Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier
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Title: Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier
Author: T. L. Pennell
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Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier
A Record of Sixteen Years' Close Intercourse
with the Natives of the Indian Marches
By
T. L. Pennell, M.D., B.Sc., F.R.C.S.
With an introduction by
Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, V.C., K.G.
And with 37 Illustrations & 2 Maps
Second Edition
London
Seeley & Co. Limited
38 Great Russell Street
1909
TO
MY MOTHER,
TO THE
INSPIRATION OF WHOSE LIFE AND TEACHING
I OWE MORE THAN
I CAN REALIZE OR RECORD
INTRODUCTION
This book is a valuable record of sixteen years' good work by an
officer--a medical missionary--in charge of a medical mission station
at Bannu, on the North-West Frontier of India.
Although many accounts have been written descriptive of the wild
tribes on this border, there was still plenty of room for Dr. Pennell's
modestly-related narrative. Previous writers--e.g., Paget and Mason,
Holdich, Oliver, Warburton, Elsmie, and many others--have dealt
with the expeditions that have taken place from time to time against
the turbulent occupants of the trans-Indus mountains, and with the
military problems and possibilities of the difficult regions which
they inhabit. But Dr. Pennell's story is not concerned with the clash
of arms. His mission has been to preach, to heal, and to save; and
in his long and intimate intercourse with the tribesmen, as recounted
in these pages, he throws many new and interesting sidelights on the
domestic and social, as well as on the moral and religious, aspects
of their lives and characters.
During a long career in India I myself have seen and heard a good
deal about these medical missions, and I can testify to their doing
excellent and useful work, and that they are valuable and humanizing
factors and moral aids well worthy of all encouragement and support.
No one can read Dr. Pennell's experiences without feeling that the
man who is a physician and able to heal the body, in addition to
being a preacher who can "minister to a mind diseased" as well as to
spiritual needs, wields an influence which is not possessed by him
who is a missionary only.
As the author himself writes: "The doctor finds his sphere
everywhere, and his hands are full of work as soon as he arrives
(at his station). He is able to overcome suspicion and prejudice,
and his kindly aid and sympathetic treatment disarm opposition,
while his life is a better setting forth of Christianity than his
words. There is a door everywhere which can be opened by love and
sympathy and practical service, and no one is more in a position to
have a key for every door than a doctor."
These few words fairly sum up the situation, and I fully agree with
the view they express.
On such a wild frontier as that on the North-West Border of India the
life of a doctor-missionary is beset with many perils. A perusal of
Dr. Pennell's most interesting story shows that he has had his share
of them, and that in the earnest and zealous discharge of his duties
he has faced them bravely and cheerfully. I cordially recommend his
book to all readers, and my earnest hope is that medical missions
will continue to flourish.
ROBERTS, F.M.
December 19, 1908.
PREFACE
After sixteen years of close contact with the Afghans and Pathans
of our North-West Frontier in India, I was asked to commit some
of my experiences to paper. The present book is the result. I have
used the Government system of transliteration in vernacular names
and expressions, and I beg the reader to bestow a few minutes'
consideration on the table of corresponding sounds and letters given
on p. xvi, as it is painful to hear the way in which Englishmen,
who, with their wide imperial interests, should be better informed,
mispronounce common Indian words and names of places which are in
constant use nowadays in England as much as abroad.
Nothing is recorded which has not been enacted in my own experience
or in that of some trustworthy friend. In Chapters XIII. and XIV. it
would have been unwise to give the actual names, so I have put the
experience of several such cases together into one connected story,
which, while concealing the identity of the actors, may also make the
narrative more interesting to the reader; every fact recorded, however,
happened under my own eyes. In Chapter XXII., the night adventure of
Chikki, when he met an English officer in disguise, was related by
him to me of another member of his profession, and not of himself.
I wish to thank the Church Missionary Society for allowing me
to reproduce some articles which have already appeared in their
publications, notably Chapter XX. and part of Chapter IV. I tender
my best thanks to Major Wilkinson, I.M.S., Major Watson, H. Bolton,
Esq., I.C.S., and Colonel S. Baker, for some of the photographs which
have been here reproduced; and to Dr. J. Cropper for his kindness in
reading the proofs.
We are at present engaged in building a branch dispensary at Thal,
a place on the extreme border mentioned several times in the text,
where the medical mission will have a profound influence on the
trans-border tribes, as well as on those in British India. This will
be known as the "Lord Roberts Hospital," as that place was at one
time of the 1879-80 campaign the headquarters of his column.
The Author's profits on the sale of this book will be entirely
devoted to the building of the hospital, and carrying on of the
medical mission work at Thal.
T. L. PENNELL.
P. and O. s.s. "China,"
Gulf of Suez,
September 24, 1908.
CONTENTS
Chapter I
The Afghan Character
Pages
Paradoxical--Ideas of honour--Blood-feuds--A sister's revenge--The
story of an outlaw--Taken by assault--A jirgah and its unexpected
termination--Bluff--An attempt at kidnapping--Hospitality--A midnight
meal--An ungrateful patient--A robber's death--An Afghan dance--A
village warfare--An officer's escape--Cousins 17-30
Chapter II
Afghan Traditions
Israelitish origin of the Afghans--Jewish practices--Shepherd
tradition of the Wazirs--Afridis and their saint--The zyarat, or
shrine--Graveyards--Custom of burial--Graves of holy men--Charms and
amulets--The medical practice of a faqir--Native remedies--First aid
to the wounded--Purges and blood-letting--Tooth extraction--Smallpox
31-43
Chapter III
Border Warriors
Peiwar Kotal--The Kurram Valley--The Bannu Oasis--Independent
tribes--The Durand line--The indispensable Hindu--A lawsuit and its
sequel--A Hindu outwits a Muhammadan--The scope of the missionary
44-53
Chapter IV
A Frontier Valley
Description of the Kurram Valley--Shiahs and Sunnis--Favourable
reception of Christianity--Independent areas--A candid
reply--Proverbial disunion of the Afghans--The two policies--Sir
Robert Sandeman--Lord Curzon creates the North-West Frontier
Province--Frontier wars--The vicious circle--Two flaws the natives
see in British rule: the usurer, delayed justice--Personal influence
54-67
Chapter V
The Christian's Revenge
Police posts versus dispensaries--The poisoning scare--A native
doctor's influence--Wazir marauders spare the mission hospital--A
terrible revenge--The Conolly bed--A political mission--A treacherous
King--Imprisonment in Bukhara--The Prayer-Book--Martyrdom--The
sequel--Influence of the mission hospital--The medical missionary's
passport 68-77
Chapter VI
A Day in the Wards
The truce of suffering--A patient's request--Typical cases--A
painful journey--The biter bit--The condition of amputation--"I am
a better shot than he is"--The son's life or revenge--The hunter's
adventure--A nephew's devotion--A miserly patient--An enemy converted
into a friend--The doctor's welcome 78-88
Chapter VII
From Morning to Night
First duties--Calls for the doctor--Some of the
out-patients--Importunate blind--School classes--Operation
cases--Untimely visitors--Recreation--Cases to decide 89-97
Chapter VIII
The Itinerant Missionary
The medical missionary's advantage--How to know the people--The
real India--God's guest-house--The reception of the guest--Oriental
customs--Pitfalls for the unwary--The Mullah and the Padre--Afghan
logic--A patient's welcome--The Mullah conciliated--A rough
journey--Among thieves--A swimming adventure--Friends or enemies?
--Work in camp--Rest at last 98-113
Chapter IX
Afghan Mullahs
No priesthood in Islam--Yet the Mullahs ubiquitous--Their great
influence--Theological refinements--The power of a charm--Bazaar
disputations--A friend in need--A frontier Pope--In a Militia post--A
long ride--A local Canterbury--An enemy becomes a friend--The ghazi
fanatic--An outrage on an English officer 114-125
Chapter X
A Tale of a Talib
Early days--The theological curriculum--Visit to Bannu--A public
discussion--New ideas--The forbearance of a native Christian--First
acquaintance with Christians--First confession--A lost love--A stern
chase--The lost sheep recovered--Bringing his teacher--The Mullah
converted--Excommunication--Faithful unto death--Fresh temptations--A
vain search--A night quest--The Mullahs circumvented--Dark days--Hope
ever 126-139
Chapter XI
School-Work
Different views of educational work--The changed attitude of the
Mullahs--His Majesty the Amir and education--Dangers of secular
education--The mission hostel--India emphatically religious--Indian
schoolboys contrasted with English schoolboys--School and
marriage--Advantage of personal contact--Uses of a swimming-tank--An
unpromising scholar--Unwelcome discipline--A ward of court--Morning
prayers--An Afghan University--A cricket-match--An exciting
finish--A sad sequel--An officer's funeral--A contrast--Just in
time 140-152
Chapter XII
An Afghan Football Team
Native sport--Tent-pegging--A novel game--A football tournament--A
victory for Bannu--Increasing popularity of English games--A tour
through India--Football under difficulties--Welcome at Hyderabad--An
unexpected defeat--Matches at Bombay and Karachi--Riots in Calcutta--An
unprovoked assault--The Calcutta police-court--Reparation--Home
again 153-167
Chapter XIII
'Alam Gul's Choice
A farmer and his two sons--Learning the Quran--A village school--At
work and at play--The visit of the Inspector--Pros and cons of
the mission school from a native standpoint--Admission to Bannu
School--New associations--In danger of losing heaven--First night in
the boarding-house--A boy's dilemma 168-178
Chapter XIV
'Alam Gul's Choice (continued)
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 179-189
Chapter XV
Afghan Women
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 190-201
Chapter XVI
The Story of a Convert
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
202-210
Chapter XVII
The Hindu Ascetics
The Hindu Sadhus more than two thousand years ago much as
to-day--Muhammadan faqirs much more recent--The Indian ideal--This
presents a difficulty to the missionary--Becoming a Sadhu--An
Afghan disciple--Initiation and equipment--Hardwar the Holy--A
religious settlement--Natural beauties of the locality--Only man
is vile--Individualism versus altruism--The Water God--Wanton
monkeys--Tendency to make anything unusual an object of worship--A
Brahman fellow-traveller--A night in a temple--Waking the gods--A
Hindu sacrament--A religious Bedlam--A ward for imbeciles--Religious
delusions--"All humbugs"--Yogis and hypnotism--Voluntary maniacs--The
daily meal--Feeding, flesh, fish, and food 211-226
Chapter XVIII
Sadhus and Faqirs
Buried gold--Power of sympathy--A neglected field--A Sadhu converted
to Christianity--His experiences--Causes of the development of the
ascetic idea in India--More unworthy motives common at the present
time--The Prime Minister of a State becomes a recluse--A cavalry
officer Sadhu--Dedicated from birth--Experiences of a young Sadhu--An
unpleasant bedfellow--Honest toil--Orders of Muhammadan ascetics--Their
characteristics--A faqir's curse--Women and faqirs--Muhammadan faqirs
usually unorthodox--Sufistic tendencies--Habits of inebriation--The
sanctity and powers of a faqir's grave 227-240
Chapter XIX
My Life as a Mendicant
Dependent on the charitable--An incident on the bridge over the Jhelum
River--A rebuff on the feast-day--An Indian railway-station--A
churlish Muhammadan--Helped by a soldier--A partner in the
concern--A friendly native Christian--The prophet of Qadian--A
new Muhammadan development--Crossing the Beas River--Reception
in a Sikh village--Recognized by His Majesty Yakub Khan, late
Amir--Allahabad--Encounter with a Brahman at Bombay--Landing
at Karachi--Value of native dress--Relation to natives--Need
of sympathy--The effect of clothes--Disabilities in railway
travelling--English manners--Reception of visitors 241-256
Chapter XX
A Frontier Episode
A merchant caravan in the Tochi Pass--Manak Khan--A sudden
onslaught--First aid--Native remedies--A desperate case--A last
resort--The Feringi doctor--Setting out on the journey--Arrival
at Bannu--Refuses amputation--Returns to Afghanistan--His wife and
children frightened away 257-266
Chapter XXI
Frontier Campaigning
The Pathan warrior--A Christian native officer--A secret
mission--A victim of treachery--A soldier convert--Influence
of a Christian officer--Crude ideas and strange motives of
Pathan soldiers--Camaraderie in frontier regiments--Example
of sympathy between students of different religions in mission
school--A famous Sikh regiment--Sikh soldiers and religion--Fort
Lockhart--Saraghari--The last man--A rifle thief--Caught red-handed
267-276
Chapter XXII
Chikki, The Freebooter
The mountains of Tirah--Work as a miller's labourer--Joins
fortune with a thief--A night raid--The value of a disguise--The
thief caught--The cattle "lifter"--Murder by proxy--The price
of blood--Tribal factions--Becomes chieftain of the tribe--The
zenith of power--Characteristics--Precautionary measures--Journey to
Chinarak--A remarkable fort--A curious congregation--Punctiliousness
in prayers--Changed attitude--Refrained from hostilities--Meets his
death 277-286
Chapter XXIII
Rough Diamonds
A novel inquirer--Attends the bazaar preaching--Attacked
by his countrymen--In the police-station--Before the
English magistrate--Declares he is a Christian--Arrival
of his mother--Tied up in his village--Escape--Takes
refuge in the hills--A murder case--Circumstantial
evidence--Condemned--A last struggle for liberty--Qazi Abdul
Karim--His origin--Eccentricities--Enthusiasm--Crosses the
frontier--Captured--Confesses his faith--Torture--Martyrdom
287-295
Chapter XXIV
Deductions
Number of converts not a reliable estimate of mission work--Spurious
converts versus indigenous Christianity--Latitude should be allowed
to the Indian Church--We should introduce Christ to India rather
than Occidental Christianity--Christianizing sects among Hindus and
Muhammadans--Missionary work not restricted to missionaries--Influence
of the best of Hindu and Muhammadan thought should be welcomed--The
conversion of the nation requires our attention more than that
of the individual--Christian Friars adapted to modern missions--A
true representation of Christ to India--Misconceptions that must be
removed 296-304
Chapter XXV
A Forward Policy
Frontier medical missions--Their value as outposts--Ancient
Christianity in Central Asia--Kafiristan: a lost opportunity of the
Christian Church--Forcible conversion to Islam--Fields for missionary
enterprise beyond the North-West Frontier--The first missionaries
should be medical men--An example of the power of a medical mission
to overcome opposition--The need for branch dispensaries--Scheme of
advance--Needs 305-312
Glossary 314-318
Index 319-324
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Dr. Pennell Travelling as a Sadhu Frontispiece
A Khattak Sword-Dancer 28
A Zyarat or Shrine on the Takht-i-Suliman 34
A Group of Lepers at a Zyarat or Shrine in Hazara 36
The Khaiber Pass. A Village in the Pass 46
A Cavalry Shutur-sowar, or Camel-rider 46
Types of Frontier Tribesmen 50
Bannu Villagers 56
The Khaiber Pass. Khaiber Rifle Sepoy on the Watch 62
The Result of a Blood-Feud 82
A Transborder Afghan bringing his Family to the Hospital 82
Bannu Mission. A Group of Patients 94
A Group of Out-patients at the Mission Hospital 94
Travelling by Riding Camel 100
Itineration by Means of Ekkas and Mules 100
Ferrying across the River Indus 112
Travelling down the Indus on a "Kik" 112
Mahsud Labourers at Work in Bannu Cantonment 148
Bannu Mission. A Group of Students 148
A Football Match at Bannu 154
The Bannu Football Team 154
The Chief Bazaar, Peshawur City 156
The Bazaar in Peshawur City 156
The Indus in Flood-time 158
A Ferryboat for the Mail on the Indus River 158
A Modern "Black Hole" 164
Boy and Girl grazing Buffaloes 170
Women carrying Waterpots 196
Women going for water at Shimvah 198
Water-carrying at Shimvah 198
Near Shinkiari, Hazara District 208
A Muhammadan Faqir 212
Dr. Pennell 244
Flour Mills near Shinkiari 278
Map of the North-West Frontier Province 313
Map of the North-West Frontier of India 318
TABLE OF THE CHIEF SOUNDS REPRESENTED IN THE
GOVERNMENT SYSTEM OF TRANSLITERATION
a = short u, as in "bun."
á = broad a, as in "mast."
i = short i, as in "bin."
í = ee, as in "oblique."
e = a, as in "male."
o = long o, as in "note."
u = short oo, as in "foot."
ú = long oo, as in "boot."
q = guttural k.
kh = ch, as in "loch."
gh = guttural r, not used in English.
' = the Arabic letter 'ain, a guttural not used in English.
PRONUNCIATION OF THE PRINCIPAL ORIENTAL WORDS USED IN THIS BOOK
Afghán Jahán Nizám
Afghánistán Jamála Panjáb
Afrídi Jelálábad Panjábi
Alláhu Akbar Kabír Pathán
Amír Kábul Patwár
Badakshán Káfir Pesháwur
Baltistán Kálabágh Qurán
Bengáli Kalám Rám
Bezwáda Karáchi Ramazán
Bhágalpur Karím Risáldár
Bukhára Khalífa Ríshíkes
Chenáb Khorasán Sádhu
Chilás Kohát Sanyási
Chinárak Laghmáni Saragári
Chitrál Loháni Sardár
Deraját Majíd Sarkár
Dharmsála Málik Subadár
Ghulám Mirzáda Sulíman
Hákim (ruler) Mughál Tálib
Hakím (doctor) Multán Tamána
Hardwár Nának Tiráh
Hazára Nárowál Waziristán
Islám Nezabázi
AMONG THE WILD TRIBES OF THE AFGHAN FRONTIER
CHAPTER I
THE AFGHAN CHARACTER
Paradoxical--Ideas of honour--Blood-feuds--A sister's revenge--The
story of an outlaw--Taken by assault--A jirgah and its unexpected
termination--Bluff--An attempt at kidnapping--Hospitality--A
midnight meal--An ungrateful patient--A robber's death--An Afghan
dance--A village warfare--An officer's escape--Cousins.
The East is the country of contradictions, and the Afghan character is
a strange medley of contradictory qualities, in which courage blends
with stealth, the basest treachery with the most touching fidelity,
intense religious fanaticism with an avarice which will even induce
him to play false to his faith, and a lavish hospitality with an
irresistible propensity for thieving.
There are two words which are always on an Afghan's tongue--izzat
and sharm. They denote the idea of honour viewed in its positive and
negative aspects, but what that honour consists in even an Afghan
would be puzzled to tell you. Sometimes he will consider that he
has vindicated his honour by a murder perpetrated with the foulest
treachery; at other times it receives an indelible stain if at some
public function he is given a seat below some rival chief.
The vendetta, or blood-feud, has eaten into the very core of Afghan
life, and the nation can never become healthily progressive till public
opinion on the question of revenge alters. At present some of the best
and noblest families in Afghanistan are on the verge of extermination
through this wretched system. Even the women are not exempt. In 1905,
at Bannu, there was a case where a man had been foully murdered over
some disputed land. It was generally known who the murderer was, but
as he and his relations were powerful and likely to stick at nothing,
and the murdered man had no near relation except one sister, no one
was willing to risk his own skin in giving evidence, so when the case
came up in court the Judge was powerless to convict.
"Am I to have no justice at the hands of the Sarkar?" passionately
cried the sister in her despair. "Bring me witnesses, and I will
convict," was all the Judge could reply. "Very well; I must find my own
way;" and the girl left the court to take no rest till her brother's
blood, which was crying to her from the ground, should be avenged.
