Taib Khan continued in the work of the mission hospital, but fresh

trials were about to test and sift him more severely than ever. The

old friend of his boyhood, the Khani Mullah, and some relations

came down to Bannu, and while pretending at first to acquiesce in

his having become a Christian, recalled to him the memories and

associations of his boyhood. He became violently homesick. The old

village scenes, his patrimony there only waiting for him to claim,

the girl to whom he had been engaged, and whom her parents were,

they said, still keeping unmarried in hopes that Taib would recant

and claim her--all these old scenes and ideas came to him with such

irresistible force that he came to me one day and asked for a month's

leave, that he might revisit his village. I well knew the dangers

to which he would be exposed, but I sympathized with his homesick

state of mind, and knew it would be futile to expect him to stifle

it, so I gave him leave, and, warning him of the specious nature of

the suggestions and temptations which would be offered to him there,

reluctantly parted from him. At the same time I told him that if he

did not return at the expiration of the month, I should conclude that

something was wrong, and go in search of him.

The month passed, and Taib did not appear, so I started for Peshawur,

and thence to Thandkoi, to get news of him. I took as my companion

Azizuddin, an Afghan, who but for his conversion to Christianity

would have been a distinguished Mullah, but now was a simple

mission catechist. It was a long walk of about seventeen miles

from the station to the village, and we were caught in a tropical

thunderstorm. Watercourses that had been all but dry an hour before

were now surging up to our armpits, and could only be forded with

difficulty. We reached the village like drowned rats, and the people

were kind to us and dried our clothes and gave us breakfast; but all

inquiries as to Taib Khan were fruitless, though someone indeed told

us that he had gone to the Akhund of Swat in company with the Khani

Mullah. We had to return to Peshawur after a bootless search.

A fortnight later, while on tour in the Kohat district, news was

brought me that Taib was again in his village. This time I took

a convert from Islam with the very Muhammadan name of Muhammad

Hoseïn. Though children born of Christian parents are never given names

distinctive of Islam, yet when converts have such names, and are not

desirous of changing them, we do not advocate a change of name, because

we wish them to feel that the change is a spiritual and not a material

one. So Muhammad Hoseïn and I set off, but resolved to proceed more

warily than in my previous visit; so, instead of going straight into

the village, we sat down by a well outside the neighbouring town of

Zaida, and my companion, leaving me there, went into the town to make

inquiries. Zaida is a larger and more important place than Thandkoi,

and contains many mosques, while the overlord is a well-educated

Muhammadan nobleman, an alumnus of the Peshawur mission school. He

was led to believe that Taib was secreted in one of the mosques there,

but would not be allowed to appear except perhaps at night.

He returned to me at the well, and by this time it had become known

who we were, so there was less hope than ever of Taib being allowed

to show himself. As evening drew on we made as though we would return

to Peshawur, but on reaching the first village on the Peshawur road I

let my friend go on alone, while I returned for a night quest. At the

same time I told him to wait for me till morning at the ferry over the

Kabul River, fifteen miles distant. I bound my turban over my face,

as is the custom with Pathans when they wish to be incognito, and,

throwing my lungi, or shawl, over all, returned to Zaida. I entered

the mosques one by one, and finally discovered Taib seated with some

Mullahs in one of them. I was still far from the attainment of my

object, as to have made myself known to Taib under such conditions

would, of course, have been fatal; so I betook myself to the chief

of the village above mentioned. He, being in Government service, was

away, but his brother received me, and I told him that I had reason

to believe that Taib Khan was being kept there against his will,

and wished him to call the young man and inquire from him whether he

wished to return to Bannu with me or no.

The chief, who had received me with the greatest good-nature, even

though he had been roused from his sleep for the purpose, acceded to

my request and sent a messenger to have Taib and the other Mullahs

called. Taib was much astonished, and apparently ashamed too, when

he saw me; but when the chief addressed him, saying, "Do you wish

to stop here as a Muhammadan or return with the Padre Sahib?" he at

once replied: "I will go with the Padre Sahib." There was a great

clamour from the Mullahs, on the one hand urging Taib not to leave,

and reviling him when he persisted, and on the other insisting to the

chief that Taib was really a true Muhammadan, and did not want to go,

but the eye of the Padre Sahib had a mesmeric influence on him, and he

should not, as a true Mussulman himself, allow Taib to go away with me.

Both Taib and the chief, however, stood firm, and the chief, turning

to me, said: "Now take him away with you, and look better after him

in the future; but make haste, and do not loiter on the way. I will

see that no one leaves the village for half an hour; after that you

must look out for yourselves."

I thanked him for his courtesy, and Taib and I wasted no time on the

road, and reached the Kabul River at dawn, just as Muhammad Hoseïn

was about to cross over.

Some years passed, and Taib Khan became one of our valued mission

workers, and I hoped that he was mature and strong enough to stand

any vicissitudes; but often one finds that, while a convert in his

first enthusiasm will suffer much for the Gospel's sake, afterwards

an inordinate idea of his own power and importance grows upon him,

and he falls a victim to the blandishments of false friends who seek

his downfall.

So it turned out with Taib Khan: he, like most of the Afghan converts,

would not have shrunk from martyrdom, and, in fact, he had already

undergone great hardships and sufferings for the Gospel's sake. He

was put in joint charge with another Indian Christian of a rather

remote dispensary. The Muhammadans of the place became very friendly,

and pointed out how needless it was for him to forsake his village,

his relations, and the graves of his forefathers just because he wished

to be a Christian; let him be a Christian if he liked--it was no doubt

written in his fate that he should be so--but let him go and live in

his village. With the knowledge that he had acquired of medicine he

could easily earn enough to support himself and his wife and child,

and besides that he could claim the piece of land that was his by

right, if he took the trouble to prove his title to it.

Then followed a spiritual decline. Hypercritical objections to

Christianity, which had never troubled him before, were made into

excuses for returning more and more to his original Muhammadan

position. Finally he went to live in his village, conforming himself

outwardly at least to the Muhammadan standard, though, no doubt,

professing in some respects still to have an attachment to the

Christian religion. Who is to judge? Even through perverts Christian

doctrine continues to permeate the great mass of Islam, and God will

undoubtedly bring back His own at the last. So, "undeterred by seeming

failure," we work and pray on, leaving the result with Him who knows

the hearts of men.

CHAPTER XI

SCHOOL-WORK

Different views of educational work--The changed attitude of the

Mullahs--His Majesty the Amir and education--Dangers of secular

education--The mission hostel--India emphatically religious--Indian

schoolboys contrasted with English schoolboys--School

and marriage--Advantage of personal contact--Uses of a

swimming-tank--An unpromising scholar--Unwelcome discipline--A

ward of court--Morning prayers--An Afghan University--A

cricket-match--An exciting finish--A sad sequel--An officer's

funeral--A contrast--Just in time.

There are four attitudes towards educational work: that of the people

at large, who desire learning, not usually for learning's sake, but

because that is the portal of Government preferment and commercial

success; that of the priests and religious-conservative element,

who oppose it tooth and nail as subversive of the old religious

ideas and priestly power; that of the missionary, who finds therein

his vantage-ground for familiarizing the intelligent and influential

section of the people with the doctrines and ideals of the Christian

religion; and that of the Government, which, indifferent alike to

the motives of the missionary and the opposition of the Mullahs,

requires educated young men for administrative posts, and believes

that education eclipses fanaticism.

"Any parent sending his son to the mission school will be

excommunicated" was the fatwa of the Mullahs at Bannu when the

mission school was inaugurated; the delinquent would be unable to get

priestly assistance for marriage, for burial, or for the other rites

so essential to a Muhammadan's religious safety. But parents and boys

alike were desirous of availing themselves of the advantages of the

school, so the Mullahs relented, and said: "Let the boys go to school,

but beware lest they learn English, for English is the language of

infidelity, and will certainly destroy their souls." But without

English all the best Government appointments were unattainable, and

their boys would have to be content with inferior posts and inferior

pay; so pressure was again brought to bear on the Mullahs, and the fiat

went forth: "Let the boys read English, so long as they do not read

the Christian Scriptures, for the Christians have tampered with those

books, and it is no longer lawful for true Muhammadans to read them."

Again a little patience and a little gaining of confidence, and

the Mullahs tacitly retracted this restriction too, and now many of

the most prominent Mullahs themselves send their sons to the mission

school. The Muhammadan lads compete zealously with the others for the

Scripture prizes, and in 1907 two Muhammadan officials gave prizes

to be awarded to the boys who were most proficient in Scripture in

the matriculation class. Sic tempora mutantur!

A significant occurrence was the visit of His Majesty the Amir of

Afghanistan to the Islamic College at Lahore, when he made a speech,

in which he reiterated the advice: "Acquire knowledge! acquire

knowledge! acquire knowledge!" and went on to say that if they had

been previously well grounded in their religion they need not fear

lest the study of Western science might overthrow their beliefs or

undermine their faith.

Thus most of the Muhammadan boys in our school have already studied

the Quran in a mosque, and many continue to receive religious teaching

from their Mullah while studying in school. Thus they enter school

at an older age than the Hindu students, who, except in family life,

take little count of their religion, and slight their priests. The

danger is obvious: faith in the old order is lost, and there is

nothing but a conceited and bumptious materialism to take its place.

Here it is that the mission school holds the advantage of the

Government institution. The latter, in the endeavour to be impartial,

excludes all religious teaching, and therewith loses the most valuable

means of moral training. The mission school, on the other hand,

gives special prominence to religious and moral training, which

go hand-in-hand. "I prefer sending my son to the mission school,"

said a Muhammadan father to me once, "because he will be taught the

religious incentives to moral conduct there, and I shall not be afraid

of his character losing its moral balance." And this was said by a man

thoroughly orthodox and zealous in his own religion. There can be no

doubt that a far smaller proportion of the students in mission schools

and colleges lose the religious instinct of their forefathers, and it

is often the loss of this which results in moral instability and ruin.

"I never took an interest in studying my own religion till I was

taught Scripture in the mission school," said a pupil to me; and,

of course, we encourage the boys not only to perform the religious

duties inculcated by their own religion, but to study it thoughtfully,

and see how far it satisfies the aspirations of their souls. A

visitor to our school hostel of an early morning would find the

Muhammadans saying their prayers and the Hindus their devotions,

and we encourage this, and give facilities for it by setting apart

places for its performance, because it is a terrible thing to take

away a boy's faith, even though it be a faith in a mistaken creed,

and I think the man who has argued or bantered a young fellow out

of his faith without bringing him to a higher faith has incurred a

grave responsibility. The real enemy of the Christian faith is not

so much Islam or Hinduism, but infidelity and a gross materialism.

It is not education that is to blame for the unrest, sedition,

and materialism which threatens to engulf India, but the Government

system of education has undoubtedly much to answer for. God is ignored

in Government schools, prayer is proscribed, and the teachings of

English socialistic and materialistic philosophers are poured into

the capacious but untrained minds of the students. The result is

mental intoxication and libertinism. India has always been religious

to the core, and learning and religion have gone hand-in-hand. The

result of their divorce is destructive to moral stability, and the

Nemesis of the policy will pursue the country for years, even if,

as is to be hoped, the policy itself be discontinued.

