The dress of the Afghan women, especially those whose husbands have rank or wealth, is extremely picturesque. A short, tightly-fitting bodice of green, blue, or crimson silk, confines the bust, but buttons so closely up to the throat, that one can only guess at the proportions of shoulders and bosom. The bodice is generally embroidered with gold, and then becomes so stiff and unyielding, that it is virtually a corset. In this cold weather the short arms of this sari are continued down to the wrist, and the vest itself is padded with wool for the sake of warmth. Trousers à la Turc, baggy and flowing as Fatima’s, and tightly fastened at the ankles with gold or silver bands, a broad silk kummerbund of almost endless length about the waist, with the ends so disposed that they become skirts; dainty white socks and a tiny slipper or shoe, gold-embroidered—such is the indoor dress of a Cabuli lady; while covering and hiding all save feet and ankles is the voluminous white garment drawn over the head and face, and falling to the heels. These veiled beauties wear jewellery alike about the forehead, hands, wrists, arms, ankles, and ears; while handsome gold loops secure the yashmak at the back of the head; the hair being drawn from the forehead and tied tightly into a knot, Grecian fashion. The length of a silk kummerbund, which encircles a lady’s waist, is sometimes astonishing: one I saw must have been 12 yards long by 18 inches broad, and the end was even then not forthcoming. The slippers and shoes are of Cabuli make, and are very pretty. On a pale green ground beautiful patterns are worked with gold and silver thread and particoloured silk, until the effect is more like that of a fairy slipper than one for daily use. When a stout leathern sole is put on with high heels rudely bound with iron, the work of art is complete. The stalls in which these slippers and shoes are made are the gayest in the whole bazaar. A Cabuli lady’s foot is small, almost to deformity, and the baggy trousers by contrast make them appear exceedingly petite.
From the few faces seen, being chiefly those of old or passée women, it is difficult to judge of the famed beauty which the Cabulis are said to boast. The children are certainly, as a whole, the prettiest I have ever seen. Their complexions are red and white, with a tinge of olive pervading the skin, eyes black and lustrous, well-shaped features, teeth to make a Western beauty envious, and bright, intelligent looks, that sadly belie the race to which they belong. Their mothers must be beautiful, for their fathers are generally villanous-looking: the men losing all the pleasing traits which they possessed as boys. The lady I have described as seen in the zenana for a moment was certainly handsome, and was far lighter in complexion than a Spaniard; her eyes were really worthy of the praises sung by Hafiz, but the sensuous lips were a little too full and pouting. It was just such a face as one imagines in a harem, and would be in keeping with the langourous life of a voluptuary, to whom sensuality is a guiding star. Such faces always lack character, and would soon prove insipid in the eyes of the West. The Cabuli lady, when journeying, is either carried in an elaborate wicker-work cage covered with the inevitable flowing linen, or rides, Amazon-fashion, on a pony behind her lord. At times she is coquettish enough to throw warm glances at Kafirs, behind her husband’s back, and is no doubt delighted at the admiration bestowed upon her daintily-slippered feet.
What the mission in life is of such women, in such a country as this, may be summed up in a few words. She must play the part of a mother, rather than a wife, for her sympathies go all with the children left to be brought up in the zenana, and not with their father, whose course lies in different lines in the busy scheming world outside. That some women of strong character occasionally share their husband’s ambition, and aid him by advice and suggestions, is quite true. The mother and wife of Yakub Khan are both women of exceptional ability, influencing and guiding men, and well versed in state intrigues. But the exceptions are few, and only prove the general rule obtaining in all Mahomedan countries, that woman is a cypher outside the four walls of the zenana.
