At the Court of the Amîr: A Narrative

by John Alfred Gray

“Oh, sir, I poor man—what I know? You looked at him, and he died; perhaps trouble come for us.”

“Nonsense,” I said, “he must have died of something. Boys don’t die because you look at them.”

“Sir, in this country often it is they do!”

I indignantly said, “What do you mean! I haven’t got the evil eye!”

He looked at me meaningly, then looked on the ground and shook his head dolefully: I couldn’t persuade him that the thing was a ridiculous impossibility. As there is a kind of vendetta in Afghanistan I rather wondered what would happen next. I told my interpreter to make enquiries and find out what the boy really died of. He said,

“Why for we make enquiries? Better it is we keep quiet for a few days and say nothing.”

I never heard what was the cause of death, and the matter blew over.

Ghosts.

Besides the evil eye the Afghans believe in other forms of magic; in certain days of the week being lucky, and others unlucky; in ghosts, and jins, or devils. A man told me one day that the house he lived in was formerly occupied by the three sisters of one of the kings, Shah Shujah, I think it was, and that they were evil women. One night on his return home, just as he entered the house he heard sound of women’s laughter in the bath-room on the ground floor. Wondering who could be there, he opened the door. Three women, whom he did not recognize, sprang up and rushed, laughing, through the further door into the inner bath-room. He slammed the door to, and fastened it, and hurried upstairs, where he found his wife and the women of the household. He enquired who were the women in the bath-room. They said there could be no women. The house was of the usual kind—only one door leading from the street into the courtyard, and every one entering could be seen. Lights were procured, and he descended to the bath-room, unfastened the door, opened it, and peeped in—no one was there. He went across to the further door and found it fastened with a chain and padlock on the outside in the usual way. He thought, “The women cannot have fastened themselves in.” He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door and looked in: this room also was empty. He is convinced he saw the wraiths of the women who formerly occupied his house.

Almost every house in Kabul has its ghost or jin. The house I had on my return from Turkestan had a reputation. The soldiers who were put to guard it in the winter while I was at the Palace at last refused to sleep in one of the ground floor rooms. They said it was haunted, that jins and devils came and pinched them, and moved their rifles and belts from where they had placed them. So in spite of the intense cold they moved out into the porch of the big gate opening from the courtyard into the street, and there they took up their quarters permanently. One day, just before sunset, after I had returned, the syce came out of the stable, which was under the room I occupied, and called one of the other servants. The latter came to me afterwards and said that just as it was beginning to get dusk he went to look into the stable, as the syce had called him. To his astonishment he saw what seemed to him to be two small children running round the legs of the bay horse, and jumping on its neck and off again. He went forward to gain a clearer view, and the children, or jins, as he called them, disappeared. He searched the stable thoroughly, and found nothing out of the way, except that the bay horse was trembling and covered with sweat.