When I first went to India I had a prejudice against mission schools,

and protested against a medical missionary having to superintend

one; but I have become convinced that the hope of India is in her

mission colleges and schools, for it is in their alumni that we find

young men who have been able to acquire Western knowledge without

losing the religious spirit, learning without moral atrophy, mental

nobility without a conceited mien and disrespect for their parents,

and breadth of view without disloyalty and sedition. I should like

to see the Government close all their schools and colleges except

those for primary and technical education, and devote the money saved

to the encouragement of private effort on lines more germane to the

spirit of the country.

The Indian student is an attractive personality and well worth

sympathetic study, for he is the future of the country in embryo. The

schoolboy has not yet lost the ancient Indian respect, even love, of

the pupil to the master, and is therefore much more readily subjected

to discipline than his English counterpart. His chief failing is

his incorrigible propensity to what is known in English schools as

"sneaking"; schoolboy honour and esprit de corps are being developed in

mission schools, but have very little basis on which to build. "Please,

sir, Mahtab Din has been pinching me." "Shuja'at 'Ali has stolen my

book." "Ram Chand has spilt the ink on my copy-book." If the master

is willing to listen to tales of this kind, he will get a continuous

supply of them all day long.

There are few boys who are not ready, by fair means or foul, to use

a master for paying off a grudge against a fellow-student, and as

the schemes are often deeply laid and the schemers very plausible,

the master has to be very much "all there," or, on the plea of

maintaining discipline, he will be merely a tool in a personal

quarrel. Once two or three of the senior students came to bring to

me serious charges against the moral character of one of the junior

masters. They were prima facie well substantiated by witnesses, but

on further investigation it turned out that the whole affair had been

engineered merely because the master had broken up an undesirable

clique of theirs. Such habits have, of course, to be sternly repressed.

There is much greater diversity in the social status of the boys

in an Indian school than in English schools. In the Bannu Mission

School every class of the community is represented--from the son

of the rich landowner to that of the labourer, from the Brahmin to

the outcast--and not only do they get on well together, without the

poor boy having to feel by taunt or treatment that he is unwelcome

or despised, but I have often come across genuine acts of charity

which have been done quite naturally and without any ostentation;

in fact, they tried to keep it secret in more cases than one. Thus,

a poor boy, unable to buy his books, has had them supplied to him by

the richer boys in the class. In one case a poor boy was left quite

destitute by the death of his father, and some of the boys arranged

a small subscription month by month to enable him to remain at school.

The Bannu school course commences in the infant class, where little

toddles of five summers sit on grass-mats and learn their alphabet,

to the big lads of eighteen in the fifth form, who are preparing for

the matriculation of the Punjab University. Visitors are sometimes

surprised to be told that many of the boys in this class are married

and have children, but such is unfortunately still the case. At one

time even much younger boys married, but a school law was passed that

any pupil marrying under the age of sixteen would be expelled. Since

then some twenty or more boys have had to leave because their parents,

usually much against the boys' will, insisted on getting them married

below this age. But many marriages have been postponed, and there is

a healthier public feeling against early marriage, and we hope that

before long there will be no married boys in the school at all.

I place great importance on the influence of the school hostels. These

are the boarding-houses where those students whose homes are in the

remoter parts of the district reside, and the contrast between our

raw material, the uncouth, prejudiced village lad, and the finished

product, the gentlemanly, affectionate student who is about to leave

us, is an object-lesson in itself. The boarders, though comparatively

few in number, are really the nucleus of the school, and take a

prominent part in matches and in school life in general quite out of

proportion to their numbers. The missionary is constantly in contact

with them, and they come to him at all seasons, till the relationship

is more like that of a father to his family than of a master to his

students. Such students leave the hostel with friendly feelings towards

Christians and Englishmen, which show themselves in after-years in

the hospitable and hearty reception which they accord not only to

the missionary, but to others who may be visiting their village.

There is a swimming-tank attached to the hostel, and the boys bathe

every morning except in the coldest winter months, when they bathe at

the well, where the water is several degrees warmer. Woe betide the

boy who is found asleep after sunrise! for should the manager come

round and find him so, he is hauled out by two of the monitors, who,

seizing him by hands and feet, toss him far into the swimming-tank

before he quite knows whether he is dreaming or awake. A similar

punishment is inflicted on a boy using foul language, who is thrown

in, clothes and all, for purification from its stain. At one time

visitors often got opportunities of seeing the punishment inflicted,

but it is getting rarer now as the standard rises.

A strange fragment of frontier boyhood was Amal Khan. He was brought

down to us from Afghanistan by a friendly Sardar, who had taken an

interest in him. He was only about eleven years old, but his father

and most of his family had been killed in vendettas, and his ruling

passion was to grow big and strong, buy a rifle, and go in quest of

the murderers or their relatives. His gentle little face and winsome

manner seemed so out of keeping with the cold bloodthirstiness of the

remarks he used to make with the greatest naïveté that he was looked on

as a kind of curiosity. Later on, when he had made some acquaintance

with Scripture, he used to like to hear the Gospel stories of the

gentleness of Jesus--the Good Shepherd, the miracles of compassion,

the parable of the Good Samaritan, and such like; but even then the

passion for revenge seemed to dominate his little breast, and he

finally went back to his village across the Afghan border in order

to apply himself more seriously to the object of his fate.

Once a well-to-do Afghan brought down his three sons to place them in

our hostel, and told me I might use any means I liked to discipline

them, short of shooting them. He had evidently found them too much

of a handful himself. They had been accustomed to run wild in a wild

country, and any idea of sitting still in a classroom to learn lessons

seemed to have never entered their heads. They seemed so accustomed to

the use of knife and revolver that the other boys, Afghans though they

were, came to ask me to take precautions for their safety. Finally,

when I had to "discipline" them, and that was not before very long,

they all three disappeared, and I never saw them till, some years

later, I visited their village.

Once a Government civilian wrote asking me to take a young ward of

court into my hostel. The account of him was not promising, as,

though only sixteen, he had been turned out of two schools for

misconduct. His family was of noble Afghan descent, but had been

bereft of most of its male members owing to the wretched blood-feuds,

and this boy was now the head of the family. Hoping to be able yet

to save him and to make him a power for good instead of for evil,

as he must by his position become one or other, I consented, and a

day was appointed for his admission. The day passed, but the boy did

not appear. I then got a letter from the officer responsible for him,

saying that as he had just murdered his younger brother, the hope of

his schooling must be abandoned.

Some of the masters of the little Government primary schools in the

more remote parts lead very unenviable lives, especially if they happen

to be Hindus. Their pupils often defy their authority, and they are

afraid to chastise them. I have myself seen a boy allowed to sit in

class with a loaded revolver in his belt. The unwillingness of the

master to enforce his authority is excusable, yet, had he complained,

he would merely have lost his place and his pittance. On another

occasion I came upon a poor Hindu schoolmaster in a certain village

who was about to send in his resignation. He had punished a boy for

playing truant, and the father had just been round with a loaded

rifle and dared him to touch his son again.

In the mission school the work of the day commences with roll-call,

at which a portion of Scripture is read by the headmaster, and

the Lord's Prayer repeated. During the latter the boys have to

stand. They do not object to this, but I remember once a Hindu boy

being accused of having become a Christian because he had shut his

eyes and folded his hands during the prayer. He told me that many of

the boys really joined in the prayer, and certainly they have got to

value and appreciate prayer. On a Sunday evening the boarders come to

my house to sing hymns from "Sacred Songs and Solos" and vernacular

collections, and if I omit to offer the usual prayer at the close,

they remind me of the omission; they do not wish to go away without it.

Once, at a cricket-match with a rival school, when the issue of

the game was hanging in the balance, and depended on the last man,

who had just gone in, making four runs, a Muhammadan Afghan, one of

the eleven, retired to a corner of the field and repeated the Lord's

Prayer, closing it with a petition for the victory of the school,

and returned to find the winning run just made! At meetings of the

schoolboys among themselves it is not uncommon for prayer to be

offered by one of the number, and at a farewell dinner given me in

1908 by some pupils a very beautiful and touching prayer was offered

by an old Hindu student, now reading in the Lahore Medical College,

and all the other Muhammadans, Hindus, and Christians stood up for it.

Missionaries were the first to open schools on modern lines, but at

the present time Muhammadans, Hindus, and Sikhs are endowing their own

schools and colleges on the most lavish scale, and teaching their own

religions therein, just as the mission schools teach Christianity. This

certainly has many advantages over the Government system, where

religion is ignored. His Majesty the Amir of Afghanistan is alive to

the necessity of keeping up with the times, and is founding a college

on modern lines at Kabul, which will be the first step towards the

foundation of an Afghan University. During his recent visit to India

he selected a number of trained Muhammadan graduates from Lahore and

elsewhere, who are to inaugurate the new scheme. He will, no doubt,

encounter the opposition of some of the more fanatical Mullahs, who

already look upon him as having been contaminated with many Western and

heretical ideas; but the ultimate result will be good, and the attempt

shows that even for Afghanistan a new era is approaching. Perhaps

it may not be long before a mission school at Kabul will receive the

royal sanction.

The following episode I relate in this place because it shows the

striking contrast between the uneducated ghazi fanatic of the hills

and young men of the same race and antecedents who have passed through

the humanizing and civilizing influences of a mission school.

It is a lovely autumn afternoon in the little frontier town of

Bannu. The trees round the recreation-ground between the city and

cantonments are becoming sere and showing variegated tints of yellow

and brown. There is an unusual crowd round the greensward which forms

the station cricket-pitch, and as it is Friday, the Bannu market-day,

a number of Wazirs and other hillmen who are coming to and from market

stop for a few minutes to gaze on the scene that lies before them,

and probably to wonder in their minds what mysterious ultimate object

the Feringis have in the evolutions they are watching enacted, or

whether it is some preliminary to military operations on their own

hill fastnesses.

Turning to the recreation-ground itself, we find that it is a

cricket-match between the garrison officers and the Mission High School

students. The boys have been stealing a number of runs, and their

score is beginning to draw on towards a century, when the officers

put on a new slow bowler, and a succession of unwary batsmen fall

victims to his wiles, and soon the innings is over with a score of

eighty-eight. The officers begin to bat, and the score rises rapidly;

then some good catches send several players back to the pavilion

(here represented by some shady shisham-trees). The score reaches

eighty-eight, and the last player goes in, a young fair-haired boy,

the son of the slow bowler; the winning run is made, and the boy

caught at point next ball, and the innings is over.

Just one week has passed. Again it is market-day, but no tribesmen can

be seen anywhere near the recreation-ground; instead we see long lines

of khaki-dressed native infantry, while sentries and patrols guard all

the roads leading thereto, and all is silent as the grave. Then we see

a long procession slowly, silently moving out of the fort, long ranks

of native infantry--Sikh, Pathan, and Punjabi Mussulmans--with slow,

measured tread and arms reversed; then a gun-carriage surmounted by

a coffin covered with the Union Jack and wreaths, the masterless

steed, the mourners; a group of sunburnt officers of the Frontier

Force and some more troops bring up the rear. It is the funeral of a

distinguished frontier officer, and the slow bowler of last Friday,

now borne to his last resting-place, the victim of a dastardly ghazi

outrage the day before.

