Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier Part 15

One naturally a.s.sociates with those who give the heartiest welcome, and when in native garb the attraction is to those for the sake of whom we have come out to this land, while, on the other hand, there is danger that, when dressed for the drawing-room or the tennis-courts, we may spend too much of our time on that side of the gulf. If we English realized how much pain we often cause our Indian brethren, not so much by what we say or do as by the way we say or do it and the way we act towards them, a great cause of racial misunderstanding and ill-feeling would be removed.

Suppose a Sahib is seated in his study, and the bearer announces "A Sahib has come to call," the answer is given at once: "Ask him into the drawing-room." A moment after an Indian gentleman arrives, and the bearer is told to give him a chair in the verandah, or he may be even left standing in the sun, as happened to me more than once, till the Sahib had finished eating his lunch or writing his letters. At more than one bungalow, whether it belonged to a missionary or an official, the bearer would not even report my presence till he had catechized me as to who I was and what I wanted. I have had to wait as long as two hours before the Sahib found leisure to see me, being left meanwhile without a seat except G.o.d's good earth, in the wind and cold, or in the heat and sun, as the case might be. A missionary, of all people, should not have a room set apart and tacitly understood to be "for English visitors only," or make a habit of receiving the two kinds of visitors in altogether different style, or allow his menial servants to hustle and hector the already diffident and nervous native visitor.

When I was on my pilgrimage with my disciple, how our hearts opened to those true friends who received both of us alike, and did not chill us at the outset with the suggestion, "I suppose your friend would like to be taken to the house of the catechist." Why, forsooth? Many a time we were both the guests of the humblest of our Indian brothers, and perfectly happy in unrestrained communion with them; others, too, of stations high above our own received us both with an unreserved hospitality, in which nothing was allowed to show that any difference was made between English and Indian, and we honoured and loved them for it. Why, then, should others be at pains to show that they had one treatment for the Englishman and another for the Indian, or perhaps conceal that feeling so poorly that we were never able to feel at ease with them? Which, I ask, is more likely to remove racial antipathy and unrest, and to make our Indian brethren feel that the Christianity which we preach is really genuine and means what it says?

CHAPTER XX

A FRONTIER EPISODE

A merchant caravan in the Tochi Pa.s.s--Manak Khan--A sudden onslaught--First aid--Native remedies--A desperate case--A last resort--The Feringi doctor--Setting out on the journey--Arrival at Bannu--Refuses amputation--Returns to Afghanistan--His wife and children frightened away.

It is evening, and a party of Lohani merchants are slowly defiling with their camels through the Tochi Pa.s.s, one of the mountain gorges which connect our Indian Empire with Afghanistan, and its last beams are shining in the faces of a dozen stalwart men now returning to their homes near Ghuzni, with the proceeds of their winter's trading on the plains of India. The men and some five or six women are on foot, while their children and two or three more women are mounted on some of the camels, which would otherwise be returning unladen, their loads having been sold in Multan. The women, veiled as usual, show little more to the pa.s.ser-by than one eye and a small triangular piece of cheek; while the men are either holding the nose-strings of the camels, or walking beside them with their guns over their shoulders, and a pistol and long knife or sword peeping out from their open cloak; for the weather is getting hot now with approaching summer, and they are pa.s.sing through the hostile country of the Wazirs, that wild border mountain tribe who think it their ancestral right to hara.s.s and plunder the merchant caravans pa.s.sing through their district as much as opportunity allows.

Among the merchants we are struck by one fine, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, stalking along by the side of the foremost of his three camels, his gun and sword ready for use, but, in the absence of any sign of an enemy, walking at ease, humming quietly to himself a native ditty, in expectation of speedily seeing his home again, and rejoining his wife and three children, who have not accompanied him on this journey.

These three camels form his wealth and the centre of his hopes and prospects, for by means of them does he yearly take down his merchandise of skins and fruit to the markets of India, and return in early summer--it is now the month of May--with the proceeds to his home.

Manak Khan--for that is his name--has been down many a winter now with his three camels to the Derajat, or that part of India nearest Afghanistan, and has had more than one scuffle with the Wazirs, while pa.s.sing through their land, in defence of his little stock-in-trade. His fellow-travellers evidently consider him one of their boldest and best men, for it requires no little knowledge of the country, and courage, too, to lead a party composed largely of women and children, and enc.u.mbered by a lot of baggage, through mountain pa.s.ses, where they are daily and nightly exposed to the attacks of the mountaineers hiding behind the rocks, or crowning the heights on either side, and thirsting for their small possessions.