Shortly after this I was sitting in a classroom of the mission
school teaching the boys. It was a Friday morning, when thousands
of the hillmen come in to the weekly fair, and the bazaars are
full of a shouting, jostling throng, the murmur of which reaches
even the schoolroom. Suddenly a shot was heard, and then a confused
shouting. Running out on to the street hard by, I found a Wazir, quite
dead, shot through the heart. It was the murderer who had escaped the
justice of the law, but not the hand of the avenger, for the sister
had concealed a revolver on her person, and coming up to her enemy in
the crowded bazaar, had shot him point-blank. She was arrested there
and then, and the court condemned her to penal servitude for life. I
met her some weeks later as she was on the march with some other
prisoners to their destination in the Andaman Islands. Resignation and
satisfaction were her dominant feelings. "I have avenged my brother;
for the rest, it is God's will: I am content." Those were the words
in which she answered my inquiries.
The officer who has most power with the Pathans is the one who,
while transparently just, yet deals with them with a strong hand,
whose courage is beyond question, and who, when once his mind is made
up, does not hesitate in the performance of his plans. To such a one
they are loyal to the backbone, and will go through fire and water
in his train.
"Tender-handed grasp a nettle,
It will sting you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
Soft as silk it then remains."
This has its counterpart in a Pashtu proverb, and is no doubt a true
delineation of the Afghan character.
Some years ago some outlaws had fortified a village a few miles across
the border, and had there bidden defiance to the authorities while
carrying on their depredations among the frontier villages, where
they raided many a wealthy Hindu, and even carried off the rifles
from the police posts. The leader of the gang was Sailgai. His father
was Mian Khan, a Wazir of the Sparkai clan. When still a boy Sailgai
showed great aptitude and skill in archery, and when about fifteen
he commenced rifle-shooting, and soon became a noted marksman. This,
however, led him to associate with the desperadoes of the clan, and
before long he became the leader of a gang which used to go out at
night-time to break into shops and into the houses of rich Hindus. When
this occupation began to pall on him he became a highway robber, and
lay in wait with his confederates in various parts of the Kohat-Bannu
road to waylay and rob travellers both by day and night. The next
step onward--or downwards, we should say--was to become the leader
of a gang of dacoits. These men would enter a village, usually in
the late evening, and hold up the inhabitants while they looted the
houses of the rich Hindus at leisure. On these occasions they often
cut off the ears of the women as the simplest way of getting their
earrings; and fingers, too, suffered in the same way if the owner did
not remove his rings quickly enough. At the same time Sailgai became
a professional murderer, and used to take two hundred to four hundred
rupees for disposing of anyone obnoxious to the payer.
Still, up to this time he had contrived to keep clear of the police,
and had never been caught. If anyone informed against him he soon
discovered who the informant was, and paid him a night visit, only
leaving after he had either killed him or taken a rich ransom. Some
eight years ago he took two hundred rupees for killing a Bizun
Khel Wazir, and went to his house one evening with fifteen of his
followers. The Wazir, however, got a warning, and made a bold stand,
and Sailgai had to fire seven times before he despatched him, and
by that time the brother of the deceased had fetched some police and
followed up in chase of Sailgai. When, however, the police saw that
they had a well-armed band to contend with, although about equal in
number to the Wazirs, they beat a hasty retreat, with the exception
of one man, who opened fire on the murderers at two hundred paces,
but was hit and disabled, so that Sailgai and his party got away in
safety. Government gave a reward to this, the one brave man, and put
a price on Sailgai's head, so that he could no longer enter British
territory except by stealth, and he retired to his fort at Gumatti,
which he strengthened and made the base for marauding expeditions on
Government territory.
These subsequently became so frequent and so successful that the
Indian Government was finally constrained to send up a column under
Colonel Tonnochy, who was in command of the 53rd Sikhs at Bannu,
to destroy his fort once for all. Before the guns opened fire the
Political Officer, Mr. Donald, walked up alone to the loopholes of
his fort to offer Sailgai and his fellow-defenders terms. Knowing well
the long list of crimes that would be proved against him, he replied
that he had determined to sell his life as dearly as possible in the
fort where he had been born and bred; and we must say, to his credit,
that they restrained their fire till Mr. Donald got back to his own
lines. Colonel Tonnochy brought the guns up to within sixty yards
of the fort, and while directing their operations he was mortally
wounded. When the tower was finally taken by storm, all Sailgai's
companions were dead, and he himself wounded in four places. He,
however, with a last effort took aim at the British officer, Captain
White, who was bravely leading the assault, and shot him dead, and was
almost at the same moment despatched by that officer's orderly. Wazirs
from Gumatti, as well as from all the rest of the neighbourhood,
are constantly coming to the mission dispensary, and some of them
have been in-patients. The police munshi who made the bold stand
above mentioned was himself treated for his wound in our hospital.
The Afghan has in some respects such inordinate vanity in connection
with his peculiar ideas of sharm, and is so hot-headed in resenting
some fancied insult, that he sometimes places himself in a ridiculous
position, from which he finds it difficult to extricate himself
without still further sacrificing his honour.
An instance of this occurred in December, 1898. The mission school
athletic sports were in progress in the mission compound, and the
political officers of the Tochi and Wano were engaged not far off
in a jirgah of the representatives of the Mahsud and Darwesh Khel
sections of the Wazirs. Suddenly the cry was raised, "The Wazirs have
attacked us!" and for a short time all was confusion. Wazirs were seen
rushing pell-mell into school, bungalow, and other buildings, and a
great part of the spectators who had gathered to see the sports fled
in confusion. It transpired, however, that, so far from the Wazirs
desiring to do us any injury, they were the Mahsuds in flight from
the Darwesh Khels, who were hot in pursuit, chasing them even into the
mission buildings where they had sought refuge. The council had been
proceeding satisfactorily, and with apparently amicable relations on
both sides, when a Darwesh Khel malik, in the excitement of debate,
gesticulated too close to the seat of the Political Officer. A Mahsud
orderly, thinking he was disrespectful to the officer, pushed him back
with needless force, so that the malik slipped and fell. The Darwesh
Khels round him at once set on the orderly, saying he had done it of
malice prepense, and began to beat him. In another moment the whole
assembly were frantically attacking each other; but the Mahsuds,
being very decidedly in the minority, found safety in flight, and,
our mission compound being the nearest rallying-place, had come down
upon us in this unceremonious manner, with the Darwesh Khels in hot
pursuit. Fortunately, no serious injury resulted, and both parties
were soon laughing at their own foolish hot-headedness.
Bluff is a very prominent characteristic of the Afghan, and this makes
him appear more formidable than he really is to those who are not
acquainted with his character. He is also a great bully and exults in
cruelty, so that he becomes a veritable tyrant to those who have fallen
into his power or are overawed by his bluff. At the same time, he has
a profound reverence for the personification of power or brute force,
and becomes a loyal and devoted follower of those whom he believes to
be his superiors. It is often asked of me whether I carry a revolver
or other arms when travelling about among these wild tribes. For a
missionary to do so would not only be fatal to his chance of success,
but would be a serious and constant danger. It would be impossible
for him to be always on his guard; there must be times when, through
fatigue or other reasons, he is at the mercy of those among whom he is
dwelling. Besides this, there is nothing which an Afghan covets more,
or to steal which he is more ready to risk his life, than firearms;
and though he might not otherwise wish harm to the missionary, the
possibility of securing a good revolver or gun would be too great a
temptation, even though he had to shed blood to secure it. My plan was,
therefore, to put myself entirely in their hands, and let them see
that I was trusting to their sense of honour and to their traditional
treatment of a guest for my safety.
At the same time, I was rather at pains than otherwise to let them
see that the bluff to which they sometimes resorted had no effect
upon me, and that I was indifferent to their threats and warnings,
which, as often as not, were just a ruse on their part to see how far
they could impose on me. Once, when I was in a trans-border village,
resting a few hours in the heat of the day, some young bloods arrived
who had just come in from a raid, and were still in the excitement
of bloodshed. Some of them thought it would be a good opportunity to
bait the Daktar Sahib, and one of them, holding his loaded revolver
to my chest, said: "Now we are going to shoot you." I replied:
"You will be very great fools if you do, because I am of more use to
you than to myself, and you would as likely as not poison yourselves
with my drugs if I were not there to tell you how to use them." At
this the senior man of the party rebuked them, and offered me a kind
of apology for their rudeness, saying: "They are only young fellows,
and they are excited. Do not mind what they say. We will see that no
harm comes to you." On another occasion I came to a village across
the border rather late at night. There were numerous outlaws in the
village, but the chief under whose protection I placed myself took the
precaution of putting my bed in the centre of six of his retainers,
fully armed, in a circle round me, one or two of whom were to keep
watch in turns. I had had a hard day's work, and was soon sound asleep,
and this was my safety, because I was told in the morning that some
of the more fanatical spirits had wanted to kill me in the night,
but the others said: "See, he has trusted himself entirely to our
protection, and because he trusts us he is sleeping so soundly;
therefore, no harm must be done to him in our village."
Not long ago there was a notorious outlaw on the frontier called
Rangin, who had been making a practice of kidnapping rich Hindus,
and then holding them to ransom. I was in the habit of visiting our
out-station at Kharrak about once a month, and usually went alone
and by night. Information was brought that Rangin, knowing of this,
intended one day to kidnap me, and hold me to a high ransom. The next
time I visited Kharrak, I purposely slept by the roadside all night
in a lonely part, that the people might see that I was not afraid of
Rangin's threats. Needless to say, no harm came of it; but the people
there in the countryside spread the idea that, as there was an angel
protecting the Daktar Sahib, it would be a useless act of folly to
try to do him an injury.
Although the honour which an Afghan thinks is due to his guest has
often stood me in good stead, yet sometimes the observance of the
correct etiquette has become irksome. A rich chief will be satisfied
with nothing less than the slaying of a sheep when he receives
a guest of distinction; a poorer man will be satisfied with the
slaying of a fowl, and the preparation therefrom of the native dish
called pulao. On one occasion I came to a village with my companions
rather late in the evening. The chief himself was away, but his son
received me with every mark of respect, and killed a fowl and cooked
us a savoury pulao, after which, wearied with the labours of the day,
we were soon fast asleep. Later on, it appeared, the chief himself
arrived, and learnt from his son of our arrival. "Have you killed for
him the dumba?" he at once asked; and, on learning from his son that
he had only prepared a fowl, he professed great annoyance, saying:
"This will be a lasting shame (sharm) for me, if it is known that,
when the Bannu Daktar Sahib came to my village, I cooked for him
nothing more than a fowl. Go at once to the flock, and take a dumba,
and slay and dress it, and, when all is ready, call me." Thus it
came about that about 1 a.m. we were waked up to be told that the
chief had come to salaam us, and that dinner was ready. It would not
only have been useless to protest that we were more in a mood for
sleep than for dinner, but it would also have been an insult to his
hospitality; so we got up with alacrity and the best grace possible,
and after a performance of the usual salutations on both sides, we
buckled to that we might show our appreciation of the luscious feast
of roast mutton and pulao that had been prepared for us.
On one occasion, in turning back to Bannu from a journey across
the frontier, I had an escort of two villainous-looking Afghans,
who appeared as though they would not hesitate at any crime,
however atrocious. They, however, looked after us with the greatest
attention, and brought us safely into Bannu. On arrival there, I
offered them some money as a reward for their good conduct; they,
however, refused it with some show of indignation, saying that to
take money from one who had been their guest would be contrary to
their best traditions. Consequently, I sent them over to rest for the
night at the house of one of my native assistants, with a note to give
them a good dinner, and send them away early in the morning. He gave
them the dinner, but when he got up in the morning to see them off,
he found that they had already decamped with all his best clothes.
Among the Afghans theft is more or less praiseworthy, according to
the skill and daring shown in its perpetration, and to the success in
the subsequent evasion of pursuit. Two years ago an Afghan brought
his little daughter for an operation on her eye. The operation was
successfully performed, and the day of discharge came. Meanwhile
the eyes of the Afghan had lighted on my mare, and he thought how
useful it would be to him on his travels, and the night following
his discharge we found that he had come with a friend and taken the
horse away. Unfortunately for the success of the undertaking, he had
an enemy, who, when a reward was offered for the discovery of the
thief, thought he might enrich himself and pay off an old grudge
at the same time. The culprit had, however, by this time arrived
with his capture safely across the Afghan frontier into Khost,
and no laws of extradition apply there. Other members of the tribe,
however, reside in British India, and would be going up with their
families into the hills as the heat of summer increased. The Deputy
Commissioner called for the chiefs of the tribe, and informed them
that until they arranged for the return of the mare, he would be
reluctantly compelled to issue orders that they were not to go up
to the hills with their families. At first they protested that they
had no control over the thief, whom they had themselves turned out
of their tribe because he was a rascal; but when they found that
the officer knew them too well to be hoodwinked by their bluff,
they found it convenient to send up into Khost and bring back the
mare. The man through whose instrumentality it was brought back has
posed to me ever since as my benefactor, and expected a variety of
favours in return. The theft was universally reprobated by the tribe,
but chiefly because circumstances had doomed it to failure.
Notorious thieves and outlaws have frequently availed themselves of
the wards of the mission hospital when suffering from some fever
or other disease which has temporarily incapacitated them; but,
of course, they come under assumed names, and otherwise conceal
their identity. It is to be hoped, however, that they benefit
all the same from the addresses and good counsel which they daily
hear while under treatment. Sometimes, as in the case I am about
to relate, their identity becomes known. A few years ago, in Bed
26--the "Southsea" bed--there was Zaman, a noted thief, who came in
suffering from chronic dysentery, and continued under treatment for
over two months. He lingered on, with many ups and downs, but was
evidently past recovery when he came in. He paid much attention to
the Gospel that was read to him, and sometimes professed belief in
it, but showed no signs of repenting of his past career. But when
told eventually that there was no hope of his recovery, he at once
had a police officer summoned, so as to give him the names of some
of his former "pals," hoping thereby not only to get them caught and
punished in revenge for their having thrown him off when too weak and
ill to join in their nefarious practices, but also to gain a reward
for the information given. He gradually sank and died, professing
a belief in Christ; but He alone, who readeth the heart, knoweth. I
do not think he would have turned informer had not his confederates
apparently deserted him in his distress.
No description of Afghan life would be complete which did not give
an account of their public dances. These take place on the 'Id days,
or to celebrate some tribal compact, or the cessation of hostilities
between two tribes or sections. It can only be seen in its perfection
across the border, for in British India the more peaceful habits
of the people and the want of the requisite firearms have caused
it to fall into desuetude. Across the frontier some level piece of
ground is chosen, and a post is fixed in the centre. The men arrange
themselves in ever-widening circles round this centre and gyrate round
it, ever keeping the centre on the left, so as to give greater play
to their sword-arms. The older and less nimble of the warriors form
the inner circles; outside them come the young men, who dance round
with surprising agility, often with a gun in one hand and a sword in
the other, or, it may be, with a sword in each hand, which they wave
alternately in circles round their heads. Outside them, again, circle
the horsemen, showing their agility in the saddle and their skill
with the sword or gun at the same time. On one side are the village
minstrels, who give the tune on drums and pipes. They begin with a slow
beat, and one sees all the circles going round with a measured tread;
then the music becomes more and more rapid, and the dancers become
more and more carried away with excitement, and to the onlooker it
appears a surging mass of waving swords and rifles. The rifles are
as often as not loaded and discharged from time to time, at which the
gyrations of the horsemen on the outside become more and more excited,
and one wonders that heads and arms are not gashed by the swords which
are seen waving everywhere. Suddenly the music ceases, and all stop to
regain their breath, to start again after a few minutes, until they
are tired out. The excitement and the intricate revolutions often
bring the scene to the brink of a real warfare, and not infrequently
it ends in bloodshed. In one instance, where a man fell, and in
falling discharged his rifle with fatal effect into another dancer,
the unintentional murderer would have had his throat cut there and
then had not his friends hurriedly dragged him out and carried him
off to his home, fighting as they went. In this way blood-feuds are
sometimes started, which will divide a village into two factions,
and not end till some of the bravest have fallen victims to it.
On one occasion I was seated with some Afghans in a house in the
village of Peiwar in the Kurram Valley. Most of the houses were on
either side of one long street running the length of the village,
and I noticed that some little doors had been made from house to house
all down the street, and on inquiring the object of this, I was told
that some time before a great faction fight had been carried on in the
village. One side of the street was in one faction and the other side
in the other faction, and they were always in ambush to fire at each
other across the street. The only way to get to the village supply of
water was to go from house to house down to the bottom of the street,
and in order to do this without exposure, doors had been made, while
by common consent they had agreed not to shoot while getting their
supplies from the stream at the bottom. My host went on to show me
sundry holes in his door and in the wooden panels of the windows,
which the bullets of his neighbours across the street had penetrated,
and said: "It was behind that hole in the door there that my uncle
was shot; that hole in the window was made by the bullet which killed
my brother." Pointing to another Afghan who had come into the room
and seated himself on the bed, he said: "That is the man who shot my
brother." On my remarking upon the peace and goodwill in which they
appeared to be living at the present time, he said: "Yes, we are good
friends now, because the debt is even on both sides. I have killed
the same number in his family." After a faction fight of this kind,
the fatalities on both sides are added up, and if they can be found to
be equal, both sides feel that they can make peace without sacrificing
their izzat (honour), and amicable relations are resumed, it being
thought unnecessary to investigate who were the real instigators or
murderers. If, however, one side or the other believes itself to
be still aggrieved, or not to have exacted the full tale of lives
required by the law of revenge, then the feud may go on indefinitely,
until whole families may become nearly exterminated. The avenger will
go on waiting his opportunity for months or years, but he will never
forget; and one will always remember the hunted look and the furtive
expression and nervous handling of the revolver and cartridges which
mark the man who knows that one or more such avenger is on his track.
A Political Officer in the Kurram Valley was once visiting a chief
of the village of Shlozan, who, like all chiefs, had a high tower,
in which he would seek security from his enemies at night. His host
took him up into the tower, after carefully seeing that a window
in the upper story was shut. The officer, thinking he would like
a view of the country round, went to open it, but was hurriedly
and unceremoniously pulled back by the chief, who told him that
his cousin had been watching that window for months in the hope of
having an opportunity of shooting him there. The officer made no
further attempt to look out of the window, but some months later he
heard that his friend the chief, having inadvertently gone to the
open window, had been shot there by his cousin. So universal is the
enmity existing between cousins in Afghanistan that it has become a
proverb that a man is "as great an enemy as a cousin," the causes of
such feuds being such as are more likely to arise between those who
have some relationship. The causes of 90 per cent. of such feuds are
described by the Afghans as belonging to one of three heads--zan, zar,
and zamin, these being the three Persian words meaning women, money,
and land; and disputes are more likely to arise between cousins than
between strangers on such matters as these.
CHAPTER II
AFGHAN TRADITIONS
Israelitish origin of the Afghans--Jewish practices--Shepherd
tradition of the Wazirs--Afridis and their saint--The zyarat
or shrine--Graveyards--Custom of burial--Graves of holy
men--Charms and amulets--The medical practice of a faqir--Native
remedies--First aid to the wounded--Purges and blood-letting--Tooth
extraction--Smallpox.