Just facing the cricket-ground is a shady and flowery patch of ground,

enclosed by a simple brick wall and containing a number of white

tombstones. Here lie many gallant officers, military and civil--some

killed in action; others, like the present Captain Donaldson, killed

by religious fanatics in Bannu and the neighbourhood while in the

execution of their duties; others, again, carried off by pestilence

and disease. Here, too, in lowlier grass-grown graves, lie a number

of the native Christian community. East and West, high and low,

all gathered in one small plot, covered with the same Mother Earth

to await their common resurrection--so glorious in its expectations

for some, so dread in its possibilities for others.

Here, just facing the now deserted cricket-ground, the long procession

halts; the chaplain, just arrived after a hasty drive of ninety miles

from Dera Ismaïl Khan, begins to recite the solemn verses of the Burial

Service, and the booted and spurred officers do their last brotherly

service and shoulder their comrade's coffin from the gun-carriage

to the grave. The strains of the "Last Post" sound forth--a shrill

call to the sombre mountains round as the last rays of the setting

sun fall slanting through the foliage on the faces of the mourners;

some sharp words of command ring forth from a native officer; the

troops wheel about, and all is solitude and silence.

Only the day before a new regiment was to arrive in Bannu, and, as the

custom is, the station regiments were marching out with their band

to welcome them in. At the head of the regiment a group of officers

were riding, including the officer commanding the district, Colonel

Aylmer, V. C., and his Brigade-Major, Captain Donaldson. Just beyond

the fort the road narrows a little to pass over a culvert, and the

officer on the outside of Captain Donaldson fell back a little to

make room for him.

Behind that culvert a Mahsud Wazir was in hiding, determined to kill an

infidel and gain a martyrdom in the most sensational manner possible,

so that for many an evening in years to come the tribal bards might

sing his praises round the camp-fires and in the village chauks. Just

as Captain Donaldson, now on the outside rank, came abreast of him,

he sprang out; a pistol shot rang through the air, and the officer

fell mortally wounded. There was, of course, no escape for the Mahsud;

bullet and bayonet at once disabled him, though he lived long enough

to be hanged that afternoon. Our first feelings are those of horror

at the enormity of the act--killing a stranger who has never seen or

injured him--but who is worthy of our severer judgment, this young and

ignorant soldier (for he had recently served in the Border Militia),

thirsting for religious fame by a deed of daring, or the Muhammadan

priest who had assiduously taught him that all Feringis were kafirs,

and that to kill one of them, in no matter how dastardly a manner,

was a sure passport to Paradise, and that eternal joys were awaiting

him as the reward of the valour and righteousness of his deed? Here,

at any rate, we see the two extremes--the gentlemanly Afghan from the

mission school, entering with zest and sport into the game of cricket

with the officers, and, so far from feeling any resentment towards

them, ready, if need be, to fight with them shoulder to shoulder in

the common cause of humanity, under the same flag, and defend them

with their own blood from the fanaticism of their fellow-countrymen;

on the other hand, the fanatical tool of the Mullah, who quails before

his ex-cathedrâ denunciations, but is ready at his suggestion to meet

a bloody death as a martyr in the cause of his religion.

As an example of the former, I might mention Muzaffar Khan, an old

student of the Bannu Mission School, who risked his life to save that

of the Political Officer of the Tochi Valley, with whom he was on

tour. While that officer was viewing a Muhammadan shrine a fanatic

rushed out and ran a dagger into his body; but, quick as thought,

Muzaffar Khan threw himself on the would-be murderer and dragged him

back before he had been able to inflict a fatal wound. The ghazi was

secured and hanged soon after, while the officer recovered, the stab

having just missed a vital part, although it had pierced right through

his body.

Yet, but for the mission school, Muzaffar Khan might have been the

ghazi himself. Race and religion were the same, but their environments

had been different.

CHAPTER XII

AN AFGHAN FOOTBALL TEAM

Native sport--Tent-pegging--A novel game--A football tournament--A

victory for Bannu--Increasing popularity of English games--A

tour through India--Football under difficulties--Welcome

at Hyderabad--An unexpected defeat--Matches at Bombay and

Karachi--Riots in Calcutta--An unprovoked assault--The Calcutta

police-court--Reparation--Home again.

The reader must imagine himself on a flat open piece of ground covered

by the hard alluvial earth known in the Panjab as pat. This kind

of earth is somewhat saline, and has a universally smooth surface,

unbroken by grass or shrub, which is utilized by the villagers for

their games and fairs, and by the British for the evolutions of their

troops. Around are a number of Bannu villages, but the men and children

have all collected round this piece of ground in their gala-day attire,

for it is the Day of the Feast, "'Id-el-fitr," or the Breaking of

the Fast, following the month of Ramazan, and is to be celebrated as

usual by sports and merry-making. All the men who own or can borrow

a horse are mounted upon steeds of all descriptions, more or less

richly caparisoned, according to the ability of the owner. Saddles

are of the high-backed pattern universally used in Afghanistan, with

a long wooden croup, which helps the rider to retain his seat. They

are all carrying the long bamboo iron-tipped lance for their national

sport of tent-pegging, or nezabazi, as the Afghans call it. Some of

the boys who are there as spectators are mounted two or even three

on a horse, and others, mounted on riding camels, are able to get a

good view of the games over the heads of the others.

The pegs, cut out of the wood of the date-palm, are fixed in the

ground, three or four abreast, so that an equal number of horsemen

may be able to compete simultaneously. The competitors, with their

embroidered turbans and gay, many-coloured coats and shawls, form a

brave show at one end of the course, as they pass the intervening time

in showing off feats of horsemanship on their prancing chargers. Then,

at a given word, three or four strike their heels into the horses'

sides--for they wear no spurs--and as often as not rousing their own

excitement and that of their horses by shouting out the Muhammadan

Kalimah ("La ilaha illa 'llahu, Muhammadun rasulu 'llah"), career

wildly down on the pegs, and, if successful, gallop on triumphantly,

waving the peg at the end of their lances.

This goes on till men and horses are weary, and then a new game

commences. This is known as tod or kari. The people form a large

circle; then some young athlete, stripped except for his loin-cloth,

tied tightly round, or secured by a leather waistband, jumps lightly

out into the arena, his muscular frame showing to advantage as he

contracts his muscles under his glossy, well-oiled skin. Two other

athletes, similar in attire and appearance, answer his challenge

from the party on the opposite side. The endeavour of the challenger

is to avoid capture, while yet allowing the pursuers to come near

enough for him to give them at least three slaps with the open hand;

while the pursuers in their turn try to seize him and throw him on

to the ground, in which case they are adjudged the winners, and a

fresh challenger comes forth. Both sides are apt to get very excited,

and the throws are often so violent that bones are broken, or other

injuries received; and if that side believes this to be due to malice

prepense, the game not unfrequently terminates in a free fight.

These amusements and games go on until nightfall, when they may be

followed by some fireworks, and competitors and spectators, both

equally wearied, go home to their feast of pulao and halwa. Such

scenes have no doubt been common in Afghanistan for centuries past,

but the reader must now come with me to a different scene, and he will

see how Western influences are changing even the sports of the people.

This time we are in a large grassy sward between Bannu city and

the cantonments. There is a crowd, as before, of some thousands of

spectators, but the football goal-posts and flags show that the game

is something different. It is the day of the provincial tournament of

all the schools of the province, and teams of the various frontier

schools from Peshawur, Kohat, Dera Ismaïl Khan, as well as those of

Bannu, have collected here to pit their skill and prowess against one

another in games and athletics. The referee, an English officer from

the garrison, has blown his whistle, and the youthful champions come

out, amid the cheers of their supporters, from the opposite sides of

the ground. The Bannu team are somewhat smaller in stature, and are

wearing a uniform of the school colours--pink "shorts" and light blue

shirts. The Peshawur team are heavier in build, and are wearing their

blue-and-black uniform. The referee blows his whistle again, and both

sides are exerting all their powers to reach their adversaries' goal.

As the ball travels up and down, and the chances of one or other side

appear in the ascendant, the cheers from their supporters redouble,

and as goals are attempted and gained or lost the excitement of all

the spectators is not less than may be witnessed at a similar match in

England. The captain of the Bannu side is a native Christian, whose

father is a convert from Muhammadanism; but the other Muhammadans

and Hindus in his team are loyal to him to the backbone, and carry

out his every order with that alacrity which displays the new esprit

de corps which has developed in our mission schools.

On his outside left is a young Hindu, who carries the ball past

the opposing half-backs and backs right up to the corner, from

which he centres with great skill to the captain. The captain is,

however, being marked by the other opposing back, so he passes to

a Muhammadan lad on his inside right, and then the whole line of

forwards--Muhammadan, Hindu, and Christian--rush the ball through

the goal, amid the triumphant cheers of their side.

The game is restarted, and Peshawur makes a number of desperate

rallies and skilful rushes, which, however, are all foiled by the

vigilance of the Bannu backs and the agility of the goal-keeper, a tall

Muhammadan lad, whose weight and height both tell in his favour. Once

one of the Peshawur forwards brought the ball right up to the mouth

of the goal. The Bannu custodian seized it, but the Peshawari was

upon him. The goal-keeper held the ball securely, awaited the charge

of the Peshawari, who bounded back off him as from a wall, and then

cleared the ball with his fist far up the field to the Bannu left

half. The whistle for "time" is sounded, and the Bannu boys rush into

the field and carry off their victorious schoolfellows shoulder high,

amid great clapping and cheering.

The next day the final cricket-match is held. In this the Dera Ismaïl

Khan boys are pitted against one of the Peshawur teams. Peshawur

has already defeated Bannu and Kohat, and the Dera Ismaïl Khan boys

have disposed of the other Peshawur team. All the technicalities of

the game are observed with as much punctiliousness as in England,

and their white flannels show off well under the bright Indian sun,

and but for their dark faces and bare feet one might imagine that he

was watching a public school match in England. To-day the laurels

rest with Dera Ismaïl Khan, and they triumphantly bear off a belt

with silver shields awarded annually to the winning team.

The old order changes and gives place to the new. Tent-pegging will

always retain its charm, with its brave show and splendid opportunities

for the display of manly courage and dextrous horsemanship, so dear

to a militant nation like the Afghans, and will always remain their

favourite pastime. But the simpler native games are gradually giving

place to the superior attractions of cricket and football, and the

tournaments which of recent years have been organized between the

various native regiments and between the different tribes inhabiting

each district and between the schools of the provinces are doing much

to create a spirit of friendly rivalry, and to develop among these

frontier people a fascination for those sports which have done so much

to make England what she is. Some tribes among the Afghans, such as the

Marwats, are very stay-at-home, and soon become homesick if they enlist

in a regiment or undertake a journey. Others, like the Povindahs,

are perhaps the greatest overland merchants of the East. They travel

down from their mountains in Khorasan, through the passes in the

North-West Frontier, and traverse with their merchandise the length

and breadth of India, and numbers of them engaged in the trade in

camels cross over the seas to Australia and take service there.