The life of her master is a most difficult subject. To fathom the motives of an Afghan, or to explain his actions, would be a task for a Machiavelli, and I must deal with it in such manner as I can. It has always been held that the distinguishing features of a Cabuli are turbulence and treachery, and late events have only confirmed men in this belief. The arrangement of the city into quarters, each securely shut off from its neighbours by strong walls and fortified gateways, the part played by the Bala Hissar as a citadel dominating the tower below, and affording a refuge for the sovereign during bloody émeutes, proved to travellers in past days that the life of the populace was far from a peaceful one. Even now, though the old subdivisions of the city exist but in name,—except the Kizilbash quarter, which has still the means of cutting itself off from outside by strong gateways,—it is apparent that the Amirs never trusted their lives and property to the tender mercies of their citizen-subjects. When our army arrived at Cabul, the Bala Hissar was still a fortress capable of resisting successfully any attack made without artillery, and within its walls were the palace of the Amir, his harem, and his arsenal. Our Envoy, too, was lodged in the fortress, as the fanaticism of the Cabulis might have prompted an attack upon the Residency, if it had been in the heart of the city, with its bazaars re-echoing to the prayers of the moollahs and the cries of fakirs. That safety was not found even in the Bala Hissar, was due rather to the weakness of Yakub Khan and his contemptuous treatment of an exasperated soldiery than to any independent action of the populace. It is true that the city rabble joined in the attack upon the Embassy, but that was only when military discipline was at an end, and the men who should have guarded the lives of the Amir’s guests were in the full cry of mutiny. Again, the building of Sherpur, with its range of barracks and new fortress upon Bemaru (planned, but never executed) was due to Shere Ali’s dread of Cabul and its armed mob. With the Bala Hissar on one side and Sherpur on the other, he was sanguine enough to hope for peace and quietness in his capital; and these he would no doubt have secured if he had not foolishly quarrelled with the Indian Government, whose subsidy gave him the wherewithal to raise and equip a large army and rear the walls of his new fortress.
Every Afghan is a soldier, and the Cabulis are no exception to the rule. Their stalls are to them what homesteads are to the mountain tribes and peasants; and when extortion or taxation grows in their opinion excessive, they are ready to turn out armed to the teeth, and by open menace to intimidate their rulers. A tyrant alone can hope to keep them in due subjection; and, as a rule, Cabul has been under the influence of tyranny for many centuries. As a natural result, when turbulence occasionally subsides, treachery flourishes; and the history of the city is full of instances of treacherous plots, and successful if bloody intrigues. Coming as we have done in the guise of an avenging army, we have greatly modified the normal appearance of things in the city, our proclamation forbidding the carrying of arms having destroyed the picturesque ruffianism which used to stalk through the bazaars armed with gun, shield, and knife, and ready for all emergencies. Not a weapon now is seen except in an armourer’s shop, or on the person of some armed retainer of a Sirdar who has thrown in his lot with the British. It is a change for the better in our eyes; but when the people see our soldiers passing along with Martini or Snider slung over the shoulder, they must long to ruffle it again, and bring out from their hiding-places their own rifles and matchlocks. But it is not to be yet; though, when we again leave this “God-governed country” to its own devices, the good people of Cabul will once more be able to resume their old habits.
The influential citizens of Cabul are broadly divisible into two representative classes—the Sirdar and the trader; and in taking one from each of these sections, I shall be able fairly to sketch the general life led by the more orderly of the Cabulis. There are, of course, a mass of men: artizans, street-hawkers, retainers, and hangers-on generally, who furnish the rabble which has often made mob-law supreme within the walls; but these may be left to themselves for a little. The Sirdar has always been a prominent figure in Afghan history; he is to all intents a feudal chief, and answers very much to the Baron who, in the Dark Ages, had so much to say in the government of Western countries. He is generally of royal blood, a cousin (some twenty times removed) of the Amir; but this relationship with the sovereign is not advantageous if the Sirdar is at all ambitious of power. There are so many revolutions of the wheel in the Barakzai dynasty, that the assumption of dignity by a subordinate is always jealously watched by the Amir, and promptly nipped in the bud just when it bids fair to become dangerous. Ties of kin are but little regarded in a country where continually father is arrayed against son, brother against brother; and where human life is held so cheaply that scarcely a man reaches middle age without having blood upon his hands. The Sirdar has either to muzzle his ambition and wait patiently for a chance of suddenly acquiring power; or to accept a colourless life of ease, with nothing to trouble his mind except the caprices of a favourite slave-girl, or the loss of a valuable horse. It is not surprising, then, that in Cabul there are Sirdars perfect in dissimulation and adepts in intrigue; and others mere slaves of their sensuality, to whom the world means merely pillaus and pillows, cakes and concubines. Such men are those loved by Cæsar:
... “men that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights.”
