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‘If he keeps us waiting here long enough,’ Burnes said, ‘we may simply have to grit our teeth and endure.’
Outside, Kabul continued its usual life.
Burnes found it hard to be quite sure whether, here, they were prisoners or not. Ten days before, they had arrived at the gates of the city – or what passed for the gates, a waist-high mud wall full of holes. An inadequate rampart, one might have thought, but the Afghans came and went quite happily, as if never fearing an enemy, giving no thought to invaders or infidel. Until now, Burnes had remained swathed in his cloth, blanketed up, his face browned first by colouring and after by the weeks trekking in the mountain sun, his blue eyes becoming more startling by the day. Arriving at Kabul, however, it seemed wise to admit to what they were immediately, and take their chances.
Kabul had surprised Burnes. He had read what there was to read about the country, looked with every appearance of care at the drawings, the prints of the city. They hadn’t been wrong, exactly; but still the city was not what he expected. No commentator, no artist, had captured what Burnes saw; it was as if they had seen only the outlines of the city, or rather, as if they, like Burnes, had seen it whole, and only cared to convey the city in part. Burnes tried to think of what it was his guides had left out. He could only think of it in two words: the fragrance; the filth.
In other cities, the fruit-and-flower smell of the street, the stench of the shit, human, canine, equine and more, would have seemed the inessentials of the city’s life. It had seemed like that to the observers of the city whose work they had so relied upon; they had removed the fragrance and the filth from their gaze as lying above or below what substance truly mattered. Buildings, thoroughfares, population numbers could be set down, and that was what, it seemed, really counted; not the mere smells of this city. It seemed always in danger of turning into an orchard, a stable, or a vast latrine. To Burnes, on the other hand, it was the intangible but overpowering fact of smell which seemed central to the place. Sitting in this half-prison, with all the time in the world to practise the address to the Amir and pursue absurd speculations, he found himself wondering about a map of the city which would convey this sense of his. In his head was a map of Kabul which did not describe the streets and the buildings, but set down the intangible and rich sudden odours of the place; described where a whiff of horse-shit mingled with the heavy perfume of rotting mulberries, where dead dog and fruit blossom competed. He closed his eyes, and there, in his head, was a weighty flush of sensation, a wave like the colour purple, arriving in his head, foreign, uninvited, irresistible. You did not need to walk the streets to map them in this olfactory manner; you only needed to sit by the window, and wait for a breeze. He had seen nothing of the city, in truth, nothing but a few streets as they had arrived, nothing but the few buildings around the house where they now lived, when their guards occasionally escorted them out. The city came to them, its perfumes carried on the wind.
2.
They had arrived, and stood there at the wall, for a moment or two, as if their mere stance could announce their purpose. In front of them, there was the city. It was hard to think of it as a prize worth taking, now. Now that it was here in front of them, it seemed very unlike the great imperial jewel London and Calcutta so easily dreamed of. The hills and hollows of the land had been scattered, it seemed, with detritus; rambling, temporary houses, plastered smooth, scattered where they would fall. It was a city set high in the mountains, and the chill at night was fierce. Between the houses of the city paths, roads of packed-down mud ran; between them a thousand pedlars of goods set up their stalls to sell what they would. But it seemed to Burnes, as he stood there with his companions and waited for the Afghans to come and discover what he wanted, less like a city than a great wild garden. The groves of this high city joined, rambled with fruit trees, with what must be mulberries, blotting on the street and casting their high scent to the wind. What had London and Calcutta dreamed of? A city which could turn into an imperial jewel, certainly, a great imperial city, and not this random assembly, like the careless evening settlement of some wandering people.
Burnes, Mohan Lal the guide, and Gerard had dismounted. They stood there for a while, and it was not long before the curious little boys were succeeded by some more authoritative figures. Mohan Lal had stepped forward, but Burnes spoke first. They had listened to his explanation intently, had exchanged the ritual compliments calmly and gracefully, and, without consulting, had allowed them to remount, and led them into the city. A mounted group approached, shouting hoarsely, wheeled hungrily, curiously, around them like circling buzzards, and, before Burnes could start his explanation again, had ridden off.