With the idea of developing the esprit de corps of the school, and

gratifying their love of travel, while at the same time conferring on

them the benefits of a well-planned educational tour through the chief

cities of India, I arranged in the summer of 1906 to take the football

team of the Mission High School at Bannu on a tour through a great

part of Northern India. A number of colleges and schools from Calcutta

to Karachi not only accepted our challenge for football matches, but

offered us hospitality for such time as we should be in their town. Our

team represented all classes--Muhammadans, Hindus, native Christians,

and Sikhs. The captain of the team was an Afghan lad of the Khattak

tribe, Shah Jahan Khan by name, while the vice-captain was a native

Christian, James Benjamin. Various difficulties presented themselves,

but all were eventually successfully surmounted. Stress of work and

school duties compelled us to make the tour in the slacker time of the

year--viz., in July, August, and September. This was also the hottest

time in most of the places we visited, and some of the matches were

played in a temperature bordering on 100° F., while the spectators

were sitting under punkahs.

At this time of year the River Indus is in full flood, and presents a

remarkable sight as, bursting forth from its rocky defile at Kalabagh,

it spreads out over the flat alluvial plain of the Western Panjab. In

the winter it may be confined to one, two, or three channels, each

about one to four hundred yards wide; but in the early summer, swollen

by the melting snows of the Himalayas, it overflows its banks, and not

infrequently forms a wide expanse of water ten miles broad from bank to

bank. At such a time the villages, which are built on the more raised

areas of its bed, appear as little islands scattered here and there,

the people of which get to and from the mainland in their boats. It

is then that the tonga, or cart, has often to be dragged over miles

of submerged road, with water from one to three feet deep, before

it reaches the place where it is able to transfer its passengers and

burden to the ferry-boats, which are waiting to carry them across the

deeper portions of the river, and it may be that several changes from

boat to cart and cart to boat have to be made before the traveller

attains the farther shore, where is the railway-station and the train

waiting to carry him down to Karachi or up to Lahore.

In our case, after getting across the main stream in the ferry-boat, we

put our luggage into two carts, and, removing our superfluous clothing,

started to trudge through the inundated country to the station of

Darya Khan, on the eastern bank. Sometimes there was a quarter of a

mile or so of fields not yet submerged; sometimes the water was up

to our knees or hips for miles together, and in one place there was a

deep channel about one hundred yards wide, where a ferry-boat was in

readiness for the luggage, but we enjoyed having a swim across. Two

of the team, who were less practised swimmers, and had miscalculated

the strength of the current, found themselves being carried rapidly

down the stream; but just as some of those who had already gained the

opposite bank were about to return to the rescue, they found their

feet on a sandbank, and were able to struggle across. The thirteen

miles across the swollen river took us from nine in the morning till

four in the afternoon, though it must be admitted we loitered several

times to enjoy a swim in the cool waters of the deeper channels.

We found, too, that the football season differs in various

places. While Calcutta plays football in July and August, Karachi

plays from December to March, and Bombay in the spring. However,

even those colleges which were not in their actual football season

sportingly agreed to get up matches during our visit. In no place

did we find greater enthusiasm among the colleges and schools for

football and a more open-handed hospitality than in Hyderabad, the

capital of the Nizam's Government, and here our team experienced

their first defeat in this tour.

We had had thirty hours' travelling from Ahmadnagar, in the North,

and the stations on this line were so ill supplied with refreshments

that we had been unable to get anything except some biscuits and

sweets, and, arriving at Hyderabad at midday, we found the match

had been fixed for 4 p.m., so that the team had only time for a

hastily-prepared meal before the match. The college of the Nizam

put a strong team against us, and for the first time in the tour the

Bannu boys were distinctly outmatched. It was, however, nice to see

what good feeling was evinced by both teams in this and nearly all

the matches of the tour, both sides fraternizing with the greatest

bonhomie both before and after the matches, and friendships were made

which continued long after our team got back to Bannu.

Tours such as this undoubtedly tend to promote that feeling of

friendship and union between the races of various parts of India

which has hitherto been so little in evidence. It also tends to

widen sympathies and to lessen religious prejudices. Not only did the

members of our team sink the prejudices which might have arisen from

diversity of religious opinion, but our hosts, too, represented all

classes and faiths. Thus, in Hyderabad the organizer of hospitality

was a Christian missionary, the Rev. Canon Goldsmith. A house was

lent us for residence by a Parsi gentleman, and dinners were given

us by the Muhammadans of the place.

Further south the Hindus were more in evidence, and entertained us

royally at Bezwada and Masulipatam. In the latter place we were the

guests of the staff of the Noble College, belonging to the Church

Missionary Society, and here an amusing incident took place. The boys

in these parts are accustomed to play football with bare feet, and are

light, lithe, and wiry, while our Northerners were heavy, big-boned,

and wore the usual football boots; so it came about that when they

saw our team arrive, their hearts melted within them for fear, and

they refused to play unless our boys consented to play barefooted;

and this they refused to do, as they had had no practice in playing

like that. It seemed as though we should have to go away without a

match, but a missionary there had a boarding-house of Christian lads

of the district, and these sportingly declared that they were ready to

play. Both teams appeared at the appointed time amid a great concourse

of spectators. The Bannu boys, with their football boots, looked

much the heavier team; but the Telegu boys proved themselves much

the more nimble, and outran and ran round our boys time after time,

and as the Bannu boys played very cleanly and were careful not to hack,

they did not suffer from want of boots; but, on the other hand, several

of our boys took off theirs at half-time, hoping thereby to become as

nimble as their antagonists. They, however, lost by one goal to love,

amid the greatest excitement. The teams which had refused to play were

now most importunate in begging us to stop for other matches, but as

we were engaged for a match next day at Guntur it could not be done.

With one exception, our Afghans had never seen the sea, and they

were all greatly desirous of making its acquaintance. I accordingly

arranged for the journey from Karachi to Bombay to be on one of the

British India steamers which ply between those two ports. It was the

height of the July monsoon, and they had not realized what their

request entailed. There was a strong wind on our beam the whole

of our forty hours' journey, and the little steamer Kassara rolled

continuously the whole time, the billows sometimes breaking over her

fore-deck. All but three of them suffered the terrors of mal-de-mer

in its worst form, and earnestly wished that they had never been so

rash as to dare the terrors of the ocean at such a time. We arrived at

Bombay amid a torrential rain--a bedraggled, dispirited, and staggering

crew. It was pitch dark, and it was only with some difficulty that we

found our way to the Money School of the Church Missionary Society,

where we were to receive hospitality. The shops were closed and the

watchman asleep, but after some delay we aroused him, got some tea

at a belated coffee-shop, and lay down on the boards to wish for

the morrow. It rained almost continuously during our stay at Bombay,

but we managed one match with the City Club, of which the following

account appeared in the Bombay Gazette:

"Match between the Bannu Football Team and the City Club.

"The visitors opened the attack last evening from the southern end

of the Oval, and although the City Club at times were pressed, the

game was more or less of an even nature. The Bannu combination was

the first to score, and soon after followed up with their second

goal. Pulling themselves together, the City Club then made several

good rushes, and eventually succeeded in scoring. Soon after they

annexed their second goal, and equalized matters. In the second

half the game was intensely exciting, as either side tried to

get the winning goal. The visitors had a warm time of it, but

eventually succeeded in getting their third goal. A minute before

the close of time, however, the City men equalized by a well-judged

shot, and the match thus ended in a draw of three goals each."

One of the best matches of the tour was with the Y.M.C.A. of Karachi,

which was thus described by the Sindh Gazette:

"An interesting football match was played on Tuesday evening last on

the Howard Institute ground, between the team of the Y.M.C.A. and

Dr. Pennell's team of Pathan boys from the C.M.S. High School,

Bannu. The first goal was scored soon after the match began, by

a soft drive, and was in favour of Bannu. Almost immediately the

Y.M.C.A. equalized by Bannu heading into their own goal during a

mêlée from a corner kick. Soon afterwards the Y.M.C.A. took the

lead through a clever run up by Wolfe, who passed neatly to Morton,

who netted with a neat shot. On the whole play was very even till

half-time, when the Y.M.C.A. led by two goals to one. At half-time

the Y.M.C.A. lost the services of their outside right, who retired on

account of a weak knee. Bannu generally took the lead in attacking,

and scored twice again, the last time from a stinging shot well up

the field. The Bannu team played consistently, and altogether without

roughness. We are glad to have seen them in Karachi, and wish them

all success in the remainder of their tour."

From Guntur we travelled north to Calcutta, where a series of matches

had been arranged, after which we had arranged a number of matches

with the schools and colleges of the United Provinces of Agra and

Oudh, and those of the Panjab; but an unforeseen and unaccountable

misadventure brought our tour to a premature conclusion a few hours

before the time fixed for our departure from Calcutta. It was the

outcome of one of those waves of unrest which followed the outburst

of the storm with which the Bengalis exhibited their resentment at the

partition of Bengal. The Bengalis had organized a boycott of European

goods, and in the fervour of their campaign had placed a number of boy

sentinels at the doors of the shops of those merchants who dealt in

articles of Western manufacture. These were largely Marwari merchants

from the Bombay Presidency, and they thought to relieve themselves of

this wasp-like horde of boy sentinels by circulating the rumour that a

number of Panjabis and Afghans had come down from the North to kidnap

boys and children whom they could lay hands on. This rumour was widely

believed by the credulous mob of Calcutta, and, all unknown to us,

who were ignorant even of the existence of the rumours, our team had

been pointed out as some of the probable kidnappers.

We had returned on the morning of August 23, 1906, from playing

a number of matches in Krishnagar, and were to leave Calcutta the

same afternoon to play a match the following day at Bhagalpur. The

team had broken up into two parties to get their breakfast in one of

those eating shops which abound in the Calcutta Bazaar, and I had

gone along to Howrah Station to purchase the tickets. It was a hot

day, and on my return I stopped at a refreshment shop in the Harrison

Road, near the Church Mission Boarding-House, where we were stopping,

to get a glass of lemonade.

I was sitting quietly drinking it in the shop front, when I noticed

the whole bazaar was in an uproar. The crowd was rushing to and fro,

and the shopkeepers were hurriedly putting up their shutters. All

ignorant of the fact that it was my own boys who were being attacked,

I quietly finished my glass and strolled back to our hostel, thinking

there was no reason why I should trouble myself about affairs of

Calcutta which did not concern me. No sooner had I entered the

gates of the compound when I saw one of our team--Rahim Bakhsh--his

face covered with blood, and another one injured. "Do you not know,"

cried one, "that our boys have been murderously assaulted, and perhaps

killed?" "Where are they?" I hurriedly asked. "They are probably in the

hospital by this time." A cab was passing at the moment, and I jumped

in, and drove off to the hospital. Running up into the casualty room,

I was horrified to find six of the team lying about with their clothes

all torn and covered with blood and mud. Their heads had been shaved

by the casualty dressers, and were so cut and swollen that I could

not recognize them all until I had spoken to them, and then for the

first time I learnt what had happened.

A party of nine had gone in a refreshment room, and were having their

breakfast. Meanwhile they noticed that a crowd of many hundreds had

collected outside. Scarcely realizing that they were the cause of

the crowd, after finishing their meal, they came out to return to

the Mission Boarding-House, but were met by cries on all sides:

"These are the kidnappers! Kill them! kill them!" Even now they

did not understand the cause of the excitement, but when they asked

what it was all about, and what was wanted from them, they were only

answered by derisive shouts and a shower of stones and brickbats.

Before they had time to organize any resistance they were separated

one from another, in the midst of a raging mob, who belaboured them

with stones and sticks until they fell senseless in the street. Two

only managed to escape--Rahim Bakhsh, whom I had met in the hostel,

and one other, who had managed to get into a passing carriage.

Five of them, having been reduced to a state of insensibility, were

taken by the mob and thrown into a back alley, where the blood from

their wounds continued to flow and trickle down in a red stream

into the street gutter. One of them--Ganpat Rai--was rescued by

a friendly Bengal gentleman, who bundled him into his house and

attended to his wounds, and afterwards sent him under escort to the

hospital. Another--Gurmukh Das--was being belaboured by some ruffians

while lying in the middle of the road, when an English gentleman passed

in his carriage. Naturally indignant at what he saw, he jumped down

and asked them what they thought themselves to be, beating a senseless

man in that way; and if he had committed a crime, why did they not

take him to the police-station? Someone in the crowd called out,

"This Englishman is their officer: let us kill him!" and, leaving

the boy, they all set on him. He defended himself for some time,

when some ruffian, coming up behind, turned a basket over his head,

and it would have gone hard with him had not some friendly natives

pulled him into the Ripon College, which was close at hand.

We would fain have got away from Calcutta as soon as the condition

of the wounded enabled us to travel, for the unaccustomed diet and

climate was affecting the health of all of us; but we found ourselves

prisoners to the will of the Government, who required us to remain

in Calcutta as witnesses in the prosecution which the Government was

instituting, and we had to spend day after day of weary waiting,

hanging about the police-courts of Bow Street Bazaar. The police

had secured a number of men who had been shown to have taken part

in the riot, and most of these had secured barristers and pleaders

for their defence; consequently, there was a formidable array of

advocates on the side of the defence, each one of whom thought it

his duty to cross-examine each member of the team at tedious length,

and regardless of some of the questions having been asked us time

after time by his brothers of the law.

The brow-beating and cross-examining which we had to undergo could

not have been worse had we been the aggressors instead of the victims,

while the irrelevancy of the questions and the needless waste of time,

entailing constant postponement from day to day, was exceedingly

trying to us in our wounded and feeble condition, only anxious to

get back to our homes on the frontier. The barristers and pleaders

of the defence professed notwithstanding to be very sympathetic

with us in our troubles, and one and another would come up and say

something like this: "We people of Calcutta are most sorry for this

very unfortunate occurrence. No doubt most of the men in the dock

are guilty, and should be punished for so unwarranted an attack on

innocent travellers, but there is one man who has been arrested by

some mistake of the police. He had nothing to do with it, and should

be released, because he is quite innocent." As in each case the man

"arrested by mistake" proved to be the one for which the barrister

was holding a brief, their protestations lost something of their force.

A more pleasant feature was the genuine sympathy shown by a

certain section of the Bengalis, a sympathy which was voiced by the

Hon. Surendra Nath Bannerji, who convened a public meeting, in which

he expressed the regrets of the Calcutta citizens in an address which

was presented to us in a silver casket.

At last the court, taking pity on our uncomfortable condition,

consented to take our examination and cross-examination previous to

that of the hundred and more witnesses which the defence were going

to bring, and which would have entailed some months' stay in Calcutta,

had we been kept back to the end of the trial.

When we reached Bannu we were honoured with a civic reception, which

went far to make up to the members of the team for the discomforts that

they had undergone. The Civil Officer of the district, the Municipal

Commissioners, and a great number of the citizens, met us with a band

some few miles before reaching Bannu, and we were escorted in amid

great rejoicings.

CHAPTER XIII

'ALAM GUL'S CHOICE

A farmer and his two sons--Learning the Quran--A village school--At

work and at play--The visit of the Inspector--Pros and cons of

the mission school from a native standpoint--Admission to Bannu

School--New associations--In danger of losing heaven--First night

in the boarding-house--A boy's dilemma.

Pir Badshah was a well-to-do farmer of the Bangash tribe, not far

from Kohat, and he had married a woman of the Afridi tribe from over

the border, called Margilarri, or "the Pearl."

He had not to pay for her, because it was arranged that his sister

was to marry her brother, and in cases where an exchange like this

is made nothing further is required.

They had two sons, 'Alam Gul and Abdul Majid. The father intended

that the elder should be educated, and one day he hoped would become a

great man, perhaps Tahsildar (meaning Revenue Officer) of the British

Government, so he was going to give him the best education he could

afford; while Abdul Majid was to look after the lands and become a

farmer, for which it is not supposed that any education is necessary.

Pir Badshah was very orthodox and punctilious in all the observances

of his religion, so the two boys were not to learn anything else

until they had sat at the feet of the village Mullah, and learnt to

read the Quran.

The mosque was a little building on the hillside. It was built of

stones cemented together with mud, and in the centre was a little niche

towards the setting sun, where the Mullah, with his face towards Mecca,

led the congregation in their prayers. There was a wooden verandah,

the corners of which were ornamented with the horns of the markhor,

or mountain goat. Beyond this was the open court, in which prayers

were said when the weather was fine, and either in this verandah or

the courtyard 'Alam Gul and his brother used to sit at the feet of the

old Mullah, reciting verses from the Quran in a drawling monotone,

and swaying their bodies backwards and forwards in the way that all

Easterns learn to do from the cradle when reciting or singing.

When they had finished the Quran and learnt the prayers and other

essentials of the Muhammadan religion, 'Alam Gul was sent to the

village school, while Abdul Majid began to make himself useful on

the farm.

He used to go out with his father's buffaloes to take them to pasture,

and sometimes he used to take his brother out for a ride on one of

these ungainly animals. Then, when the harvest was ripening, a bed was

fastened up at the top of four high poles, and he had to sit all day

on this to protect the crops from the birds. For this purpose cords

are fastened across the field up to the bed, and oil-cans or other

pieces of tin are fastened to them here and there, so that as Abdul

Majid had all the ends of the cords in his hands, he could make a din

in any part of the field where he wished to frighten away the birds,

and sometimes was able to take half a dozen home for the evening meal.

'Alam Gul, on the other hand, was being initiated into the mysteries

of the Hindustani language and of arithmetic.

The school was a little mud building in the centre of the village, and

the schoolmaster was a Muhammadan from the Panjab, who found himself

rather uncomfortable in the midst of these frontier Pathans, whose

language seemed to him so uncouth and their habits so barbarous. His

meagre salary of ten rupees (13s. 4d.) a month was somewhat augmented

by his holding the additional post of village postmaster; but it had

this disadvantage--that when one of the villagers came in to buy an

envelope, and get the postmaster to address it, as probably he did not

know how to write himself, teaching had to be dropped for a season:

for it must be remembered that for a Pathan villager to send off a

letter is quite an event, and he may well afford to spend a quarter

of an hour or so, and give the postmaster a few annas extra to get

it properly addressed and despatched to his satisfaction. Meantime,

'Alam Gul and his companions would take the opportunity of drawing

figures on the sand of the floor, or of playing with a tame bullfinch

or a quail, which they were fond of bringing into the school.

To make up for these little interruptions, the schoolmaster used to

sit from morning to night, and expect his pupils to be there almost

as long, only giving them an interval of about an hour or so in the

middle of the day to go home and get their morning meal. Friday used

to be a whole holiday, for it was on that day that all the men of

the village had to assemble in the mosque for the morning prayers,

and when these were over 'Alam Gul used to go out with some of the

elder village boys to catch quails in the fields. This they did by

means of a long net spread across about thirty or forty feet of the

field. The quails were driven up into this, and the meshes of it

were of such a size that, though they could get their heads through,

their wings became hopelessly entangled, and they fell an easy prey

to the fowlers. The male quails were then kept in little string or

wicker baskets for the great quail fights, which were one of the chief

excitements and pastimes of the village. This pastime is one of the

most universal in Afghanistan, and even well-to-do men think there

is no shame in spending a great part of the day toying with their

favourite quails, and backing the more redoubtable ones against some

quail belonging to a friend, while all the men of the neighbourhood

will be collected round to see the two champions fight.

'Alam Gul had to spend five years in this school. At the end of this

time the Government Inspector came round to examine the pupils for

the Government primary examination. This was an eventful day for the

schoolmaster, for on the report of the Inspector his promotion to some

more congenial sphere and the increase of his salary would depend. The

boys, too, were all excitement, for if they passed this examination,

they would be allowed to go to the big school at Hangu or Kohat.

The schoolmaster would spend days drilling them how they were to

answer the questions of the Inspector; how they were to salaam him;

how they were to bring him a hookah if he required one, bring him tea,

or do him any other service which it might be supposed would put him

in a better mood for making a good report of the school.

The Inspector was a Peshawuri Pathan of portly presence (it is

commonly believed that among the upper ranks of native Government

officials a man's salary may be gauged by the girth of his body)

and of supercilious manners, as though his chief aim in life were to

criticize everyone and everything.

All the boys had put on their best clothes for the occasion, and

'Alam Gul had borrowed the turban which his father was accustomed to

wear on feast days.

On the arrival of the Inspector, the boys hurriedly got into line. The

schoolmaster called out: "Right-hand salute!" for though not a boy in

the school knew a word of English, it is the custom to give all the

class orders in that language. Then one boy was hurried off to hold

his horse, another to go and get it some hay, a third to get a chair

for the great man, while the schoolmaster himself was obsequious in

obeying his every sign.

The boys were examined in Urdu, writing and reading, arithmetic,

geography, and Persian. There were five boys altogether in the top

class, and of these, to the delight of the schoolmaster, the Inspector

declared four to have passed, among them being 'Alam Gul.

His father wanted to send 'Alam Gul to the Government school at

Kohat, but 'Alam Gul had a friend who had been reading in the Bannu

Mission School, and the tales that he had heard from him had given

him a great desire to be allowed to go there to study. His father,

however, was opposed to the idea, because the Mullah told him that

people who went to mission schools must become infidels, because they

were taught by Feringis, who were all infidels, and that if he sent

his son there he would excommunicate him.

There would have been no hope of 'Alam Gul attaining his wish had

it not been that just at that time the Subadar (native officer), an

uncle of 'Alam Gul's, came to the village on leave from his regiment,

which was stationed at Bannu, and it so happened that he had made

the acquaintance of the missionary in charge of the Bannu School,

and had been very favourably impressed with what he had seen of the

institution, and he offered to take 'Alam Gul back with him to the

regiment, and let him live with him.

The father had now to propitiate the Mullah, so he killed a sheep,

and made some luscious dishes with the meat, and some halwa, or sweet

pudding, which is supposed to be a delicacy to which the Mullahs are

very partial, and called his reverence in to partake of the feast;

and when his heart was merry, he propounded the scheme to him.

