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.”
But still the old woman was suspicious.
“Trust a snake before an Afghan,” she replied. “Ali-Khan is away to the hills. Go, filthy spawn of much evil!”
“Spawn of your sister’s blood, you mean,” he replied banteringly; and the old woman laughed, for this was a jest after her own heart. “Let me in!” he continued. “Once your daughter blinded my soul with a glance of her eye. Once the fringe of her eyelids took me into captivity without ransom. But time and distance have set me free from the shackles of my love. It is forgotten. Let me bring these gifts to her.”
So the old woman let him into the zenana, where the windows were darkened to shut out the strong Northern sun. Bibi Halima gave him pleasant greeting from where she lay on the couch in the corner of the room.
“Live forever, most excellent cousin!” he said, bowing with clasped hands. “Live in the shadow of happiness!” He took a step nearer. “I have brought you presents, dispenser of delights.”
Bibi Halima laughed, knowing of old Ebrahim Asif’s facility for turning cunning words. She spoke to her mother.
“Open the blinds, Mother, and let me see what my cousin has brought from the hills.”
The old woman drew up the blinds, and Bibi Halima looked.
“See, see, Mother!” she exclaimed, “see the gifts [which my cousin has brought me!”
“Aye, Daughter,” the old woman replied, “gifts to adorn the house.” And then she added, with the pride of age greedy for grandchildren, “but there will be a gift yet more fit to adorn this house when you lay a man-child into your lord’s arms.”
Then the terrible rage of the Afghans rose suddenly in Ebrahim Asif’s throat. He had come in peace, bearing gifts; but when he heard that the woman whom once he had loved would give birth to a child, the other man’s child, he drew his cheray.
A slashing, downward thrust, and he was out of the house and off to the hills again.
The blow had struck Bibi Halima’s temple with full force. She was half dead, but she forced back her ebbing strength because she wanted to hold a man-child in her