Balyamin. “Mauzbillah! how do you know that?”
A. “Mullah D. arrived last night, and, sitting in the chauk, he told how he had seen a man throwing pills into the well at Dabb village. He went after him, but as soon as the man saw him he ran away.”
B. “What is to be done?”
A. “First we must tell the women not to draw water from the wells—they have certainly been poisoned in the night—but they can take their pitchers to the tank in the big mosque; no one would interfere with that.”
B. “If we can catch the miscreant, we will show him plainly enough who is the Mussulman and who the infidel.”
As the news spread through the village, the excitement grew; women who had already filled their pitchers from the wells hurriedly emptied them and started off afresh to the mosque tank. Guards were placed at the well, both to warn the faithful and to give short shrift to any hapless stranger on whom suspicion might fall. The men about the bazaar had procured thick sticks, and seemed only waiting for the opportunity of using them, and things looked black all round. News was brought to the police-station, and, without waiting to don his uniform, the inspector buckled on a revolver, and, taking a constable with him, hurried off to the most disturbed portion of the village.
The men there were sullen, and would give no information, and two or three of the more truculent seemed inclined to hustle the police-officer. Just then the native doctor appeared on the scene, and recognized the gravity of the situation at once. One rash act, and the police might have to use their firearms in self-defence. The people, however, trusted the doctor. Had he not often championed them when subjected to little police tyrannies, and had they not often sought counsel from him in their village quarrels, and always found his advice had helped them to come to an amicable settlement? So now, when he quietly slipped his arm into that of the inspector, and led him out of the dangerous quarter, chatting the while, till he got him safely into a house without loss of official dignity, not even the most truculent tried to resist his passage. Then he returned and reasoned with them on the groundlessness of their suspicions. Had any of them ever seen anyone throw anything into the wells? Had anyone even got a stomach-ache from drinking the water? Did any King ever want to kill off all his own subjects? If so, whom would he rule, and where would be his kingdom? Finally, he bantered them out of their warlike intentions: the sticks were returned home, business resumed, the inspector came back as though his authority had never been questioned, and a very ugly situation was successfully negotiated.
In the year 1879 the tribe of the Wazirs had been incited by their Mullahs to rise, and they came down suddenly with their lashkar on the little frontier town of Tank. There was a mission hospital there, in charge of an Indian doctor, the Rev. John Williams. Before the authorities could summon the troops the Wazir warriors had overrun town and bazaar, and were burning and looting. Some young bloods went for the mission hospital, but they were at once restrained by the tribal elders, who forbade them to meddle with the property of “our own Daktar Sahib,” as they called him. Had they not often been inmates of his hospital and partakers of his hospitality? Not a hair of his head was to be injured. They at once set a guard of their own men on the mission hospital, who warned off any excited tribesmen who might have done it injury, and that was the only place in the bazaar that escaped fire and sword and pillage. Some of his surgical instruments had been carried off before the posting of the guard; but upon this being made known, search was made through Waziristan, and the friends of the doctor were not satisfied until all were returned to him.
Revenge is a word sweet to the Afghan ear, and even a revenge satisfied by the culminating murder is the sweeter if the fatal blow, preferably on some dark night, is so managed that the murdered man has a few minutes of life in which to realize that he has been outwitted, and to hear the words of exultation with which his enemy gluts his hatred. In one case that came to my knowledge, after strangling his victim, but before he was quite gone, the murderer dealt his victim a terrific blow on his jaw, shattering the bone, with the taunt: “Do you remember the day when I told you I would knock out your teeth for you?”
In the autumn of 1907 a fine stalwart Wazir was brought to the Bannu Mission Hospital in a pitiable state: both of his eyes had been slashed about and utterly blinded with a knife. His story was that his enemies came on him unexpectedly in his cottage one day, beat his wife into insensibility, tied him to a bed, and then deliberately destroyed his eyes with a knife. His wife came to hospital with him, suffering from severe contusions and some broken ribs, and we put them both into one of our small “family wards”—so called because father, mother, and children, if there be any, can all stop together for treatment. It was painful to have to tell him that he would never see again, and still more painful to hear him as he piteously said: “Oh, Sahib, if you can give me some sight only just long enough to go and shoot my enemy, then I shall be satisfied to be blind all the rest of my life.” It could not be. His lot would probably become that of the numerous blind beggars that throng Eastern bazaars; for who would plough his land now or speak for him in the village council? Yet of pure pity we kept him a few weeks, that he might hear the story of the Gospel of goodwill and forgiveness; but he would shake his head and sigh. “No, that teaching is not for us. What I want is revenge—revenge!” Then, because a concrete case will sometimes accomplish what a mere statement cannot effect, I told him the story of the Conolly bed. Over each bed is a little framed card denoting the benefactor or supporter of that bed and the person commemorated thereby, and over this particular bed is written: