Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

When the tribes about the Khyber Pass rose and necessitated the Tirah campaign, all traffic between Kabul and India was stopped, and we in Kabul had to go without those things which go to make life comfortable. There was nothing to drink, not even tea or coffee, and nothing to smoke, and so it continued for some months. I can go without most things when necessary, and not grieve overmuch, although I would rather necessity did not demand such abstinence, but when there is no tobacco or cigarettes, then matters seem to be in need of speedy readjustment, and I shall always remember the time when the Khyber Pass was closed. The Amir and the princes were always very good in letting me have things I wanted when I ran short, but on that occasion they ran short themselves.

The Amir and his sons were also very good in sending me occasional presents of game and fruit, the latter being sent them from other places before they were to be obtained in Kabul, and the strawberries they used to send me in the spring before the fruit in Kabul was ripe was a favour I very much appreciated. In the spring there was, as a rule, a scarcity of vegetables, the last year’s supply being finished and the new year’s not yet in, and I often had to go without potatoes for some weeks, and that is a dish I think most people would not care to be without at dinner; however, when I became accustomed to the place I made arrangements which obviated going short in that respect.

During the famine of 1903, when so many thousands died of starvation, most of the bazar provisions were very scarce, and some things were not to be had at any price. Flour was unobtainable in the market, and I had to buy a supply of wheat for myself and the servants from the Government, and have it ground. The Government opened a depôt and sold a stipulated quantity every day to the people, as there was none to be had elsewhere, and it is the custom of the Government to keep full granaries in case of emergency. The struggles of the people to be first in getting to the depôt, in order to obtain a share of the wheat before the daily quantity allowed for sale was disposed of, were so great, and the crush so dense, that many, principally women, were killed, by being knocked off their feet and trampled to death. The distress among the poorer classes was particularly great. Parents, who had sold all there was in the house that could be sold to get money for food, had to watch their children crying of hunger, and daily getting weaker and thinner until at last they died, while they themselves, if they lived, did so only because they had more vitality and were stronger, and not because they ate food themselves and gave none to their children.

Most of the men under me in the workshops were starving, and sometimes a man would faint while working, and on my asking what ailed him, I would gather that he had perhaps eaten about two ounces of bread in as many days. It was impossible to help all, but those of my workmen, whom I knew to be helpless with hunger, I gave food to once a day, and in many cases it was all they got until the next day. I saw one man hiding some of the bread I had given him under his coat, and the man, being run down to skin and bone for want of food, I was surprised at his not eating it all, but he told me that he had a child at home starving, and there was nothing in the house to sell for food. He said, also, that the mother of the child, and other women in the house, had nothing to eat, but that appeared to be a matter of little concern, and it was the condition of the child only that worried him. No one puts much value on a woman in Kabul, and it is not considered right for a man to cry for the death of a woman, even when it is his mother or sister who dies, but they cry and make enough fuss over the death of any male relative.

Another day a foreman workman came to me, and, without the usual salaams, told me he was a Mussulman, and had seldom asked a favour of his co-religionists, and never of a Feringhee; but he had three little children starving at home, and they were dying slowly, and his fellows would not give him anything, so he had determined to cut the throats of his children that night and put them out of their suffering, and then kill himself, but while saying his midday prayers it had been put into his mind to go first to the Feringhee, and so he had come as soon as his prayers were finished. His manner of speech was not polite, and very much removed from that of others who begged for help from me, and who usually addressed me as “Presence;” but I knew the man to be one of the religious bigots who abound in the country, to whom an infidel is lower than an animal. However, I gave him three rupees without remark of any kind, and the man, without thanking me, but simply looking dully at the money, went away. Three rupees go a long way in Kabul, although they amount to less than half a crown. I thought no more of the matter until two days after, when the man came again, and, taking off his turban, prayed for me; this is the highest compliment and favour a Mussulman can pay an unbeliever. He then told me I had saved the life of his children, and his too, for he had been mad with grief and suffering when he first came, and he said further that he had been told much against Englishmen, but he would always pray now that one of them might become a Mussulman, and so go to heaven when he died.

On top of the famine that year came cholera, and the mortality was very high, for the people were weak with want of food, and their systems out of order through eating any rubbish they could get to keep off the cravings of hunger. Daily the roads leading to the burial grounds streamed with people carrying their dead, and many, I knew, who came to tell me of a mutual acquaintance whom they had taken for burial that day, were themselves carried to the same place the next day, or a day later. The cholera spread among all classes, and penetrated even to the harems of the princes, Sirdar Nasrullah Khan’s favourite wife dying of it, and among others the Amir’s favourite slave boy was carried off. Several of the highest officials also got the disease, and died of it.

The members of the royal family are particularly afraid of cholera, that and earthquakes being their chief dread; and during other outbreaks the late Amir and his family, with all their officials and attendants, posted off helter-skelter from the city to Paghman the moment cholera made its appearance. When the cholera epidemic of 1900 occurred, three years before the one mentioned above, the late Amir and all his people went off at once, and the carts carrying luggage, tents, etc., people on horseback galloping, carriages driving along furiously, and the servants and soldiers on foot also hurrying on, gave to the scene all the appearance of a disorderly flight. The English (Mrs. Daly and myself were the only Europeans there at the time) were left behind to get on as best we could, and she spent the next four months in the treatment of cholera cases, whereby she saved many lives, while I occupied myself with a series of experiments in smokeless powder-making, in which I was fortunately successful, chiefly because I was left all this time untroubled and alone.

KABULI WOMAN’S INDOOR DRESS.

[To face p. 200.