Adventure stories; Asia, Central -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Love stories; Science fiction
By a quarter to five, we had everything loaded up save the food
_yakhdans_, the tent, and my valise, which Aryenis was using. We cast
anxious eyes on the tent as time went on, but it was just on five when
she emerged and came over to us, rather shyly, I thought. I got up
(Forsyth, seeing her coming, had gone to get Sadiq to strike the tent)
and said good-morning, inquiring after her shoulder and arms.
“My arms are all right now, and my shoulder’s not hurting much,” she
said, and asked after my face.
Being a woman, she had done a lot with the miscellaneous outfit,
mostly mine, which Forsyth had presented to her. I noticed that, as he
prophesied, the silk shirt _was_ inside the sweater, and, being a mere
man, wished it was the other way about. You see, the sweater was mine.
I felt sorry for her having to make her appearance like this, with my
baggy grey trousers tucked into a pair of very old stockings ending in
my tennis-shoes, about four sizes too big. She had swathed her hair in
a big silk handkerchief, rather moth-eaten, but an old treasure which
had outlasted me many _dhobis_.
I made her put on my _poshtin_, which came right down to her feet, and
I think she was glad of the warmth. Then I offered her Wrexham’s valise
to sit on, and sat down on one of the _yakhdans_. She looked a great
deal better than the night before, though still a bit worn. I expect
she was feeling the strain of all she’d been through.
Firoz appeared with a teapot, some _chupattis_, and a dish of salmon,
the kind that grows in tins. As he put them down, he greeted Aryenis
with, “Salaam, Miss Sahib. _Ab achhe hain?_” It was noticeable the way
the men treated her from the very beginning as a person of consequence.
I explained that he was asking if she was feeling better, and she
smiled at him and thanked him in Greek. Doubtless Payindah had told him
how brave she had been, and they were both her very devoted slaves ever
afterwards.
I poured out some tea and helped her to some fish. I noticed that knife
and spoon were familiar enough, but that the fork rather defeated her,
and could see that she was watching carefully to see what I did with
mine.
“Did you sleep last night, Harilek? You must have been cold out in the
wind.”
“Pretty well, thanks. And you?”
“More than well, as I ought to have, since you have given me your
tent and all your things. And this morning when the doctor brought me
the clothes, he gave me the most wonderful mirror I have ever seen. I
thought I was looking at a real person, not a mirror, when I looked in
it. It was like the glass round the lamp, but I’ve never seen glass
that you can see through before. Ours is thick and coloured, and we
only make plates and beads of it.”
“What do you do for mirrors, then?”
“Metal. I’ve got two of bronze, but they are not nearly as good as your
glass ones. Yours must be a wonderful country if three men travelling
on a journey in the desert have all sorts of things like that with
them.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account