Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier Part 3

THE CHRISTIAN'S REVENGE

Police posts versus dispensaries--The poisoning scare--A native doctor's influence--Wazir marauders spare the mission hospital--A terrible revenge--The Conolly bed--A political mission--A treacherous King--Imprisonment in Bukhara--The Prayer-Book--Martyrdom--The sequel--Influence of the mission hospital--The medical missionary's pa.s.sport.

I was once urging on a certain official the need of a Government dispensary in a certain frontier district. "There is no need there,"

he replied; "the people are quiet and law-abiding. Now A---, that is a disturbed area: there we ought to have medical work"--an unintentional testimony to one result of the doctor's work, though rather hard on the law-abiding section of the populace that they should have no hope of a hospital unless they can organize a few raids, or get a reputation for truculence.

Which will be better--a punitive police post or a civil dispensary? This seems a not very logical conundrum, yet it is based on sound reasoning, and a well-managed establishment of the latter kind will often remove the necessity of setting up the former. The doctor is a confidant in more matters than one, and the right man will often smooth down little frictions and mollify sorenesses which bid fair to cause widespread conflagrations.

A medical mission is a pacific, as well as an essentially pioneer, agency.

There was a little missionary dispensary on the frontier, in charge of a native doctor, a convert from Muhammadanism, who had gone in and out among the people till he was a household friend all down the country-side.

One day he was sitting in his dispensary seeing out-patients, when he heard the following conversation:

Abdultalib. "The Sarkar has sent out agents to kill the Mussulmans by poisoning their drinking-water."

Balyamin. "Mauzbillah! how do you know that?"

A. "Mullah D. arrived last night, and, sitting in the chauk, he told how he had seen a man throwing pills into the well at Dabb village. He went after him, but as soon as the man saw him he ran away."

B. "What is to be done?"

A. "First we must tell the women not to draw water from the wells--they have certainly been poisoned in the night--but they can take their pitchers to the tank in the big mosque; no one would interfere with that."

B. "If we can catch the miscreant, we will show him plainly enough who is the Mussulman and who the infidel."

As the news spread through the village, the excitement grew; women who had already filled their pitchers from the wells hurriedly emptied them and started off afresh to the mosque tank. Guards were placed at the well, both to warn the faithful and to give short shrift to any hapless stranger on whom suspicion might fall. The men about the bazaar had procured thick sticks, and seemed only waiting for the opportunity of using them, and things looked black all round. News was brought to the police-station, and, without waiting to don his uniform, the inspector buckled on a revolver, and, taking a constable with him, hurried off to the most disturbed portion of the village.

The men there were sullen, and would give no information, and two or three of the more truculent seemed inclined to hustle the police-officer. Just then the native doctor appeared on the scene, and recognized the gravity of the situation at once. One rash act, and the police might have to use their firearms in self-defence. The people, however, trusted the doctor. Had he not often championed them when subjected to little police tyrannies, and had they not often sought counsel from him in their village quarrels, and always found his advice had helped them to come to an amicable settlement? So now, when he quietly slipped his arm into that of the inspector, and led him out of the dangerous quarter, chatting the while, till he got him safely into a house without loss of official dignity, not even the most truculent tried to resist his pa.s.sage. Then he returned and reasoned with them on the groundlessness of their suspicions. Had any of them ever seen anyone throw anything into the wells? Had anyone even got a stomach-ache from drinking the water? Did any King ever want to kill off all his own subjects? If so, whom would he rule, and where would be his kingdom? Finally, he bantered them out of their warlike intentions: the sticks were returned home, business resumed, the inspector came back as though his authority had never been questioned, and a very ugly situation was successfully negotiated.