First the customs house. The three of them had been hurried into a low white house, its door barely on its hinges. As the eager crowd of short, beakily-featured men, all shouting, poured into the garden of the house, a flock of magpies rose clattering like knives from the fruit trees. The packhorses were tied up outside, and quickly stripped of their bundles. Inside, an immensely fat man emerged with great state from a back room, chewing and wiping some grease from his mouth with the bottom of his coat. All the Afghans fell abruptly silent. He gazed at them as mournfully as a dog as their luggage was brought in and dumped on the floor.
Burnes began his explanation. May the sun ever shine, glorious empire of the Afghans, long heard rumours of the wisdom and greatness of the kingdom. All received with gracious nods; tea was called for and brought by two boys of strongly corrupt appearance. Flat sweet bread followed, politely picked at by the Europeans, wolfed by the Afghans. Burnes pressed on. He and his companions were Europeans, returning home from India overland. Long heard rumours of the beauty of Kabul and promised, etc. (A brief pause here as one of the tea boys, after setting down a glass for Burnes, tried to stroke his neck. Burnes pushed him off gently, and the nearest adult hit the boy very hard with the butt of his rifle, to everyone’s colossal amusement.) Hoped to stay in Kabul for a month, and their great dream was to meet and talk with the great and famous Emperor of the Afghans, the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan.
Burnes came to the end of his speech, and the customs officer gave a brief side-to-side nod of approbation. It wasn’t quite clear what this meant; Burnes, to be sure of indicating what sort of people they were, got out his letters of introduction to the Amir, each carefully prepared in India with a grandiose seal. The official, however, showed almost no interest in them after a quick glance or two. ‘Oh God,’ Gerard said in English. ‘They’re going to search the bags.’ Burnes ignored him; there was nothing to be done about it, and the best way to stay calm was to try not to remember what on earth there was in there.
‘My books,’ Burnes said, as they extracted a dog-eared copy of Marmion and flicked through it. A sketchbook he feared might worry them more, but they looked at it cursorily, and set it down.
‘Tell me,’ the customs officer said. ‘In your country, it is said that pork is eaten. Can that be true?’
Burnes was prepared. ‘It is a food eaten only by the very poorest people in our country. I myself have never tried it, but it is said that it has the taste, somewhat, of beef. That’s a sextant.’
‘Good, good,’ the customs officer said as the underlings turned the object upside down, trying to force a noise from it. ‘And what is it?’
‘It is called a sextant in my language,’ Burnes said. ‘A sort of talisman.’
‘Good, good,’ the customs officer said. ‘In my country we have many sextants.’
It was a long afternoon, but eventually the possessions had all been examined and packed up again. Nothing seemed to excite their interest except Gerard’s bottles of medicine, which they passed around, sniffing at; the maps did not seem to trouble anyone. In the end, Burnes paid the official an enormous bribe in rupees, and gave him a little looking glass.
‘I think he was rather disappointed,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘He was probably hoping for more guns or a thrilling sort of dagger, I expect. They are said in my country to be frightfully fond of weaponry, these Afghan fellows.’
Gerard gave a snort, with which Burnes silently concurred. Mohan Lal had long ago started to seem a tedious companion, with his incessant calm explanations of why things had gone wrong.
They had been led to a house. The owner of the house had welcomed them as if they were guests, effusively, ordered them to be given food and drink, and showed them their beds. Were they prisoners? Were they guests? The interminable attentions of the Newab Jubbur Khan, the owner of the house, and of the series of small boys who sat in the corner of the room with muskets seemed to point to different conclusions. They had arrived ten days ago, and seemed no nearer achieving what they were here to do.