After he had heard the arguments of the Subadar, the Mullah relented,

and said that he knew how to make a charm which, if it were always

worn round the boy's neck, would effectually prevent him from being

contaminated by any heretical teaching which he might have in the

school; and if 'Alam Gul were admonished to be careful always to wear

this charm, he might safely be allowed to go with his uncle. So when

the leave of the latter expired, 'Alam Gul was put into his charge,

and went off with great excitement, filled with hopes of what he

would do in the great school of which he had heard so much.

The day after his arrival in Bannu the Subadar sent 'Alam Gul down

to the school in charge of a soldier of his regiment.

The soldier and 'Alam Gul came into the mission compound, and, seeing

some boys standing about, told them their errand. One of the boys

offered to take them to the head-master. They were taken to the school

office, and here they found the head-master. He was an old gentleman

with a grey beard and a kindly face, Mr. Benjamin by name. When a young

man he had himself been converted from Muhammadanism to Christianity,

so that he was able to sympathize with the religious difficulties of

the boys under his charge, and he had been for thirty years head-master

in this school, and was looked up to by the boys as their father.

'Alam Gul's certificates were examined, and he was told what books

he must obtain, and that if he came the next morning he would be

enrolled as a scholar of the Bannu Mission School.

This being an Anglo-vernacular school, where English is taught in all

but the very lowest classes, boys who come from the village schools

have to spend one whole year in learning English, in order that the

following year they may be able to take their place with the other

boys in the class to which they are entitled; so 'Alam Gul was enrolled

in this, which is called the "Special Class."

The next day the soldier again brought him, and left him alone in

the school. Here he was surrounded by a greater number of boys than

he had ever seen before in his life--boys of all ages, all sorts,

all sizes, and all religions.

There were some Muhammadans from his district, but none from his

village, or that he knew, so he felt very nervous, and wished himself

back again in the little village school on the mountain-side among

his old playmates.

Then the letters of the English language seemed so uncouth and

different from the euphonious sounds of the Arabic and Persian

alphabet, to which he had been accustomed.

"A, B, C," said the master, and "A, B, C," repeated the other boys

in the class; but he found he could not shape his mouth to these

unfamiliar sounds, and tears began to flow at the apparent hopelessness

of the task which he had undertaken with so much enthusiasm. However,

day by day the work grew easier, and new friends and acquaintances

began to be made among his class-mates. Every day there was some

fresh astonishment for him.

In the village school he had played what they called Balli-ball,

a village imitation of cricket, played with rough imitations of bats

and wickets; but here he found that every class had its own cricket

team, which played with real polished bats and balls brought all the

way from Lahore. And above all was the School Eleven, composed of

boys who were looked up to by young hopefuls of the lower classes,

much as we might regard a County Eleven in England--boys who played

in real wilayiti flannels, and had matches with the English officers

of the garrison, and saw that the other boys in the school treated

them with the respect due to their position.

'Alam Gul wondered if ever the day would come when he would find

himself numbered among this favoured throng. It was not long before

the captain of his class told him that he must come and practise, to

see if they could make him one of their class cricket team. He would

have accepted with alacrity had it not been for one circumstance,

which gave his unformed religious ideas a rude shock. The captain of

the party was a Hindu! It seemed to him ignominious, if not subversive

of his religion, that he should subject himself to the orders of a

Hindu class-fellow, and he would have refused had not a Muhammadan

from his district, reading in the class above him, to whom he confided

his scruples, laughed at him, and said: "You silly fellow! we do

not trouble about that here; everyone has his religion ordained by

Fate. What does it matter, be he Muhammadan, Hindu, or Christian,

if he play cricket well?" When his fears had been thus allayed,

'Alam Gul joined his party, and soon became as enthusiastic a member

of it as any.

A year passed, and he was promoted to the first middle class, where he

took up the full curriculum of subjects, learning not only English,

but arithmetic, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, geography, Indian history,

and elementary science.

Before he had been many months in this class he was attacked by

malarial fever, which is so virulent in the Bannu Valley in the autumn

months. His uncle sent a soldier to say that he had sent him back to

his village in charge of a man of his regiment, and that he would

come back after recovering; so his name was entered on the roll of

those absent for sick-leave.

About three weeks later his father himself appeared at the school

one day, and requested to interview the head-master.

After the usual salutations were over, the father began:

"Sir, I have a request to make."

"What is it?"

"I wish you to strike the name of my son off the roll-call of your

school."

"Why so? What has happened?"

"He is ill--very ill."

"But I have given him sick-leave. He can stop at home as long as he is

ill, and then come back to school. His name can remain on the register,

and he return when he is quite well."

"Certainly, he will come back if he recovers; but, then, he is very

ill. Supposing he were to die?"

"If he were to die, then what matter whether his name be on our

register or not?"

"Sir, the Mullah tells me that if he die with his name still on the

register of the mission school, he could never go to heaven."

Arguments were useless, and the head-master had perforce to satisfy

the father by giving the boy a leaving certificate.

Ultimately, however, 'Alam Gul recovered, and was allowed to go back

to the mission school; but a few months later the regiment in which

his uncle the Subadar was was transferred to another station, and

the uncle wished to take his nephew with him there. But the boy had

by this time formed a great attachment to the school, and begged to

be allowed to remain, so it was arranged that he should be entered

in the school boarding-house.

This hostel accommodated a number of those pupils whose homes were

too far from Bannu for them to attend as day scholars, and who had

no relations in the town with whom they might lodge. Each boy is

provided with a bedstead and a mat, and he brings his own bedding,

books and utensils.

The first night 'Alam Gul felt very strange. Instead of the small

crowded room of his house was a large airy dormitory, shared by some

twenty of his schoolfellows. At one end of the dormitory was the

room of the Superintendent, so that he could supervise the boys both

by day and night. The Superintendent was a Hindu, but 'Alam Gul had

got used by this time to respect his masters, even though they were

not Muhammadan, and had overcome some of his old prejudice. As the

Superintendent treated him kindly, and there was a Muhammadan friend

of his in the next bed, he was soon very happy there.

Attached to the hostel was a pond of water supplied daily from the

Kurram River, in which it was the duty of every boarder to bathe

regularly. This tank served other purposes too, as 'Alam Gul found to

his cost. It was the rule that all boarders were to be up and have

their bedding tidily folded by sunrise. The Principal of the school

every now and again paid surprise visits to the boarding-house about

that time, and woe betide the luckless boy who was found still asleep

in bed! Two of the monitors were told to take him by the head and

heels and swing him far into the middle of the tank.

'Alam Gul had not been many weeks in the boarding-house before one

morning he overslept himself, and before he had time to rub his

eyes or change his clothes he found himself plunged in the water,

which at that time--the early spring--was cold enough to become a

real incentive to early rising.

Schoolboys freshly joined were often found to have the bad habit of

freely abusing each other, and using foul language. The swimming-tank

formed an excellent corrective for this too, because the boy found

guilty was treated in the same way, being pitched in with all his

clothes on, and allowed to creep out and dry himself at leisure.

Once, indeed, 'Alam Gul felt very much like leaving the school

altogether. Every day in each class a period is set apart for the

Scripture lesson. At first 'Alam Gul did not wish to be present at

this, but when he found that all the other boys attended it without

demur, and remembered the power of the charm which the Mullah had

given him, he thought it did not, after all, matter; he need not pay

attention to what was taught, and so he went. But this day a verse came

to his turn to read in which were the words, "Jesus Christ, the Son

of God." He remained silent. The catechist who was teaching him said:

"Why do you not read?"

"I cannot read that."

"Why, what is wrong? Read it."

"That is blasphemy. God had no son. I cannot read that."

"It is written in the Book, and you must read it."

"I will not read it!"

The catechist was not willing, however, to grant him exemption,

and gave him some punishment.

'Alam Gul had a fit of Pathan temper then, and there was a serious

breach of discipline, which could not be overlooked. Before, however,

he had time to arrange with his father for leaving the school, he had

cooled down sufficiently to take a less prejudiced view of the case,

and decided to undergo the discipline, and stay on with us.

CHAPTER XIV

'ALAM GUL'S CHOICE (CONTINUED)

The cricket captain--A conscientious schoolboy--The Scripture

lesson--First awakenings--The Mullah's wrath--The crisis--Standing

fire--Schoolboy justice--"Blessed are ye when men shall persecute

you for My Name's sake"--Escape from poisoning--Escape from

home--Baptism--Disinherited--New friends.

About this time three circumstances occurred which brought about a

change in 'Alam Gul's ideas.

The first happened in this way. The captain of the cricket eleven

chanced to be a Christian boy, and as two or three of the members of

the cricket eleven had left, he was in need of some fresh talent to

fill their places; so a match had been arranged with a number of the

boys of the school who were aspirants to places in the coveted eleven.

'Alam Gul by this time had developed into a very steady player, who

could be relied upon to keep his wicket up at times when his side was

going to pieces; and on this particular occasion he was one of those

selected for trial, and it so happened that he made one of the best

scores of the match. This was the commencement of the friendship with

the cricket captain, which went a long way to mould his ideas. Hitherto

he had rather fought shy of making friends with the Christian boys,

for fear anything should be said repellent to his religious ideas;

but as his friendship with the cricket captain increased, they had

many a chat--not only on cricket and school matters, but on deeper

things that concerned the faith in their hearts.

The second circumstance arose in this wise: On the occasion of a

paper-chase the track had led through an orchard, and some of the

boys were not proof against the temptation of helping themselves

to the fruit, and the next day the owner of the garden came in high

dudgeon to the Principal of the school to complain that some of the

fruit had been stolen.

"You call yourself a mission school, and here are your boys coming

into my orchard and taking my fruit!"

The next day the Principal had a roll-call of the school, and made a

short speech to them, saying that he much regretted that some of the

boys had brought a bad name on the school by stealing plums. He then

ordered that the boys who had taken any should fall out and stand

in a row in front. After much exchange of glances and hesitation,

twenty or so of the boys fell out. These were ranged up in line,

facing the rest of the school, while the Principal told them that

he intended to make an example of them as a warning to others not to

sully the fair name of the school.

One of the printers from the mission press was then called, with his

printing-roller well inked, and this was rolled three times down the

face of each boy, leaving one long black streak down the forehead

and nose and one down each cheek, which they were not allowed to wash

off for the rest of the day.

'Alam Gul was rather surprised to see that one of these boys was a

member of the cricket eleven, who evidently felt the indignity very

acutely. 'Alam Gul had been by his side during the paper-chase,

and he had noticed that he had passed by the fruit without taking

any; so he went up afterwards to console him, and ask him why he had

fallen out with those who had taken the fruit. He told him that when

he saw the other boys plucking the plums, he had himself taken one;

but then he thought how they had been told in the Scripture lessons

that that was a wrong thing to do, and so he had thrown the plum away.

'Alam Gul had hitherto never looked on the Scripture lesson as

a time for moral improvement, but rather as a time when fidelity

to his religion required him to shut his ears; so when he found

his schoolmate with a conscience that had become so tender through

listening to the Scripture teaching that he even thought it necessary

to confess to having plucked a single plum which he had not eaten,

his mind was filled with an inrush of new conflicting ideas.