In the year 1879 the tribe of the Wazirs had been incited by their Mullahs to rise, and they came down suddenly with their lashkar on the little frontier town of Tank. There was a mission hospital there, in charge of an Indian doctor, the Rev. John Williams. Before the authorities could summon the troops the Wazir warriors had overrun town and bazaar, and were burning and looting. Some young bloods went for the mission hospital, but they were at once restrained by the tribal elders, who forbade them to meddle with the property of "our own Daktar Sahib," as they called him. Had they not often been inmates of his hospital and partakers of his hospitality? Not a hair of his head was to be injured. They at once set a guard of their own men on the mission hospital, who warned off any excited tribesmen who might have done it injury, and that was the only place in the bazaar that escaped fire and sword and pillage. Some of his surgical instruments had been carried off before the posting of the guard; but upon this being made known, search was made through Waziristan, and the friends of the doctor were not satisfied until all were returned to him.

Revenge is a word sweet to the Afghan ear, and even a revenge satisfied by the culminating murder is the sweeter if the fatal blow, preferably on some dark night, is so managed that the murdered man has a few minutes of life in which to realize that he has been outwitted, and to hear the words of exultation with which his enemy gluts his hatred. In one case that came to my knowledge, after strangling his victim, but before he was quite gone, the murderer dealt his victim a terrific blow on his jaw, shattering the bone, with the taunt: "Do you remember the day when I told you I would knock out your teeth for you?"

In the autumn of 1907 a fine stalwart Wazir was brought to the Bannu Mission Hospital in a pitiable state: both of his eyes had been slashed about and utterly blinded with a knife. His story was that his enemies came on him unexpectedly in his cottage one day, beat his wife into insensibility, tied him to a bed, and then deliberately destroyed his eyes with a knife. His wife came to hospital with him, suffering from severe contusions and some broken ribs, and we put them both into one of our small "family wards"--so called because father, mother, and children, if there be any, can all stop together for treatment. It was painful to have to tell him that he would never see again, and still more painful to hear him as he piteously said: "Oh, Sahib, if you can give me some sight only just long enough to go and shoot my enemy, then I shall be satisfied to be blind all the rest of my life." It could not be. His lot would probably become that of the numerous blind beggars that throng Eastern bazaars; for who would plough his land now or speak for him in the village council? Yet of pure pity we kept him a few weeks, that he might hear the story of the Gospel of goodwill and forgiveness; but he would shake his head and sigh. "No, that teaching is not for us. What I want is revenge--revenge!" Then, because a concrete case will sometimes accomplish what a mere statement cannot effect, I told him the story of the Conolly bed. Over each bed is a little framed card denoting the benefactor or supporter of that bed and the person commemorated thereby, and over this particular bed is written:

Conolly Bed.

In Memory of Captain Conolly, beheaded at Bukhara.

As long ago as 1841 this brave English officer was sent on a political mission to Bukhara, which was then an independent State, and not under the rule of Russia, as now. The Muhammadan ruler, Bahadur Khan, affected to be suspicious of his intentions, and threw him into prison, where another English officer, Colonel Stoddart, had already been incarcerated. It was in vain for them to protest and to claim the consideration due to a representative of the British Government; they were met by the answer that no letter had come from the Queen in reply to one sent by the Amir, and that therefore they had certainly come to stir up Khiva and Khokand to war against the Amir of Bukhara. Their effects were confiscated; even their very clothes were taken from them, till they only had their shirts and drawers left, when a filthy sheepskin was given to Captain Conolly as some protection against the winter cold of Bukhara. Their servants were thrown into a horrible dungeon called the Black Well, into which each man had to be lowered by a rope from the aperture at the top, and was then left to rot in the filth below.