What they were was quite a simple matter: two British officers and a native guide. What they were doing there, not even Burnes would, for this moment, quite bring into his mind. If the knowledge was not at the front of his thoughts, even the calmly interrogative brown gaze of his guards would not bring it out. What Kabul was – what Afghanistan was, here at this moment, far from India, further from England in some sense other than yards and feet than even an explorer like Burnes could quite comprehend – was a matter which could not be thought of as simple. There was, too, the question of what an Englishman was doing in Asia. That had been a question which, in this sort of situation, Burnes had had ample time to contemplate, and never managed any kind of answer. He began to be nervous, sitting here; any Englishman grows atavistically restless if he finds himself more than a hundred miles from the nearest sea, and Burnes was somehow aware all the time that this high brown stinking city was a great deal more than a hundred miles from any imaginable sea.
3.
‘Now, the Lord,’ Burnes went on. ‘No, sorry, vocative, O Lord of the Wind of a Hundred and Twenty Days. I always forget Persian numbers over fifty or so.’
‘It is not particularly complicated,’ Mohan Lal said, smiling in his infuriating way. ‘Numbers in Arabic are far more complex a proposition. And we may find we have plenty of time to perfect the address to the Amir.’
‘I’m sure,’ Gerard said. ‘Years, probably. Hi, you, sir.’
The guard in the corner of the room moved, minimally.
‘Are we to see the Amir today?’ Gerard said, as he had asked ten times a day since they had arrived.
The guard made a head-tipping gesture; whether it meant something, or whether it was just the weight of the boy’s enormous, mushroom-coloured turban, was not clear.
‘In any case,’ Gerard said, ‘he knows we are here. Probably.’
The boy guard, his loaded jezail like a bayonet between his thin dirty hands, considered this, deeply, and then made the same head-tipping gesture. ‘Rus?’ he said in the end, nodding three times at the three Europeans. They appeared to know very well what Mohan Lal was.
‘No,’ Burnes said patiently, not for the first time. ‘No, we are not Russians. We are from England, from Engelstan.’
‘Yes,’ Gerard cut in. ‘Tell the Newab Jubbur Khan to tell the Amir. Go on, go and tell your commanding officer. He will see us then, when he knows where we come from.’
The boy looked, as if deeply wounded, appealing to Burnes. ‘Rus,’ he said once more, and then, for no reason on earth, started to laugh uproariously. He did not get up.
‘I wish they wouldn’t do that,’ Gerard said irritably. ‘Laugh like that, I mean. It makes me think they know something we don’t know. And why do they keep calling us Russians?’
‘Rus,’ the boy said again, murmuring as if entranced, understanding a word in what Gerard said.
‘No, no, not Rus,’ Gerard said. ‘And when do we hear from the damned Emperor of the damned Afghans? Oh, God – oh, God – that damned mutton at breakfast. Gentlemen, excuse me—’
Burnes shrugged, as Gerard rushed from the room, clutching his stomach chaotically like an unfastened valise. He prided himself on the value of patience in these dealings. That was the great thing in the East; patience, because nothing ever happened when it should, nothing ever happened on schedule. Everything, in dealing with the great rulers of the East, was whim and delay. Ten days was nothing; because, in response to whim and delay, there was no sensible behaviour to adopt but a complete, more-than-Oriental patience. That was what everyone said, and Burnes was pleased with himself for having exercised a great deal of patience with every potentate he had ever come across, and usually attained, if not the desired end, then, at least, some interesting conclusion. What no one had ever warned him about was the necessity to exercise some patience with one’s fellow travellers; with a supercilious ass like Mohan Lal, forever making superior suggestions about one’s Persian or giving one ridiculous and probably entirely false information about the curious customs of the country, or a bigger ass like Gerard, complaining about the slightest inconvenience to his blessed dignity, arguing for two entire days about the necessity of shaving his head and dying his beard black before crossing the Indus, always wanting to tell some outraged and heavily-armed nabob about the greatness of the Empire, or even, once, telling an imam in response to the invariable question about the European diet that, yes, he ate bacon daily and very delicious it was too. Unfairly, Burnes blamed Gerard even for his disastrous digestion, the steady torrential cataract from his bowels, blamed in turn on the damned mutton at breakfast, the damned beans at dinner, or the damned melon which the rest of the company had eaten at Jalalabad with no ill effects. Yes, the exercise of patience with one’s damned fellow travellers was the most taxing thing; compared to that, waiting ten days to see the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan presented him with no difficulty whatever.
