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.
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.
Women carrying Waterpots
There was a man of desperate character in the village who had been captivated by the widow’s charms. She had so far refused his advances, but now, to have her way, she told him that if he desired to gain his end he must first dispose of her present husband. That was no obstacle to the lover, and, with the collusion of the woman, he enticed the man out into his cornfield one day, and there strangled him. The murder eventually was brought home to the unscrupulous lover, and he got penal servitude, while the foul enchantress was left free to marry the youngest brother, Fath, whom she originally desired.
Very few of the Afghan women can read the Quran; for the rest they are absolutely ignorant of all learning, and often when we are trying to explain some directions for treatment in the hospital, they excuse their denseness by saying: “We are only cattle: how can we understand?”
They know very little of their own religion beyond the prayers and a variety of charms and superstitions.
Some time ago we had a strange case in the women’s (Holtby) ward. She was a feeble old Hindu woman who felt she had not long to live, and who had such a horror of her body being burnt to ashes after death, as is the custom with Hindus, that to escape from her relatives she came into the hospital, saying, she wished to become a Muhammadan, so that she might be buried. We began to explain to her the Gospel of Christ, but she appeared too old to take in something so novel, and finding we were not the Muhammadans she took us for, she sent word to a Muhammadan anjuman to have her taken away. We assured her that we would nurse and care for her, and not burn her body; but no! perhaps we might only be some kind of Hindus in disguise! So she went off with her Muhammadan friends, and in due time was buried.
Unlike this old lady, some of the cases that come into our women’s ward are tragic beyond words. Let me give one story as told us by the poor sufferer herself, and she is only one of many who are suffering, unknown and uncared for, in Afghanistan at the present time. For, indeed—for the women especially—it is a country full of the habitations of cruelty. Her name was Dur Jamala, or “Beautiful Pearl.” She and her husband were both suffering from cataract, and lived near Kabul. They were trying to resign themselves to lives of blindness and beggary when someone visited their village who told them of a doctor in Bannu who cured all kinds of eye diseases. So, getting together all they could, which only came to about eighteen rupees, they started out on foot on their long and weary journey to Bannu—one hundred and fifty miles of rough road, with two mountain passes to cross on the way! They took with them their only child, a girl of about ten, and travelled slowly, stage by stage, towards Bannu. But before they had got far on their way, in a lonely part of the road, some cruel brigands robbed them of all their savings, beat her husband to death before her eyes, and tore away the weeping child, whom they would sell for a good price into some harim.
Women going for water at Shimvah
Poor Dur Jamala was left alone and helpless, crushed with grief. From that time it took her just ten months to get to Bannu, having been helped first by one and then by another on the way. She reached Bannu very worn and weary, and in rags, and was very grateful indeed to us for a comfortable bed and a good meal. The operation was successful, and resulted in her obtaining good sight in that eye. But meanwhile someone had frightened her, telling her that hell would be her punishment for listening to our teaching. She wept very much, and refused to allow us to operate on the other eye or listen to any more of our “wicked religion.” We saw no more of her for about four months, when she appeared one day in our out-patient department in great pain from suppuration of the second eye. She had been to some charlatan, who, in operating on it, had completely destroyed the vision of that eye, and she had suffered so much that she was only too glad to put herself again under our treatment. The second eye had to be removed, but she is able to work, as the sight of the first is good, and she often comes to us now and listens to the teaching, although she still says: “Your medicine is very good, but your religion is wicked.” Yet in listening to the Gospel story she finds some solace in the great sorrow which has so clouded the life of poor “Beautiful Pearl.”
Water-carrying at Shimvah
Women bring the water, frequently from a great distance, in skins slung on either side of donkeys.
If some of our medical ladies and nurses in England saw how their poor Afghan sisters suffered, often in silence and hopelessness, would not some of them come out to do the work of Christ and bear His name among them? “I was sick, and ye visited me.” Though till now we have only had a man doctor in Bannu, yet forty or fifty women attend the out-patients’ department nearly every day, and many of these have undertaken long and wearisome journeys to reach us.
