete my house, to give meaning and strength to my life; and to yours, blood of my soul!” he added, again kissing Bibi Halima’s hands. “And you, beloved,” he continued haltingly, for a great fear was in his heart—“but you, pearl tree of delight—you must live to…”

      “Silence, babble-mouth!” the old mother interrupted with a shriek. “Do not speak aloud with naked heart and tongue! You will bring ill luck on your house! Of course she will live. She is my daughter, blood of my blood and bone of my bone. She is of the hills.” She laughed. “Seven sons have I borne to my lord, and still I live.” And she pushed Ali-Khan toward the door, mumbling bitter words about foolish men of Persian manners sporting with the jinn of misfortune. “Go now!”

      “I go,” Ali-Khan said submissively; and he returned, half an hour later, bearing many gifts, silk and brace lets and sweetmeats and perfume from Ispahan.

      But Bibi Halima waved them aside with a short, impatient gesture. No, no, no, she did not want these man-made things. She wanted him to go to the hills to bring back to her the flowers of the hills, purple rhododendrons, soft-colored mimosas, and wild hibiscus smelling strongly of summer.

      “Go to the hills, O pilgrim,” added the old woman as she saw his anxious face. “We women need no man around in the hour of trial. Ho!” she spat out her betel through blackened, stumpy teeth, “let women do women’s business. Men in the house are as useless as barren spinsters, fit only to break the household pots. Go to the hills, my lord, and bring back the flowers of the hills. On your return, with the help of Allah, there will be a little son strengthening the house.”

      And so he went to the hills, his rifle in his arm. Up to the high hills he went to pick flowers for his beloved, a song on his lips.

      “O Peacock, cry again,” I heard his voice as he passed my house.

      Early the next morning Ebrahim Asif came to town. He also was of the Moustaffa-Khel, and a first cousin to Bibi Halima, and upon the blue-misted Salt Hills he was known as a brawler and a swashbuckler. A year before he had spoken to her of love, and had been refused. She had married Ali-Khan instead a few months later.

      Now he came to her house, and the old mother stood in the doorway.

      “Go away!” she shrilled; for being an Afghan herself, she did not trust the Afghan, her sister’s son.

      Ebrahim Asif laughed.

      “I have come to see my cousin and Ali-Khan. See, I have come bringing gifts.”

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