Captain Conolly managed to secrete a small English Prayer-Book about his person, and this was a daily source of comfort to him and his companion in prison, and he marked verses in the Psalms and pa.s.sages in the prayers from which they derived comfort. On the fly-leaves and the margins he wrote a diary of their sufferings; month succeeded month, and their hearts grew sick with hope deferred, and their bodies worn with fever, wasting and wounds. On February 10, 1842, he writes: "We have now been fifty-three days and nights without means of changing or washing our linen. This book will probably not leave me, so I now will, as opportunity serves, write in it the last blessing of my best affection to all my friends." Again, on March 11, he writes: "At first we had viewed the Amir's conduct as perhaps dictated by mad caprice, but now, looking back upon the whole, we saw indeed that it had been the deliberate malice of a demon, questioning and raising our hopes and ascertaining our condition, only to see how our hearts were going on in the process of breaking.

"I did not think to shed one more tear among such cold-blooded men, but yesterday evening, as I looked upon Stoddart's half-naked and much lacerated body, conceiving that I was the especial object of the King's hatred, because of my having come to him after visiting Khiva and Khok, and told him that the British Government was too great to stir up secret enmity against any of its enemies, I wept on, entreating one of our keepers to have conveyed to the chief my humble request that he would direct his anger upon me, and not further destroy by it my poor broken Stoddart, who had suffered so much and so meekly here for three years. My earnest words were answered by a 'Don't cry and distress yourself.' He, alas! would do nothing, so we turned and kissed each other and prayed together, and we have risen again from our knees with hearts comforted, as if an angel had spoken to us, resolved, please G.o.d, to wear our English honesty and dignity to the last, within all the misery and filth that this monster may try to degrade us with."

Again, on March 28: "We have been ninety-nine days and nights without a change of clothes."

One of the native agents of the mission, Salih Muhammad by name, subsequently escaped to India, and thus relates the closing scene of the tragedy.

"On Tuesday night (June 14, 1842) their quarters were entered by several men, who stripped them and carried them off, but I do not know whether it was to the Black Well or to some other prison. In stripping Colonel Stoddart a lead pencil was found in the lining of his coat and some papers in his waist. These were taken to the Amir, who gave orders that he should be beaten with heavy sticks till he disclosed who brought the papers, and to whom he wrote. He was most violently beaten, but he revealed nothing. He was beaten repeatedly for two or three days. On Friday the Amir gave orders that Colonel Stoddart should be killed in the presence of Captain Conolly, who should be offered his life if he would become a Muhammadan. In the afternoon they were taken outside the prison into the street, which is a kind of small square. Their hands were tied across in front. Many people a.s.sembled to behold the spectacle. Their graves were dug before their eyes.

"Colonel Stoddart's head was then cut off with a knife. The chief executioner then turned to Captain Conolly and said: 'The Amir spares your life if you will become a Mussulman.' Captain Conolly answered: 'I will not be a Mussulman, and I am ready to die!' saying which he stretched forth his neck, and his head was then struck off. Their bodies were then interred in the graves which had been dug."

For a long time the fate of these two officers was unknown in England, and, indeed, overshadowed by the greater disaster in Kabul. Then a missionary, the Rev. Joseph Wolff, undertook a journey to Bukhara, and after many sufferings and dangers, ascertained that they had been murdered two years before. He did not, however, come across the little Prayer-Book, which appears to have been lying about in some shop in Bukhara for seven years after the officers' death, when a Russian officer, pa.s.sing through the bazaar, happened to light on it. He picked it up, and, observing its interesting nature, purchased it from the shopkeeper. For another fourteen years the little book was lying on his table at St. Petersburg, when a visitor who knew Captain Conolly's relations saw it, and obtained leave to take the precious relic and place it in the hands of the relatives of the deceased; and thus, twenty-one years after her brother's death, Miss Conolly obtained the full account of his sufferings, written with his own hand.