There are the Hindu women from Bannu city collected together in one corner of the verandah, lest they should be polluted by contact with the Muhammadan women from the villages. For the women are much greater sticklers for the observance of all the niceties of Hindu ceremonial than their more Westernized husbands, and would have to undergo the trouble of a complete bath on returning home if they had been in contact with anything ceremonially impure. One can recognize the Hindu women at once by their clothes. They wear the same three garments winter and summer—a skirt reaching down to their ankles; a curious upper garment, like a waistcoat with no back to it; and a veil, which falls over and covers their otherwise bare back, and which they hurriedly pull over their faces when they see a man.
The Muhammadan women have indeed the veil, but the other garments are quite different. The upper garment is a full dress, coming down at least to the knees, and full of pleats and puckers, and ornamented by rows of silver and brass coins across the breast, while the nether garment is a pair of loose, baggy pyjamas of some dark-coloured material, usually blue or red, with very remarkable funnel-like extremities below the knees. At this point the baggy portion is succeeded by a tightly-fitting trouser, the piece about twice the length of the leg, and which is, therefore, crowded up above the ankle into a number of folds, which accumulate the dust and dirt, if nothing worse. The Povindah women—strong, robust, and rosy from the bracing highlands of Khorasan—are dressed almost entirely in black, the Marwat women in blue veils and red-and-blue pyjamas, the Bannuchi women in black veils and red pyjamas, and the women of other tribes each in their own characteristic dress.
Even the style in which the hair is plaited and worn is sufficient not only to indicate what tribe the woman belongs to, but also whether she is married or unmarried. The Povindah women are very fond of blue tattoo marks over their foreheads, while all alike are proud of the row of silver coins which is worn hanging over the forehead. The Hindu women plaster the hair of the forehead and temples with a vermilion paste, not merely for cosmetic reasons, but because it is sacred to their god Vishnu. Then, the sturdy, sunburnt faces of the Wazir women tell tales of the hard, rough outdoor life they perforce lead, and contrast with the more delicate and gentler faces of the Hindus. Notwithstanding the careful way in which all except the hill women veil their faces from masculine gaze, they are very sensitive as to what is being thought of them, and sometimes an impudent man meets a woman who at once closely veils herself, and remarks to his companion: “Ah! her nose has been cut off!” This imputation, not only on her looks, but on her character, is usually too much for her, and she indignantly unveils her face, to cover it up again at once in shame when she finds it was only a ruse!
The hill women rarely, if ever, wash either their bodies or their clothes, and suffer much in the hot weather from skin troubles as a result. The Hindu women, on the other hand, who appear to aim at doing in everything the exact opposite to their Muhammadan sisters, bathe on the slightest pretext, summer and winter, and often women who carefully veil their faces when passing down the street bathe in the river and streams in a state of nudity, regardless of passers-by.
Most of the women have a great aversion to telling their own name, because it is considered a very indelicate thing for a married woman to mention her own name. It would be very difficult to make the necessary entries in the register were it not that there is usually some other woman with her, and etiquette does not prevent her friend telling what her name is. Otherwise she will usually mention the name of her eldest son, who may be a baby in arms, or may be a grown man—never, of course, of a daughter: she must only be mentioned in a whisper, and with an apology, if at all—saying: “I am the mother of Paira Lai,” or “I am the mother of Muhammad Ismaïl.”
Notwithstanding the state of servitude in which the women are kept and their crass ignorance and superstition, they have great power in their home circles, and mould the characters of the rising generations more even than the fathers.
This fact was brought home very forcibly to me one day in school. A subject had to be fixed on for the next meeting of the school debating society. Various subjects had been proposed and negatived. I suggested: “Who has most influence in moulding our characters—our fathers or our mothers?” “How could we have so one-sided a debate?” responded half a dozen boys at once. “Who could be found to argue for the fathers? Of course, our mothers have all the influence.” How important, then, for the future of the nation that something should be done to raise, and elevate, and purify the mothers of the nation!
A trans-frontier merchant—Left an orphan—Takes service—First contact with Christians—Interest aroused in an unexpected way—Assaulted—Baptism—A dangerous journey—Taken for a spy—A mother’s love—Falls among thieves—Choosing a wife—An Afghan becomes a foreign missionary—A responsible post—Saved by a grateful patient.