A controversy as to the origin of the Afghans centres round the
question as to whether they are the children of Israel or not;
and there are two opposing camps, one regarding it as an accepted
historical fact that they are descended from the lost ten tribes of
Israel, and the other repudiating all Israelitish affinities except
such as may have come to them through the Muhammadan religion. The
Afghans themselves--at least, the more intelligent part of the
community--will tell you that they are descended from the tribe of
Benjamin, and will give you their genealogy through King Saul up to
Abraham, and they almost universally apply the term "Bani-Israil,"
or children of Israel, to themselves. Wolff, the traveller, relates
that an Afghan, Mulla Khodadad, gave him the following history:
Saul had a grandson called Afghána, the nephew of Asaph, the son of
Berachiah, who built the Temple of Solomon. One year and a half after
Solomon's death he was banished from Jerusalem to Damascus on account
of misconduct. In the time of Nebuchadnezzar the Jews were driven
out of Palestine and taken to Babylon. The descendants of Afghána
residing at Damascus, being Jews, were also carried to Babylon,
from whence they removed, or were removed, to the mountain of Ghor,
in Afghanistan, their present place of residence, and in the time of
Muhammad they accepted his religion.
To most observers the Afghan has a most remarkably Jewish cast of
features, and often in looking round the visitors of our out-patient
department one sees some old greybeard of pure Afghan descent, and
involuntarily exclaims: "That man might for all the world be one of
the old Jewish patriarchs returned to us from Bible history!" All
Muhammadan nations must, from the origin of their religion, have
many customs and observances which appear Jewish because they were
adopted by Muhammad himself from the Jews around him; but there
are two, at least, met with among Afghans which are not found among
neighbouring Muhammadan peoples, and which strongly suggest a Jewish
origin. The first, which is very common, is that of sacrificing an
animal, usually a sheep or a goat, in case of illness, after which
the blood of the animal is sprinkled over the doorposts of the house
of the sick person, by means of which the angel of death is warded
off. The other, which is much less common, and appears to be dying out,
is that of taking a heifer and placing upon it the sins of the people,
whereby it becomes qurban, or sacrifice, and then it is driven out into
the wilderness. The Afghan, more than most Muhammadans, delights in
Biblical names, and David, Solomon, Abraham, Job, Jacob, and many other
patriarchs, are constant inmates of our hospital wards. New Testament
names, such as King Jesus (Mihtar Esa) and Simon are occasionally met
with. The ceremonies enacted at the Muhammadan "'Id-i-bakr," or Feast
of Sacrifice, have a most extraordinary similarity to the Jewish
Passover; but as these have a religious, and not a racial, origin
and signification, and can be read in any book on Muhammadanism,
it is unnecessary to describe them here. The strongest argument
against their Jewish origin is the almost entire disappearance of
any Hebrew words from their vocabulary; but this may be partly,
at least, explained by their admixture at first with Chaldaic, and
subsequently with Arab, races. The Wazirs have a tradition as to their
origin, which, although its Biblical resemblance may be accidental,
is yet certainly remarkable when found among so wild and barbarous
a race. The tradition is that a certain ancestor had two sons, Issa
and Missa (probably Jesus and Moses). The latter was a shepherd, and
one day while tending his flocks on the hills a lamb strayed away and
could not be found. Missa, leaving his other sheep, went in search of
the lost one. For three days and nights he wandered about the jungle
without being able to find it. On the morning of the fourth day he
found it in some distant valley, and, instead of being wroth with it,
he took it up in his arms, kissed it, and brought it safely back to
the flock. For this humane act God greatly blessed him, and made him
the progenitor of the Wazir tribe. Though it would seem to us more
appropriate had this action been attributed to Issa instead of to
Missa, yet this tradition has often given me a text for explaining
the Gospel story to a crowd of these wild tribesmen.
Though all Afghans are fanatically zealous in the pursuit of their
religion, yet some are so ignorant of its teachings that more
civilized Muhammadans are hardly willing to admit their right to a
place in the congregation of the faithful. The Wazirs, for instance,
who would always be ready to take their share in a religious war, are
not only ignorant of all but the elementary truths of Muhammadanism,
but the worship of saints and graves is the chief form that their
religion takes. The Afridis are not far removed from them in this
respect, and it is related of a certain section of the Afridis that,
having been taunted by another tribe for not possessing a shrine of
any holy man, they enticed a certain renowned Seyyed to visit their
country, and at once despatched and buried him, and boast to this
day of their assiduity in worshipping at his sepulchre.
The frontier hills are often bare enough of fields or habitations, but
one cannot go far without coming across some zyarat, or holy shrine,
where the faithful worship and make their vows. It is very frequently
situated on some mountain-top or inaccessible cliff, reminding one
of the "high places" of the Israelites. Round the grave are some
stunted trees of tamarisk or ber (Zisyphus jujuba). On the branches of
these are hung innumerable bits of rag and pieces of coloured cloth,
because every votary who makes a petition at the shrine is bound
to tie a piece of cloth on as the outward symbol of his vow. In
the accompanying photograph is seen a famous shrine on the Suliman
Range. Despite its inaccessibility, hundreds of pilgrims visit this
yearly, and sick people are carried up in their beds, with the hope
that the blessing of the saint may cure them. Sick people are often
carried on beds, either strapped on camels or on the shoulders of
their friends, for considerably more than a hundred miles to one or
other of these zyarats. In some cases it may reasonably be supposed
that the change from a stuffy, unventilated dark room to the open air,
and the stimulus of change of climate and scenery, has its share in
the cure which often undoubtedly results.
Another feature of these shrines is that their sanctity is so
universally acknowledged that articles of personal property may
be safely left by the owners for long periods of time in perfect
confidence of finding them untouched on their return. This is the more
remarkable, remembering that these tribes are thieves by profession,
and scarcely look upon brigandage as a reprehensible act. The
inhabitants of a mountain village may be migrating to the plains for
the winter months, and they will leave their beds, pots and pans,
and other household furniture, under the trees of some neighbouring
shrine, and they will almost invariably find them on their return,
some months later, exactly as they left them. One distinct advantage
of these shrines is that it is a sin to cut wood from any of the trees
surrounding them. Thus it comes about that the shrines are the only
green spots among the hills which the improvident vandalism of the
tribes has denuded of all their trees and shrubs.
Graves have a special sanctity in the eyes of the Afghans, more
even than in the case of other Muhammadans, and you will generally
see an Afghan, when passing by a graveyard, dismount from his horse
and, turning towards some more prominent tomb, which denotes the
burial-place of some holy man, hold up his hands in the attitude
of Muhammadan prayer, and invoke the blessing of the holy man
on his journey, and then stroke his beard, as is usually done by
the Muhammadans at the conclusion of their prayers. There are few
graveyards which do not boast some such holy man or faqir in their
midst; in fact, as often as not, the chance burial of some such
holy man in an out-of-the-way part determines the site of a cemetery,
because all those in the country round desire to have their graves near
his, in the belief that at the Resurrection Day his sanctity will atone
for any of their shortcomings, and insure for them an unquestionable
entry into bliss. The graves always lie north and south, and after
digging down to a depth determined by the character of the soil,
a niche is hollowed out at one side, usually the western, and the
corpse is laid in the niche, with its face turned towards Mecca. Some
bricks or stones are then laid along the edge of the niche, so that
when the earth is thrown in none of it may fall on the corpse, which
is enveloped in a winding-sheet only, coffins being never used. The
origin of the word "coffin" is possibly from the Arabic word kafn,
which denotes the winding-sheet usually used by Muhammadans. [1]
Great marvels are related about the graves of these holy men, among
the commonest being the belief that they go on increasing in length of
their own accord, the increase of length being a sign of the acceptance
of the prayers of the deceased by the Almighty. Near the mission house
in Peshawur was one such grave, which went on lengthening at the rate
of one foot a year. When it had reached the length of twenty-seven
feet it was seriously encroaching on the public highway, and it was
only after the promulgation of an official order from the district
authorities that the further growth of the holy man should cease that
the grave ceased to expand. This shrine is still famous in the country
round as "the Nine-Yard Shrine," which numbers of devotees visit
every year, in the expectation of obtaining some material benefit.
The use of charms or amulets is practically universal. The children
of the rich may be seen with strings of charms fastened up in little
ornamented silver caskets hung round their neck, while even the
poorest labourer will not be without a charm sewn up in a bit of
leather, which he fastens round his arm or his neck. These charms are
most usually verses out of the Quran, transcribed by some Mullah of
repute and blessed by him; others are cabalistic sentences or words,
while some are mere bits of paper or rag which have been blessed by
a holy man. On more than one occasion I have found my prescriptions
made up into charms, the patient believing that this would be
more efficacious than drinking the hospital medicines; in fact,
one patient assured me that he had never suffered from rheumatism,
to which he had previously been subject, after he had tied round his
arm a prescription in which I had ordered him some salicylate of soda,
although he had never touched the drug. In one instance I found that
a man who had been given some grey powders, with directions how to
use them, had instead fastened them up, paper and all, into a little
packet, which he had sewn up in leather and fastened round his neck,
with, he told me, very beneficial result. From this it can be readily
understood that Mullahs and faqirs who pretend to have the power of
making charms for all known diseases, and sell them to the people at
large, are often able to enrich themselves far more rapidly than a
doctor who confines himself to the ordinary methods of treatment.
Once, when I was in camp, I came across a mountebank who was making
quite a large fortune in this way. He had travelled over a large
part of South-Western Asia, but did not stop long in any one place,
as no doubt his takings would soon begin to wear off after the first
days of novelty. One of his performances was to walk through fire,
professedly by the power of the Muhammadan Kalimah. A trench was
dug in the ground, and filled with charcoal and wood, which was set
alight. After the fire had somewhat died down, the still glowing
embers were beaten down with sticks, and then the faqir, reciting
the Kalimah with great zest, proceeded to deliberately walk across,
after which he invited the more daring among the faithful to follow
his example, assuring them that if they recited the creed in the
same way and with sincerity, they would suffer no harm. Some went
through the ordeal and showed no signs of having suffered from it;
others came out with blistered and sore feet. These unfortunates were
jeered at by the others as being no true Muhammadans, owing to which
they had forfeited the immunity conferred upon them by the recitation
of the creed. One young Sikh student, calling out the Sikh battle-cry,
ventured on the ordeal, and came out apparently none the worse. The
Muhammadans looked upon this as an insult to their religion, because
Muhammadans oftener than not heard that cry when the Sikhs had been
engaged in mortal combat with them, and this action of the young
Sikh appeared to them to be a challenge as to whether the Muhammadan
or the Sikh cry had the greater magic power. However, some of the
more responsible persons present checked the more hot-headed ones,
and the affair passed off with a little scoffing. Every morning and
afternoon the faqir prepared for the reception of the patients,
who were collected in great numbers on hearing of his fame. Each
applicant had to give 5 pice to the assistant as his fee. He was
then sent before the faqir, who remained seated on a mat. The faqir
asked him one or two questions as to the nature of the illness,
wrote out the necessary charm, and passed on to the next. Three or
four hundred people were often seen at one sitting. This would give
about 50 rupees (£3. 6s. 8d.) as a day's takings. Some days would,
no doubt, be occupied in travelling, and others less fruitful;
but his equipment and his method of travelling showed that it was
a very profitable business. He was stopping in the rest-house,
and invited me to dinner, which was served in English fashion. He
entertained me with stories of his travels, and made no secret of the
fact that he took advantage of the credulity of the people to run a
good business. When dinner was nearly over an assistant came in to
say that there were many people outside clamouring for charms. With
an apology to me for the interruption, he took a piece of paper,
tore it up into squares, quickly wrote off the required number, and
gave them to the assistant to go on with. In some cases, especially
those suffering from rheumatism or old injuries or sprains, he used
rubbings and manipulations, much as a so-called bone-setter does,
and these, no doubt, helped the charm to do its work.
The medical and surgical treatment of the faqirs is extremely
crude. Sometimes Jogis and herbalists from India travel about the
country and practise a certain amount of yunani, or Hippocratic
medicine; but the native doctors of Afghanistan have extremely little
knowledge of medicine. The two stock treatments of Afghanistan are
those known as dzan and dam. Dzan is a treatment habitually used in
cases of fever, whether acute or chronic, and in a variety of chronic
complaints, which they do not attempt to diagnose. It consists in
stripping the patient to the skin and placing him on a bed. A sheep or
a goat is then killed and rapidly skinned. The patient is then wrapped
up in the skin, with the raw surface next him and the wool outside. He
is then covered up with a number of quilts. When successful, this
treatment acts by producing a profuse perspiration, and when it
is removed--on the second day in the summer and the third day in
the winter--the patient is sometimes found to be free from fever,
though very worn and weak from the profuse sweating. If the first
application is not successful, it may be repeated several times. In
a case of severe injury to one of the limbs, the same treatment is
often applied locally. In the case of a fractured thigh, for instance,
the sheepskin is tied on, a rough splint applied externally, and
often left for a week or more. Where there has been an open wound,
and the patient has been brought several days' journey through the
heat down to our hospital in Bannu, you can usually anticipate the
character of the case by seeing the men who have carried the bed in
carefully winding their pagaris round their noses and mouths before
proceeding to unbandage it for your inspection, and when it is at
last opened all except the doctor and his assistant try to get as far
away as possible. A surgeon can scarcely be confronted with a more
complete antithesis to his modern ideas of aseptic surgery than a
case like this, and many and prolonged applications of antiseptics
and deodorants are required before the wound begins to assume a
healthy aspect, even if inflammation and gangrene have not rendered
amputation a necessity. In the case of a small wound, the whole or
a part of the skin of a fowl is used in the same way, the flesh of
the slaughtered animal being always a part of the fee of the doctor.
The other remedy, or that known as the dam, is akin to what is known
in Western surgery as a "moxa." A piece of cloth is rolled up in a
pledget of the size of a shilling, steeped in oil, placed on the
part selected by the doctor, and set alight. It burns down into
the flesh, and a hard slough is formed; this gradually separates,
and leaves an ulcer, which heals by degrees. This remedy is used
for every conceivable illness, a particular part of the body being
selected according to the disease or the diagnostic ability of the
doctor who applies the remedy. Thus, in people who have suffered from
indigestion you will often see a line of scars down each side of the
abdomen. For neuralgia, it is applied to the temples; for headache,
to the scalp; for rheumatism, to the shoulders; for lumbago, to the
loins; for paralysis, to the back; for sciatica, to the thighs; and so
on indefinitely. I have counted as many as fifty scars, each the size
of a shilling, on one patient as the result of repeated applications
of this remedy. The Afghans have extraordinary faith in both these
treatments, and I have sometimes sat in a village listening to an
argument in which some young fellow, lately returned from a visit
to a mission hospital, recounted the wonderful things he had seen
there, to which some old conservative greybeard retorted: "What do
we want with all these new-fangled things? The dzan and the dam are
sufficient for us." As formerly in the West, so still in Afghanistan,
the village barber performs the ordinary surgical operations, such
as opening an abscess or lancing a gum.
The women all claim a greater or less knowledge of such surgery and
medicine as they think necessary for them. After one of the village
frays, when the warriors come back to their homes more or less cut
and wounded, the women of the household at once set about their
treatment. If there is severe hæmorrhage some oil is quickly raised
to boiling-point in a saucepan, and either poured into the wound,
or if, for instance, a limb has been cut off, the bloody stump is
plunged into the oil. This, no doubt, acts as an effective, though
somewhat barbarous, hæmostatic. If the bleeding is only slight,
a certain plant gathered from the jungle is reduced to ashes, and
these ashes rubbed on the wound. In the case of a clean cut the
women draw out hairs from their own head, and sew it up with their
ordinary sewing-needles, and I have sometimes seen flesh wounds which
have been quite skilfully sewn up in this way. They are less skilful
in the application of splints. In most neighbourhoods there is some
village carpenter who prides himself on his skill in the application
of splints to broken bones; but in most cases he bandages them too
tightly, or with too little knowledge of the circulation of the limb,
so that not a year passes in which we do not get one or more cases
of limbs which have become gangrenous after quite simple fractures
through this kind of treatment.
Almost the only drugs which are used to any extent in Afghanistan
are purgatives, and especially those of a more violent and drastic
nature. Nearly every Afghan thinks it necessary to be purged or bled,
or both, every spring, and not unfrequently at the fall of the year
too. Scarcely any illness is allowed to go to a week's duration without
the trial of some violent purge. Sometimes the purge is given with so
little regard to its quantity and the vitality of the patient that it
results in rapid collapse and death. In other cases a latent dysentery
is excited, which may result in an illness lasting many months,
and leaving the patient permanently weakened thereby. The seasonal
blood-lettings are performed, as in the West, from the bend of the arm,
this position having, no doubt, come down to the practitioners of both
East and West from the ancient Greeks; but in the case of illness,
while the physicians of the West have had their practice revolutionized
by modern ideas of anatomy and physiology, those of the East still
follow the humoral and hypothetical pathologies of Hippocrates and
his predecessors. These practitioners know the particular vein in
the particular limb or part of the body which has to be selected for
venesection in any particular illness. I have known a young doctor from
England lose at once the confidence which the people might up to that
time have had in his medical knowledge, because in a case of illness
to which he was called he recommended venesection, and the patient's
medical attendant who was to carry out the treatment made the, to him,
very natural inquiry, "From what vein?" The English doctor said: "It
does not matter." Both patient and medical attendant not unnaturally
assumed that he was either a very careless doctor or an ignoramus,
and, in either case, that they had better call in a fresh opinion.
Cataract is a very common complaint in Afghanistan, and from time
immemorial there have been certain hakims, or native practitioners,
who operate on this by means of the old process of couching. These
men usually itinerate about the country from village to village, as
in most cases the old men and the old women who are suffering from
cataract are unable to undertake the journey to a town where one
of these practitioners lives; or it may be that their relations are
not willing to take the trouble for someone whose working days are
apparently over. In some cases no doubt the operation results in good
sight, but in the majority other changes which take place in the eye
as a result of the operation lead before long to total blindness. As,
however, the hakim seldom goes over the same ground again till after
the lapse of several years, his reputation does not lose by these
failures, as it would have done if he were always resident in one
place. The tooth extracting of the village is usually entrusted to the
village blacksmith, who has a ponderous pair of forceps, a foot and
a half to two feet long, hung up in his shop for the purpose. Where
the crown of the tooth is fairly strong and prominent the operation
generally results in a short struggle, and then the removal of the
aching tooth; but if the tooth is very carious, or not prominent enough
for a good grip, the results are often disastrous, even to fracture of
the jaw, and these ultimately come to the mission hospital for repair,
several often turning up in one day.
At one time smallpox was terribly rife in Afghanistan, and even now
no village can be visited without seeing many who are permanently
disfigured by it. When an Afghan comes to negotiate about the price of
an eligible girl for marrying to his son, one of the first questions
asked is, "Has she had the smallpox?" and if not, either the settlement
may be postponed until she is older, or else some deduction is made
for her possible disfigurement if attacked by the disease. Many times
fathers have brought their daughters to the hospital with the scars
left by smallpox in their eyes, begging me to remove them, not so much
for the sake of the patient as because the market value of the daughter
will be so much enhanced thereby. The custom of inoculation was at
one time almost universal in Afghanistan. A little of the crust of the
sore of a smallpox patient was taken and rubbed into an incision made
in the wrist of the person to be inoculated. The smallpox resulting,
though usually mild, was sometimes so severe as to cause the death
of the patient, and the people have not been slow to recognize the
great advantages which vaccination has over inoculation. Only two
circumstances deter the people from universally profiting by the
facilities offered by the British Government. The first reason is that
very often the vaccinators are underpaid officials, who use their
opportunities for taking bribes from the people, and make the whole
business odious to them. The other is, that they have a widespread
superstition that the Government are really seeking for a girl, who
is to be recognized by the fact that when the vaccinator scarifies
her arm, instead of blood, milk will flow from the wound; she is then
to be taken over to England for sacrifice, and the parents are afraid
lest their girl should be the unlucky one.
