AT THE MOUTH OF THE KHYBER PASS
THE two names in India most fascinating to me were Kashmir and
Afghanistan. I longed to see Afghanistan even more than I longed to see
Kashmir. I knew hosts of men who had been in Kashmir; I knew four or
five women who had lived there. I knew two or three men who had been in
Afghanistan, but no woman, and the men had not stayed there long, nor
had they seen much. One of them was a fairly high official. He had
ridden out every morning in Kabul. He was attended by a subservient
retinue, provided by the Ameer. When he mounted they salaamed until
their foreheads touched their saddle-cloths. If he rode to the right he
was followed humbly; if he rode to the left he was stopped humbly, but
effectually. “There was cholera in that part of the town. Their master,
the Ameer, would command their death did they allow his English brother
to catch infection.”
[Illustration: AFREDEEDS AT THE KHYBER PASS. _Page 329._]
All this fired my desire to see Afghanistan. The journey from Rawal
Pindi to Peshawar was extremely trying. The weather was vivid, the
topography of the country was flat, and it was unrelieved by
architecture of any interest. We stopped a few days at Campbellpore, the
most uninteresting cantonment in India, in spite of the elephants who
salute and salaam, and in spite of the splendid regimental drag. I shall
remember the kindness of the “Elephant Battery” when I have forgotten
Campbellpore; but at the time Campbellpore was a geographical
horror—mitigated by the regiment—but still a horror.
After we left Campbellpore we crossed the Attock Bridge. We tried to
think it picturesque, because it was so famous. It was not picturesque,
unless the sightseer was endowed with an imagination that saw beauty in
any spot superlatively arid.
It never rains at Peshawar; so all the officers of the Scots Fusiliers
say; but it was raining when our train crawled into the station, and it
rained most of the time we were there. I had a petty triumph at
Peshawar, and a bitter disappointment. I had been told—worse than that,
my husband had been told—that I could not go into the native city
without the protecting presence of numerous Englishmen. Nevertheless,
every day for two weeks I spent several hours in Old Peshawar with only
my ayah, our chokera, and our gharri wallah and sais. I did not suffer
the least inconvenience from my foolhardiness.
To a woman there is nothing more delightful in being in India than the
delight of buying, for a few pence, a something that she feels sure will
be to her an artistic delight, for many years of colourless Western
residence. The Indian artisans, or the Indian artists (for in India the
highest art is highly mechanical) lack the fine exactitude and the
superlative grace of the Japanese amateurs. But no art is so
characteristic as the Indian art. They have inherited everything, they
have invented nothing, nor do they appropriate anything. The very
rigidity of the Indian caste lines has kept the Indian art lines pure,
if it has also kept them crude. When you are in Peshawar you are so near
the borderland, across which the bravest British soldier goes with more
or less trepidation, that the most callous European tourist is justified
in feeling himself dangerously near the interesting cradle of Indian
art. You can buy a great many things in Peshawar; you can buy two things
there that you can buy nowhere else in perfection—waxwork and the skins
of snow-leopards.
We associate leopards with torrid jungles, but, on the principle that
the greatest heat is cold and the extremest cold hot, the Indian
leopards sometimes find their way up to the snows of the Himalayas. The
baby leopards that are born there are gray and white, not brown and
yellow. They are rare, and still more rarely caught. They are called
“snow-leopards”; they look as if they were thickly powdered with snow,
and they smell of the high, cold hills. I bought the skin of one in
Peshawar for forty rupees—about three pounds. It was beautifully
marked; the claws were perfect, and the teeth impressive. A few days
ago, I was asked ten pounds for the skin of a clawless, toothless
snow-leopard—a manufactured, European-looking fellow—and I was
inclined to doubt if he had seen as much of the Himalayas as I had.
“Waxwork” is more difficult of description. I am too ignorant of
Oriental mythology to appreciate the peculiarities of Oriental anatomy
as portrayed on Indian purdahs; and the Peshawar waxwork is very
anatomical. Three-legged cows follow five-legged cows in the wake of a
mightily-turbaned Rajah, who sits astride a very peculiarly constructed
peacock. I have often had my fragile heart broken by seeing displayed in
a London shop the duplicate of some article I had bought in the
East—some article I had thought unobtainable in Europe. But I believe I
am quite secure in my sole possession of some very fine specimens of
Peshawar waxwork. You can buy waxwork in almost every Indian bazaar and
in half a dozen London shops, but only the cheaper sorts. The wonderful
curtains, teeming with wax representations of Indian life and Indian
history; purdahs, over which expert Indian artists spend months and even
years, can only be bought, I believe, in two or three shops in Old
Peshawar. I bought some wonderful bits of metal work in Peshawar. I have
one quaint vessel, so characteristic in its shape that, though it has
never been used, I always fancy it smells of coffee. I bought a
marvellous little table of fine Kashmir work, and a ridiculous native
chair constructed in the coarsest way. The two are typical of the most
careful extreme and of the most careless extreme of Indian workmanship.