4.
Out on the street, debate about the Europeans who rode so badly was furious and incessant, like the noise of a cloud of swallows.
‘The Amir will not see them.’
‘The Amir will see them tomorrow, fool. He has seen them yesterday, and knows everything about them.’
‘How can the Amir have seen them when they have not seen the Amir?’
At the edges of the market, the old men jogged up and down on their heels, agitated by debate, and punched at the air, quick as clockwork. They bothered no one.
‘The Amir sent Akbar the son of the Amir, and the Amir saw them with the eyes of Akbar.’
‘Did they not know the son of the Amir when Akbar was announced?’
‘Many are the ways of the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan, and wise they are.’
Futteh the singer, plump and pale as a dove, his saucy eyes wandering to make sure of his audience, finished sucking on his plum, pondered, spat. He began a story.
‘You recall the tale of the Vizier’s daughter and the son of the King,’ he started. ‘And the King did not know how he should know if the daughter of the Vizier was true and good as she was thought to be. Now, this was many, many years ago, in China. And the Vizier had the most marvellous garden of roses in all of China, and he was in the habit of taking a walk in the garden, each morning. And one morning, he was accompanied in his walk by his daughter, who was as beautiful as the first light of the dawn over the mountains. He was glad to walk in the rose garden with his daughter, and, after they had walked together for an hour, the Vizier said to his daughter: My daughter, is it true that …’
The story unravelled. Futteh was a good storyteller, and, even in the cold of the early evening, he could hold half a dozen old men with his seamless voice. Their eyes fixed on his, six pairs of eyes, whether crafty, knowing, cynical, for the moment subdued into the quiet trust of the audience. Their knees hunched, their backs against the wall, they listened to the comforting tale they had heard hundreds of times before. Occasionally they interrupted with marginal, concerned comments – ‘He does not know that the ring has been swallowed by the fish on the King’s table,’ or, ‘The girl, does she not understand that the man she is marrying is her own brother?’ or, as narrative catastrophe threatened, ‘Allah is great and merciful.’ But for the most part, they let Futteh tell the story in his own leisurely manner.
When it was over, an hour or two had passed, and the audience sighed, as if wanting more of their own satisfaction.
‘The son of the King in the story disguised himself, and went into the marketplace to hear what the common people were saying,’ one of the audience said.
‘Yes, and that is what Akbar, son of the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan, that is what he has done, with the Russians.’
‘They are not Russians,’ another man said, passing. ‘Engelstan.’
‘Akbar put on a tribesman’s clothes, and took a jezail,’ Futteh said, waving his hand in the air impatiently, dismissing either the objection or the flies. ‘And he went to the house where the English are, and sat with them for two hours, and talked with them. But all the time, they did not know who they were speaking with.’
‘Great is the mind of the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan, and wise is he in the ways of the world,’ someone murmured.
‘And they ride so badly,’ Futteh added, with great finality.
‘Like the sack of rice on the back of an old donkey,’ his listeners chorused sagely.
5.