CHAPTER III
BORDER WARRIORS
Peiwar Kotal--The Kurram Valley--The Bannu Oasis--Independent
tribes--The Durand line--The indispensable Hindu--A lawsuit and its
sequel--A Hindu outwits a Muhammadan--The scope of the missionary.
I was standing on a pine-clad spur of the Sufed Koh Range, which
runs westwards towards Kabul, between the Khaiber Pass on the north
and the Kurram Pass on the south. The snow-clad peaks of Sika Ram,
which rise to a height of fifteen thousand feet, tipped by fleecy
white clouds, were just behind me, while in front was the green valley
of the Kurram River, spread out like a panorama before me, widening
out into a large plain in its upper part, where numerous villages,
partly hidden in groves of mulberry and walnuts, nestled among the
lower spurs of the mountains, while farther down the hills on either
side of it closed in and became more rugged and bare, and the river
wound its circuitous path through defile and gorge, till it debouched
on the plains of India. Immediately before me was the pine-covered
Pass of Peiwar, which will always be memorable as the scene of the
great battle fought between the forces of the Amir, Sher Ali, and
the advancing column of Sir Frederick Roberts. There were the pines
covering the crest where the Afghan batteries were ensconced, and one
could trace without difficulty the circuitous path up the stony bed
of the mountain torrent, through a deep ravine, and then winding up
among the pine-woods, by which the gallant regiments of the advancing
army stormed and finally captured the Afghan position. Westward of the
pass was a fertile valley, dotted over with villages here and there,
forming part of the territory of the Amir of Afghanistan. A few miles
below the top of the pass could be seen the fort where the soldiers
of the Amir guarded his frontier. Turning eastward, some dozen miles
off, could be seen the cantonments of Parachinar, the westernmost
cantonments of British occupation, and the seat of administration of
this trans-border valley. There was a fort garrisoned by the local
levies of the Kurram Militia--Afghans from the villages round, who,
under the training and influence of three or four British officers,
have become part of the "far-flung battle line" of the defences of
the Empire.
I had been spending some weeks among the people of this district,
and the time had come for reluctantly leaving the shady groves and
cool breezes of the Upper Kurram for the sweltering plains of Bannu,
which even now I could see in the eastern distance covered by heat
haze, recalling the punkahs and restless nights which were soon to
be my lot instead of the bracing air of the Sufed Koh. Our tents and
baggage had been loaded up on some mules, which we could see winding
along the white road below us, while we were lingering behind to take
a last leave of the hearty Afghans, who had been both our hosts and
our patients. Three times had we to pitch our nightly camp before we
crossed the border of British India and entered the border town of
Thal, which is the first town in British India which a traveller from
Afghanistan enters. From the time of crossing the Afghan frontier till
now, he has been going through what is known as an "administrative
area." Here was a fort, occupied by troops of the Indian Army, under
command of a British officer.
Thirty-four miles still remained in a direct line between us and
our destination in Bannu, and before accomplishing this special
arrangements had to be made with the tribes occupying it for our
escort; for this tongue of country running up between Thal and
Bannu was not British India, nor even an administrative area,
but independent, and owned by the marauding Wazir tribe, who owed
allegiance to neither Amir nor Viceroy. A couple of ruffianly-looking
Wazirs arrived to escort us down. Their rifles were slung over their
shoulders, and well-filled cartridge belts strapped round their waists;
a couple of Afghan daggers were ensconced in the folds of the dirty
red pagaris which they had bound round their bodies, and they carried
their curved Afghan swords in their hands. We had now left the fertile
valley of Upper Kurram behind us, and wandered through a succession of
rocky mountain defiles, over precipitous spurs, and along the stony
bed of the river for more than thirty miles. The lower mountain
ranges separating Afghanistan from India form by their intricacy
and precipitate nature a succession of veritable chevaux de frise,
which by their natural difficulties maintain the parda or privacy of
the wild tribes inhabiting them, who value the independence of their
mountain fastnesses more than life itself. Here and there is a patch of
arable land in a bend of the Kurram River, overlooked by the walled and
towered village of its possessors, who have won it by force of arms,
and only keep it by their armed vigils, even the men who are ploughing
behind their oxen having their rifles hung over their shoulders,
and keeping their eyes open for a possible enemy. In some places a
channel from the river has been carried with infinite labour on to a
flat piece of ground among the mountains, where a scanty harvest is
reaped. For the rest the hill seems to be almost devoid of animal or
vegetable life. A few partridges starting up with a shrill cry from a
tuft of dry grass in front of one are occasionally seen, and stunted
trees of ber and acacia supply a certain amount of firewood, which
some of the Wazirs gather and take down to the Friday Fair in Bannu.
The Afghans will tell you that when God created the world there were
a lot of stones and rocks and other lumber left over, which were
all dumped down on this frontier, and that this accounts for its
unattractive appearance. There is one more range of hills to surmount
before we reach the plains of India. We have toiled up a rocky path,
from the bare stones of which the rays of the summer sun are reflected
on all sides, without any relief from tree or shrub, or even a tuft of
green grass, till the ground beneath our feet seems to glow with as
fierce a heat as that of the blazing orb above us. We have reached
the summit, and the vista before us changes as if by magic. Five
hundred feet below us is the broad plain of India, irrigated in this
part by the vivifying waters of the Kurram River, which, liberated
from the rock-bound defile through which they have wandered for the
last thirty miles, now dashing over their stony bed, anon hemmed
in by dark overhanging cliffs, are at last free to break up into
numberless channels, which, guided by the skill of the agriculturist,
form a labyrinth of silver streaks in the plain below us. As far as
the life-giving irrigation cuts of the Kurram River extend are waving
fields of corn, sugar-cane, maize, rice, turmeric, and other crops,
spread in endless succession as far as the eye can reach.
Scattered among the fields are the teeming villages of the Bannuchies,
partly hidden in their groves of mulberries and figs and their
vineyards, as though Cornucopia, wearied by the barren hills above
them in Afghanistan, had showered down all her gifts on the favoured
tribes below. Such is India as it appears to the Pathans inhabiting the
hills on our North-West Frontier, and when we see it thus after some
time spent with them in their barren and rocky hills, we can readily
understand that two thoughts are dominant in their minds. The one is:
"Those rich plains have been put there, in contiguity to our mountains,
because God intended them to be our lawful prey, that when we have
no harvest we may go down and reap theirs; and when we are hard up,
and have a big fine to pay to the British Government, we may lighten
some of the wealthy Hindus of the money that they have accumulated
through usury and other ways which God hates." The other thought is:
"What possible reason has the British Government, the overlord of such
rich lands, for coming and interfering with us in our mountain homes,
which, though nothing but rocks and stones, are still our homes for all
that, where we resent the presence and interference of any stranger?"
The reader will have observed that in the journey above described,
from Peiwar down to Bannu, four different territories have been
passed through. The first and the last--viz., Afghanistan and British
India--are two well-defined, easily comprehensible geographical areas;
but it is seen that betwixt the two are various other tribal areas,
in varying relations with the Indian Government. A few words must
be said to familiarize the reader with the political conditions
obtaining there. The frontier of British India is well defined, but
that of Afghanistan was more or less uncertain until the year 1893,
when Sir Mortimer Durand was deputed by the British Government to
meet the officers delegated by the Amir Abdurrahman, in order that
the frontier might be delimited. This frontier is since known as the
"Durand Line." The intervening area between the Durand Line and the
British frontier is in varying relations to the Indian Government.
Some parts of this, such as Tirah (the country of the Afridis and
Orakzais) and Waziristan (the country of the Wazirs and Mahsuds), are
severely left alone, provided the tribes do not compel attention and
interference by the raids into British territory, which are frequently
perpetrated by their more lawless spirits.
These raids are no doubt disapproved of by the majority of the
tribesmen, who recognize the fact that they must stand to lose in
any conflict with the British Government; but such is the democratic
spirit of the people that every man considers himself as good as his
neighbour, and a step better if he has a more modern rifle. As in the
interregnums of the days of the Israelitish Judges, each man does what
seems good in his own eyes, and bitterly resents any effort of his
neighbour, and even of the tribe, to control his actions or curtail
his liberty. Thus it happens that it is really very difficult for the
tribal elders to prevent their bad characters from perpetrating these
raids. The raiders are usually men with nothing to lose, owning no
landed property within the confines of British India, and guilty of
previous murders or other crimes, which make it impossible for them
to enter the country, except surreptitiously, as they would certainly
be imprisoned, and perhaps hanged, if caught.
A great number in the tribe own lands on both sides of the border, and
find it to their interest to take no overt part against the Government;
while at the same time, unless they give asylum to the desperadoes,
and conceal them on occasion, they are liable to be themselves the
victims. Thus it happens that in nearly every frontier expedition
there are some sections of the tribe which desire to be on good terms
with the British, and are known as "friendlies." It is difficult
for a military commander who has not previously known the people
to appreciate this, and when he finds his camp being sniped from a
supposed "friendly" village, he not unnaturally doubts the sincerity
of the people. As likely as not, however, the recalcitrant sections of
the tribe have been at pains to snipe from such points as to implicate
the friendly sections and force them into joining the standard of
war. On one occasion the exasperated General refused to believe the
representations of the Political Officer that the villages from the
neighbourhood of which the sniping came were friendly until he left
the camp and went over to live in the (supposed) enemies' village
himself! The well-disposed clans would welcome an administration of
the country by which these lawless spirits could be kept in check.
Then, there are certain semi-independent States, such as Chitral and
Dir, where there are rulers of sufficient paramount power to govern
their own country and to render it possible for the British to maintain
that amount of control of their external relations which is considered
desirable, by means of a Political Agent attached to the court of the
chief, while still leaving the latter free to manage his own internal
affairs in accordance with the customs of his tribe and the degree
of his own supremacy over the often conflicting units composing it.
Thirdly, there are what are known as "administered areas," such as the
Upper Kurram Valley, above mentioned. These are inhabited by tribes
over whom no one chief has been able to gain paramount authority for
himself, where, as is so often the case among Afghans, the tribe is
eaten up by a number of rival factions, none of which are willing
to acknowledge the rule of a man from a faction not their own. The
Government official, therefore, is unable to treat with one ruler,
but has to hear all the members of the contending factions. So great
is the democratic spirit that any petty landowner thinks he has as
much right to push his views of public policy as the representative
of an hereditary line of chiefs. This naturally greatly complicates
official relations, and the Political Officer, however much he would
like to refrain from interference in tribal home policy, finds that,
amid a host of conflicting units, he is the only possible court
of appeal. This results in an intermediate form of government: the
Indian Penal Code does not obtain; tribal laws and customs are the
recognized judicial guides, and there is a minimum of interference
with the people; yet the Political Officer is the supreme authority,
and combines in himself the executive and judicial administration of
the area.
Notwithstanding the exclusiveness of the religion that these
people profess, they find it impossible to do their business or
live comfortably without the help of the ubiquitous and obsequious
Hindu. Just as much as the great Mughal Emperors of old found it
best to have Hindus for the posts of treasurer, accountant, adviser,
etc., so the frontier chief of to-day has his Hindu vassal always with
him, to keep his accounts, write his petitions, and transact most of
his written and judicial business. The majority of the shopkeepers
also are Hindus. Even under the settled administration of British
India the Muhammadan has never become such an adept at bargaining,
petty trade, and shopkeeping as the more thrifty and quick-witted
Hindu. Thus in every village of any pretension there are the Hindus,
with their shops, who make their journeys to the big market-towns
on the frontier--Peshawur, Bannu, and Dera Ismail Khan--and return
with piece-goods, matches, looking-glasses, and a variety of Western
trinkets, as well as the food-stuffs which the Afghan covets, but
cannot produce himself, such as white sugar and tea. These Hindus
are regarded as vassals by the Muhammadan community they supply,
and each Hindu trader or shopkeeper has his own particular overlord
or Muhammadan malik, who in return for these services guarantees his
safety, is ready to protect him--by force of arms, if necessary--from
rival Muhammadan sections, and to revenge any injury done to him as
if it were a personal one to himself.
The Hindu supplies the brains and the Muhammadan the valour. The
Hindu is ever ready to outwit his overbearing but often obtuse
masters, and under British rule avails himself of the protection
the law affords to do things he would not venture on across the
border. Once when travelling across the border my guide was an outlaw,
who had been obliged to fly from British territory after committing
a murder. He told me that he had gone into partnership with a Hindu
for an extensive contract for road-making: the Hindu was to supply
the capital and keep accounts, and he was to recruit the coolies and
do the supervision of the work. "While I," he said, "was broiling
and sweating in the summer sun, that pig of a Hindu was comfortably
seated in his office falsifying the accounts, and I never got an anna
for all my labours. I thought I should get justice from the Sarkar,
so I brought a civil action against him; but I was a plain man, and he
learnt all about the ways of the law from some pleader friend of his,
and I lost the case. Then I paid another pleader a big sum to take
my appeal to the Sessions Judge, but he had manipulated the accounts
and paid the witnesses, so that I lost that too. Allahu Akbar! The
Judge gave his verdict before the shadow had turned [before midday],
and before the time of afternoon prayers had arrived that son of a
pig was as dead as a post. But then I had to come over here, and I
can only pay an occasional night visit to my village now."
A story which he told me to illustrate the mercantile genius of the
Hindu will bear repeating. A Muhammadan and a Hindu resolved to go
into partnership. The Muhammadan, being the predominant partner,
stipulated that he was to have the first half of everything, and the
Hindu the remainder. The Hindu obsequiously consented. The first day
the Hindu brought back a cow from market. He milked it, got the butter
and cream, made the dung into fuel-cakes for his fire, and then went
to call the Muhammadan because the cow was hungry and wanted grass
and grain. The Muhammadan said he was ready to do his share if the
Hindu did his. The Hindu blandly replied that he had already done his,
while the stipulated "first half" of the cow included the animal's
mouth and stomach, and fell clearly to the lot of the Muhammadan.
Now let us see what is the position of the missionary in each of these
areas. In British India he has a free hand so long as he keeps within
the four corners of the law. In Afghanistan there is an absolute veto
against even his entry into the country, and there is no prospect of
this changing under the present régime. A convert from Muhammadanism
to Christianity is regarded within the realms of the Amir as having
committed a capital offence, and both law and popular opinion would
decree his destruction. In the intervening tribal areas there is no
reason why a cautious missionary, well acquainted with the language and
customs of the people, should not work with considerable success. A
medical missionary who did not attack their religion with a mistaken
zeal would undoubtedly be welcomed by the greater number of the people,
though the Mullahs, or priests, would be an uncertain element, and
certainly hostile at the beginning. The local political authorities
have the final say as to how far the missionaries may extend their
operations. I shall revert to this subject in the concluding chapter
(Chapter XXV.), where I shall show that in no part of the country are
medical missions more obviously indicated, not only for Christianizing
the people, but equally so for pacifying them and familiarizing them
with the more peaceful aspects of British rule.
CHAPTER IV
A FRONTIER VALLEY
Description of the Kurram Valley--Shiahs and Sunnis--Favourable
reception of Christianity--Independent areas--A candid
reply--Proverbial disunion of the Afghans--The two policies--Sir
Robert Sandeman--Lord Curzon creates the North-West Frontier
Province--Frontier wars--The vicious circle--Two flaws the
natives see in British rule: the usurer, delayed justice--Personal
influence.
Among the various tracts of border territory that have recently
been opened up and brought under the influence of civilization by
the frontier policy of the Indian Government, none is fairer or
more promising than the Upper Kurram Valley, on the lower waters of
which river Bannu, the headquarters of the Afghan Medical Mission, is
situate. The River Kurram rises on the western slopes of Sikaram, the
highest point of the Sufed Koh Range (15,600 feet), and for twenty-five
miles makes a détour to the south and east through the Aryab Valley,
which is inhabited by the tribe of Zazis, who are still under the
government of the Amir, and form his frontier in this part. The river
then suddenly emerges into a wider basin, the true valley of Upper
Kurram, stretching from the base of the Sufed Koh Range to the base
of a lower range on the right bank, a breadth of fifteen miles, the
river running close to the latter range, and the north-western corner
of this basin being separated from the head-waters of the Kurram by
the ridge of the Peiwar Kotal, where was fought the memorable action
of December 2, 1879, by which the road to Kabul was opened. This wide
valley runs down as far as Sadr, thirty miles lower down towards the
south-east, being narrower, however, below. Here the valley narrows
down to from two to four miles, and runs south-east for thirty-five
miles to Thal, where it ceases to be in British territory, but winds
for thirty miles among the Waziri Hills, until it emerges into the
Bannu Plain, and flows through the Bannu and Marwat districts into
the Indus at Isa Khel. Thus, with the exception of the head-waters and
some thirty miles just above Bannu, the territory is all now subject
to British rule, and is steadily becoming more peaceful and civilized.
Below the Zazis the valley down as far as Waziristan was originally
possessed by the Bangash, a Sunni tribe of Pathans, who came themselves
from the direction of Kohat. The Turis were a Shiah tribe inhabiting
some districts on the eastern bank of the Indus near Kalabagh,
who, being ardent traders and nomads, were accustomed to visit
the cool regions of Upper Kurram every summer for trade, health,
and pasturage. One summer, some two hundred years ago, a quarrel
arose between them and the Bangash of a village called Burkha, and
resulted in a battle, in which the Turis came off victorious, and,
destroying or driving away the inhabitants of Burkha, made it their
first settlement in the valley. Soon after this they attacked and
possessed themselves of two of the most important villages of the
valley, Peiwar and Milana, and to this day every Turi with aspirations
to importance claims land in one of these three villages, though it
may be only the fiftieth part of a field, as proof of his true lineage.
Year by year the Turis gradually strengthened their position, driving
the Bangash farther down the valley, except in some cases, such as
the inhabitants of the large and beautiful village of Shlozan, the
Bangash of which, all becoming Shiahs, amalgamated with the Turis,
and retained their lands.
Finally, having made their position secure, and realizing the charms
of the valley, the Turis ceased to return to the plain, and remained
in the valley all the year round. Hence to-day we find the upper part
of the valley inhabited only by Turis, while below this, as far as
the Alizai, the Turis and Bangash are mingled, their villages being
often side by side; and further down still the Bangash have the land
all to themselves.
Since the people have realized the peace resulting from English rule,
and have begun to beat their swords into ploughshares, many of the hill
tribes bordering the valley have taken every opportunity of settling
in allotments in the valley, and enjoying the larger produce of its
richer soil. These are the Mangals and Makbals above, and the Zaimukhts
below, thus introducing a fresh element into the population. Over and
above these any worker in the valley has to count on dealings with the
neighbouring tribes, who still cling to their mountain fastnesses,
and sometimes still show their old disposition to loot the more
peaceable inhabitants. These are the Ningrahars, Spinwars, and Paris
on the north, and the Zazi-i-Maidan on the south; while the Afghan
country of Khost being in close proximity, its people also would be
easily reached. To make the enumeration of the inhabitants complete,
it only remains to mention the Hindus, who, mostly of the Arora caste,
are in large numbers in the valley, and retain most of the trade,
and do much clerical and business work for the Muhammadans.
In the time of the Hindu Rajahs of Kabul they were probably in the
ascendant here, and the little archæology which the valley presents
is all of Hindu origin. Apart from the variety of tribes who are thus
brought into close proximity in the valley, it has a special interest
and importance from its being one of the two routes from Kabul to India
(the other being the Khaiber). Hence many nomads from Afghanistan
frequently visit and temporarily inhabit the valley. Prominent at
present among these are the Hazaras, numbers of whom have been driven
out from their own lands by the Amir, and have come here to labour
on the roads.
