Hussein. Patrick O’Brian

them if Hussein could supply the rest: he did, by clearing his hoard right out and by pawning Amir Khan’s turquoise-studded ankus, which he had hidden when the bunnia came to take possession of Amir Khan’s other things, so that when his cousin came out of prison he was able to go straight to Sialkot, where his brothers’ friend was waiting.

      He parted very affectionately from Hussein, promising by his hope of Paradise to repay him, and borrowing another five rupees just before he went.

      When he was gone Hussein felt more lonely than he had ever been before, and he turned still more for companionship to Jehangir.

      However, he had made a good many friends among the younger mahouts, many of whom had been children with him, so he was not lonely, except when he wanted to be, as he did sometimes; for he had rather a powerful imagination, and there were times when he loved to be by himself, or with Jehangir, filled with a gentle, exquisite pity for himself, for no very obvious reason. When he felt like this he could sometimes go out beyond the elephant lines into the sand dunes, where he would thump on a tom-tom for hours at a time, singing that melancholy song they sing in Peshawar, of which the refrain goes ‘Drai jarra yow dee.’

      Now the chief of the mahouts had, among other things, a daughter. This daughter was as beautiful as a spotted sand-quail: her name was Sashiya.

      Most of the younger mahouts were enamoured of her, and she had been betrothed as a child to a certain insignificant young man, who kept accounts.

      Hussein’s friend, Kadir Baksh, was particularly loud in his praises of her beauty: one day Hussein asked him whether she could be seen in any particular place.

      ‘Yes,’ said Kadir Baksh; ‘every Friday she and other of Ghulam Haider’s anderun go to the cemetery. They sometimes stay to play with the children among the mounds where there are no graves. I have often hidden with others among the trees, and I have seen her veil blown aside no less than three times.’

      ‘Then', said Hussein, ‘to-morrow we will go to the cemetery.’

      They went and concealed themselves in a bush among the trees at the deserted end of the cemetery. For some time they waited: Hussein began to get impatient when ants began walking over them, but Kadir Baksh assured them that it would be worth it.

      At length some people appeared among the tombs; they walked slowly towards the green mounds where there were no graves, and Hussein saw that they were women, with a few children among them. They all wore chudders, but Kadir Baksh pointed out one who wandered some way to the left of the main group. ‘That is she,’ he whispered.

      ‘She walks like a gazelle,’ said Hussein.

      ‘But a gazelle has four feet.’

      ‘Quite.’

      Sashiya hopped from one mound to another. ‘It is too hot for a veil,’ she said, taking off her chudder. Most of the others took theirs off, for they had no idea that they were watched.

      Sashiya sat on the top of a little green mound, hugging her knees. Hussein felt a shock go through him, as if he had swallowed a large piece of ice.

      His mouth opened and he protruded his head from the bush. One of the women saw him and in a moment they were all gone.

      Hussein turned to find Kadir Baksh regarding him coldly. ‘I wish I had never told you about her,’ said Kadir Baksh.

      They went home without more words, and parted in silence, each wrapped up in his own thoughts. Next week they each went separately to watch Sashiya, but she did not come. They met on the way back and quarrelled, each being in a bad temper. The house of the chief of the mahouts was in Haiderabad: he lived with his brother, a merchant in the town, who had built a large house with a garden on the roof.

      The women of the anderun used to spend most of the day up there during the hot weather, so that Hussein, coming to see Ibrahim, the chief of the mahouts, about a matter to do with the elephants, saw Sashiya leaning over the edge. She was gone in a moment, but he had recognised her.

      The same evening he spoke with an ancient woman who sold herbs nearby. She said that she had often been into the house to see the womenfolk. She told him about the garden on the roof, but she could not remember whether there was another roof near to it or not, until Hussein gave her a rupee, and then she recalled a tree that was growing in the courtyard of a neighbouring house: this tree, she said, hung over the parapet of the roof garden. Furthermore, she said that she could get messages into the house, as her sister was one of the servants; so Hussein sent several cardamom seeds and certain flowers, which being interpreted showed that he would be on the roof garden an hour after sunset.

      He spent the rest of the day beautifying himself, and then he went into the city.

      The courtyard where there grew the convenient tree was surrounded by a low wall. There had formerly been stables leaning against the wall, but these had fallen into disuse: indeed the whole place was practically deserted, as it had been bought up as a speculation by a merchant who had been unable to let it, since it was commonly reputed to be the habitation of a peculiarly malignant ghost.

      Hussein, wrapped in a sombre cloak, got over the wall and climbed into the lower branches of the tree. The night was pitch dark and there was no moon, so he went up the tree slowly.

      Just as he was hauling himself up on to the branch that overhung the roof, he bumped into a large soft body crowding against the trunk. It was Kadir Baksh on the same errand. ‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered.

      Hussein was rather at a loss to reply to this, so he grappled with Kadir Baksh, meaning to throw him off the tree. They creaked to and fro on the swaying branch, cursing each other in fierce whispers.

      Sashiya watched them interestedly from the parapet. She had often seen her lovers fighting in the courtyard below, but never before in the tree. Hussein wrenched Kadir Baksh loose from the trunk, and pushed him over, but the other seized Hussein’s leg as he fell. They hit the ground together with a muffled thump; they rolled over twice; Hussein came out on top and he seized Kadir Baksh by the throat.

      ‘Go away,’ he whispered, ‘or I will kill you.’

      ‘How can I go away when you hold me by the throat?’

      ‘Swear by the Prophet that you will go if I release you.’ Kadir Baksh swore in a choked voice. Then he got up, feeling his neck tenderly, and disappeared over the wall. Hussein scaled the tree again: he found Sashiya sitting on the parapet.

      ‘Well?’ she said.

      ‘I have come,’ replied Hussein.

      ‘So I see.’

      Hussein could hardly make any reply to this, so he came creeping along the branch, and he would have dropped on to the roof, but she said:

      ‘You had better stay where you are in case anyone should come, and then you could duck under the parapet.’

      Hussein felt quite nonplussed: he had expected something entirely different. He hardly knew just what he had anticipated, but he felt that this was unconventional and not at all the right thing.

      ‘I have composed a song,’ he said, ‘about your eyebrows.’

      ‘Well, you can’t sing it now,’ replied Sashiya, ‘or you will wake everybody up. But what is there that is so remarkable about my eyebrows that you should make a song?’

      ‘They are like thin black bows bent in perfect symmetry above pools of unfathomable depth,’ said Hussein, quoting from his song, which he had taken from the works of Hafiz.

      ‘Aha?’ she said. Hussein felt that this was more like the real thing, and he went on.

      After the third verse he said, ‘Even the finest poetry cannot be recited with any effect in a tree, you know, let alone such poor doggerel as I can turn out.’

      ‘Well, if you come here you must promise not to make the least sound, or I don’t know what will happen to me if that cat Fatima comes up …’

      ‘On