The sun has now disappeared behind the hill before them, and, like good Muhammadans, they make a brief halt for the evening prayers. The men cleanse their hands and feet with sand--for there is no water to be had here--and, selecting a smooth piece of ground, spread their shawl and, facing the Holy City, perform the requisite number of genuflections and calls on G.o.d.

Suddenly there is the loud report of several guns; the bullets whistle through the midst of the party, and in a moment all is confusion and uproar. The camels start up and try to escape; the women seize their children or the camel-ropes; while the men s.n.a.t.c.h their guns, which had been just now put down, and hastily take aim at some dozen men running down the mountain-side in the direction of the camels, with their long knives ready for action. But the first volley had not been without effect: Manak Khan is lying on the ground, blood flowing fast from a wound in his left leg just above the knee, and anxiously is he watching what is now a hand-to-hand conflict close by him. The Wazirs have rushed among the camels and have cut their cords, and are attempting to drive them off; while the other merchants, having discharged their matchlocks, attack them with their swords, and camels and men are mingled in one shouting, slashing melee.

Fortunately for the Lohanis, two of the leading Wazirs fall quickly with fatal sword wounds, and the remainder, seeing that the Lohanis have not been caught napping, and that the tide is turning against them, make off as quickly as they appeared, and the merchants have far too much to do in quieting their frightened camels to think of a pursuit. A hasty council is held. It is found that one man has his arm broken by a sword cut, and Manak Khan has his leg broken, the ball having pa.s.sed through the bone and opened the knee-joint, while most of the remainder can show smaller cuts.

The women now come to the rescue. A veil is torn up and the wounds bound, some being st.i.tched by the women pulling hairs out of their own heads, and using their ordinary sewing-needles on their husbands' skin. An immediate march is resolved upon, but then comes the difficulty about Manak Khan. Moving him causes him great pain and the blood to gush forth afresh, while to leave him is out of the question, for his throat would be cut long before morning. Whatever may be the faults of an Afghan, he is not one to forsake a friend in the hour of need, and so it proves here. A piece of cloth is half burnt, and the blackened shreds, soaked with oil, rubbed over the wound, and the leg then bound to a musket with the ample folds of a shawl, and, lastly, our hero is tied on a rough bed, and mounted high on the back of a camel.

Great were the lamentations when Manak Khan reached his village home; and instead of his strong step and hearty greeting consoling his wife for her long winter of separation, she came forth only to see the pain-marked face and helpless form carried in on a bed, and to hear the account of the night attack in the dread Tochi Pa.s.s. "Bismillah! let the will of G.o.d be done," consoles the village Mullah, while some practical friend starts off for the nearest hakim, or doctor. The latter shortly arrives; and the wife retires into the cottage, while the greybeards a.s.semble in the courtyard to offer their bits of experience and advice, and vow vengeance over the Quran on the luckless Wazirs who committed the deed.

After no little ceremony and interchange of ideas, the doctor decides on a combination of two remedies, for the case is a serious one: the leg is greatly swollen from the groin to the calf, and unhealthy matter is issuing from both the apertures of entry and exit of the bullet, while the shattered bones grate on each other, and cause the man to bite convulsively the rolled-up end of his turban, on the slightest movement.

For the first remedy a fat sheep is bought and slain and immediately skinned, the reeking skin being applied at once to the bare leg, with the b.l.o.o.d.y side next the skin, from groin to heel, and the whole bound up and placed in the hollow formed by burning out the central core from the half of a three-foot length of tree-trunk.

For the second remedy a message is sent to a certain religious devotee, who has an asylum in the neighbourhood and a great reputation for charms which will cure all manner of diseases (when it is the will of G.o.d that they shall be cured). Next day he arrives, clad in simple goatskin, with the hair outside, and a cap of similar material. Many long prayers are gone through with the help of the Mullah, and at last a small piece of printed paper torn from an Arabic tract is produced, and carefully sewn up in a small piece of leather, and tied in the name of G.o.d round the man's ankle.

Then comes the last ceremony, and one not to be overlooked on any account--that of providing a feast at the sick man's expense for all parties concerned. His little store of rupees is fetched out, and returns lighter by a third to the folds of the old turban in which it was carefully h.o.a.rded, while the charm-maker is seen leading away a fine milch goat.