So far no vengeance had been exacted for the Amir's atrocity; now the murdered man's sister thought she would like to have her revenge, so when the Bannu Mission Hospital was inaugurated, she wrote out to the medical missionary, expressing her desire to support a bed in memory of her brother, and that bed has been supported in his name ever since, and we tell the Afghans in it that that is the Christian's Revenge. When I sit by the bedside of some sick or wounded Afghan in that bed, and tell him and the others round him that it was their co-religionists who killed this officer because he would not forsake Christianity for Islam, and that now his sister is paying for them to be nursed and tended, and praying for them that they may learn of the Saviour who bid us forgive our enemies, and do good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us, then it is easy to see that the story has set them thinking. And when it is further brought home by their experiences in the mission hospital, where they have been lovingly tended by the very native converts whom they have abused and perhaps maltreated in the bazaar, they return to their Afghan homes with very different feelings towards Christians.

It is thus that the medical missionary gets his pa.s.sport to all their villages, not only in British India, but across the border among the independent tribes. While visiting a Wazir chief once in his border fort, he said to me: "You can do what we cannot possibly do. I cannot go into that village over there, because I have enmity with the people there. The chief of that tribe across the river a few miles off has a blood-feud with me, and I have always to go armed and with a guard lest he should waylay me; at night I cannot leave my fort, but have to sleep ready armed in my tower. And I am like most of us in this country: we all have our enemies, and never know when we may meet them. But you can go into any of our villages and among all the tribes, although you have not even got a revolver with you, and, more than that, you get a welcome, too."

In some parts of the country across the border it is necessary to take a fresh guide every few miles, as the various villages are on bad terms, and might injure the traveller on the lands of the opposing village merely in order to get their enemies involved in a feud, or into trouble with the Government. These guides are called badragga, and within the tribal boundary any member of the clan, even a child, is often sufficient protection, as that is sufficient to show that the traveller has received the sanction of the tribe to move about within their boundaries. If, however, marauding bands are known to be about, or if the tribe is at feud with a neighbouring one, then they will send a fully-armed badragga of several men with you. I have, however, seen a traveller consigned to the care of a boy of nine years or so, and, no doubt, with perfect security.

On one occasion when it had been arranged that the badragga of a certain clan was to meet me at a prearranged rendezvous, I arrived at the appointed time and place under the care of the badragga of the clan through whose territories I had just pa.s.sed, but no one was forthcoming. We waited an hour or so, but still no one came; my badragga then accompanied us a little way forward till we came in view of the first village of the next clan. Here they stopped and said: "We can go no farther. If we were to go into that village, there would very likely be bloodshed, as there is enmity between us and them; but we will sit at the top of this knoll here and watch you while you go on to the village, and if anyone interferes with you on the way we will shoot." I went on with an Indian hospital a.s.sistant who was with me, and when nearing the village a man came up and shook hands with great heartiness, saying: "Don't you remember me? I brought my brother to your hospital when he was shot and his leg broken, and we were with you for two months." He brought me to the village and to his brother, who hobbled out on a crutch to meet us, and was very pleased. They insisted on our stopping while they called some of the other villagers, who were anxious to see the doctor, and finally sent us forward on our journey with a fresh escort and a hearty "G.o.d-speed."

CHAPTER VI

A DAY IN THE WARDS

The truce of suffering--A patient's request--Typical cases--A painful journey--The biter bit--The conditions of amputation--"I am a better shot than he is"--The son's life or revenge--The hunter's adventure--A nephew's devotion--A miserly patient--An enemy converted into a friend--The doctor's welcome.

As I have already said, the Afghans never forget their tribal feuds except in the presence of foes from without. Then they may put them aside for a while, especially if their foe be not Mussulman in faith, but only for a while. The feuds begin again as soon as the danger is past.

But in the wards of the mission hospital all this is changed, and here may be seen representatives of all the frontier tribes chatting fraternally together, who as likely as not would be lying in ambush for one another if they were a few miles off across the frontier. But it is generally recognized among them that feuds are to be forgotten in hospital; and accordingly the doctor gets an audience from half a dozen different tribes in one ward when he is drawing out the conversation from the land of feuds to the Prince of Peace, and when he contrasts the Gospel of loving your neighbour with their rule of "shoot your neighbour and get his rifle." They say in a half-apologetic tone: "True; but G.o.d has decreed that there shall always be discord among the Afghans, so what can we do?" Sometimes a patient will say: "I want to be in a ward that has no windows, because I am afraid that one of my enemies may come at night when the lamp is burning in the ward and shoot me through the window by its light."

