Читать книгу At the Court of the Amîr - John Alfred Gray - Страница 3

Table of Contents

The start and the wherefore. Unsettled condition of Afghanistan. Departure from Peshawur. Jumrûd Fort and the Watch-tower, The Afghan guard. The Khyber defile. Eccentricities of Rosinante. Lunch at Ali Musjid. Pathan villages. Pathans, their appearance and customs. Arrival at Landi Kotal Serai. The Shenwari country. Caravan of Traders. Dakka. Dangers of the Kabul River, Mussaks. Camp at Bassawal. Chahardeh. Mountain road by the river. Distant view of Jelalabad.

It was with no small amount of pleasurable excitement that I donned the Afghan turban, and with Sir Salter (then Mr.) Pyne and two other English engineers, started from Peshawur for Kabul to enter the service of the Amîr.

I had made the acquaintance of Mr. Pyne in London, where I was holding a medical appointment. He had returned to England, after his first short visit to Kabul, with orders from the Amîr to buy machinery, procure engineering assistants, and engage the services of an English surgeon.

I gathered from his yarns that, for Europeans at the present day, life among the Afghans was likely to be a somewhat different thing from what it was a few years ago.

In the reigns of Dost Mahomed and Shere Ali it was simply an impossibility for a European to take up a permanent residence in Afghanistan; in fact, except for occasional political missions, none was allowed to enter the country.

We do, indeed, hear of one or two, travelling in disguise, who managed to gather valuable facts concerning the country and its inhabitants, but we learn from their narratives that the hardships they were forced to undergo were appalling. For ages it has been a proverb among the natives of India that he who goes to Kabul carries his life in his hand. They say, “Trust a cobra, but never an Afghan;” and there is no denying the fact that the people of Afghanistan have had the credit from time immemorial of being a turbulent nation of highway robbers and murderers. If there were any chance of plunder they spared not even their co-religionists, and, being fanatical Mahomedans, they were particularly “down” on any unfortunate traveller suspected of being a Feringhi and an infidel.

A busy professional life following upon the engrossing studies of Hospital and University, had given me neither time nor any particular inducement to read about Afghanistan, so that when I left England I knew very little about the country. However, on reaching India I found plenty of people ready enough to enlighten me.

I heard, from officers who had been on active service in Afghanistan in 1880, of the treacherous and vindictive nature of the people; of the danger when they were in Kabul of walking in the town except in a party of six or seven; of the men who, even taking this precaution, had been stabbed. I heard, too, a great deal about the assassination of the British envoy in Kabul, Sir Louis Cavagnari, in 1879; of the highway dangers of the two hundred mile ride from the British frontier to Kabul, and, remembering that we were about to trust our lives absolutely for some years to the good faith of these proverbially treacherous Afghans, it struck me we were in for an experience that was likely to be exciting.

What actually happened I will relate.

Departure from Peshawur.

We were all ready to start from Peshawur one day in March, 1889. The Amîr’s agent, a stout and genial old Afghan, named Abdul Khalik Khan, had provided us with turbans, tents, and horses; we had received permits from the Government to cross the frontier, and our baggage was being loaded on the pack-horses when a telegram arrived directing us to await further orders. We were informed that there was fighting among the Pathans in the Khyber, and we were to postpone our departure till it was over. This seemed a healthy commencement.

Three days afterwards, however, we were allowed to proceed. The first day’s march was short, simply from the cantonment across the dusty Peshawur plain to Jumrûd fort: about nine miles. The fort, originally built by the Sikhs in 1837, has been repaired and strengthened by the British, who now hold it. It is said, however, to be of no very great value: one reason being because of the possibility of its water supply being cut off at any time by the Afghan hillmen.

The servants, with the pack-horses and tents, took up their quarters in the courtyard, but we four accompanied the officer in charge up to his rooms in the watch-tower. From here we had an extensive view over the Peshawur valley. The entry to the Khyber was about three miles off to the west. We had left the cantonment early in the afternoon, and soon after our arrival it became dark. We dined, and were thinking of turning in to prepare for our long hot ride on the morrow, when we found, instead, that we should have to turn out.