Day follows day, and night follows night, but still Manak Khan lies tossing feverish on a bed of pain, and still is the patient Sadura watching by his bedside, and daily bringing in fresh milk and b.u.t.ter and sugar, and making tempting pancakes, only to be left half tasted by the fever-stricken frame of her loved one. At last the tenth day comes, on which the sheepskin is to be removed, and the hakim comes, and the Mullah comes, and the greybeards come, and prayers are read, and money is given; but, to the disappointment of all, the limb is found no better, swollen as before, and bathed in evil-smelling matter, which makes his friends, all but his faithful wife, bind a fold or two of their turbans over their noses and mouths.

So week follows week. One herb is tried after another; the last of his rupees disappears among the hakims, for, peradventure, think they, the doctor did not heal it at once because his fee was not high enough, so a larger fee is given, and a hint that if only he will say for what price he will speedily heal it, they will go all lengths to pay him; for it must be unwillingness, not incapability, that prevents his doing so.

So two months pa.s.sed away, but still the limb was swollen and sore, still was he unable to rise from his bed of pain.

Then they determined to send a messenger to the neighbouring town of Ghuzni, and call in a doctor of great repute from there. True, his charge was high--one of the three camels must be sold to defray it--but what hope was there for them with the breadwinner hopelessly crippled? So the messenger went and the doctor came, and his remedy was tried. Two bunches of wool were thoroughly soaked in oil and then set fire to, and fastened on the skin near the knee; the pain was great, but Manak Khan stood it bravely, tightly biting his turban-end and grasping his friend's arm in a spasmodic grip. When the burnt flesh separated after a few days the ulcers left were dressed with some leaves from a plant growing on the shrine of a noted saint, and renewed every two or three days. Still there was no improvement, though charms and amulets were bought at high prices from many a saint, and the Ghuzni doctor came again and took away his second camel.

Manak Khan and Sadura were beginning to lose all hope, when one day a traveller was pa.s.sing through their village on the road to Kabul, and as he was sitting with the villagers, telling them the latest news from India, one of them asked him about a scar on his left arm.

"Ah," he said, "when I was in Dera Ismal Khan I had a terrible abscess; but there was an English doctor there, and he lanced it, and got it quite well in a couple of weeks; and," he went on, "numbers of people have been going to him, and I have seen some wonderful cures."

"Really!" say they; "and had you to pay him a great deal?"

"No; that is the strange part: he will not take any money from anyone, but sees all the people that go to him, be they ever so poor, for nothing."

"That cannot be; he must have a reason behind it all."

"No, not unless it be this--that you know he is a Feringi, and, like all other Feringis, an unbeliever; but, more than that, he seems to want all the people to believe on Hazrat 'Esa" (Lord Jesus) "as being the Son of G.o.d" (here the Mullah and several of the men spit on the ground and say, "Tauba, tauba"), "and to this end he has got an a.s.sistant who preaches to all the people who go to him, and tells them about Hazrat 'Esa, and how he was a hakim and cured people."

"Well, this is strange, but I wonder if he could cure Manak Khan."

And so all particulars are asked, and the advice of all the greybeards, while Manak Khan catches at the idea as a dying man at a straw. Sadura, however, is not so easily convinced. She did not relish the idea of her husband being separated from her once more, and moreover, said she, where the doctor of Ghuzni had failed, how was it likely that another doctor, and he a blasphemer of their Prophet, would succeed?

So the idea was waived for a time, and things went on as before, while their last camel was sold to pay their increasing debts, and gloom settled on the little circle. But as the September days were lengthening and still no hope appeared, they settled that they would try the Feringi's medicine. But then came the difficulty as to ways and means; their last camel had been sold, and Manak had no friends who would take him down to the plains free of expense.

At last a bright idea struck them: their little daughter, Gul Bibi, was now seven years old, and many a man would be willing to lend eighty or ninety rupees on condition of her being kept for his wife. And so it was settled: the bargain was struck, and with the proceeds a man was engaged to take him on camel-back down to the Derajat plains. The village carpenter made a kind of litter, which could be fastened on the back of a camel, and as his wife must stop for the children, his old mother volunteered to take the journey with him and tend him through it.