In the highlands between Kabul and Jelalabad is a secluded valley, girt with pine-clad hills, and down which a tributary of the Kabul River flows, fertilizing the rice crops which rise terrace above terrace on the slopes of the hills, and meandering in sparkling rivulets through the villages which lie nestling among orchards of peaches and apples, interspersed with fine walnut and plane trees. This is the Valley of Laghman, and, like the Kabulis, the men are great merchants, and travel about between Central Asia and Hindustan. One of these merchants took his young son, Jahan Khan, down with him to India on one of his journeys, in order that he might serve his apprenticeship in the trade of his father and see something of the wealthy cities and beautiful buildings of India, the fame of which had so often roused the boyish imaginations of the youth of Laghman, and made it the desire of their lives to travel down once to India and see for themselves its glories and its wealth.
Father and son travelled about for two years, buying and selling and taking contracts for road-making, at which the Afghans are great adepts, till one summer the father was stricken down with dysentery. The boy took him to a mission hospital, where for the first time he heard the story of the Gospel; but he had been always taught to look upon the English as infidels, and he used to stop his ears, lest any of the words spoken by the mission doctor might defile his faith. The disease grew worse, and the father paid some men to carry him to the shrine of a noted saint in the neighbourhood, called Sakhi Sarwar, which was renowned for its power in healing diseases. He made a votive offering, but still the malady grew worse, and at last one morning Jahan Khan found himself an orphan hundreds of miles away from home and relations, with no friends and no money to help him home. It is the great desire of an Afghan who dies away from his country to have his body embalmed and carried back, it may be, hundreds of miles on a camel, to be interred in his ancestral graveyard; but how could the poor boy, without money or friends, perform this duty? He had to be content with burying his father near the tomb of the famous saint, whose benign influence might be expected to serve him in good stead on the Day of the Resurrection.
Jahan Khan then took service with some Muhammadans of the country, and it was in this way that I first met him. Soon after my arrival in India I wanted a body-servant who knew no language but Pashtu, in order that I might the more easily gain proficiency in that language. The Muhammadan gentleman to whom I applied recommended me Jahan Khan; but Jahan Khan himself resented the idea of becoming servant to a Feringi and an infidel, which he thought would jeopardize his faith and his salvation. His Muhammadan patron laughed at his scruples, and quoted the Pashtu proverb, “The Feringis in their religion, and we in ours,” saying: “So long as you say your prayers regularly, and read the Quran, and keep the fast, and do not eat their food, lest by any chance there should be swine’s flesh in it, you have no reason to fear.”
For some time Jahan Khan served me well, but was evidently chary of too dangerous an intimacy. I had at that time an educated Afghan who was teaching me Pashtu, and he sometimes twitted Jahan Khan with his inability to read. This made the boy desirous of learning, and he persuaded the munshi to give him a lesson every day. When the alphabet had been mastered, the munshi was looking about for some simple book for reading-lessons, and he happened to take up a Pashtu Gospel which had been given him and laid aside, and from this Jahan Khan got his first reading-lessons. Before long the teaching of the book he was reading riveted his attention. It was so different from the old Muhammadan ideas with which he had been brought up. Instead of the law of “Eye for eye and tooth for tooth,” was the almost incredible command to forgive your enemies. His reading-lesson became the event of the day for him, not merely on account of the advance in learning, but because of the new ideas which were stirring in his mind. When the munshi observed that a change had come over him, he became alarmed, and told Jahan Khan that he must have no more reading-lessons at all, and that he had better give up all idea of learning to read. The seed was, however, already sown, and despite the adjurations of the munshi, Jahan Khan astonished me one day by coming to ask that I should continue the reading-lessons with him.