The fort was not an hotel, and had no sleeping accommodation to offer us. I looked at Pyne. The baggage was down there in the courtyard, somewhere in the dark, and our bedding with it. Should we——? No! we would roll up our coats for pillows, throw our ulsters over us, and sleep on the platform outside the tower. We were proud to do it. But—the expression “bed and board” appealed to my feelings ever afterwards.

We had an early breakfast.

In the morning we found the guard of Afghan cavalry waiting for us in the travellers’ caravansary near the fort. There were about forty troopers—“the Amîr’s tag-rag,” as the British subalterns disrespectfully called them.

They were rough-looking men, dressed more or less alike, with turbans, tunics, trousers, and long boots. Each had a carbine slung over his shoulder and a sword at his side. A cloak or a rug was rolled up in front of the saddle and a couple of saddle bags strapped behind. They carried no tents. I cannot say they looked smart, but they looked useful. Of the individual men some were rather Jewish in type, good-looking fellows—these were Afghans; and one or two had high cheek-bones and small eyes—they were Hazaras. All were very sunburnt, and very few wore beards. This last fact surprised me; I had thought that Mahomedans never shaved the beard.

It is, however, not at all an uncommon thing for soldiers and officers in the Afghan army to shave all but the moustache; but I learnt that in a Kabul court of law, when it is necessary in swearing to lay the hand upon the beard, that a soldier’s oath is not taken: he has no beard to swear by.

The Khyber Pass.

The baggage was sent off under a guard of about a dozen troopers. We followed with the rest and entered the gorge of the Khyber. It is a holiday trip now-a-days to ride or drive into the Pass. You obtain a permit from the Frontier Political Officer, and are provided with a guard of two native cavalrymen, who conduct you through the Pass as far as Landi Kotal. This is allowed, however, on only two days in the week, Mondays and Thursdays—the Koffla, or merchant days. The Khyber Pathans have entered into an agreement with the Government that for the payment of a certain subsidy they will keep the Pass open on those two days: will forbear to rob travellers and merchants. Doubtless it is an act of great self-denial on their part, but they keep faith.

Riding along the Pass one sees posted at intervals, on rock or peak, the Pathan sentry keeping guard. He is a fine-looking man, as he stands silently in his robes: tall, with black beard and moustache. His head may be shaven or his long hair hang in ringlets over his shoulders. He wears a little skull cap with, may be, a blue turban wound carelessly round it: a loose vest reaching the knee is confined at the waist by the ample folds of the cummerbund, or waist shawl. In this is thrust a pistol or two and a big ugly-looking knife. The short trousers of cotton, reaching half-way down the leg, are loose and not confined at the ankle like the townsman’s “pyjamas.” On the feet he wears the Afghan shoe with curved up toe: the ornamental chapli or sandal of leather: or one neatly made of straw. Draped with classical beauty around the shoulders is the large blue cotton lûngi, or cloak. If the morning is cold the sheepskin postîn is worn, the sleeves of which reach to the elbow. If it rain the postîn is reversed, and the wool being outside shoots the wet off. The next day’s sun dries it.

The rifle he has may be an old English musket, a Martini-Henry or a native jezail, but, whatever it be, in the Pathan’s hands it is deadly.

The scenery in the Khyber is rugged and wild, the only vegetation being stunted bushes and trees at the bottom of the gorge. The rocky cliffs rise precipitously on either side, and gradually closing in, are, at a little distance from the entry, not more than three or four hundred feet apart. The road at one time leads by the stream at the bottom of the gorge, and later creeping up the mountain it winds in and out round the spurs or fissures half-way up the face of the cliff. It is a good broad road, made, and kept in excellent repair, by the British. Nevertheless, I was far from happy: my mare, accustomed to a town, was frightened by the rocks, the sharp turns, and the precipices, and desired to escape somewhere, anywhere—and there was no parapet.