It was a sad farewell this time, and long did Sadura stand at the outskirts of the village watching the camel and its precious burden, with the old mother and st.u.r.dy camel-driver trudging by the side, gradually disappear round a corner of the defile.

On the seventh day they emerged from the Gomal Pa.s.s on to the Plain of Tank, and here they stayed a little to recuperate with the kind Dr. John Williams, of the Christian hospital there; then going on till the trees and mudhouses of Dera Ismal Khan came in sight. Here a fresh disappointment awaited them: the Feringi doctor had left Dera, and gone to carry on his work in Bannu, one hundred miles farther. But what cannot be cured must be endured, and so the camel's head is turned towards Bannu, and the weary march resumed once more. Five days later, as the evening was drawing on--it was now late in November--Bannu was reached, and the new Feringi doctor inquired for; and a few minutes later the camel, with its strange burden, came through the gates of the mission compound, and the long tedium of the three hundred miles'

journey was brought to a close.

Such was the story with which Manak Khan came to me, and which he gradually unfolded to me some two months later, as confidence had increased, and I used to sit by his bedside hearing tales of his mountain home. Great was the sorrow with which I had to tell him that his case was incurable, that his leg had become thoroughly disorganized, and amputation was necessary; but, like most of his race, his aversion to the loss of a limb made him prefer the long months of a bed of sickness and the tedious and repeated operations performed in an endeavour to save the limb in a usable condition. In this way he and his mother remained with us till the middle of April, when, as the heat of the plain began to be felt, they were compelled to return to their mountain home, with little or no improvement.

Yet with one great difference, which lightened up the sadness of his departure: he had learnt to believe on Christ Jesus as his own Saviour, and to look up to Him as the One who carries us safely through sickness and trial, and is preparing a home for us at last; and very earnestly did he a.s.sure me that during the long days of patient suffering in our little mission hospital he had learnt to lift his heart in prayer to Him who hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and look up to Him as his Saviour.

"And," said he, "if G.o.d spares my life, I will tell my people of Him, and come back with my family to be received into the Christian Church."

So he left us, and our prayers followed him on his long and painful journey home; and may it not be that he is a light shining in a dark place, and witnessing in that little Afghan village of how he went for bodily healing, but G.o.d saw fit to pour light into his soul instead, and make the very tedium of a protracted illness in the Bannu Mission Hospital the guiding light to heaven?

Every now and again we got news of Manak Khan. He had taken with him some books in the Pashtu language, a New Testament and some others, and these used to be read by a Mullah in his village and some other friends of his who could read. His leg, however, never got well, and was the cause of his death some three years later. When on his death-bed, he directed his wife to go to Bannu with her children and place herself under my protection, and one autumn morning she arrived, with three children. Before she had been with us many days, however, others of her tribe came and warned her that if she stopped with us she would lose her religion, sell herself to the Evil One, and be lost for ever, and they accompanied these admonitions with threats, so that ultimately she left us, and we have not seen her since. But who knows? Sometimes after the lapse of years these people return to us, and the thread of circ.u.mstance is picked up again where it had been cut, as though there had never been any breach of continuity at all! Or it may be the seed goes on growing in some distant Afghan village unknown to us, but known to and tenderly cared for by Him who will not let even a sparrow fall to the ground without His will, and who has counted among His own many a one now resting in a Muhammadan graveyard against that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed.

CHAPTER XXI

FRONTIER CAMPAIGNING

The Pathan warrior--A Christian native officer--A secret mission--A victim of treachery--A soldier convert--Influence of a Christian officer--Crude ideas and strange motives of Pathan soldiers--Camaraderie in frontier regiments--Example of sympathy between students of different religions in mission school--A famous Sikh regiment--Sikh soldiers and religion--Fort Lockhart--Saraghari--The last man--A rifle thief--Caught red-handed.

Some of the finest fighting material of the Indian Army comes from the Pathan tribes, both on the British side of the border and across it in Tirah and Waziristan, and very pleasant fellows some of these Pathan warriors are. Often when wandering about the frontier have I received the hospitality of some outpost or stayed with the native officer in some blockhouse, and listened to them recounting tales of active service or of their mountain homes. Many of these native officers are old students of the frontier mission schools, and these extend a doubly hearty welcome. Some are serious religious inquirers, and, from having travelled and mixed with all kinds of men, are able to examine the claims of Christianity with less prejudice than the priestly cla.s.s.