At Peshawur I bought the horses and grapes, and the almonds and dried
fruits, that the reason of my wanderings might be open to the
Government, and that there might be no hindrance upon the road. But when
I came to Nowshera he was gone, and I knew not where to go. I stayed one
day at Nowshera, and in the night a Voice spoke in my ears as I slept
among the horses. All night it flew round my head and would not cease
from whispering. I was upon my belly, sleeping as the Devils sleep, and
it may have been that the Voice was the voice of a Devil. It said: “Go
south, and thou shalt come upon Daoud Shah.” Listen, my brother and
chiefest among friends—listen! Is the tale a long one? Think how it was
long to me. I have trodden every league of the road from Pubbi to this
place; and from Nowshera my guide was only the Voice and the lust of
vengeance.
To the Uttock I went, but that was no hindrance to me. Ho! Ho! A man may
turn the word twice, even in his trouble. The Uttock was no _uttock_
[obstacle] to me; and I heard the Voice above the noise of the waters
beating on the big rock, saying: “Go to the right.” So I went to
Pindigheb, and in those days my sleep was taken from me utterly, and the
head of the woman of the Abazai was before me night and day, even as it
had fallen between my feet. _Dray wara yow dee! Dray wara yow dee!_
Fire, ashes, and my couch, all three are one—all three are one!
Now I was far from the winter path of the dealers who had gone to
Sialkot and so south by the rail and the Big Road to the line of
cantonments; but there was a Sahib in camp at Pindigheb who bought from
me a white mare at a good price, and told me that one Daoud Shah had
passed to Shahpur with horses. Then I saw that the warning of the Voice
was true, and made swift to come to the Salt Hills. The Jhelum was in
flood, but I could not wait, and, in the crossing, a bay stallion was
washed down and drowned. Herein was God hard to me—not in respect of the
beast, of that I had no care—but in this snatching. While I was upon the
right bank urging the horses into the water, Daoud Shah was upon the
left; for—_Alghias! Alghias!_—the hoofs of my mare scattered the hot
ashes of his fires when we came up the hither bank in the light of
morning. But he had fled. His feet were made swift by the terror of
Death. And I went south from Shahpur as the kite flies. I dared not turn
aside, lest I should miss my vengeance—which is my right. From Shahpur I
skirted by the Jhelum, for I thought that he would avoid the Desert of
the Rechna. But, presently, at Sahiwal, I turned away upon the road to
Jhang, Samundri, and Gugera, till, upon a night, the mottled mare
breasted the fence of the rail that runs to Montgomery. And that place
was Okara, and the head of the woman of the Abazai lay upon the sand
between my feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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