The orchard city fell into shade as the afternoon wore on; pale peaches, espaliered against the wall, plums, apricots, pears; beneath the window of the Newab Jubbur Khan where they sat all day, a fine apple tree, just like the trees of Burnes’s childhood. He shut his eyes, and sniffed, and sometimes, through all the smell and noise and clear strange mountain air, there was all his childhood, in the sheltered Montrose garden. Walnuts, cherries, vines, and more wonderful things, pomegranates growing in the streets, and, everywhere, mulberry trees; their fruit piled up in market stalls, lying in the street, and the whole city sucking ceaselessly on fruit. At the door of their wing in the courtyard, a small boy, padded up with scraps of cloth, his legs wrapped up puttee-fashion, his dirty feet bare and hardened in sandals, was sucking on a handful of cherries and mulberries, cracking walnuts between his hard teeth, and every so often running his tongue round his mouth to clean off what juice was staining his face, leaving a fat white clown-smile in a fruit-smeared face. And everywhere the birds; bright chattering magpies, the fat burble of doves, edging at each other in their nervous fighting. Burnes watched them for hours from the window. And the nightingale; he had never known, quite, what the Persians meant when they wrote about the nightingale, but here, it was a sharp lemon tang, cutting through the rich sweetness of the dungy perfumed city, a line of pure song, returning on itself, multiplying, varying, twisting, but always, always, itself. He sat in the evening light, and listened, and found no way to ask the others to be quiet too.
The day wore on, and at some point towards the end of the afternoon, a procession of dishes began to be carried into the room. The two women of the house, veiled in brick-red cloaks, carried them in. Their veils were raw squares of cloth, dropped over their heads. A coarse lattice was cut in to allow them to see. Burnes seemed to catch the glint of an eye through the loose weave of the eye-slit, and, before he lowered his eyes, wondered for a moment if that meant the woman was looking at him. From their gait, they were both young, and the contours of their bodies were revealed by the rippling red cloth.
A third woman stood at the door and watched, holding a baby; she too was veiled; even the baby was veiled. She seemed to be supervising the other women. Perhaps a favoured wife. The dishes were set down on the floor without explanation, and, when the entire room was filled with clay dishes, the three women retreated to the door, looked once at the food, and not at the men, and quickly left. And then the Newab Jubbur Khan came in.
The Newab, whose house this was, seemed to regard them with an almost affectionate air. He made a point of eating with them; he also made a point of coming in after the food, and leaving without excusing himself. The three of them scrambled to their feet.
‘You have passed an agreeable day, I hope?’ the Newab said kindly. He was a slight man, his nose a huge beak in his little face; when he walked, it was with an evident consciousness of grandeur which his appearance did not entitle him to. He walked like a man who has once been fat. ‘If you do not object, I would like to eat with you.’
‘We would be honoured,’ Burnes said.
‘Honoured indeed,’ Gerard said, looking warily at the food. ‘Thrice honoured.’
The Newab nodded agreeably at Gerard’s meaningless formulation. ‘Sit, sit,’ he said. He rattled off the habitual prayer, lazily looking round, and without taking a breath, fell back from Arabic into Persian. ‘The lamb is particularly fine, from my own flock.’ He gestured at a greasy-looking dish, grey and shining in the sun. Burnes leant forward and scooped up some of the cold stew, knowing perfectly well that the Newab was lying politely, since all the food here had to be ordered up from the bazaar. Gerard just looked green.
‘Tell me,’ the Newab asked, after each of the dishes had been commended and accepted, and they were embarked on the task of struggling unsuccessfully with what could be eaten of the Newab’s food. ‘How large a city is London, or Calcutta?’
‘They are different cities, Newab, and both large and beautiful,’ Mohan Lal said.
‘I see,’ the Newab said. He seemed, still, to be under the impression that Calcutta and London were more or less the same place, or perhaps different names for the same city; an impression they had been trying to correct for some time now. ‘But how big? Is it, for instance, as large as our city?’
‘I think it might be even a little larger,’ Burnes said tactfully. ‘How many people, for instance, live in Kabul?’
The Newab sucked on his teeth, and gazed at the wall, as if calculating. ‘Many, many people, and their numbers grow every day, thanks to the wisdom and kindness of the Amir who rules over them.’
‘I see,’ Burnes said, making a routine half-incline of the head at the mention of the Amir.
