At the Court of the Amîr: A Narrative

by John Alfred Gray

Then the other one, the dresser, linked the drunkard with him, and they aimed, not at me, but at the Armenian. They would cut him off. Now this fellow had been honest according to his lights. Every piece of advice he gave me I found to be sound: he instructed me in the customs of the country, described what should be done at festivals, what at visits of condolence; told me who were the dangerous men and who the true servants of His Highness; prevented my servants robbing me, and though he was rough and unpolished he had showed to me in a hundred minor ways a careful thought almost amounting to affection. Added to this, his dry humour and his yarns in broken English had whiled away many a dull hour when, as a newcomer, the sense of utter loneliness had oppressed me. He seemed my one friend. Was I to go back on him?

The Hindustanis wrote to His Highness accusing the Armenian, among other things, of translating the Amîr’s words to me falsely—a most serious matter. But how could they know the Armenian translated falsely if they did not understand English? The drunkard understood, though he spoke “book English,” and haltingly; hence the necessity of him in the plot.

I saw the Armenian one day looking very dejected, and I asked him what was the matter. He told me of the accusation that had just been made against him.

“Perhaps Amîr Sahib kill me,” he said.

Wishing to cause him as much distress as possible, the Hindustanis had shown their hand. It was a weak thing to do. The original conception was crafty, for I saw at once how difficult a thing it was to rebut; and then, too, it was just the idea to “catch on” in the mind of an Oriental monarch. How could I say the Armenian translated correctly when I understood little or no Persian?

If anything was to be done it must be done promptly. I determined, therefore, to carry the war into the enemy’s camp, and I sat down at once and wrote to His Highness in English.

I said it had come to my ears that these men—mentioning their names—had accused my Interpreter of translating falsely; that I had no reason to believe the accusation was true, for I found the accusers unworthy of trust. I then proceeded to explain why; describing the drunkenness of the one and the ignorance of the other; and pointed out their neglect of duty, naming a man of position as witness in each case that I brought forward. I was, fortunately, able to do this, for in two or three surgical operations that I had had to do, when they showed themselves neglectful and incompetent, there had been men of position, military officers, who witnessed the operation. I sent for the secretary of Col. Attaullah Khan, then British agent with the Amîr, who understood English, asked him to translate for me, mentioning in the letter that he had done so, and at once sent the translation in to His Highness.

Amîr’s Sense of Justice.

That night the Amîr sent for the witnesses and examined them. The next morning a messenger arrived with a written order from the Amîr that I was to bring the Armenian before him on the following day; the Hindustanis were to be accompanied by one of their countrymen, or rather a Kashmiri, who spoke English fluently. This man was a civil engineer who had served the Amîr for some eight years—a clever man, well known at the Foreign Office in India.[7]

I felt some amount of nervous disturbance, wondering what turn the affair might take. I had not been long in the country, and I did not know what were the possibilities of the case. The whole story of the Hindustanis is, in itself, unimportant. What does it matter whether they rebelled against me or not? But it brings forward one trait of the Amîr’s character—his sense of what is fair—and for that reason I have related it.