It was a delight to notice week by week the growth of the Spirit in the boy’s heart, but with all that there were many storms to brave and many seasons of darkness and unbelief, which threatened to crush the young seedling before it was yet able to weather the storm. The Afghan nature is hot-tempered and reckless, and he found it difficult to curb his spirit under the taunts of those around him. One afternoon, as I was sitting in my room, I heard shouts from outside—“O Daktar Sahib! O Daktar Sahib!”—and on running out found that two Muhammadans had seized him and were beating him, while they were trying to stifle his cries by twisting his turban round his neck. This was only the first of many times that the young convert was to bear the reproach of the Cross, and he had not yet learnt to take the vindictiveness of his Muhammadan compatriots with the forbearance which was a later growth of the Spirit. This assault, however, resulted in a parting of the ways, and from that time Jahan Khan publicly avowed himself a Christian. He had many a battle yet to fight—not so much with outward enemies as with his own Pathan nature—but the Spirit was to conquer.
Some time after his baptism Jahan Khan conceived a burning desire to revisit his childhood’s home. His widowed mother was still living there with his brothers and cousins, and he wanted to tell them of his new-found faith. We pointed out to him the great dangers that attended his enterprise. In that country, to become a pervert from Muhammadanism was a capital offence, and even the nearest relation could not be depended on to incur the odium and danger of protecting a relative who had brought disgrace on Islam. Jahan Khan could not, however, be dissuaded, and at last the preparations were made. Some copies of the Gospels in the Persian and Pashtu languages were sewn inside his trousers, a baggy Afghan garment, lending itself appropriately to this kind of secretion.
On reaching Jelalabad, some of the Afghan police arrested him on suspicion of being a spy of the ex-Amir, Y’akub Khan, and he was in imminent danger of discovery. A few rupees in the hands of the not too conscientious officials saved the situation, and after sundry other vicissitudes he reached his home. His mother and brothers received him with every token of delight, and for some days there were great rejoicings. Then came the time when he had to make known his change of faith. At first, when the villagers missed him from the public prayers in the mosque, they thought it was merely the weariness of the journey; but as the days passed by, and he still did not appear, it became necessary to give explanations. No sooner was it known that he was a Christian than the villagers clamoured for his life. An uncle of his, however, who was himself a Mullah, managed to appease them on condition that he should leave the country at once; and that night there were great weepings in his house, for his mother felt that she was not only going to lose her newly returned son, but that he had sold his soul to the devil and disgraced her whole family. Still, however, mother’s love conquered, and she prepared him his food for the journey, and parted with many embraces. “O that you should have become a Feringi! Woe is me, but still you are my son!” He left the books with some Mullahs there, who, though they would have been afraid to accept them openly, or let it be known that they were in the possession of such heretical literature, were nevertheless actuated by curiosity to hide the books away, that they might see, at some quiet opportunity, what the teaching of the book of the Christians was.
Jahan Khan’s dangers were not yet, however, over. Travellers from Kabul to India could not venture through the passes in small parties, but joined one of those enormous caravans which pass twice weekly through the Khaiber Pass. In these caravans, besides the honest trader and bona-fide traveller, there are usually some unscrupulous robbers, who try by trickery or by force to get the property of their fellow-travellers. A common method with them is some evening, after the day’s journey is over, to propose a convivial party. “We have just slain a kid,” they will say to the unsuspecting traveller, “and we have cooked the most delicious soup. Will you come and share it?” But in the soup they have mixed a quantity of a poisonous herb, which causes insensibility, or it may be madness, in those who partake of it. Whether they knew of Jahan Khan’s secret, or whether they thought that he might be carrying money with him, I cannot say; but he, all unsuspectingly, joined in one of these evening feasts, and remembered nothing more until, some days later, the caravan entered Peshawur. With a great effort he struggled up to the mission bungalow, but it was some days before he was able to undertake the journey to Bannu, and still longer before he regained his previous health.
His visit to his home had not been without fruit, and about a year later a brother and two cousins journeyed down from Laghman to Bannu, and while there one at least was brought to ask for Christian baptism, and is to this day working in one of our frontier medical missions. The others placed themselves under instruction, but they could not stand the heat of the Indian summer, and became so homesick for their mountain village that they returned there.