‘London has many hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, and is the richest and most beautiful city in the world,’ Gerard cut in. Burnes looked at him in irritation; what the point of boasting to the Newab about the size of London was, he had no idea. Just an unthinking, involuntary outcrop of Gerard’s personality, as frustrating and impossible to argue with as geology.
‘Of course, we have seen very little of Kabul,’ Burnes said. ‘But the reputation of the beauty and splendour of the city has spread far, and we have travelled from India in the hope that we may see for ourselves.’
‘How is it that you have seen very little of Kabul?’ the Newab abruptly asked. He seemed genuinely puzzled, proffering a dish of boiled aubergines.
Burnes was thrown. ‘We have been resting here, at your hospitality,’ he said finally, seeing no way to point out that they were effectively prisoners. At that, as if to make his point, one of the succession of small boys with muskets wandered in. He greeted the Newab elaborately, the English more casually, and sat down in the corner of the room, promptly falling asleep, both hands on the barrel of his gun. ‘At the gracious hospitality of the Newab,’ Burnes said, pointedly. ‘We have been unable to see the famous city of Kabul.’
‘Great is the city of Kabul,’ the Newab Jubbur Khan echoed, absently. He took a piece of bread, tearing it in half, and dipped it in some dish of meat; before eating it, he made a vague gesture of invitation towards Gerard, who, with too evident unwillingness, followed his example. ‘Yes, the city is great, and its fame has spread far. The bazaar of the city is the greatest in the world, where the world comes to marvel at the riches and splendour of the empire. The merchants of China and Russia and Engelstan come to the great markets, laden with goods, and leave laden down with more than they brought, such are the marvels of the city. The beauty and splendour of the city is great, and the beauty of the people of the Emperor is famous throughout the world. And such, willing, it will always be. Over the city is the Bala Hissar, the palace of my brother, the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan, where my brother rules over his family and his wives and his wealth in wisdom and mercy and goodness, willing. And the palace of my brother is famed throughout the world, and the world comes to express its wonder at its beauty and greatness and the greatness of my brother the Amir.’
He paused, perhaps considering whether his description of the city would, in the end, be as useful to the English as simply letting them out to look for themselves; perhaps, however, considering what there could possibly be to start praising next in the high stinking city. Not the food, at any rate, Burnes thought unkindly, refusing the offer of another greasy dish.
‘The Amir is your brother?’ Mohan Lal said.
‘The Amir is the brother, it is said, of every Afghan,’ Burnes said, helping out.
‘He is my brother,’ Jubbur Khan said simply. ‘The shade of the same mountain shadowed our birth, and may the same stream refresh his parched tongue.’
‘May friendship be forever between warriors,’ Burnes said.
‘And he is my brother,’ Jubbur Khan said again.
‘He is the brother of every Afghan,’ Gerard said, conventionally echoing what Burnes had said.
‘He is the brother of every Afghan,’ Jubbur Khan agreed. But then he seemed troubled, and said, once more, more emphatically, ‘The Amir is my brother.’
‘He is the brother of every Afghan,’ Gerard said again, idiotically.
‘He is your brother?’ Burnes cut in. ‘He is the son of your father?’
‘He is the son of my father,’ Jubbur Khan said, relieved. ‘Yes, he is the son of my father.’
This explained a great deal. And now Jubbur Khan got up, as if he had said enough to explain who he was, and who the Amir was, and what the Europeans were. He got up, bowing on all sides, and swept out with massive graciousness, hardly waiting for his guests to raise themselves and bow graciously back, as if his good manners were such that no complementary response could possibly improve or complete them, and was out of the door and at the bottom of the stairs before Gerard succumbed to what had clearly been troubling him for some time, a colossal, harrumphing and malodorous fart, like a bough breaking under the sheer weight of fruit. The boy guard looked up, surprised and humorous. Burnes vastly bowed in his direction, the sleeves of his robe collapsing about his arms and hands. ‘And to you, O Lord of the Wind of a Hundred and Twenty Days,’ he said. ‘That, I expect, is a very good sign.’