One day I spent some hours in a shop where I had discovered a
fascinating collection of Bokhara work, of skins, and of Afghan weapons.
The shop was far back in a dark, barn-like building; it was more like an
empty granary than anything else. The proprietor rolled up half a dozen
skins for me to sit on; then he sent his servants climbing up bamboo
ladders into the garret. They brought down huge rolls of temptation.
When I came to pay for what I had bought, my purse was gone. A great
excitement ensued, initiated by Ayah and my chokera, both of whom I had
taken in with me. We hastened to the gharri, followed by the merchant
and all his assistants. Both the gharri wallah and the sais were fast
asleep, lying across the road some yards from the gharri. About fifty
natives, men, women, and children, were crowded about the carriage. They
were examining my wrap and a Maltese lace scarf I had carelessly left on
the seat. They made way for me good-humouredly; and on the front seat
lay my purse. Nothing had gone from it. That was the nearest to being
mobbed I ever came in the East. Yet I was told by European women, who
had lived for two years or more in Peshawar, that nothing would tempt
them to venture into the native city, without half a company of
soldiers.
You enter Old Peshawar through one of the picturesque, dilapidated
gates, to which you become so used in the Orient. As you go on, the
streets grow narrower and the natives thicker. There were streets where
I saw nothing but pottery, most of it blue and green, all of it very
common. It looked very rich and effective a few yards off, but when I
went to the booths, in which it was displayed, it was unmitigatedly
ugly. I bought one dish, because I thought it was the ugliest piece of
pottery I had ever seen. It is made of mud and is very breakable.
Strangely enough I managed to bring it safely home, and it even escaped
the destructive fingers of the Custom House officers at Liverpool. There
were streets, miles long, where I saw nothing but shoes and shoemakers.
Most of the shoes were bright red or green, thickly embroidered with
tinsel and mock pearls.
A queer zig-zag canal runs through Old Peshawar; it is crossed by bamboo
bridges. On the banks, under the blazing sun, sat the sellers of mettie
and other Indian sweets. There were piles of countless melons, some of
them bursting with their own lusciousness, there were mountains of
cocoanuts, and huge heaps of curry stuffs. I stopped to buy a bag of
gram, of which I am as fond as an Indian. A high-caste woman came up,
and bargained with the old man who had the stall, for a few pie worth of
gram. She wore the graceful red trousers of her caste, and was hidden in
the full folds of her white bourkha. A naked black baby toddled at her
side. He had thick silver bangles on his ankles and a string of blue
beads about his fat waist.
My husband and an officer friend arranged to take me to the Khyber Pass.
By the way, the correct spelling of that is Kaibar, I think, but I
haven’t the courage of my knowledge; I fear not every one would
recognise the word. The “tum-tum” was packed full of ice, a hamper of
provisions was slung beneath. The escort was ready; we were to start at
midnight; to avoid, as far as possible, the fearful heat of the torrid
place into which we were going. At ten o’clock we were having a
wonderfully nice little supper with some officers who were going with us
on horseback. I remember that I had an oyster on my fork when an orderly
came in with a note saying that the commanding officer was extremely
sorry, but he could not allow me to go. Only that day Afredeeds had
fired upon a non-commissioned officer who was escorting a gun from near
the Pass to Peshawar. I sent a return message, pleading very hard for
permission to go; but it was refused. My husband might go, if he chose,
but the commanding officer was a Queen’s servant, and he would not risk,
in the slightest way, the life of a woman. I was so disappointed at
missing the excursion that the men all gave it up and remained with me
in Peshawar. We lingered on in Peshawar for two weeks hoping that the
Pass would become safer; but it did not. The war cloud thickened, and I
was forced to leave without getting even a passing glimpse of the land
of the Ameer. One morning early I rode out with a young officer. We went
as near the mouth of the Pass as I could induce my friend to take me. As
it was, he said he would be cashiered if we were caught. I had one
glimpse of a group of Afredeeds, however, and a fine, manly-looking lot
they were, despite their cruel faces.
Peshawar—Peshawar of the cantonments—is dull and vapid. It is
reiterated drifts of sand, and since I might not journey into
Afghanistan I was glad to leave Peshawar.