Among the thousand and one duties that fall to the lot of a frontier missionary is that of becoming a matchmaker to some of the converts. It may be that in one station a number of young men are brought into the Christian fold where there is no corresponding women’s work, whereby they might be enabled to set up house for themselves, while it would be courting many dangers to expect them to live for an indefinite period in a state of single blessedness. Thus it came about that I undertook a journey with Jahan Khan down to India, and in one of the zenana missions there we found a girl who was to become his helpmeet through life. She came of one of those Afghan families which had long been domiciled in British India, and had been brought to the Christian faith through the devoted efforts of some lady missionary. She had also received the training of a compounder and midwife from the lady doctor where she had been converted, and so was able to be, not only a light to his home, but also an efficient helper in the work of the mission.
Some time after the happy pair had made their home in Bannu, and after on three successive occasions the arrival of a young Afghan had brought still more happiness into their married life, a letter came from a devoted missionary working in a difficult outpost in the Persian Gulf. The letter set forth how the missionary had been left almost without a helper in one of the most difficult and fanatical fields of missionary effort among Muhammadans, and ended by an appeal for some native worker to come out and help. It was difficult to resist such an appeal, and though loth to lose the services of Jahan Khan even for a time, one felt that one had no worker more eminently suited for stepping into the breach. The Afghan makes an excellent pioneer. His pride of race and self-reliance enable him to work in an isolated and difficult field, where a convert from the plains of India would quickly lose heart. So it came about, in a few weeks’ time, that we had a farewell meeting in Bannu for bidding God-speed to Jahan Khan and family in their new sphere of missionary labour; and we felt what a privilege it was, for not only had we seen the first-fruits of the harvest of Afghanistan, but had also seen an Afghan convert going out as a missionary to what was as much a foreign country for him as India is for us. For some time he shared with the devoted American missionaries the vicissitudes of work among the fanatical Arabs of Bahrain, and here his eldest daughter was taken from him and laid to rest in the little Christian cemetery. When some time later he could be spared to return to Bannu, we put him to work in the mission hospital, where he was not only able to influence the numerous Afghans who every week came from over the border as patients, but was able also to acquire great proficiency in medical and surgical practice.
Near Shinkiari, Hazara District
Some years after this we had occasion to open fresh work in a village—Kharrak—in the midst of the Pathan population of the Kohat district, and when we were in need of a thoroughly reliable man to place in this isolated outpost, we found no one better suited than Jahan Khan. Kharrak is a chief salt mart in the Kohat districts, and in the centre of a fertile valley, which, from the amount of grain it produces, has been called the “Granary of the Khattaks.” Hard by are salt-quarries, which employ a good number of labourers, and attract merchants with their caravans from distant parts. I first visited this town in 1895, in company with Jahan Khan, and found a rough and fanatical population, who refused to listen to our message, and even rejected our medical aid. As years passed by many of them had occasion to become patients in the Bannu Mission Hospital, and they carried back good accounts to their fellow-townsmen of the benefits they had received and the sympathy that had been displayed towards them, with the result that before long our visits were welcomed, we were able to preach in their bazaars, and eventually they asked us to open permanent work there, gave us a suitable site close to the town, and raised subscriptions to help in the building.
When first Jahan Khan and his devoted wife started work at Kharrak, they had a great deal of prejudice and antagonism to overcome, owing to their being converts from Muhammadanism; but, by patience and consistency of life, by uniform kindness to all the sick and needy who came for their aid, they gradually lived it down. I have now no greater pleasure in my work than to visit Kharrak, and to see these two faithful workers in their hospital, surrounded by the sick and needy, telling them of the precious sacrifice of Christ—the very Muhammadans who were once, in their fanaticism, thirsting for his blood, now quietly sitting round and listening attentively while he recounts, day by day, the story of the Cross. I will give an instance to show how a consistent Christian life can influence even such wild, ferocious Pathans as those of Kharrak. Some fanatical Muhammadans, irritated at the preaching of the Gospel in their town, hired a professional assassin to come to shoot Jahan Khan; but the man happened to be one who had been indebted to the young doctor for recovery from a severe illness, in which he had, by his unremitting attention, been the means of saving his life. When he found who it was he was required to kill, he returned the money and informed Jahan Khan, that he might be on his guard. Jahan Khan called for the men who had hired the assassin, expostulated with them for their ingratitude for the benefits they had received in the hospital, and, when they expressed their contrition, freely forgave them, and now they are his staunch partisans.