The Khorotis and Ghilzais also frequent the valley. It is owing to
this peculiarly central and cosmopolitan position, and partly to
the character of the people themselves, that this district presents
so many advantages as a centre of mission work and influence. There
is a great opportunity for mission work among the Turis. These, as
above mentioned, are Shiahs, while all the tribes round belong to
the orthodox sect of Sunnis; consequently, previously to the English
occupation in 1891 they were subjected to persistent, relentless
persecution at the hands of the Amir, and to frequent inroads
from their Sunni neighbours. They naturally, therefore, look on the
Christians as deliverers from the throes of Sunni rule and persecution,
and are ipso facto inclined to look on Christianity favourably, since
it has brought them so much peace and freedom from oppression. And
still, as a wordy warfare is carried on by their respective Mullahs,
both sides endeavour to find in Christianity points of resemblance
by which they can magnify their own sect, rather than, like the
Muhammadans of Bannu, to be constantly cavilling at every word from
a Christian tongue or a Christian book.
This has resulted in a wonderful (wonderful, at any rate, to a
missionary from bigoted Bannu) openness to conversation about the
Christian Scriptures, and readiness to receive Christian teaching. For
instance, in Bannu a well-inclined Mullah dare not read a Bible except
in secrecy, while in Kurram I have frequently seen Mullahs publicly
reading and commenting on the Holy Word to large groups of Khans and
other men.
Again, in Bannu mention of such doctrines as the Sonhood, the
Crucifixion, or the Sinlessness of Christ, or the Fatherhood of God,
is as often as not the signal for an uproar; while here the same
doctrines, even if not partially accepted, may yet be freely talked
about, with the certainty of nearly always getting a fair hearing.
The first summer during which I spent some time among these
people I nearly everywhere had a hospitable, not to say cordial,
reception. This, of course, was partly attributable to the
medical benefits they received, but it was markedly different
from the reception often accorded to the bearer of Gospel tidings
in Hindustan. At no place was there any open opposition from the
Mullahs, and most of them came to see me, and had long talks about
the Injil (Gospel), and asked for and gratefully accepted copies of
it, which I have reason to believe they preserved carefully and read
regularly; while the people often besought us to partake longer of
their hospitality or to visit them again next year, or, better still,
to start a dispensary in their midst.
A reference to the map shows how intimate are the relations of this
valley with Afghanistan, and relics of Afghan rule frequently present
themselves to the doctor when going about their villages--men who have
been crippled for life as a punishment for some crime, or it may be
merely because they incurred the displeasure of someone of influence,
who manufactured a case against them. I have seen men who have had
their right hand cut off for robbery, and others whose feet were
completely crippled by long-continued incarceration in the stocks,
or by a torture often inflicted to extract evidence, in which the
foot is tied with cords to a piece of wood like a magnified tent-peg
fixed in the ground. This peg has a cleft in it, and a wedge is then
hammered slowly into this cleft, thus gradually tightening the cords
till they cut into the foot and cause its mortification.
In every village there are one or more matamkhanas, where the Shiahs
hold their annual mournings for the martyrs of Kerbela (Hasan and
Huseïn) at every Muharram. Under Afghan (Sunni) rule these ceremonies
were often interdicted, or at least restricted; but now they are
able to carry them on unhindered, and pray for the continuance of
British rule in consequence. These places form convenient centres
for the men to gather together and talk, and in them many of my
religious discussions have been held. They are all the more ready
to accept the Christian account of the Crucifixion and its meaning
(which is such a stumbling-block to the Sunnis), because they look on
the martyrdom of the two brothers at Kerbela as having a vicarious
efficacy for those who perform the memorial rites, and regard 'Ali,
the fourth Khalifa from Muhammad, as being indeed a saviour.
If we could have visited this valley in the days long before
the Christian era, when the first Aryan immigrants were passing
down from Central Asia into the Panjab, we should have seen it
covered with their settlements, and seen them engaged in the simple
Nature-worship depicted in the Vedas, which record this stage of
Aryan civilization. This region was probably much better watered and
more fertile in those days than it is now. Not only does geological
evidence point to a greater rainfall and vegetation, but as these
early immigrations were mostly of large bands of pastoral people,
moving with their flocks and herds, their families and household
possessions, and as they probably only gradually moved down the valley
into the plains below, they must have found more pasturage than the
desolate frontier ranges would now afford.
The Kurram Valley above described serves as a good example of an
administered area fairly well advanced in the civilizing effects of
a settled and just Government.
The independent tribes, on the other hand, go down the scale till
you find tribes, such as some sections of the Wazirs and Afridis,
who are utter barbarians, entirely devoted to a nomadic life of
systematic highway robbery.
A Political Officer was once seated, with a number of the head men of
some of these independent tribes, on the top of one of their rugged
mountains, from which you look down on Afghanistan to the west and
India to the east. They had been touring with him as his escort for
some days. He had fed them well, and could chat familiarly with them
in their own lingo, so that they had learnt to talk with him without
reserve about even their tribal secrets.
"Now, tell me," said the officer, "if there were to be war--which
God forbid--between Russia and England, what part would you and your
people take? whom would you side with?"
"Do you wish us to tell you what would please you, or to tell you
the real truth?" was their naïve reply.
"I adjure you only tell me what is the 'white word'" (meaning the
true statement).
"Then," said an old greybeard among them, voicing the feelings of all
present, "we would just sit here up on our mountain-tops watching you
both fight, until we saw one or other of you utterly defeated; then
we would come down and loot the vanquished till the last mule! God
is great! What a time that would be for us!"
No doubt he spake truly, but such is the discord of the Afghan tribes
that no doubt the spoil would scarcely be gathered in before they
would begin to fight among themselves over the division of it. These
tribal jealousies and petty wars are inherent among the Afghans,
and greatly diminish their formidableness as foes. If you ask them
about it they will acknowledge this defect in their character, and
tell you how that one of their ancestors displeased the Almighty,
who, to punish him, wove the strands of discord in the web of their
nature from that time onwards. Hence the saying, "The Afghans of the
frontier are never at peace except when they are at war!" For when some
enemy from without threatens their independence, then, for the time
being, are their feuds and jealousies thrown aside, and they fight
shoulder to shoulder, to resume them again when the common danger is
averted. Even when they are all desirous of joining in some jihad,
they remain suspicious of each other, and are apt to fail one another
at critical moments; or else one tribe will wait to see how it fares
with those already in it before unsheathing their own swords. Thus it
was in the frontier rising of 1897 that the difficulty of quelling
the rising would have been immensely greater had it not been that
the tribes rose seriatim instead of simultaneously, and the rising
in one part of the frontier had been put down before another broke out.
Two policies have at various times been advocated with equal warmth by
their respective partisans. The earlier policy, which was supported by
Lord Lawrence in the days of his Viceroyalty, was generally known as
the "policy of masterly inactivity." Later on the "forward policy"
received more general approbation, its chief exponent being Sir
Robert Sandeman. Those who advocate the former point out the great
expenditure involved in all interference with the internal tribes
across our border, and that almost inevitably we become sooner
or later involved in wars with them. They would therefore have the
British Government strictly abstain from all trans-frontier politics,
and leave the tribes severely alone, so long as they give no trouble
to us on our side of the border. The "forward" party, on the other
hand, point out the danger of having this extensive area on the
most vulnerable part of our Indian Empire outside our own control,
and they advocate a system of controlling all the political affairs
of the trans-border tribes, while leaving their internal policy in
the hands of their own chiefs, who, though guided by our political
officers, would be free to maintain the ancient tribal customs.
Sir Robert Sandeman is, perhaps, the most remarkable instance of
the power which a single officer has been able to exercise over
these border tribes, and it was through him that the large tract
on the border between Quetta and the Deras was organized under our
Political Officers, working through the tribal chiefs. Allowances are
made to the tribes, in return for which they guarantee the safety of
the British posts on the highroads, and become responsible for any
misdemeanours on the part of other members of their tribe. Tribal
levies are organized under young officers of the British Army, who
train them in military discipline, drill, and marksmanship. The pay
received by these soldiers becomes a valuable asset to the tribe,
and a strong inducement to give up their more predatory habits, in
favour of the pax Britannica. Still, it was found necessary to place
regular troops of the Indian Army in some of the more important and
critical situations. The frontier is, for the most part, composed of
intricate, and in many parts inaccessible, mountain ranges, which form
an absolute barrier to the passage of troops; but piercing through
these are the passes, of which the best known are the Khaiber and the
Bolan, which from time immemorial have formed the highways through
which hostile armies have invaded India, and it would be through them
that any enemy of the future would endeavour to bring its forces. It
is therefore a paramount necessity to the British Government that
these passes should be securely guarded, and therefore each one of
them forms part of one of the areas administered by British officers,
and guarded either by native troops or tribal levies.
It is through these passes, too, that the great merchant caravans pass
down from Afghanistan and Central Asia into British India. In former
times the merchants had to subsidize the tribes through which they
passed, who would otherwise have blocked the passes and stolen their
goods; and it is partly to make up to the tribes for the loss of this
income that the tribal subsidies were arranged. Near where each of
these passes debouches on to the trans-Indus plain is a city, which
forms an emporium for the merchandise brought down, and a military
station for the protection of the pass. While Peshawur serves this
purpose for the Khaiber, Kohat commands the Kurram, Bannu the Tochi,
and Dera Ismail Khan the Gumal.
When Lord Curzon assumed the Viceroyalty, the frontier districts
formed part of the Panjab, and the Lieutenant-Governor of that
province was in administrative control of them. Lord Curzon wished
to bring them more directly under his own control, so in 1901 a new
province, composed of five frontier districts of the Panjab, was
constituted, and called the North-West Frontier Province. The five
districts composing this province are Hazara, Peshawur, Kohat, Bannu,
and Dera Ismail Khan. These are all beyond the Indus, except Hazara,
which is to the east of that river.
A Chief Commissioner was appointed over the whole province, directly
responsible to the Viceroy, and he had his headquarters and the centre
of government at Peshawur.
Lord Curzon's next move was to advance the railway systems of the
Panjab along the frontier, bringing their termini to the mouths of
the Khaiber and Kurram Passes. As this enabled a rapid concentration
of troops at any point along the frontier, he was able to withdraw
the regiments of the Indian Army which garrisoned the more outlying
districts, and to replace them by tribal levies.
No doubt it is the desire of the Government not to make any further
annexations of this barren, mountainous, and uninviting border
region; but it is not always equally easy to avoid doing so, and it
is a universal experience of history that when there are a number of
disorganized and ill-governed units on the borders of a great power,
they become inevitably, though it may be gradually and piece by piece,
absorbed into the latter. There are, however, financial considerations
which induce the Government to refrain from annexing a country which
has few natural resources, can pay little in taxes, and must cost a
great deal to administer.
But these frontier tribes form some of the finest fighting material
from which the Indian Army is recruited, and it may be that years
of regular and peaceful administration will destroy the military
qualities of these people, as has been the case in South India. The
many opportunities afforded by the frontier to the Indian Army for
active service, and the training that they get in the little frontier
expeditions, may also be looked upon by some as a valuable asset.
The usual sequence of events is as follows: First, the more
unruly sections of the tribes carry on a series of raids on the
frontier villages of India, as has been their custom from time
immemorial. Sometimes the miscreants are captured and meet their fate;
more often they escape, and, in accordance with the system of tribal
responsibility, a fine is put on the tribe from which they come. These
fines go on accumulating, the tribe running up an account with the
Government for its misdeeds.
Thus we come to the second stage, when the patience of the Government
is exhausted. The tribal heads are called in, and an ultimatum offered
to them. They must pay so much in fines and deliver the criminals
demanded, or an expedition will be organized. Much time--it may be
many months--is occupied in councils, while the tribe is endeavouring
to gain time or to make the terms more favourable.
The third stage is when the tribe fail to meet the Government's
conditions, and a punitive expedition is organized against them. This
expedition enters their hills, raises their parda, burns their
villages, fights a few actions--usually of the nature of ambuscades
or rearguard actions--realizes more or less of the fine, confiscates
a number of rifles, and comes back again.
The tribe is now free to commence its depredations afresh with a
clean sheet, and to begin to run up a new account, and, in order more
effectually to prevent this and keep a greater control over them,
the Government find themselves compelled to enter on the fourth stage,
which is that of annexing some points of vantage where military posts
can be erected, which will overawe and control them.
It is thus that a gradual, though it may be reluctant, annexation of
territory becomes inevitable.
Then, it must be remembered that there is always a section of the
tribe, and often a majority, who are favourable to annexation, for the
more settled and peaceful rule of the British brings many advantages
in its train. While before they were not able to cultivate their crops
at any distance from the village, and even then only when fully armed,
now they are able to till the ground in peace even miles away from
their habitations, and land which was before unculturable becomes
of great value. They are able to trade and carry on the ordinary
avocations of life with a security to which they have been hitherto
strangers. They learn the value of money, and begin to amass wealth.
There are always, however, two parties in the tribe who are opposed
tooth and nail to British rule, and as they have got power far
in excess of their more peacefully disposed brethren, they are
usually able to terrorize the more peace-loving majority into a
false acquiescence in their own opposition. These two parties are
the outlaws and the Mullahs.
The outlaws have made their living by raiding and robbery for
generations, and have no inclination to give up their profession for
more peaceable but less exciting and less profitable employment.
Not only have the Mullahs an antipathy to those whom they consider
kafirs, or infidels, but they know that under the changed conditions of
life, their influence, their power, and their wealth must all suffer.
Besides this, there are two elements in our rule which are
equally repugnant to all. One is the protection which we give to
the money-lender, and the other is the dilatory nature of our
justice. Usury is unlawful to the Muhammadans, but as they are
spendthrift and improvident, the Hindus are able to make a living
among them by lending them money in times of necessity. The Hindu
was formerly prevented from charging too high a rate of interest
or running up too long an account, by the fact that if he did so,
his Muhammadan masters, who held the sword, would come one night and
burn his house over his head, and let him start afresh. Under British
régime, however, the usurer is protected. He is able to recover his
debts from the impecunious Muhammadan by a civil action, and may
get the latter thrown into prison if he does not pay; while if the
Muhammadan tries to burn his account-books, he will find himself an
inmate of His Majesty's gaol.
The justice which the Muhammadan of the frontier appreciates is a rapid
and appropriate justice, such as used to be meted out by officers in
the days of Nicholson, when the offender might find himself accused,
arrested, judged, and visited with some punishment appropriate to
the crime all within the course of a few days. At the present time he
can, if rich enough, call in a pleader, and get any number of false
witnesses, and his case is inevitably dragged out by the magistrate
by successive postponements for getting the attendance of these
witnesses, or through some technicality of the law; and even when
he does--it may be after the lapse of some months--get a judgment,
the losing party in the suit is at liberty to bring an appeal to the
Sessions Judge, and from him another appeal can be lodged at the High
Court of Lahore, which has so many cases on its lists that it may be
his case will not be taken till after the lapse of two or three years.
The real strength of our administration on the frontier is the
personnel of our officers, for it has always been the man, and not
the system, that governs the country; and there are names of officers
now dead and gone which are still a living power along that frontier,
because they were men who thoroughly knew the people with whom they
had to deal, and whose dauntless and strong characters moulded the
tribes to their will, and exerted such a mesmeric influence over
those wild Afghans that they were ready to follow their feringi
masters through fire and sword with the most unswerving loyalty,
even though they were of an alien faith.
As an example of this, it is related that on a certain frontier
expedition the regiments were passing up a defile on a height, above
which some of the enemy had ensconced themselves in ambush behind
their sangars. The Afghans had been soldiers in the Indian Army,
who had now completed their service and retired to their hills, and
were, as is often the case, using the skill which they had learnt
in their regiments against us. They were about to fire, when one
of them recognized the officer riding at the head of the regiment
as his own Colonel. He stopped the others, and said: "That is our
own Karnal Sahib. We must not fire on him or his regiment." That
regiment was allowed to pass in safety, but they opened fire on the
one which succeeded.
CHAPTER V
THE CHRISTIAN'S REVENGE
Police posts versus dispensaries--The poisoning scare--A
native doctor's influence--Wazir marauders spare the mission
hospital--A terrible revenge--The Conolly bed--A political
mission--A treacherous King--Imprisonment in Bukhara--The
Prayer-Book--Martyrdom--The sequel--Influence of the mission
hospital--The medical missionary's passport.
I was once urging on a certain official the need of a Government
dispensary in a certain frontier district. "There is no need there,"
he replied; "the people are quiet and law-abiding. Now A---, that is a
disturbed area: there we ought to have medical work"--an unintentional
testimony to one result of the doctor's work, though rather hard on
the law-abiding section of the populace that they should have no
hope of a hospital unless they can organize a few raids, or get a
reputation for truculence.
Which will be better--a punitive police post or a civil
dispensary? This seems a not very logical conundrum, yet it is based
on sound reasoning, and a well-managed establishment of the latter
kind will often remove the necessity of setting up the former. The
doctor is a confidant in more matters than one, and the right man
will often smooth down little frictions and mollify sorenesses which
bid fair to cause widespread conflagrations.
A medical mission is a pacific, as well as an essentially pioneer,
agency.
There was a little missionary dispensary on the frontier, in charge
of a native doctor, a convert from Muhammadanism, who had gone in
and out among the people till he was a household friend all down
the country-side.
One day he was sitting in his dispensary seeing out-patients, when
he heard the following conversation:
Abdultalib. "The Sarkar has sent out agents to kill the Mussulmans
by poisoning their drinking-water."
Balyamin. "Mauzbillah! how do you know that?"
A. "Mullah D. arrived last night, and, sitting in the chauk, he told
how he had seen a man throwing pills into the well at Dabb village. He
went after him, but as soon as the man saw him he ran away."
B. "What is to be done?"
A. "First we must tell the women not to draw water from the wells--they
have certainly been poisoned in the night--but they can take their
pitchers to the tank in the big mosque; no one would interfere
with that."
B. "If we can catch the miscreant, we will show him plainly enough
who is the Mussulman and who the infidel."
As the news spread through the village, the excitement grew; women who
had already filled their pitchers from the wells hurriedly emptied
them and started off afresh to the mosque tank. Guards were placed
at the well, both to warn the faithful and to give short shrift to
any hapless stranger on whom suspicion might fall. The men about the
bazaar had procured thick sticks, and seemed only waiting for the
opportunity of using them, and things looked black all round. News was
brought to the police-station, and, without waiting to don his uniform,
the inspector buckled on a revolver, and, taking a constable with him,
hurried off to the most disturbed portion of the village.
The men there were sullen, and would give no information, and
two or three of the more truculent seemed inclined to hustle the
police-officer. Just then the native doctor appeared on the scene,
and recognized the gravity of the situation at once. One rash act,
and the police might have to use their firearms in self-defence. The
people, however, trusted the doctor. Had he not often championed them
when subjected to little police tyrannies, and had they not often
sought counsel from him in their village quarrels, and always found
his advice had helped them to come to an amicable settlement? So now,
when he quietly slipped his arm into that of the inspector, and led
him out of the dangerous quarter, chatting the while, till he got
him safely into a house without loss of official dignity, not even
the most truculent tried to resist his passage. Then he returned and
reasoned with them on the groundlessness of their suspicions. Had any
of them ever seen anyone throw anything into the wells? Had anyone
even got a stomach-ache from drinking the water? Did any King ever
want to kill off all his own subjects? If so, whom would he rule,
and where would be his kingdom? Finally, he bantered them out of
their warlike intentions: the sticks were returned home, business
resumed, the inspector came back as though his authority had never
been questioned, and a very ugly situation was successfully negotiated.
