Shere Ali was with the regiment in Egypt, left the canal with them in December, 1915, and was just in time for the advance from Ali Gharbi. Shahbaz Khan came down to the depôt and dismissed his son with envious blessings. He had dyed his beard a bright red, and he carried himself with a youthful air, hoping that the Colonel might discover some subterfuge by which he could re-emerge on the active list. The Colonel would have given ten of his jiwans for him, and Shahbaz Khan knew it. But the rules were all against him. So the regiment went off to the accompaniment of the dhol and serinai, amidst many loud shouts and salutations, mingled with British cheers, and old Shahbaz Khan was left behind. He died in his bed before Shere Ali came back, and no doubt a brooding sense of having been born too soon hastened his end.
Father and son, I have explained, were faithful to type. The Khattak is the Celt of the Indian Army, feckless, generous, improvident, mercurial, altogether a friendly and responsive person, but with the queer kink in him you get in all Pathans, that primitive sensitive point of honour or shame which puzzles the psychologist. It is often his duty to kill a man. On these occasions the ægis of the British Government is a positive misfortune. For the Khattaks are mainly a cis-frontier race, and therefore subject to all the injustice and inequalities of our law. Citizenship of the Empire hampers the blood feud. A stalking duel started in British territory generally ends in the Andamans or Paradise. If you lose you lose, and if you win you may be hanged or deported for life. Nevertheless, the instinct for honour survives this discouragement, and there is a genial colony of Khattak outlaws over the border.
Old Shere Khan killed a rival for his wife's affections in the regimental lines, and he could not have done anything else. The man's offence carried its own sentence in the minds of all decent-thinking people. The Subadar-Major begged the Adjutant to cut the fellow's name--Sher Gol, I think it was--and to get him well away before night. Otherwise, he said, there would be trouble. But the Adjutant could not look into the case before the next morning. In the meantime, to safeguard Sher Gol, he told the Subadar to see that twenty stout men slept round his bed. The Subadar made it fifty, but the quarter guard would have been better; for at one in the morning--it was a late guest-night--the Adjutant and Sher Gol's company commander were called out quietly to see the remains of him. His head was swaying slowly from side to side on the edge of the bed. A hatchet planted in the skull and oscillating with every movement of it had been left there as evidence. The Subadar put his knee against the charpoy (bed) and pulled the chopper out. Whereupon Sher Gol opened his eyes, saying, "Ab roshni hai" ("Now there is light"), and expired. He had been killed with fifty men sleeping round him. They had all slept like the dead and nobody had heard the blow. There was no evidence against Shahbaz Khan whatever; public opinion was on his side.
Of such stock was Shere Ali, and though a mere lad he had killed his man at Kohat before he fought at Sheikh Saad. Zam, zan, zar (land, women, and gold), according to the Persian proverb, are at the bottom of all outrages, and with Shahbaz Khan and Shere Ali, as with nine Khattaks out of ten, it was zan. And zan (woman), too, was in Shere Ali's mind when he brooded so dejectedly over his wound at Sheikh Saad. He was hit in the foot and lamed the moment he left the trenches. This meant a two-inch shortage, and, as he believed, permanent crutches.
"I have never seen him so down in the mouth," Anderson, the machine-gun officer, said to me on the barge. "He has lost all his cheery looks."
Shere Ali was certainly dispirited. He had his head and chest low, and all the wind taken out of him. He looked like a bird with its crest down and its feathers ruffled.
The Khattak thinks no end of his personal appearance. He dresses to kill, and loves to go and swank in the bazaar in his gala kit. He will spend hours over his toilet peering at himself in the glass, all the while without a trace of self-consciousness, though his neighbours may be almost as interested in the performance as he. Then when his hair is neatly oiled and trim to the level of the lobe of his ear, he will stride forth in his flowery waistcoat of plum-colour or maroon velvet with golden braid, spotless white baggy trousers, a flower behind his ear, a red handkerchief in his pocket, a cane in his hand, and for headgear a high Kohat lungi--black with yellow and crimson ends, and a kula[[10]] covered with gold.
Every Khattak is a bit of a blood, and Shere Ali was true to type. In his country a showy exterior betokens the gallant in both senses of the word. A woman of parts will not look at a man unless he has served in the army, or is at least something of a buccaneer. Of course, a wound honourably come by is a distinction, and Shere Ali should not have been depressed. He would return a bahadur, I told him, but he only smiled sadly. He was crippled; there was no getting over it. He would join in the Khattak dance no more. As for the dhol and serinai--if that intriguing music had broken out just then I believe we should both have wept.
I heard more of Shere Ali from Anderson when he returned fit three months afterwards. In the depôt the lad's depression seemed permanent. He was very anxious to get back to his village, and kept on asking when he might go. But he was told that he must wait for a special pair of boots. He was sent to Lahore to Watts to be fitted.
"Give him the best you can turn out," the Adjutant wrote; "a pair that will last at least three years." Shere Ali returned all impatience.