The third influence came to him through the Scripture lesson

itself. The Indian pastor was teaching them from that chapter of the

greatest pathos in all history--the Crucifixion of our Lord. When it

came to his turn he read the verse: "Father, forgive them, for they

know not what they do." Not very long before he would have resented

even having to read a verse addressing the Almighty as "Father,"

but now his heart was full of new emotions. "How could the Prophet

Christ pray for the forgiveness of enemies?" He remembered how an

uncle of his, on his death-bed, in making his last testament to

his sons, had enumerated his enemies and what evil they had done

him, and impressed upon them that revenge for those wrongs was the

heirloom which he had bequeathed to them, and which they must regard

as their bounden duty to perform. He remembered, too, how many of his

own family had been killed in blood-feuds, and even now his uncle,

the Subadar in the regiment, took precautions against somebody whom

he suspected of being his enemy. If Christ was able to die in this way

and His teaching had still such moral power, how was it that Muhammad,

who professed that his teaching had superseded that of Christ, had

not been able to give his followers an equal power? Why were there

Muhammadan tribes always torn with discord and feud and bloodshed on

every side, and by those who professed to do such deeds in his name?

'Alam Gul now began to study the Gospels for himself, and an interest

was awakened in his heart which surprised him; and instead of trying to

shirk the Scripture lessons, he began always to look forward to them,

and asked many questions which showed the greater insight that he was

gaining into their meaning. The next vacation, when he went home, he

took an early opportunity of visiting the old Mullah who had given

him the charm when first he joined the school five years before,

and asked him about some of his difficulties. He wanted to know

why the Muhammadans always spoke of the Book of the Law and of the

Gospels with respect, and yet would not allow people to read them,

and why the Gospels spoke of Christ as the Son of God, which he had

been taught to consider blasphemy.

The Mullah, however, did not deign to try to solve his difficulties,

but became very angry, and abused him roundly, and that evening

went to his father to tell him to take his son away before he became

utterly corrupted.

'Alam Gul got a great beating that night, and ran away to the house

of a relation, and did not come back for three days, and asked no

further questions.

His father, no doubt, thought that the beating had had its effect, and,

when the time arrived for rejoining school, allowed him to go back.

The crisis came on the day of a school picnic. It was a May morning,

and the masters and boys were going to a shady spot on the banks of

the Kurram River, where the day would be spent in aquatic sports

and merry-making. 'Alam Gul sought counsel of the missionary in a

quiet spot under the trees, where he might unburden his heart without

being disturbed.

"Does Christ demand that I should confess Him openly? Should I not

wait till my parents are dead?--because it will be a great trouble

to them when they hear that I have become a Christian, and they will

never want to see me again. Cannot I be a secret follower, and continue

to live as a Muhammadan, and attend the prayers in the mosque?"

"If any man confess Me not before men, neither will I confess him

before My Father. If any man love father or mother more than Me, he is

not worthy of Me." "Let the dead bury their dead, but follow thou Me."

How pulsating with the deepest verities of life these sayings seem,

when we put them forward to such an inquirer in answer to such

questions! How charged with the magnetism which draws the seeking

soul almost in spite of itself--a two-edged sword dividing asunder

the bones and the marrow!

"No; you must go home and tell your father what your intention

is. Persecution must come, sooner or later, and unless you are

willing to bear it for Christ's sake now, how can you be received

into the company of His soldiers? You have a duty to your parents,

from which you cannot absolve yourself, and no blessing of God will

rest on your actions when you are deceiving them, and till you are

of full age you are bound to obey them."

'Alam Gul was awake a long time that night after the lights were out

and all the other boys in the dormitory were fast asleep under their

quilts. At last he got up, and, with his pocket-knife, cut the cord

that still bound the charm that the old Mullah had made for him, and

stuffed it away among his books. He then knelt down by his bedside for

a few minutes, and when he got into bed again he had made his choice,

and his mind was made up; but there were to be many vicissitudes

before the goal was reached.

'Alam Gul was in the matriculation class now, and a member of the

coveted cricket eleven. He still performed his Muhammadan prayers,

and kept the fast of Ramazan; but the moments which gave him most

satisfaction in the day were those in which he took his little

English Testament into a quiet corner on the roof of the school-house,

and read the words of our Lord, calling the weary and sin-laden to

Himself, and, after set portions of the Muhammadan prayers were over,

in the part reserved for the munajat, or private petitions, he would

pray earnestly in the name of Christ that God would make the way

clear to him to become His disciple, and to incline the hearts of

his relations thereto as well. He had to stand fire, too, among his

school-fellows, now that it had become known that he was an inquirer;

but his position in the school, and the fact that he was nearly the

best bat in the cricket team, and therefore of value to the honour

of the school in the inter-school tournaments, prevented them from

carrying the persecution very far, and it was more banter and sneers

than anything worse. A few irreconcilables, however, tried to injure

his reputation by spreading lying rumours about him, even going to the

head-master with some concocted evidence against his moral character,

which, had that official been less conversant with the wiles of

the backbiters, might have resulted in his expulsion from school,

but actually resulted in their utter discomfiture.

One Muhammadan youth, who professed great zeal for his religion,

was always starting some recriminating religious discussion, till the

other boarders passed a resolution that any of their number starting

such a discussion was to be fined one rupee.

Before the lapse of many days there were the two at it again, hammer

and tongs, in the middle of the dinner-hour. A schoolboy court was

appointed to name the culprit responsible for starting the discussion,

and it is a pleasing tribute to the schoolboys' love of fair play that,

though the judges chosen were one Muhammadan and one Hindu, they both

decided that the Muhammadan was guilty, and should be fined. The latter

declared that he was going to pay no fine! They then held a fresh

council, to settle how they were to bring the pressure required for

the carrying out of their law. At last one boy said: "I have it. Till

he pays the fine, not one of us is to speak to him or have anything

to do with him, on the pain of a fine of one anna." This bright idea

was passed unanimously, and, after a few anna fines had been levied,

the recalcitrant member gave in. Sweets were bought with the proceeds,

there was a general merry-making, and no more disturbances of the

peace on 'Alam Gul's account, who was tacitly allowed to have what

opinions and fads he liked without further interference.

He had not so easy a time, however, when the vacation came round and

he went home, and in much fear and trembling made his longings known

to his father.

First they resorted to blandishments, reminded him of his good family

and noble ancestors, and of the bright future which lay before so

clever and well educated a boy. His brother was about to be married;

even then they were preparing for the wedding-guests. This would have

to be all stopped, for the family of the bride would refuse to give

her into a family disgraced, and then his brother would die of shame,

and no one would be able to wipe the stain away for ever.

When these tactics failed, the old Mullah was called. He was too

wroth to argue when he found that 'Alam Gul no longer wore the charm,

and abused him with all the epithets that he could think of, and left

the house threatening to excommunicate the whole family. Later on he

came back in a calmer mood with two older Mullahs from a neighbouring

village, who were much revered for their learning and sanctity, and

these surrounded 'Alam Gul, and argued for hours to show him the error

of his ways and the corruption of the Christian Scriptures. 'Alam

Gul had one argument, to which they had no answer to give:

"If you say these Scriptures are corrupted by the Christians, then

where have you genuine copies by comparison with which we can see

the proof of it? Had the Muhammadans themselves no copies of the

Scriptures which they were able to preserve from those wicked people

who wanted to corrupt them?"

Finding their arguments of no avail, they formally cursed him with

all the anathemas of the Quran, both for this life and the next.

The next trial was to be the most heart-searching and trying of all,

and 'Alam Gul felt he would ten times rather have had the anathemas

of the Mullahs or the beatings of his enemies. It was when he went

into the zenana. His mother was there with other women, and as soon

as they saw him they began weeping and loudly lamenting. His mother

came with her hair dishevelled, and, falling down before him, beat

her breast, and bewailed with loud cries and frantic gesticulations

that she had borne a son who was going to disgrace the family and

bring down her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.

'Alam Gul burst into tears, and besought his mother to be comforted;

saying that she had been misinformed as to what he was going to do,

and who the Christians were. He was not going to forsake her, but

would serve her to the day of his death.

"I adjure thee," she said, "swear to me that you will never go near

those Christians again or read their books."

"No, mother, I cannot do that; for their book is the Kalam Ullah

[the Word of God], and God is with them of very truth."

The women were still weeping, and 'Alam Gul persuading, when his

father came in, and, seizing 'Alam Gul, pulled him outside, and,

getting a thick stick, beat him till he was black and blue all over,

and then left him with a kick and a curse.

That night 'Alam Gul found that all his clothes had been taken away,

and he was left with only a loin-cloth. This had been done lest

he should run away and escape, they thinking that in a few days,

finding the hopelessness of his position, he would relent and submit.

Six days he remained thus, being given nothing more than a bit of

stale bread once a day and a little water. Still he remained firm,

and refused to go to the mosque or repeat the Kalimah; and when he

found himself alone for a time, he knelt down and prayed for help

and deliverance.

On the seventh morning an uncle came, and sat down by his side, and

began to commiserate him and profess his sympathy for the hardships

he was undergoing. He then untied the corner of his shawl, and got

out some sweetmeats and gave them to 'Alam Gul, as some amends for the

privations he had been undergoing. Something, however, in his demeanour

made 'Alam Gul suspicious, and he excused himself for not eating the

sweetmeats at once, and put them in a handkerchief by his side.

When his uncle had departed, he gave some of the sweetmeats to one

of the dogs in the house. Very shortly afterwards the dog began to

vomit and show signs of pain. He was now sure that the plan had been

to poison him in such a way that his death might be reported as due to

some ordinary sickness, and he made up his mind to escape at all costs.

It was midday, and nearly everyone was enjoying a sleep during the

oppressive noon of a summer day. Searching about, he found a shirt

and an old turban, and, donning these, he slipped out, and was soon

through the deserted village street out in the fields beyond. He

dared not take the direct route to Bannu, for he knew that pursuit

would be made, and the pursuers would probably take that direction;

so he turned northwards towards Kohat, and came to the village of a

schoolmate, who gave him shelter and food for that night in his house

and a pair of shoes for his feet, which had become blistered on the

hot rocks over which he had been travelling.

The next night he slept in a mosque, and then reached the highroad

from Kohat to Bannu, and got a lift on a bullock-waggon travelling

to the salt-mines of Bahadur Khel. On the fifth day after leaving

his village, very footsore, tired, and ragged, he appeared in the

mission compound at Bannu.

He was now nineteen years of age, so nothing stood in the way of his

being admitted as a catechumen, of which he was greatly desirous,

and the following Easter he was baptized into the Christian Church.

He had, of course, been publicly disowned and disinherited by his

family, who now regarded him as one dead; but he was supremely happy

in his faith, and was always seeking opportunities of leading, not

only his schoolmates, but also Mullahs and others whom he encountered

in the bazaar or elsewhere, into conversation concerning the claims

of Jesus Christ.