In the year 1879 the tribe of the Wazirs had been incited by their
Mullahs to rise, and they came down suddenly with their lashkar on
the little frontier town of Tank. There was a mission hospital there,
in charge of an Indian doctor, the Rev. John Williams. Before the
authorities could summon the troops the Wazir warriors had overrun
town and bazaar, and were burning and looting. Some young bloods went
for the mission hospital, but they were at once restrained by the
tribal elders, who forbade them to meddle with the property of "our
own Daktar Sahib," as they called him. Had they not often been inmates
of his hospital and partakers of his hospitality? Not a hair of his
head was to be injured. They at once set a guard of their own men on
the mission hospital, who warned off any excited tribesmen who might
have done it injury, and that was the only place in the bazaar that
escaped fire and sword and pillage. Some of his surgical instruments
had been carried off before the posting of the guard; but upon this
being made known, search was made through Waziristan, and the friends
of the doctor were not satisfied until all were returned to him.
Revenge is a word sweet to the Afghan ear, and even a revenge satisfied
by the culminating murder is the sweeter if the fatal blow, preferably
on some dark night, is so managed that the murdered man has a few
minutes of life in which to realize that he has been outwitted,
and to hear the words of exultation with which his enemy gluts his
hatred. In one case that came to my knowledge, after strangling his
victim, but before he was quite gone, the murderer dealt his victim a
terrific blow on his jaw, shattering the bone, with the taunt: "Do you
remember the day when I told you I would knock out your teeth for you?"
In the autumn of 1907 a fine stalwart Wazir was brought to the Bannu
Mission Hospital in a pitiable state: both of his eyes had been slashed
about and utterly blinded with a knife. His story was that his enemies
came on him unexpectedly in his cottage one day, beat his wife into
insensibility, tied him to a bed, and then deliberately destroyed his
eyes with a knife. His wife came to hospital with him, suffering from
severe contusions and some broken ribs, and we put them both into one
of our small "family wards"--so called because father, mother, and
children, if there be any, can all stop together for treatment. It was
painful to have to tell him that he would never see again, and still
more painful to hear him as he piteously said: "Oh, Sahib, if you can
give me some sight only just long enough to go and shoot my enemy,
then I shall be satisfied to be blind all the rest of my life." It
could not be. His lot would probably become that of the numerous
blind beggars that throng Eastern bazaars; for who would plough his
land now or speak for him in the village council? Yet of pure pity we
kept him a few weeks, that he might hear the story of the Gospel of
goodwill and forgiveness; but he would shake his head and sigh. "No,
that teaching is not for us. What I want is revenge--revenge!" Then,
because a concrete case will sometimes accomplish what a mere statement
cannot effect, I told him the story of the Conolly bed. Over each bed
is a little framed card denoting the benefactor or supporter of that
bed and the person commemorated thereby, and over this particular
bed is written:
Conolly Bed.
In Memory of Captain Conolly, beheaded at Bukhara.
As long ago as 1841 this brave English officer was sent on a
political mission to Bukhara, which was then an independent State,
and not under the rule of Russia, as now. The Muhammadan ruler,
Bahadur Khan, affected to be suspicious of his intentions, and threw
him into prison, where another English officer, Colonel Stoddart,
had already been incarcerated. It was in vain for them to protest
and to claim the consideration due to a representative of the British
Government; they were met by the answer that no letter had come from
the Queen in reply to one sent by the Amir, and that therefore they
had certainly come to stir up Khiva and Khokand to war against the
Amir of Bukhara. Their effects were confiscated; even their very
clothes were taken from them, till they only had their shirts and
drawers left, when a filthy sheepskin was given to Captain Conolly
as some protection against the winter cold of Bukhara. Their servants
were thrown into a horrible dungeon called the Black Well, into which
each man had to be lowered by a rope from the aperture at the top,
and was then left to rot in the filth below.
Captain Conolly managed to secrete a small English Prayer-Book about
his person, and this was a daily source of comfort to him and his
companion in prison, and he marked verses in the Psalms and passages in
the prayers from which they derived comfort. On the fly-leaves and the
margins he wrote a diary of their sufferings; month succeeded month,
and their hearts grew sick with hope deferred, and their bodies worn
with fever, wasting and wounds. On February 10, 1842, he writes:
"We have now been fifty-three days and nights without means of
changing or washing our linen. This book will probably not leave me,
so I now will, as opportunity serves, write in it the last blessing of
my best affection to all my friends." Again, on March 11, he writes:
"At first we had viewed the Amir's conduct as perhaps dictated by mad
caprice, but now, looking back upon the whole, we saw indeed that it
had been the deliberate malice of a demon, questioning and raising
our hopes and ascertaining our condition, only to see how our hearts
were going on in the process of breaking.
"I did not think to shed one more tear among such cold-blooded men,
but yesterday evening, as I looked upon Stoddart's half-naked and
much lacerated body, conceiving that I was the especial object of
the King's hatred, because of my having come to him after visiting
Khiva and Khok, and told him that the British Government was too
great to stir up secret enmity against any of its enemies, I wept on,
entreating one of our keepers to have conveyed to the chief my humble
request that he would direct his anger upon me, and not further destroy
by it my poor broken Stoddart, who had suffered so much and so meekly
here for three years. My earnest words were answered by a 'Don't cry
and distress yourself.' He, alas! would do nothing, so we turned and
kissed each other and prayed together, and we have risen again from our
knees with hearts comforted, as if an angel had spoken to us, resolved,
please God, to wear our English honesty and dignity to the last, within
all the misery and filth that this monster may try to degrade us with."
Again, on March 28: "We have been ninety-nine days and nights without
a change of clothes."
One of the native agents of the mission, Salih Muhammad by name,
subsequently escaped to India, and thus relates the closing scene of
the tragedy.
"On Tuesday night (June 14, 1842) their quarters were entered by
several men, who stripped them and carried them off, but I do not know
whether it was to the Black Well or to some other prison. In stripping
Colonel Stoddart a lead pencil was found in the lining of his coat
and some papers in his waist. These were taken to the Amir, who gave
orders that he should be beaten with heavy sticks till he disclosed
who brought the papers, and to whom he wrote. He was most violently
beaten, but he revealed nothing. He was beaten repeatedly for two or
three days. On Friday the Amir gave orders that Colonel Stoddart should
be killed in the presence of Captain Conolly, who should be offered
his life if he would become a Muhammadan. In the afternoon they were
taken outside the prison into the street, which is a kind of small
square. Their hands were tied across in front. Many people assembled
to behold the spectacle. Their graves were dug before their eyes.
"Colonel Stoddart's head was then cut off with a knife. The chief
executioner then turned to Captain Conolly and said: 'The Amir spares
your life if you will become a Mussulman.' Captain Conolly answered:
'I will not be a Mussulman, and I am ready to die!' saying which he
stretched forth his neck, and his head was then struck off. Their
bodies were then interred in the graves which had been dug."
For a long time the fate of these two officers was unknown in England,
and, indeed, overshadowed by the greater disaster in Kabul. Then a
missionary, the Rev. Joseph Wolff, undertook a journey to Bukhara,
and after many sufferings and dangers, ascertained that they had been
murdered two years before. He did not, however, come across the little
Prayer-Book, which appears to have been lying about in some shop in
Bukhara for seven years after the officers' death, when a Russian
officer, passing through the bazaar, happened to light on it. He
picked it up, and, observing its interesting nature, purchased it
from the shopkeeper. For another fourteen years the little book was
lying on his table at St. Petersburg, when a visitor who knew Captain
Conolly's relations saw it, and obtained leave to take the precious
relic and place it in the hands of the relatives of the deceased;
and thus, twenty-one years after her brother's death, Miss Conolly
obtained the full account of his sufferings, written with his own hand.
So far no vengeance had been exacted for the Amir's atrocity; now the
murdered man's sister thought she would like to have her revenge, so
when the Bannu Mission Hospital was inaugurated, she wrote out to the
medical missionary, expressing her desire to support a bed in memory
of her brother, and that bed has been supported in his name ever
since, and we tell the Afghans in it that that is the Christian's
Revenge. When I sit by the bedside of some sick or wounded Afghan
in that bed, and tell him and the others round him that it was their
co-religionists who killed this officer because he would not forsake
Christianity for Islam, and that now his sister is paying for them
to be nursed and tended, and praying for them that they may learn
of the Saviour who bid us forgive our enemies, and do good to those
who despitefully use us and persecute us, then it is easy to see that
the story has set them thinking. And when it is further brought home
by their experiences in the mission hospital, where they have been
lovingly tended by the very native converts whom they have abused and
perhaps maltreated in the bazaar, they return to their Afghan homes
with very different feelings towards Christians.
It is thus that the medical missionary gets his passport to all
their villages, not only in British India, but across the border
among the independent tribes. While visiting a Wazir chief once in
his border fort, he said to me: "You can do what we cannot possibly
do. I cannot go into that village over there, because I have enmity
with the people there. The chief of that tribe across the river a
few miles off has a blood-feud with me, and I have always to go armed
and with a guard lest he should waylay me; at night I cannot leave my
fort, but have to sleep ready armed in my tower. And I am like most
of us in this country: we all have our enemies, and never know when
we may meet them. But you can go into any of our villages and among
all the tribes, although you have not even got a revolver with you,
and, more than that, you get a welcome, too."
In some parts of the country across the border it is necessary to take
a fresh guide every few miles, as the various villages are on bad
terms, and might injure the traveller on the lands of the opposing
village merely in order to get their enemies involved in a feud, or
into trouble with the Government. These guides are called badragga,
and within the tribal boundary any member of the clan, even a child,
is often sufficient protection, as that is sufficient to show that the
traveller has received the sanction of the tribe to move about within
their boundaries. If, however, marauding bands are known to be about,
or if the tribe is at feud with a neighbouring one, then they will
send a fully-armed badragga of several men with you. I have, however,
seen a traveller consigned to the care of a boy of nine years or so,
and, no doubt, with perfect security.
On one occasion when it had been arranged that the badragga of a
certain clan was to meet me at a prearranged rendezvous, I arrived
at the appointed time and place under the care of the badragga of
the clan through whose territories I had just passed, but no one
was forthcoming. We waited an hour or so, but still no one came;
my badragga then accompanied us a little way forward till we came in
view of the first village of the next clan. Here they stopped and said:
"We can go no farther. If we were to go into that village, there would
very likely be bloodshed, as there is enmity between us and them;
but we will sit at the top of this knoll here and watch you while you
go on to the village, and if anyone interferes with you on the way
we will shoot." I went on with an Indian hospital assistant who was
with me, and when nearing the village a man came up and shook hands
with great heartiness, saying: "Don't you remember me? I brought my
brother to your hospital when he was shot and his leg broken, and
we were with you for two months." He brought me to the village and
to his brother, who hobbled out on a crutch to meet us, and was very
pleased. They insisted on our stopping while they called some of the
other villagers, who were anxious to see the doctor, and finally sent
us forward on our journey with a fresh escort and a hearty "God-speed."
CHAPTER VI
A DAY IN THE WARDS
The truce of suffering--A patient's request--Typical cases--A
painful journey--The biter bit--The conditions of amputation--"I
am a better shot than he is"--The son's life or revenge--The
hunter's adventure--A nephew's devotion--A miserly patient--An
enemy converted into a friend--The doctor's welcome.
As I have already said, the Afghans never forget their tribal feuds
except in the presence of foes from without. Then they may put them
aside for a while, especially if their foe be not Mussulman in faith,
but only for a while. The feuds begin again as soon as the danger
is past.
But in the wards of the mission hospital all this is changed, and
here may be seen representatives of all the frontier tribes chatting
fraternally together, who as likely as not would be lying in ambush
for one another if they were a few miles off across the frontier. But
it is generally recognized among them that feuds are to be forgotten in
hospital; and accordingly the doctor gets an audience from half a dozen
different tribes in one ward when he is drawing out the conversation
from the land of feuds to the Prince of Peace, and when he contrasts
the Gospel of loving your neighbour with their rule of "shoot your
neighbour and get his rifle." They say in a half-apologetic tone:
"True; but God has decreed that there shall always be discord among
the Afghans, so what can we do?" Sometimes a patient will say: "I
want to be in a ward that has no windows, because I am afraid that
one of my enemies may come at night when the lamp is burning in the
ward and shoot me through the window by its light."
Great as is the variety of physiognomy, of dress, and of dialect,
even more diverse are the complaints for which they come. Eye
diseases form more than a quarter of the whole, and few cases give
so much satisfaction both to surgeon and patient as these, in many
of which the surgeon is able to restore sight that has been lost for
years, and to send the patient back to his home rejoicing and full
of gratitude. Here is a Bannuchi malik suffering from consumption, a
not uncommon complaint in their crowded villages; next him is a Wazir
lad from the hills, Muhammad Payo by name, suffering from chronic
malarial poisoning. He is an old acquaintance, as he returns to his
home when he feels strong enough, and then, what with coarse fare and
exposure (for he is a poor lad), soon relapses and comes back to us
at death's door, as white as a sheet, and has to be nursed back again
to vigour. Just now he is convalescent, and is going about the ward
doing little services for the other patients, and telling them what to
do and what not to do, as though he had been in the hospital all his
life. Poor fellow! he has lost both his parents in a village raid,
and would have been dead long ago himself but for the open door of
the mission hospital.
In another bed is a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of twelve from Khost,
suffering from disease of the bones of his right leg, which he has
not been able to put to the ground for two years. His home is eighty
miles away across the mountains, and he had no one to bring him to
Bannu, though he had begged some of the traders to let him sit on one
of their baggage camels; but who was going to inconvenience himself
with a friendless boy like that? He had heard such wonderful stories
of the cures effected in the Bannu Hospital from a man in his village
who had been an inmate for six weeks for an ulcer of the leg, that he
determined to get there by hook or by crook, and he had accomplished
the greater part of the journey crawling on his hands and knees,
with an occasional lift from some friendly horseman, and had been six
weeks on the road, begging a dinner here and a night's lodging there
from the villages through which he passed. When he arrived, his state
can be better imagined than described: the weary, suffering look of
his face; the few dirty rags that covered him; the malodorous wound
on his leg, full of maggots, bound round with the last remains of his
pagari; while now there is no brighter, happier boy in the hospital,
with his white hospital shirt and pyjamas, clean, gentle face and
pleasant smile, as he moves about from bed to bed with his crutch,
chatting with the other patients.
Passing on, we see a big swarthy Afghan, with fine martial features,
in which suffering is gradually wearing out the old truculent air. He
had gone armed with a friend one night to a village where there was
a Militia guard. He maintains that they had merely gone to visit a
friend, and had been delayed on the road till night overtook them;
but to be out armed at night is of itself sufficient to raise a
prima-facie case against a man on the border, and when the Militia
soldiers challenged him, and instead of replying he and his friend
took cover, it was so clear to the former that they must be marauders,
that they opened fire. The friend escaped, but our patient received
a bullet through the left thigh, which shattered the bone. He was not
brought to the mission hospital for some time, and when we first saw
him it was obvious that unless the limb were speedily removed, his
days were numbered. He, like all Afghans, had an innate repugnance
to amputation, but finally consented on condition that the amputated
limb should be given to him to take back to his home, that it might
ultimately be interred in his grave; only thus, he thought, would he
be safe from being a limb short in the next world. Once I tried to
argue an Afghan out of this illogical idea, and when other arguments
failed, I suggested that the unsavoury object might be buried in a
spot in the mission compound, and he might leave a note in his grave
specifying where it might be found. He answered at once: "Do you
suppose the angels will have nothing better to do on the Resurrection
Day than going about looking for my leg? And even if they would take
the trouble, they would not come into this heretic place for it."
So the limb was removed and carefully wrapped up and stored away
somewhere, so that he might on recovery take it back with him to
his village. His wound is nearly healed now, and he has sent off his
sister, who was in hospital to nurse him, to his home to fetch a horse
on which to ride back the forty miles to his village, where he will
wile away many a long winter's night with stories of his experiences
in the Bannu Mission Hospital, and how kind the feringis were to him.
Among Afghans a man's nearest relations are often his deadliest
enemies, and "he hates like a cousin" is a common expression. Thus
it came to pass that one day a wounded Afghan was brought to the
mission hospital on a bed borne of four, and examination showed
a serious condition. He had been shot at close quarters the night
before while returning to his house from the mosque after evening
prayers. The bullet had passed completely through the left side of
the chest, the left lung was collapsed, and the patient was blanched
and faint from the severe bleeding that had occurred. A compress
of charred cloth and yolk of egg had been applied, through which
the red stream was slowly trickling. He believed he had been shot
by his uncle, with whom he had a dispute about the possession of a
field, but had not seen his face clearly. A room was got ready, the
patient's blood-saturated garments were replaced by hospital linen,
and the wound was cleansed and dressed.
For a long time he hovered between life and death, constantly attended
by two brothers, who, if they had been as instructed as they were
assiduous, would have made two very excellent nurses. Gradually,
however, he recovered strength, and the wound healed; and one day
when visiting his ward I found him sitting up with a smile on his
face, and after the usual greetings, he said: "Please come to me,
Sahib; I have a request to make." I sat by his bedside, and asked
what I could do for him. He drew me closely to him, and said in a
subdued voice: "Sahib, I want you to get me some cartridges; see,
here are four rupees I have brought for them." "Why, what do you
want them for?" said I. "Look here," said he, pointing to the wound
in his chest; "here is this score to pay off. I am stronger now,
and in a few days I can go home and have my revenge."
I said to him deprecatingly: "Cannot you forego your revenge after all
the good counsels you have been hearing while in hospital? We have,
after so much trouble and nursing, cured you, and now, I suppose,
in a few days we shall be having your uncle brought here on a bed
likewise, and have to take the same trouble over him." "Don't fear
that, Sahib," was the prompt reply; "I am a better shot than he
is." Well, we never did have to deal with that uncle, though I never
gave him the cartridges; probably he got them elsewhere.
Another day a similar cortège came to the hospital. This time the
man on the bed was a fine young Pathan of about twenty summers, and
his father--a greybeard, with handsome but stern features, and one
arm stiffened from an old sword-cut on the shoulder--accompanied the
bearers, carefully shielding his son's face from the sun with an old
umbrella. His was a long-standing feud with the malik of a village
hard by, and he had been shot through the thigh at long range while
tending his flocks on the mountain-side. It had happened four days ago,
but the journey being a difficult one, they had delayed bringing him;
and meanwhile they had slain a goat, and, stripping the skin off the
carcass, had bound it round the injured limb with the raw side against
the flesh. Under the influence of the hot weather the discharges
from the wound and the reeking skin had brought about a condition of
affairs which made bearers and bystanders, all except the father and
the doctor, wind their turbans over their mouths and noses as soon as
the hospital dresser began to unfold and cut through the long folds
of greasy pagari which bound the limb to an improvised splint and
that to the bed. It was a severe compound fracture of the thigh-bone,
with collateral injuries, and I called the father aside and said:
"The only hope of your son's life is immediate amputation. If I
delay, the limb will mortify, and he will certainly die." The old
man, visibly restraining his emotion, said: "If you amputate the leg,
can you promise me that he will recover?" "No," I said; "even then he
might die, for the injury is severe, and he is weak from loss of blood;
but without amputation there is no hope." "Then," said the father,
"let it be as God wills: let him die, for, by our tribal custom,
if he dies as he is I can go and shoot my enemy; but if he dies from
your operation then I could not, and I want my revenge." After this
they would not even accept my offer of keeping the wounded lad in
the hospital to nurse, but bore him away as they had brought him, so
that he might die at home among his people, and then--well, the mind
pictured the stealthy form crouching behind the rock; the hapless
tribesman of the other village with his rifle loaded and slung on
his shoulder right enough, but who was to warn him of his lurking
enemy? And then the shot, the cry, and exultation.
