At the Court of the Amîr: A Narrative

by John Alfred Gray

On the 21st of April, the cholera spread to Rish Khor, and there was an exodus of the Court to the Paghman Mountains. Here the water was good, tumbling down in many little cascades from the hills. One day I was seized with vomiting and was ill, and the Amîr hearing of it sent to enquire how I was. Happily by the time the messenger arrived I was better. Soon the road between Paghman and the infected city was closed, and sentries were posted to cut off all communication.

In the Arm Foundry the native workmen dropped down at the benches, and work was stopped for want of men to do it.

I was called to see one of the storekeepers of the foundry, Gholam Nuksh Ban, who was seized. I had hopes for him, and the second day he was better. After that he ceased following the instructions I gave, and took the advice of Hakims and friends. I found him drinking curds and whey, and large quantities of water: I left him therefore. Vomiting returned with excessive violence and he died. Before he died, however, he gave into my hands a magazine rifle that I had bought for the Amîr in London, but which had been detained at the Frontier and afterwards sent on.

The Armenian went the round of the bazaars to inspect the food sold. He was not a skilled inspector, but he could at least distinguish rancid butter, sour milk, putrid meat, or decomposing vegetables, when he saw them.

At this time the Hazaras broke out in rebellion, and the locusts invaded Kabul again. The latter, wise creatures, did not stay; they passed on.

I received an order to attend one of the Chamberlains of Prince Habibullah, and I went to his house. To see a stranger in the grip of cholera is bad; but to see a man you know, is a horror that catches you in the throat. There were the shrunken features and ashy-grey face of a dreadful ghost of the man I knew. I tried hard to save this man’s life. Visiting him time after time, I made his men do as I said. The look in the eyes of a man when he greets you, feeling the dread phantom loosening its hold and his life coming back to him, is a thing to remember.

The Dabier-ul-Mulk, Chief Secretary to the Amîr, and the man, I suppose, most trusted by His Highness, was seized. I was sorry I received no order to attend him. He died.

Of the four Englishmen who were in Kabul at the onset of the disease none were ill—with the exception of my own slight attack.

At the end of six weeks the cholera lessened in severity in the town and spread more in the surrounding villages. It returned, however, again and again, and the mortality was excessive. By the beginning of June I was informed that eleven thousand deaths had been reported to His Highness in Kabul and its neighbourhood.

Among other stories I heard at the time was one of a man falling and dying just outside the town, near the execution ground. The body was not seen till the following morning, when a man riding by saw the pariah dogs that prowl in that neighbourhood snarling and worrying over something.