‘Indeed,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘Your digestion is improving, to venture a fart. You need not have waited until the departure of the Newab, indeed. I have read that the Afghan custom is to fart at table.’
‘A risky business,’ Gerard said. ‘With nothing to eat but this damned greasy food.’
6.
Outside, there was a flicker of movement. A scarlet-leaved tree against the dense dusk sky trembled suddenly; a gust, quickly over, as if someone had shaken the tree’s trunk and run away. Another movement, something which might have been a bird, shooting up from the tree with a raucous squawk, abruptly muted. Gerard raised himself from where he lay, complete with food and boredom, and went to the window, where Burnes was already standing. Underneath the tree, a flash, sudden, of white, like the wink of a fish belly, turning in a black pool. For a moment the faces of the Afghans had turned up to the window, before returning to their usual occupation; their teeth and eyes winking white in the dusk. They could be guards; yes, they could be; or, conceivably, they could merely be sitting there, as they would sit there indifferently, whoever was inside the house of the Newab. Burnes did not know, and could not think who to ask.
Out in the court, the squatting boys were preparing for their street-sport. There were five of them, and each clutched, underneath his arm, something which peeped and squawked, a weak piping squawk like an unoiled hinge. With his free hand, each dipped steadily into a little bag, tied to the sash at his waist next to the knife, and ate shrivelled-up little apricots, crunching and spitting the stones with all the absorption they had. In a moment, a boy threw down the piping bird under his arm, and, as if recognizing the challenge, the boy facing him in the circle threw down his bird, too. The two quails shivered their plumage back into plumpness, and nervously strutted in the other’s direction. The boys made an encouraging noise, a quick strange grunting rattle, like a pig eating a snake, and a handful of grain was flung down. The fight began.
It was dark, below, and Burnes could see nothing of the sport; the faces were turned down in excited absorption, and all that could be heard was the occasional fierce cry from a boy, quickly stifled, the pipe and peck of two small birds fighting over a handful of grain. Burnes had seen the sport before, in the daylight, from this window. The rudimentary contest seemed never to weary or tire the street, and they squatted over the two little fat birds, watched them barge each other, pluck at each other with their fierce little beaks like toy birds, a harmless little bout between paint-bright tin birds, wheeling in their tin circles.
Down there, small cries of excitement, quickly muted, were being made; this was not a game for cheering at, but one where the small shrieks of the birds, rending and tearing each other’s little flesh for grain, was to be heard and winced over. This was the sport – the one thing, as it were – which kept Kabul quiet, and everyone watched it; underneath the window, Burnes had seen fine horsemen, street boys – even, a couple of times, an idle Newab Jubbur Khan leaving his house for a morning constitutional – pause for a moment before the rapt silent bout. It was too dark to see, from the window, what was happening; you could not see which of the two birds was succeeding, which was succumbing. There was only the faint tremulous cries of small fat birds, assaulting each other furiously over grain which neither of them would eat. Burnes drew back into the room.
The guard came in. But instead of sitting down in the corner, he stood at the door, and looked at them; at Burnes and Gerard and Mohan Lal. ‘He,’ the guard said finally, ‘will see you tomorrow.’ He made a small gesture with his head, the side-to-side twist, an acknowledgement of something, though none of them had said anything, and then left.
They stared at each other.
He will see you tomorrow, the guard had said, just that; and Burnes ran the sentence through his head, over and over again, to see if it was clear, if he had understood it correctly. Language brings opposite meanings so intimately together, and if the guard had said He will not see you tomorrow, there was a terrible danger that Burnes would have missed it. He ran through the sentence, over and over, adding words which he might have missed, substituting they for he, never for tomorrow, kill for see. He got to the end of it. He was absolutely sure of what he had heard. The Emperor of the Afghans would see them tomorrow.