A man of the Khattak tribe was out on the hills with a friend after
mountain goats; he tracked one, but in following it up passed over into
the hills of a section of the Wazir tribe. He was passing along one
of those deep gorges which the mountain torrents have worn through
the maze of sandstone ridges, where the stunted acacia and tufted
grass afford pasturage to little else than the mountain goats, when
his practised eye descried two heads looking over the ridge four
hundred feet above him. Seeing they were observed, the two Wazirs
stood up and challenged them.
"Who called you to come poaching in our country?" "I shall come
when I choose, without asking your permission," retorted the
Khattak. "Swine! has your father turned you out because there was no
maize in your corn-bin?" The Khattak retorted with something stronger,
and each proceeded to impugn the character of the other's female
relations, till the Wazir, thinking he had excited the Khattak to
give him sufficient provocation, sent a bullet whistling past his
head. The Khattak made a jump for the cover of a neighbouring rock,
but before he had time to gain shelter a second bullet had struck
him in the leg, bringing him headlong to earth. His companion had got
the shelter of a rock and opened fire on the Wazirs; but the latter,
thinking they had sufficiently vindicated the privacy of their stony
hills, made off another way.
The Khattak could do no more than lift his friend into the shelter
of a cliff, stanch the bleeding with a piece torn from his pagari,
and make off in hot haste for his village to sound a chigah and bring
a bed on which the wounded man might be carried home. The chigah, of
course, came too late to track the Wazirs, but they bore the wounded
man home, and next morning brought him to the mission hospital. He lay
there for three months, carefully tended by his father and a brother,
and there all three were attentive listeners to the daily exposition
of the Gospel by the doctor or catechist; but the wounded man got
weaker and weaker, and when it became clear to all that his recovery
could not be hoped for, they took him off to his home to die.
The next day a Wazir of the same tribe that had shot him was brought
in suffering from an almost identical gunshot wound, and we thought
at first it had been the work of an avenger, but it proved to have
been received in another feud about the possession of a few ber-trees
(Zizyphus jujuba). This Wazir submitted to amputation, and is now
going about the hills the proud possessor of an artificial limb from
England, which his father sold a rifle to buy, and which is the wonder
and admiration of his neighbours.
The devotion shown in some cases by relations who have accompanied
some sick or wounded man to hospital is very touching, and in pleasing
contrast to their frequent enmity. One case that imprinted itself on
my memory was that of a man from Kabul, who had been a sufferer for
several years from severe fistula; his nearest relation was a nephew,
and he was a talib (student). Both were poor, but the man sold up
some little household belongings and hired a camel-driver to bring
him down on his camel. The journey to Bannu occupied fourteen days,
and the sick man suffered much from the constraint and jolting of the
camel-ride. An operation was performed, but it was some months before
the patient was cured and discharged, and during all that time he was
assiduously nursed by the talib, who sat day and night by his bedside,
attending to his wants and reading to him either the Suras of the
Quran or some Persian poet, only leaving him to go into some mosque
in Bannu, or in a village near, where some charitable Muhammadans
would give him his morning and evening meal.
To save the patients from the danger of having their money stolen by
other patients or visitors, we advise them on admission to give up
their money into our charge, to be kept safely until they get their
discharge, when it is returned to them. Usually they readily agree to
this, but sometimes we have some wary characters, usually Kabulis or
Peshawuris, whose experience of the world has led them to trust no one,
and these refuse to let their possessions out of their own keeping,
usually securing their money in a bag purse tied round their waist
under their clothes. One such Kabuli came into the hospital terribly
ill with dysentery. Fearing, I suppose, we might take his money by
force, he swore, in answer to the usual question, that he had not
a single anna on him, and all through his illness he begged a few
pice from us or from other patients to buy some little delicacy he
fancied to supplement the regular hospital diet. He said he had no
relations or friends living; "all had died," and certainly none ever
came to inquire after him. His disease resisted all our efforts to cure
it--he had been worn out with exposure and hard living--and at last,
one morning, we found him dead in his bed; he had passed away quietly
in the night, without even the patient in the bed next him knowing
of it. We then found a bag containing eighty rupees bound round his
waist; he had kept it carefully concealed from everyone throughout,
and now died leaving behind him what might have purchased him so many
little delicacies. There being no claimant for the money, we made it
into a fund for helping indigent patients to get back to their more
distant homes.
There was once a Mullah in Bannu who was particularly virulent in
his public denunciations of the mission and everything connected
with it. He would frequently give public lectures which were tirades
against all Christians, and missionaries in particular, telling the
people that if they died in the mission hospital they would assuredly
go to hell, and all the mission medicine they drank would be turned
into so much lead, which would drag them relentlessly down, down
to the bottomless pit--and very much more in that strain. We were
therefore somewhat surprised when one fine morning we beheld four
white-robed talibs bringing a bed to the hospital, on which was a form
covered by a white sheet, and on lifting the sheet, there was this
very Mullah! We did not ask him awkward questions, but admitted him
at once, and I think our Christian assistants throughout his long and
dangerous illness showed him particular attentions, and nursed him with
special care. They never taunted him with his former attitude to us,
but strove, by the exhibition of Christian forbearance and sympathy,
to give him a practical exposition of what Christianity is. When he
left the hospital he thanked us in the presence of his disciples,
offered a prayer for blessing on the hospital, and is now one of our
staunchest friends.
Here is a very sad case in Bed 18, called "the Gleaners' Bed," because
it is supported by the Gleaners' Union of Lambeth: A young man of
twenty-five or thirty, blind from his birth, and yet brought to the
hospital cruelly slashed in several places with sword and knife; one
cut on the right shoulder went through the muscle down to the bone. And
this was done only to rob him of the few things he possessed. Had the
culprit known that the man was blind, let us hope he would not have
been so brutal, but poor Mirzada was on the ground asleep, covered up
with a sheet, as is the custom with the natives, and had been attacked
in this way before he could escape or beg them to spare him. It was
so sad to see him stretched moaning on his bed, with eyes that had
never seen the light or the beauty of God's creation, heart that had
never felt, ear that had never heard of the "Light of Life" or the
"glory that shall be revealed." Our Christian assistants sat beside
him day by day, and told him of Christ and His love; but he never,
so far as we could judge, seemed to grasp the truth for himself, and,
when his wounds were healed, left us to beg by the wayside. We pray for
Mirzada, "who sitteth by the wayside begging," that he may yet find
the Light! He at least has learnt to bless the mission hospital and
the Christian friends in England, through whose charity he can say:
"I was a stranger, and ye took me in; sick, and ye visited me."
The doctor or his assistants may go a long journey up and down the
frontier and both sides of the border without coming to a village
where they will not get a hearty welcome from some old patient. He
will be made to sit down for a little good cheer in the village chauk,
that the grateful patient may call his acquaintances round to shake
hands with the Daktar Sahib, whose patient he was while in the mission
hospital, and with stories about whom he has so often regaled them
in the winter evenings.
CHAPTER VII
FROM MORNING TO NIGHT
First duties--Calls for the doctor--Some of the
out-patients--Importunate blind--School classes--Operation
cases--Untimely visitors--Recreation--Cases to decide.
An Eastern day begins early. As the first streak of dawn lightens the
Eastern sky the slumberers are awakened by the long-drawn-out chant of
the Muezzin calling to prayer from all the mosques in the city. "God
is great, God is great. I give witness there is no God but God. I
give witness that Muhammad is the prophet of God. Come to prayer;
prayer is better than sleep." And forthwith every pious Muslim hastily
rises, performs the necessary ablutions, and commences the day with
ascription of praise to the Creator. The Hindus follow suit: little
bells tinkle in their temples as their priests rouse the slumbering
Gods, or as the Puritanical Arya Samajist offers his early sacrifice
of "Hawan," or incense. Meanwhile, the church bell calls the little
Christian community together for early morning worship, and they
unite in prayer and praise before separating, each to his or her
own sphere of work for the day. If the missionary desires a morning
"quiet time" he must get up early enough to get it in before this,
as after morning service the busy round of duties leaves him little
leisure till the evening shades close in.
Darya Khan, the "Lord of the Rivers," the hospital cook, is waiting
for the day's supplies, and reports fifty patients on full diet,
twenty on middle, and fifteen on milk diet. So many cases have left
the hospital, so many admitted; such a one died last night. And so
the supplies for the day are measured out and weighed, and orders
given for the purchase of fresh goods as needed.
Then come the ward clerks, with their tale of soiled linen and case
sheets to be checked, and clean towels, bandages, bed-linen, and
clothes for the in-patients have to be dealt out according to the
needs of each one.
This over, the head gardener, 'Alam Khan, or the "Lord of the
World," is standing by with the day's supply of vegetables and
flowers, and these have to be apportioned to the patients in the
hospital and to the various members of the staff whose families
reside on the premises. He follows with a string of questions, each
of which requires due consideration, such as, "Are the mulberries
to be shaken yet?" "Where are the young Pipul tree saplings to be
planted?" "Some oranges were stolen in the night; would I come and
see the footmarks?" "A hostel boy ('Light of Religion') was caught
among the plum-trees with some fruit in his pocket. Would I punish
him?" And so on, as long as one has leisure to listen and adjudicate.
The clock strikes eight, leaving just half an hour to visit the wards
before out-patients begin. There is the abdominal section operation
of yesterday to examine; the house-surgeon has come to report that the
case of tubercular glands has had a hæmorrhage during the night. We are
just hurrying over to see them, when up comes 'Alam Gul, the "Flower
of the Earth," to say his brother was coming down from the roof that
morning, when his foot slipped on the ladder; he fell on his head,
and was lying unconscious. Would I go and see him? The serious cases
seen, and 'Alam Gul's brother visited, the out-patient department is
demanding our attention. The verandahs are full of patients, the men
in one and the women and children in another, and while the catechist
is preaching to the former, a Bible-woman is similarly engaged with
the latter. Outside are some patients lying on the native beds, or
charpais, and a variety of other equipages which have all brought
patients--palanquins, camels, oxen, asses, and so on.
Let us see some of these. Here is a Wazir shepherd from the
mountains. He has been shot through the thigh while tending his flocks,
and eight rough-looking tribesmen of his have bound him securely on a
bed and carried him down, journeying all night through, and they have
left their rifles, without which they could not have ventured out,
at the police post on the frontier. Another of those on the beds is a
man of about fifty years, suffering from dropsy. He has been carried
sixty miles on this bed from Khost, a district in Afghanistan. A third,
who has been brought from another transfrontier village on an ox, is
suffering from a tumour of his leg, which will require amputation. And
so on with some half-dozen others. After this brief examination,
saying a word of welcome to the travel-stained Afghans who have borne
their precious burdens in with so much labour, and even danger, and
with a word of comfort and reassurance to the sick ones themselves,
the doctor enters his consulting-room, and the patients are brought in
one by one to be examined. Those requiring in-patient treatment are
sent off to the wards, and the remainder get the required medicines,
or have their wounds dressed and leave for their homes.
A great number of the out-patients are cases of eye disease, and
sometimes four or five blind men will come in a line, holding on to
each other, and led by one who is not yet quite blind. Very likely
they have trudged painfully upwards of a hundred miles, stumbling over
the stones in the mountain roads, and arriving with wounded feet and
bruised bodies. They sit together, listening, perhaps for the first
time in their lives, to the Gospel address, and eagerly awaiting
the interview with the doctor, when they will hear if they are to
receive their sight there and then, or to undergo an operation,
or what. For the stories they have heard of the power of Western
skill lead them to believe that if the doctor does not cure them on
the spot it must be that he is too busy or they are too poor. When,
therefore, as sometimes happens, the doctor sees at the first glance
that the case is a hopeless one, and that the sight is gone never to
be brought back, it is a painful duty to have to explain the fact to
the patient, and often the doctor needlessly prolongs the examination
of the eye lest the man should think that it was want of interest
in his case that makes the doctor say he can do nothing. And then
the beseeching, "Oh, sahib, just a little sight!" "See, I can tell
light from darkness; I can see the light from that window there." "I
have come all the way from Kabul because they said the feringi doctor
could cure everything. Why do you not cure me?"
One man refused to budge till I had taken him to see my mother; she
might be able to do something--she must have more skill than I, for
from whom had I learnt? Another went to her to beg her to intercede
with me for him, because he was sure it was want of will, not want
of power, that prevented him gaining his end. At last, when they
are convinced that nothing can be done, it is touching to see them
as they resignedly say, often with tears rolling down their cheeks:
"It is God's will. I will be patient." Then they may begin their weary
trudge home again, or stop in the Bannu bazaar for a few days to beg
some money to get them a lift on a camel for part of the long journey.
A commotion at the door, and a Bannuchi boy of about seven is
carried in on the shoulders of his father, with his hand tied up in
the folds of a turban. "We were crushing sugar-cane in our press,
when my beloved Mir Jahan got his hand in the cogs of the wheel,
and it was all crushed before we could stop the buffalo. Oh! do see
him quick--he is my only son, a piece of my liver!" And the father
bursts into tears. Mir Jahan is chloroformed at once, the bandages
unbound, and a terrible sight we see; the hand has been crushed into
a pulp, but the thumb is only a little cut. That will enable him to
pull the trigger of a rifle when he grows up, and that is what his
father and he consider of great importance. So the thumb is saved,
and the mangled remains of the other fingers removed, and a shapely
stump fashioned. It is fortunate that the Bannuchis have not much
machinery. This sugar-press is almost the only piece they have, and
we get several crushed hands every year as a result, usually because
they let their children play in dangerous proximity to the wheels,
and then leave them to "Qismet" (Fate).
Meanwhile, perhaps, some big chief has come in with several
attendants. He wants to have a special consultation with the doctor,
and has to be treated with as many of the formalities of Oriental
courtesy as the doctor can find time for. He gives some fee for the
hospital, or perhaps may send one or two ox-burdens of wheat or Indian
corn as his contribution to the hospital stores.
The patients are still coming, when a schoolboy comes to say that it
is time for the doctor to take his classes in school. It is not every
mission station that can provide a distinct European missionary for the
school, and Bannu is one of those where the supervision of the school
is one of the duties of the medical missionary, who takes the senior
classes in Scripture, English, and Science. So the consulting-room
is changed for the class-room, and the missionary finds himself
surrounded by a class of twenty to twenty-five intelligent young
fellows preparing for the matriculation at the Panjab University, and
waiting to be initiated into the mysteries of optics, or chemistry,
or mechanics, or to practise English composition, or he may have them
attentively listening while he goes with them through the ever-fresh
stories from the life of our Lord, hearing and asking them questions
as its inimitable teachings are brought home to them by precept and
by illustration. Class-work over, a visit of inspection is paid to
the other class-rooms, where the remainder of the school staff are at
their work, which the school principal must criticize and supervise,
giving some advice here, some correction there, and seeing generally
that everything is kept up to the mark.
Now we must go to see what progress has been made with the new ward
which is being built in the hospital. The beams must be selected and
tested. Here a carpenter has been putting some bad work into a lintel,
thinking it will not be noticed; there the bricklayers have been idle,
and have not finished the stipulated number of layers. The foreman
has a complaint to make of some of the coolies, who went away from
work without his permission. "We only went to say our prayers. Surely
you would not have us miss them?" they plausibly urge. Put them on
piecework, and their prayers are got over very quickly; but pay them
by the day, and even the ablutions seem interminable! But such is human
nature, and they have such an air of injured innocence it is difficult
to be angry with them. They are Mahsud Wazirs from over the border, and
work hard when well managed, so are let off with a warning this time.
This done, a visit must be paid to the mission press. Here not only
is printing in vernacular and in English carried on for the mission's
own requirements, but work is executed for the various offices and
merchants in the city. Accounts have to be checked, bills have to be
made out, proofs have to be corrected, and directions given for the
day's work.
Now it is time to visit the hospital wards, and perform the day's
operations.
Usually, patients are operated on the same day that they are
admitted. If this were not done, not only would the wards become
hopelessly congested, but in many cases the courage of the patients
would ooze out of their fingers' ends, and, instead of finding them
ready for the ordeal, one would be greeted by "I have just heard that
my father has been taken seriously ill. If I do not go home at once,
I shall never see him again." Another: "I quite forgot to arrange
for my donkey to get hay during my absence. I will go home and make
arrangements for it, and return in two days." Of course, one knows
that these stories are pure fabrications, but it would be useless to
tell them so, or to argue; one can only return them their own clothes,
take back the hospital linen, and let them go. Sometimes they come
back later on, and tell more fibs about their father or their donkey
in justification of themselves; more often they are not seen again.
While the operation cases are being prepared by the house-surgeon,
the doctor goes the round of the wards, examining, prescribing, and
saying words of cheer from bed to bed. This done, he is just about
to commence operations, when a man comes running up to say that his
brother was out shooting when his gun exploded, blowing off his hand;
would the doctor see him at once lest he bled to death? and close
behind him is the wounded man brought up on a bed. The doctor examines
him, sets a dresser to apply a temporary dressing, and perhaps a
tourniquet, so that the case may safely wait till the conclusion of
the other operations.
The operation cases to-day are representative of an average day in
the busy time of the year: they begin with five old men and three
women suffering from cataract, then two cases of incurved lids,
then an amputation, the removal of a tumour, and two cases of bone
disease. These over, the man with the injured hand is chloroformed
and the wound stitched up, except for two fingers, which were so
damaged that they had to be removed altogether.
The schoolboys are out now in the field playing football, and the
doctor, after refreshing himself with a cup of tea, thinks that nothing
would be more invigorating than a good hour's exercise with them; but
he has scarcely got his togs on before the servant comes to announce
that a certain big malik, or chief, has come to make a call. One would
like to put him off with an excuse for a more convenient time; but then
it was he who gave us lodging and hospitality when itinerating in his
neighbourhood six months ago, and this would be a poor return for his
courtesy; so he is ushered in, with four or five of his retainers,
and some minutes are spent in formal courtesies and talking about
nothing in particular. Then, just as one is going to suggest that
as one has something to do the interview might terminate, he comes
to the point and object of his interview. He has got a lawsuit on in
one of the local courts against a neighbouring malik. His case is an
absolutely just one; but as the other party have some relationship with
the head-clerk of the Judge's office, he fears he will not get justice,
unless--unless--- Would I just write a few lines to the Judge, asking
him to give his case full consideration? It would be no trouble to me,
and would confer a benefit on him which he will remember to his dying
day. One launches into an explanation, which is wearying because one
has so often given it in similar cases before, that the Judge would
be very angry if I adopted such a method of influencing his case,
that if his case is a just one there is no need of such measures,
that he must rely on the integrity of his witnesses, and so on; no,
he cannot or will not understand why you profess friendship with him,
and yet refuse so very humble a request as the writing of a note. By
the time the visitor has departed only half an hour is left for the
game of football, and there is a man waiting to take you to a case
of pneumonia at the other side of the bazaar, and two other calls
have to be made on medical cases in the city.
It is evening now, and once more the church-bell collects the
little Christian community together for the evening hymn of praise
and worship, and the pastor gives some words of instruction and
encouragement, specially intended for the catechumens and inquirers
who are present.