Great as is the variety of physiognomy, of dress, and of dialect, even more diverse are the complaints for which they come. Eye diseases form more than a quarter of the whole, and few cases give so much satisfaction both to surgeon and patient as these, in many of which the surgeon is able to restore sight that has been lost for years, and to send the patient back to his home rejoicing and full of grat.i.tude. Here is a Bannuchi malik suffering from consumption, a not uncommon complaint in their crowded villages; next him is a Wazir lad from the hills, Muhammad Payo by name, suffering from chronic malarial poisoning. He is an old acquaintance, as he returns to his home when he feels strong enough, and then, what with coa.r.s.e fare and exposure (for he is a poor lad), soon relapses and comes back to us at death's door, as white as a sheet, and has to be nursed back again to vigour. Just now he is convalescent, and is going about the ward doing little services for the other patients, and telling them what to do and what not to do, as though he had been in the hospital all his life. Poor fellow! he has lost both his parents in a village raid, and would have been dead long ago himself but for the open door of the mission hospital.

In another bed is a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of twelve from Khost, suffering from disease of the bones of his right leg, which he has not been able to put to the ground for two years. His home is eighty miles away across the mountains, and he had no one to bring him to Bannu, though he had begged some of the traders to let him sit on one of their baggage camels; but who was going to inconvenience himself with a friendless boy like that? He had heard such wonderful stories of the cures effected in the Bannu Hospital from a man in his village who had been an inmate for six weeks for an ulcer of the leg, that he determined to get there by hook or by crook, and he had accomplished the greater part of the journey crawling on his hands and knees, with an occasional lift from some friendly horseman, and had been six weeks on the road, begging a dinner here and a night's lodging there from the villages through which he pa.s.sed. When he arrived, his state can be better imagined than described: the weary, suffering look of his face; the few dirty rags that covered him; the malodorous wound on his leg, full of maggots, bound round with the last remains of his pagari; while now there is no brighter, happier boy in the hospital, with his white hospital shirt and pyjamas, clean, gentle face and pleasant smile, as he moves about from bed to bed with his crutch, chatting with the other patients.

Pa.s.sing on, we see a big swarthy Afghan, with fine martial features, in which suffering is gradually wearing out the old truculent air. He had gone armed with a friend one night to a village where there was a Militia guard. He maintains that they had merely gone to visit a friend, and had been delayed on the road till night overtook them; but to be out armed at night is of itself sufficient to raise a prima-facie case against a man on the border, and when the Militia soldiers challenged him, and instead of replying he and his friend took cover, it was so clear to the former that they must be marauders, that they opened fire. The friend escaped, but our patient received a bullet through the left thigh, which shattered the bone. He was not brought to the mission hospital for some time, and when we first saw him it was obvious that unless the limb were speedily removed, his days were numbered. He, like all Afghans, had an innate repugnance to amputation, but finally consented on condition that the amputated limb should be given to him to take back to his home, that it might ultimately be interred in his grave; only thus, he thought, would he be safe from being a limb short in the next world. Once I tried to argue an Afghan out of this illogical idea, and when other arguments failed, I suggested that the unsavoury object might be buried in a spot in the mission compound, and he might leave a note in his grave specifying where it might be found. He answered at once: "Do you suppose the angels will have nothing better to do on the Resurrection Day than going about looking for my leg? And even if they would take the trouble, they would not come into this heretic place for it."

So the limb was removed and carefully wrapped up and stored away somewhere, so that he might on recovery take it back with him to his village. His wound is nearly healed now, and he has sent off his sister, who was in hospital to nurse him, to his home to fetch a horse on which to ride back the forty miles to his village, where he will wile away many a long winter's night with stories of his experiences in the Bannu Mission Hospital, and how kind the feringis were to him.