His original acquaintance with the Quran and Islam had been deepened

and extended by the study of books of controversy and his knowledge

of Christianity by daily Bible study, so that even the Mullahs found

they had to deal with one who could not be silenced by the threadbare

arguments and trite sophisms which were all that most of them knew

how to use.

There was a great crowd of students and others both inside and outside

the native church on the day when, arrayed in clean white clothes,

he came to receive the rite of baptism, and the deepest silence was

upon all when he answered a clear, unfaltering "I do" to each of the

questions of the native clergyman who was officiating. His reception

afterwards by his Muhammadan acquaintances was not altogether a hostile

one. Students form a remarkable contrast to the ignorant portion of the

population in the comparative absence of religious fanaticism and their

ability to recognize and honour sincerity of motive, even in those

who are to them apostates, and many of his Muhammadan schoolmates

maintained their friendship with him, and others who at first had

joined in the opposition and abuse of the crowd came round before

long and resumed their old relations as though nothing had happened.

Judging by other cases, even his own relations will probably resume

friendly relations after the lapse of time has enabled them to do so

without incurring a fresh stigma among the villagers, and they will

be all the more ready to do this if he has won for himself a good

position in Government service, and is able to help them to meet the

dunnings of the money-lender in a bad season.

When 'Alam Gul had to find some way of earning his own living, he

found many avenues closed to him. The Muhammadans would not give him

work, and even in Government offices, if his immediate superior was at

all a bigoted Muhammadan, he would find it impossible to stop there

without getting involved in traps that had been laid for him almost

every day, and which would ultimately and inevitably result in his

dismissal in disgrace.

Finally he obtained a post in the Government Telegraph Office, and,

by his industry and punctuality, rapidly made progress and attained

a position which was a universal silencer to the common taunt,

"He has only become a Christian for the sake of bread," with which

young converts are assailed, even when the charge is palpably untrue.

CHAPTER XV

AFGHAN WOMEN

Their inferior position--Hard labour--On the march--Suffering

in silence--A heartless husband--Buying a wife--Punishment for

immorality--Patching up an injured wife--A streaky nose--Evils of

divorce--A domestic tragedy--Ignorance and superstition--"Beautiful

Pearl"--A tragic case--A crying need--Lady doctors--The mother's

influence.

In all Muhammadan countries women hold a very inferior, almost

humiliating, position, being regarded as very distinctly existing

for the requirements of the stronger sex. In Afghanistan they labour

under this additional hardship, that the men are nearly all cruel

and jealous to a degree in their disposition, and among the lower

sections of the community the severe conditions of life compel the

women to labour very hard and continuously--labour which the men

think it beneath their dignity to lighten or share.

The wife has to grind the corn, fetch the water, cook the food, tend

the children, keep the house clean--in fact, do everything except

shopping, from which she is strictly debarred. The husband will

not only buy the articles of food required for the daily household

consumption, but he will buy her dresses too--or, at least, the

material for them--and the lady must be content with his selection,

and make up her dresses at home with what her lord is pleased to

bring her. How would their sisters in England approve of that?

The fetching of the water is often no sinecure. If the well is in the

village precincts it may be pleasant enough, as it no doubt affords

excellent opportunity for retailing all the village gossip; but in

some places, as, for instance, during summer in Marwat, the nearest

water is six or seven, or even ten, miles away, and the journey

there and back has to be made at least every other day. In Marwat

the women saddle up their asses with the leathern bottles made from

goatskins long before daybreak, and the nocturnal traveller sometimes

meets long strings of these animals going to or returning from the

watering-place under the care of a number of the village women and

girls. The animals in these cases have to be satisfied with what they

drink while at the source of the water-supply.

When the women get back to their houses it will be still scarcely

dawn, but they have a busy time before them, which will occupy them

till midday. First the grain has to be ground in the hand-mills; then

yesterday's milk churned; then the cows and goats milked; then the

food cooked, the house cleaned, and a hundred and one other duties

attended to which only a woman could describe.

When on the march the women are heavily loaded. They can often be seen

not only carrying the children and household utensils, but driving

the pack animals too, while the lordly men are content to carry only

their rifle, or at most give a lift to one of the children. Yet it is

not because the men are callous, but because it is the custom. Their

fathers and forefathers did the same, and the women would be the

first to rebuke a young wife who ventured to complain or object.

Some of the women of the Povindah tribe are splendid specimens of

robust womanhood. These people travel hundreds of miles from Khorasan

to India, carrying their families and household goods with them, and

the women can load and manage the camels almost as well as the men,

and carry burdens better. The outdoor, vigorous, active life has made

them healthy, muscular, and strong, and buxom and good-looking withal,

though their good looks do not last so long as they would were their

life less rough. But when a baby is born, then comes the suffering. The

caravan cannot halt, and there is seldom a camel or ox available for

the woman to ride. She usually has to march on the next day, with the

baby in her arms or slung over her shoulder, as though nothing had

happened. Then it is that they endure sufferings which bring them to

our hospital, often injured for life. If there is no hospital, well,

they just suffer in silence, or--they die.

The Afghan noblemen maintain the strictest parda, or seclusion, of

their women, who pass their days monotonously behind the curtains

and lattices of their palace prison-houses, with little to do except

criticize their clothes and jewels and retail slander; and Afghan

boys of good family suffer much moral injury from being brought up

in the effeminate and voluptuous surroundings of these zenanas. The

poorer classes cannot afford to seclude their women, so they try to

safeguard their virtue by the most barbarous punishments, not only for

actual immorality, but for any fancied breach of decorum. A certain

trans-frontier chief that I know, on coming to his house unexpectedly

one day, saw his wife speaking to a neighbour over the wall of his

compound. Drawing his sword in a fit of jealousy, he struck off her

head and threw it over the wall, and said to the man: "There! you are

so enamoured of her, you can have her." The man concerned discreetly

moved house to a neighbouring village.

The recognized punishment in such a case of undue familiarity would

have been to have cut off the nose of the woman and, if possible,

of the man too. This chief, in his anger, exceeded his right, and if

he had been a lesser man and the woman had had powerful relations,

he might have been brought to regret it. But as a rule a woman has no

redress; she is the man's property, and a man can do what he likes

with his own. This is the general feeling, and no one would take

the trouble or run the risk of interfering in another man's domestic

arrangements. A man practically buys his wife, bargaining with her

father, or, if he is dead, with her brother; and so she becomes his

property, and the father has little power of interfering for her

protection afterwards, seeing he has received her price.

The chief exception is marriage by exchange. Suppose in each of

two families there is an unmarried son and an unmarried daughter;

then they frequently arrange a mutual double marriage without any

payments. In such cases the condition of the wives is a little, but

only a little, better than in the marriage by purchase. If a man and

a woman are detected in immorality, then the husband is at liberty

to kill both; but if he lets the man escape, he is not allowed to

kill him subsequently in cold blood. If he does, then a blood-feud

will be started, and the relations of the murdered man legitimately

retaliate, or he must pay up the difference in the price between

that of a man's life and that of a woman's honour. In practice, one

often finds that a man has been murdered where, by tribal custom,

he should only have had his nose cut off; as it is obviously easier

for the aggrieved husband to ambush and shoot him unawares than to

overpower him sufficiently to cut off his nose.

Every year in the mission hospital we get a number of cases, many

more women than men, where the sufferer has had the nose cut off by

a clean cut with a knife, which sometimes cuts away a portion of the

upper lip as well. This being a very old mutilation in India, the

people centuries ago elaborated an operation for the removal of the

deformity, whereby a portion of skin is brought down from the forehead

and stitched on the raw surface where the nose had been cut off, and

we still use this operation, with certain modifications, for the cases

that come to us. Two years ago a forbidding-looking Afghan brought

down his wife to the Bannu Mission Hospital. In a fit of jealousy he

had cut off her nose, but when he reflected in a cooler moment that

he had paid a good sum for her, and had only injured his own property

and his domestic happiness, he was sorry for it, and brought her for

us to restore to her as far as possible her pristine beauty. She had

a low forehead, unsuitable for the usual operation, so I said to the

husband that I did not think the result of the operation would be

very satisfactory; but if he would pay the price I would purchase

him an artificial nose from England, which, if it did not make her

as handsome as before, would at any rate conceal the deformity.

"How much will it cost?" said the Afghan.

"About thirty rupees."

There was a silence: he was evidently racked by conflicting sentiments.

"Well, my man, what are you thinking about? Will you have it or no?"

"I was thinking this, sir," he replied, "you say it costs thirty

rupees, and I could get a new wife for eighty rupees."

And this was said before the poor woman herself, without anything

to show that he felt he had said anything out of the common! I am

glad to say, however, that he ultimately decided to have the original

wife patched up, paid the money, and I procured him the article from

England, which gave, I believe, entire satisfaction, and the last time

I heard of them they were living happily together. Perhaps he is able

to hold out the threat of locking up her nose should she annoy him,

and knows he can remove it as often as he likes now without having

to pay up another thirty rupees.

In a case where I procured a false nose for a man, the shop in

England sent out a pale flesh-coloured nose, while his skin was

dark olive! Obviously this had to be remedied, so I procured some

walnut stain, and gave him something not very different from the

colour of the rest of his face. Unfortunately, he started off home

before it was dry, and was caught in a rainstorm. He was annoyed to

find himself the centre of merriment on his arrival at his village,

and came back to me to complain. The nose was all streaky!

The fine physique and good health of the hill Afghans and nomadic

tribes is largely due to the fact that their girls do not marry

till full grown, not usually till over twenty, and till then they

lead healthy, vigorous, outdoor lives. They form a great contrast to

the puny Hindu weaklings, the offspring of the marriage of couples

scarcely in their "teens."

The two greatest social evils from which the Afghan women suffer

are the purchase of wives and the facility of divorce. I might add a

third--namely, plurality of wives; but though admittedly an evil where

it exists, it is not universally prevalent, like the other two--in

fact, only men who are well-to-do can afford to have more than one

wife. The Muhammadans themselves are beginning to stem the evil and

explain away the verses in the Quran which permit it, by saying that

there is the proviso that a man may only marry a plurality of wives if

he can be quite impartial to all of them; and as that is not possible,

monogamy must be considered the law for ordinary mortals.

The following, which was enacted under my eyes, shows the evil that

results from divorce and polygamy. There were three brothers, whom

we will call Abraham, Sandullah, and Fath, all happily married to one

wife each. Abraham, the eldest brother, died. The second brother was

now entitled to marry the widow; but she did not like him, while she

had a decided liking for the youngest brother, Fath. She had, however,

a hatred for Fath's wife, and was determined not to be junior wife

to her. Fath, carried away by the charms and cajolings of the widow,

consented to divorce his own wife on condition of the widow marrying

him. She agreed, vowing she would never marry Sandullah, and then Fath

divorced his wife. But meanwhile Sandullah insisted on his rights,

and forced the widow to marry him. She perforce submitted, but I think

he got some lively times at home, and the woman took opportunities

of meeting Fath. Then what does the insatiable and foolish Sandullah

do but marry the divorced wife of his younger brother. The widow was

now furious: she had refused to marry the man she fancied unless he

divorced that woman, and now she is married to the man she did not

want, and has got the hated woman as co-wife into the bargain.