And the easy-going Sirdar answers so fully to this description, that it would seem as if the cares of life sat very lightly upon him. Such men are too characterless to repay observation; and though we see many of them here, we pass them by contemptuously, except when a mountain of flesh more than usually formidable looms upon us in cantonments. They are not men given to fighting or political intrigue; and such as we have now among us are anxious only as to their allowances which the “Great British Government” guarantees to them while they are faithful to its interests. If they are time-servers, it is simply because they have no idea beyond the present one of comfort and quietness; if we were defeated they would probably make their obeisance to the new rulers, and would settle down calmly to their daily enjoyment of the fat of the land in their well-stocked harems. There were such men among our own hard-headed Barons ages ago, who watched their more ambitious compeers make and ruin dynasties, and lived placidly through all the turmoil without even being partisans.
But the other type of Sirdar is a very different person: he holds that to be powerful is the salt of life, and his aim from youth to old age is to seek power in all its forms. He is generally rich and a lover of show; valuing money for the advantage to which it can be turned in many ways, and estimating pomp at its real worth—to impress the ignorant and humiliate the inferior. His life as now made up is not to outward seeming one of much importance, but not one of us can hope to penetrate beneath its surface, and examine the many schemes which pass through his mind. He lives in one of the large, high-walled houses which are studded about the city, though he has a “villa” or two in pleasant Koh-Daman, or one of the near valleys. If one visits him, the courtesy with which he receives a guest is that of a polished gentleman, flavoured, perhaps too highly, with the Eastern affectation of humility. His house is reached through byways and along covered-in streets, so dark and noisome that one expects to meet a ghazi at every turn. But all is quiet, and finally a bit of blue sky is seen overhead, a narrow doorway is passed through, and the square courtyard of the house gained. A few horses, saddled and bridled, are standing in a sunny corner; a dozen picturesque-looking ruffians are lounging about; the great man is at home. We find him in a long room squatting on an ottoman with a dozen friends and associates about him, to whom he has doubtless been expounding some new and brilliant idea that has occurred to him. He is politely anxious about his visitor’s health, thanking God that it is well with him, and inquires if “the General” also is well. His conversation is guarded, but he makes up for his reticence by his hospitality: it would be derogatory to his dignity if the rite were not duly honoured; and in a few minutes trays bearing little cups of sweetened tea, sweetmeats, nuts and grapes, are being handed round by two or three of the loungers we passed in the courtyard. This tea is a mystery to me; it is always ready; it is always good, and one can sip cup after cup with an enjoyment that positively increases with indulgence. The Sirdar’s friends are mostly notable men: that grey-bearded old gentleman on his right is a tribal chief of some importance, who has come from his distant village to see how things move in Cabul after the late jehad; that dark-visaged man is a Bokhara trader, whose mind holds news of the White Czar and of the changing fates of the Central Asian Khanates; while his counterpart is another trader returned from Hindustan, where he has, perhaps, seen and learnt much that may shape the Sirdar’s views in future. Behind the Sirdar is a richly embroidered purdah veiling the entrance to the zenana, wherein the quiet life of the women slowly moves. Our conversation is short and purely ornamental, and we take our leave, pleasantly impressed with the courtesy shown, but pondering over the depth of Afghan duplicity which is so cunningly hidden. The Sirdar passes his morning among his friends, and in the afternoon he will probably visit General Roberts or Major Hastings, the Chief Political Officer, to learn much, but to impart little. How far he can be trusted no one knows, not excepting even himself. If by serving us he can make his position secure, he will “sell” his nearest friends; if he thinks his interests are safe with men opposing us, he will thwart our projects with all the skill he possesses. His life now is not so restless as in old days, as our army has broken up all settled government, and the prospect is so hazy, that to dabble too openly in dangerous schemes might land him in distant Calcutta, to bear Daoud Shah company. Our Sirdar has lakhs of money hidden away in his house or buried in some secret spot; but he is cunning enough to swear that he lost greatly when Mahomed Jan held Cabul, and asks the British Government to recoup him, as he has always been faithful to its interests. The new influences at work upon his life are not so welcome to him, as they are novel and not to be easily understood; and he would far prefer the old order of things, when he could pit himself against some rival and gain his ends by crooked ways that he knows we should not countenance. If his chances just now of being shot or stabbed are not so great as formerly, he does not, with his fatalistic ideas, appreciate the change; and at times he grows sullen, and is discontented with our temporary rule.