Among Afghans a man's nearest relations are often his deadliest enemies, and "he hates like a cousin" is a common expression. Thus it came to pa.s.s that one day a wounded Afghan was brought to the mission hospital on a bed borne of four, and examination showed a serious condition. He had been shot at close quarters the night before while returning to his house from the mosque after evening prayers. The bullet had pa.s.sed completely through the left side of the chest, the left lung was collapsed, and the patient was blanched and faint from the severe bleeding that had occurred. A compress of charred cloth and yolk of egg had been applied, through which the red stream was slowly trickling. He believed he had been shot by his uncle, with whom he had a dispute about the possession of a field, but had not seen his face clearly. A room was got ready, the patient's blood-saturated garments were replaced by hospital linen, and the wound was cleansed and dressed.

For a long time he hovered between life and death, constantly attended by two brothers, who, if they had been as instructed as they were a.s.siduous, would have made two very excellent nurses. Gradually, however, he recovered strength, and the wound healed; and one day when visiting his ward I found him sitting up with a smile on his face, and after the usual greetings, he said: "Please come to me, Sahib; I have a request to make." I sat by his bedside, and asked what I could do for him. He drew me closely to him, and said in a subdued voice: "Sahib, I want you to get me some cartridges; see, here are four rupees I have brought for them." "Why, what do you want them for?" said I. "Look here," said he, pointing to the wound in his chest; "here is this score to pay off. I am stronger now, and in a few days I can go home and have my revenge."

I said to him deprecatingly: "Cannot you forego your revenge after all the good counsels you have been hearing while in hospital? We have, after so much trouble and nursing, cured you, and now, I suppose, in a few days we shall be having your uncle brought here on a bed likewise, and have to take the same trouble over him." "Don't fear that, Sahib," was the prompt reply; "I am a better shot than he is." Well, we never did have to deal with that uncle, though I never gave him the cartridges; probably he got them elsewhere.

Another day a similar cortege came to the hospital. This time the man on the bed was a fine young Pathan of about twenty summers, and his father--a greybeard, with handsome but stern features, and one arm stiffened from an old sword-cut on the shoulder--accompanied the bearers, carefully shielding his son's face from the sun with an old umbrella. His was a long-standing feud with the malik of a village hard by, and he had been shot through the thigh at long range while tending his flocks on the mountain-side. It had happened four days ago, but the journey being a difficult one, they had delayed bringing him; and meanwhile they had slain a goat, and, stripping the skin off the carca.s.s, had bound it round the injured limb with the raw side against the flesh. Under the influence of the hot weather the discharges from the wound and the reeking skin had brought about a condition of affairs which made bearers and bystanders, all except the father and the doctor, wind their turbans over their mouths and noses as soon as the hospital dresser began to unfold and cut through the long folds of greasy pagari which bound the limb to an improvised splint and that to the bed. It was a severe compound fracture of the thigh-bone, with collateral injuries, and I called the father aside and said: "The only hope of your son's life is immediate amputation. If I delay, the limb will mortify, and he will certainly die." The old man, visibly restraining his emotion, said: "If you amputate the leg, can you promise me that he will recover?" "No," I said; "even then he might die, for the injury is severe, and he is weak from loss of blood; but without amputation there is no hope." "Then," said the father, "let it be as G.o.d wills: let him die, for, by our tribal custom, if he dies as he is I can go and shoot my enemy; but if he dies from your operation then I could not, and I want my revenge." After this they would not even accept my offer of keeping the wounded lad in the hospital to nurse, but bore him away as they had brought him, so that he might die at home among his people, and then--well, the mind pictured the stealthy form crouching behind the rock; the hapless tribesman of the other village with his rifle loaded and slung on his shoulder right enough, but who was to warn him of his lurking enemy? And then the shot, the cry, and exultation.