At the Court of the Amîr: A NarrativeGray, John Alfred
History
At the Court of the Amîr: A Narrative
Gray, John Alfred
'Abd al-Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan, -1901; Afghanistan -- History
On Tuesday, at ten a.m., we reached Kamard or Shush-Bûrjah, and my tent
was put up in an orchard. I lay under a walnut-tree all day and saw
patients. We stayed here three days, and His Highness held a Durbar. I
went, and His Highness told me about the source of a river there: how
it came from a tunnel at the foot of the mountain, and the water was
hot; and how it rendered the valley warm in the winter. I had lunch
with His Highness, and then went to attend to a man with a broken thigh.
On the Friday, we started again and crossed that awful mountain, the
“Tooth-breaker,” Dandan Shikan. I found that the road had been greatly
improved since I was last there. As it was, however, there were a great
many accidents. We went on to Saighan, and they brought one old fellow
of seventy to me, the uncle of the Chief Secretary, or Dabier-ul-Mulk.
His horse had slipped sideways on Dandan Shikan, and he had broken
his right arm just below the shoulder and his right thigh just above
the knee. I put him up in splints, and he was carried the rest of the
journey in a sort of cradle slung on a camel; another injured man being
on the other side. The old man quite recovered.
We camped one day at Akrab-abad, and though it was the middle of July,
the night was excessively cold. The winter there is bitter, hence the
name--Akrab meaning a scorpion. It is about ten thousand feet above the
sea.
We reached the western extremity of the Bamian Valley, and His
Highness’s chief cook had a row with mine. Between the two I received
some beef-tea that was sour. The Hakim Abdur Rashid, having been
sent by His Highness to enquire how I was, the Armenian, with much
vigour and energy, detailed the iniquities of the cooks. The matter
was reported to His Highness: he sent for the cooks and informed
them that if I did not recover he would blow them to pieces from the
cannon’s mouth. My cook bolted before we reached Kabul. I suppose his
“prognosis” of the case was unsatisfactory. I don’t know where he went
to, and I did not see him again till I was better.
[Sidenote: The Camp of the Camels.]
We rode through the Bamian Valley and passed the colossal Figures,
the Caves, the ancient Cities, and the modern fortified Villages. It
was very beautiful, and I really fancied I was better. There were
cornfields, beanfields, grass, trees, and river.
The soldiers camped at the end of the valley, beyond Zohak-i-Marhan,
where it is narrow. There were some camels camped here also, and
their weird moans and bubbling cries echoing back from the rocks were
horrible to hear. They sounded like the hopeless cries of the damned:
at least, I thought so--I was evidently morbid.
Here a soldier of the Amîr’s bodyguard quarrelled with a comrade and
killed him. I don’t know if he were hanged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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