At last, however, these duties accomplished, dinner is
negotiated, and then the doctor can sit down to his newspaper
and his correspondence. He is not, however, long left free from
interruption. The first to come is the superintendent of the
boarding-house; he reports that some of the Hindu boarders have
been cooking meat in the school saucepan, and now the vegetarian
party refuse to eat food cooked in that vessel, which has ipso facto
become unclean.
The arguments of both sides are heard, and the case decided, that the
meat party are to provide their own saucepan. Then the house-surgeon
comes in with his nightly report of the wards, stating the condition
of the operation cases or of any other serious cases, and taking the
orders for the night. Following on him comes a catechumen who has a
quarter of an hour's instruction every night; then three of the senior
boarders, to ask some questions about the English composition for the
morrow, and get some hints for their essays. Lastly, the night-watchman
comes to report that, as there is a gang of Wazir marauders about,
special precautions must be taken for the security of the compound;
but he thinks that if I get him a new pistol and some cartridges all
will be safe.
A day such as I have described is not at all above the average during
the busy months of the year, and the doctor may consider himself lucky
if the soundness of his slumbers is not disturbed by any calls during
the night.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ITINERANT MISSIONARY
The medical missionary's advantage--How to know the people--The
real India--God's guest-house--The reception of the guest--Oriental
customs--Pitfalls for the unwary--The Mullah and the Padre--Afghan
logic--A patient's welcome--The Mullah conciliated--A rough
journey--Among thieves--A swimming adventure--Friends or
enemies?--Work in camp--Rest at last.
There is this difference between the medical missionary and the
preacher pure and simple: that while the latter has to seek his
congregation, the former will have his congregation come to him,
and often in such numbers that, like our Lord and His disciples,
he will not have leisure even so much as to eat. But even a doctor,
who finds his time at headquarters fully and profitably occupied,
will be committing a great mistake if he never itinerates. For it
is in camp and in village life that the missionary gets to know and
understand the people, and by travelling from village to village,
and living with them as their guest, he gets to know their real inner
life in a way that otherwise he never would, and for a missionary,
at least, such an experience is indispensable.
There are two methods of itineration. On the one hand, he may carry
tents and a full camp equipment, and pitch his camp near some large
village, or in the midst of several small ones, and may receive his
patients and do his daily work there, while visiting the villages
after his day's work is done. By this plan he is independent, and can
work at his own time, and can stay or move as his fancy dictates. On
the other hand, he may become the guest of one of the chief men of
the village, who will put his guest-house at his disposal and give
him hospitality. By this plan he is brought into much closer contact
with the people and will see more of them, but he will forfeit his
independence, will be obliged to consult his host in all his plans,
and must be prepared to put himself and his time at the disposal of
his host and the villagers, both by day and night.
Both methods have their advantages. For a new district, and where
the people are suspicious, the latter plan, though more exacting,
is probably the better; when the missionary has become well known
and has much work to do, the former is preferable.
The traveller who has spent a winter in touring India, but has only
visited the large towns and show places, and has never lived in
an Indian village, remains altogether a stranger to the deep inner
life of the Indian. The real India is not seen in the Westernized
bazaars of the large cities, but in the myriads of villages, wherein
more than 80 per cent. of the population of India dwell. Moreover,
a much better and more attractive side of Indian life is seen in the
villages than in the towns, and it is among their less sophisticated
population that the missionary spends his happiest hours.
When travelling without camp equipment, we generally follow the
Bible precept. We arrive at a village, and, "inquiring who within
it is worthy, abide there till we depart thence." This is usually
some malik, or head man, who possesses that great institution of
Afghanistan, a hujra, or guest-house. We are shown to this house,
usually a mud building with a low door and a few small apertures in
the walls in the place of windows, and a clean-swept earthen floor,
which may be covered by a few palm-mats. Hearing of our arrival,
the owner of the guest-house comes to receive us in the Oriental
fashion so familiar to readers of the Old Testament.
Thus, on one occasion I came rather late at night to one such
guest-house. The host had already retired, but rose from his bed
to receive me. I inquired if that was his hujra. He answered: "No;
it is God's, but I am in charge of it." Such expressions are not mere
form, as was shown by the cheerful and unostentatious way in which the
owner put himself out in order to insure my comfort. Once I arrived
about midnight at a village, the head man of which I did not know
personally, though it appears he knew me well. He was not satisfied
until I consented to occupy his bed, which he had just vacated for me,
while he went off to make himself a shift elsewhere. The acceptance
of such an offer might not always prove very attractive among those
Afghans whose ideas of cleanliness are not the same as ours, but to
refuse it would--at least, on the part of a missionary--be an act so
discourteous as to injure the attainment of those relations with the
people which he should desire.
The head man will at once call for some of his attendants, who,
except at the busy time of sowing and harvest, are probably lounging
about the chauk, and they at once bring a number of the plain wooden
bedsteads of the country, which are almost universally used, even
by the richer classes, in preference to chairs. Rugs and pillows are
brought, and perhaps a carpet may be spread on the floor. Tea is then
ordered, and an attendant brings in a tray on which is a very large
teapot and a number of very small saucerless cups, called in these
parts balghami, and used all over Central Asia for tea-drinking. The
whole is covered by an embroidered cloth, which is removed by the
attendant. Sugar is added to the teapot to a degree which to many
Western palates appears nauseating. Cardamoms, and sometimes other
spices, are also added. The milk, too, is usually added to the teapot,
although some hosts, who have learnt by experience the peculiarity of
Western taste, leave the milk and the sugar to be added by the guests
themselves. Tea is poured out and handed round, and drunk usually very
hot; and if the guests drink it with very loud smackings of the lips,
it is supposed to indicate that they particularly appreciate it. The
cups are filled repeatedly, and when the guest wishes to indicate
that he has had enough he turns the cup upside down.
By this time the news of our arrival has spread through the
village. There are probably a number of old patients there, who
have once or oftener been inmates of the base hospital, and they
help to collect all the blind, the halt, the maimed, and the sick
of the village, and we proceed to unpack our medicines and commence
prescribing and physicking.
Then will come the Mullah of the village, with his Quran under his arm
and his rosary in his hand, and with a very sanctimonious and superior
kind of air. He has come to see that the faith of the flock is not
endangered, and is followed by a number of his talibs, or students,
whose great desire is to hear a wordy battle between the Padre and
the Mullah, and to see the former ignominiously defeated.
Eastern ideas are cast in such a very different mould to Western, and
their system of logic and habit of mind are so unlike ours, that the
young missionary may consider himself fortunate if he is not frequently
held up to ridicule by some ignorant Mullah, who on such an occasion as
this, before an audience who are naturally inclined to side with him,
and can appreciate his language and arguments very much better than
ours, has all the advantage on his side. It is no doubt better to avoid
such discussions as far as possible. But this cannot always be done,
as the refusal to answer questions would be assumed to imply inability
to do so, and would be taken by the audience to indicate defeat. What
really impresses the people would not usually be our arguments, but
the patience and courtesy with which we meet, or ought to meet, the
endeavours of our opponent to make us lose our temper. According to
Eastern ideas, the mere stroking of the beard is supposed to indicate
irritation arising from the inability to answer the questions, and if
the inexperienced disputant incautiously puts his hand to his beard,
his opponent will most probably show off his advantage by pretending
to apologize to him for having made him lose his temper.
On one occasion, while touring among the frontier villages, I was
spending the night at a hujra, and after dark a Mullah had come in for
discussion, and a great number of the men of the village, attracted
by the hope of an interesting conflict between their champion and
the Padre Sahib, had collected to listen.
It was winter, and there was a fire of twigs burning in the middle
of the room, which was filling the place with its smoke, as there
was only one quite inadequate aperture in the centre of the room by
which it could find its exit. Round all four sides were a number of
the native beds, on which both disputants and audience were seated
cross-legged or reclining at their ease.
As the fire burnt low a boy would bring in some crackling thorns and
branches which were piled outside the room, and throw some on the
fire, which would blaze up and illuminate the faces of all around;
for the only other light was the little earthen oil lamp in a niche
in one corner, which only served to make the darkness visible.
The Mullah was evidently bent on making a display of his own dialectic
skill at my expense, and began in a rather condescending tone to
ask if I knew anything about theology; and on my replying that I
had come to the country in order to teach the Christian religion,
he turned to the audience, and said somewhat contemptuously:
"I do not suppose these Padres know much, but we will see." He then
turned to me and said: "Can you tell me the colour of faith?"
Rather puzzled by the question, I asked what he meant. He said:
"Why, is it white, or green, or red, or what colour?"
I replied that, as an abstract idea, it did not possess the quality
of colour.
Mullah: "Then can you tell me what shape it is? Is it round, or square,
or what?"
I: "Neither has it any shape. It is only an abstract quality."
Mullah: "It is evident that he does not know much about theology,
seeing he cannot answer such simple questions as the colour and shape
of faith."
At this time I did not know that the Muhammadans ascribed such concrete
qualities to all their abstract religious ideas.
Mullah: "Do you know anything about astronomy?"
I thought that here at least my knowledge might not be far inferior
to that of this Mullah, and said:
"Yes, I think I can answer you any questions on that subject."
Mullah: "Tell me, then, what becomes of the sun when it sinks below
the horizon every evening?"
I then proceeded to as simple and lucid an explanation as I could
of the revolutions of the earth on its axis, but could see from the
looks and ejaculations of the audience that they thought the idea
rather a mad one.
The Mullah himself made no effort to conceal his contempt, and said:
"That, then, is all you know about it?"
A little nettled, I said:
"Well, what explanation do you give?"
"We all know that the fires of hell are under the earth. The sun
passes down there every night, and therefore comes up blazing hot in
the morning."
I rather had my breath taken away by this explanation, which met with
ejaculations of approbation from the men around me, and I incautiously
asked the Mullah if he could explain the seasons.
Mullah (turning to the people): "It is evident that I shall have to
teach him everything from the beginning."
To me: "It is in the spring that the devil makes up his fires, and
piles on the firewood. Therefore the fires get very hot in the summer,
and cool down later on. That is why the summer sun is so hot."
Needless to say, the explanations of the Mullah appeared to
the audience as rational and lucid as mine were far-fetched and
incomprehensible, and they had no doubt as to which of the disputants
had won the day.
From this it can be seen that if a young missionary thinks that a
mere knowledge of Western learning and Western logic will enable
him to cope with the very limited learning of the Afghan Mullahs
on their own ground, he is vastly mistaken, and will before long be
put to ridicule, as I was on the above occasion, which was one of my
earliest experiences on the frontier.
Since then I have learnt how to argue with Afghan logic, and from
the Afghan point of view.
If it happens that the Mullah, or some friend of his, is in need of
medical or surgical advice, his attitude to you will undergo a great
change, and you will have much greater facilities for carrying on your
work among the people. Sometimes, when he sees the benefits accruing to
the poor people who had no other prospect of getting medical relief,
his attitude becomes unexpectedly friendly, as his better feelings
prevail over his religious animosity.
Once, having set out on an itineration, some Pathans came to tell me
I might as well save myself the trouble of going in that direction
because a certain Mullah, who had much influence in those parts,
had gone before us, warning the people not to accept our treatment,
listen to our preaching, or even come near us. I answered by the remark
which appeals to the Muhammadan mind under almost every conceivable
circumstance: "Whatever God's will has ordained will be," and told
him we should adhere to our original plan.
On the first two days the people certainly seemed suspicious, and
very few came near us. While we were on the march on the third day,
passing not very far from a village, a man who had apparently noticed
us from the village, which was situated on an eminence above the road,
came running down to us, and, after the usual salutations, said:
"There is an old patient of yours here who is very anxious to see
you; please turn aside and come to the house." On arrival we found
that it was a woman who, a year before, had been an inmate of the
Bannu Hospital for malignant tumour on the leg, which had required
amputation. Before she left the hospital we had made her a rough wooden
pin leg, on which she now appeared hobbling along to greet us. She
showed great delight at unexpectedly meeting us, and had apparently
been telling her fellow-villagers wonderful stories of what she had
seen and heard in the mission hospital, and of the unaccountable
love and sympathy which had been shown her there, for others of her
neighbours came crowding into her little courtyard, and among them,
though unknown to us, the Mullah who was supposed to be preaching a
crusade against us. He had apparently come in on the quiet to see for
himself what we and our work were like, and was greatly struck at the
undisguised delight with which we were greeted by our old patients; for
when the woman of the house begged us to stop while she prepared us a
meal, he came forward and disclosed himself, saying: "No; my house is
in the next village, and it is my prerogative to entertain the Padre
Sahib. He must come on to my house." At the same time he took up some
Pashtu Gospels which we had been giving away, but which the people, for
fear of theological displeasure, had been afraid to take openly, and
said: "This is Kalam Ullah [Word of God], and is a good book." Thus,
in a moment, by this providential presence of the Mullah, the whole
attitude of our reception was changed. Word was passed on from village
to village that we had become the guests and eaten the bread of the
Mullah himself, and that he had pronounced in favour of our books,
telling the people that we were Ahl-el-Kitab, or people of the Book,
the term which Muhammadan theologians apply to Christians and Jews
when they wish to speak of them in a friendly spirit.
We were not always equally fortunate, especially in our earlier years
on the frontier.
About two years after I first went to Bannu I went out on a short
itineration with my assistant Jahan Khan, an account of whom is given
in Chapter XVI.
We came to one village where the Mullahs had been exciting the feelings
of the people against us, and telling them that any food or vessel
we touched was thereby defiled. We found it difficult to get food or
drinking-vessel even on payment, and some of the patients who came
to us were induced to go away, and in some cases to throw away the
medicine they had already received.
With some difficulty we got a lodging for the night, and early next
morning we started off to look for a village where we might get a
more hospitable reception. But the minds of the people had already
been poisoned against us.
We went into the courtyard of the Patwar-Khana (village bailiff),
and sat down and opened our medicines. Some Hindus came for treatment,
and we got one of them to bring us some food; but the Muhammadans were
universally hostile, and stationed one of their number at the gate to
prevent any Muhammadan communicating with us. They then apparently
became annoyed with the Hindus, that they should be participating
in benefits from which they had excluded themselves, and stones
began to fall into the courtyard where we were seated; and as the
Hindus in these villages are not only in a small minority, but live
in dread of the fiercer Muhammadans, even they who had already come
to us disappeared, and we were left alone. It seemed useless to stop
in a village where we were not welcomed, so we saddled our animals
and departed.
Many years have passed since this experience. Patients from both
these villages frequently come to the Bannu Hospital, and now I and
my assistants get a welcome and hospitality whenever we visit them.
At other times the difficulties of itineration are not so much from
the people as from the hardships of travelling among the frontier
mountains, where the roads are nil, and the bridle-tracks such that
it is often impossible to get a loaded camel through.
I will therefore give a short account of a journey from Bannu across
the Wazir Hills to Thal, which we made in the summer of 1904.
As our route lay chiefly through independent territory, it was
difficult to procure camel-men for so trying a journey.
The men with the first camels we hired ran away when they found we
were going into the hills, as not only is the road very difficult for
laden animals, but they are afraid of being attacked by Wazir robbers,
the Wazirs having the worst reputation of all the tribes of Afghans
who live on the border. With some difficulty we got four more camels,
and as their owners were themselves Wazirs, we prevailed on them
to accompany us. We loaded up our tents, medicines, and bedding,
and about 9 a. m., when the sun was already very hot, we finally
started. Besides the two camel-men, there were a hospital assistant,
two servants, a Muhammadan inquirer, whom I was taking along for the
sake of instructing him, and one of the schoolboys, who had persuaded
me to let him accompany us, so that we were quite a large party. After
toiling for some hours along a mountain defile we came to Gumatti Post,
one of those frontier forts that line the North-West Border. This was
built close to an old Wazir fort, in capturing which, two years ago,
Colonel Tonnochy and Captain White lost their lives, as described in
Chapter I. We passed through the wire entanglement, and spent the heat
of the day talking to the native officer and soldiers in charge. In the
afternoon we set out again, and marched along the bed of the Kurram
River, which we had to ford six times, so that before we reached our
night camp it had become quite dark. Taking advantage of the dark,
some light-fingered Wazir thieves managed to steal the tent carpet
off the back of a camel without our catching sight of them. Our camp
was in a Wazir village, built on a cliff overhanging the river. The
people were rather excited, as another Wazir clan had been up during
the day and made off with twenty head of cattle. However, there were
some old patients among the people, so we got a hearty welcome. They
made us some tea, and set some of their number to watch round our
beds with their Martini-Henrys ready loaded in case enemies should
come during the night. The Mullah of the place came and had a talk
with us, and then we were soon all fast asleep.
Next morning we were up betimes, and I found my bed surrounded by a
number of women with squalling babies. One mother wanted me to see her
baby's eyes, another the stomach of hers, another the ears; in fact,
all the babies seemed to have made common cause to delay my departure
as long as possible. However, after doling out various lotions and
pills, and giving the mothers many instructions, which, I fear, were
only heard to be forgotten, we managed to get the camels loaded and
started. Now, however, a new difficulty confronted us. During the
night there must have been heavy rain higher up the valley, for the
river was in flood and unfordable. I knew by experience how strong
yet deceptive the currents of the river are when it is in flood, for
a few weeks before I had been out on a bathing excursion with some
of our schoolboys in another part of the same river. I had dived
into a deep pool, when I found myself in a return current, which
was carrying me back under a small waterfall, where the water was
sweeping over an obstruction like a mill-race, with a fall of about
four feet. As soon as I got to the fall I went down, down, down, till
I thought I was never coming up again. However, I did come up, only,
however, to be pulled back at once under the waterfall and down into
the depths again. The third time I came up I got a momentary glimpse
of two of the boys trying to throw me the end of a pagari. They were,
however, much too far away for me to reach it, and I was pulled under
again before I had time to get even one good breath. As I went down
I wondered if I should ever see the boys again, and how many times
I should come up before it was all over. Then all at once it struck
me that I was very foolish trying to get out at the surface, where
the current was beyond my strength, and I must change my tactics; so
I turned over and dived down till I felt the boulders at the bottom,
and then crept along the bottom with the aid of the current--which
there, of course, was flowing downstream--as long as I could. When I
could do so no more, and had to strike upwards, I found, to my delight
and thankfulness, that I was out of the eddy and going downstream. So
it was clearly impossible to keep along the river, even if we had
not had laden animals with us. We were obliged, therefore, to make a
long détour through the hills, which took us nearly all day. So rough
and precipitous was the path that we had the greatest difficulty in
getting the camels along, and had several times to unload them in
order to get them over bad places.
During the afternoon we saw a party of fifteen or sixteen armed Wazirs
hastening towards us. At first we thought they were coming to loot us,
and one of the Wazirs with us told us to stop, while he went forward
and called out, "Are you friends or enemies?" When they replied
"Friends" he went up to them, and then called us on to join him,
when I found that they were a party of outlaws who had fallen foul
of the Government, and, therefore, had made their escape across the
frontier. They got me to sit down with them in the shade of a rock and
write down a list of their grievances for them, so that they might
propitiate the Political Officer and obtain permission to return
to British India. I was very happy to render them this service, and
we parted good friends. I noticed, however, that the Wazirs with us
seemed uncomfortable, and kept their rifles ready cocked till they
had disappeared behind a turn in the defile. I make it a principle
never to carry any arms myself, and think I am much safer on that
account, but the villagers who accompany me always go well armed;
in fact, across the border few Afghans can go out of their houses
without their rifles on their shoulders ready for use, so terribly
prevalent are the blood-feuds and village quarrels. We spent that
night in a Wazir village, where we saw a number of patients and
made fresh friends. The head man of the village apologized next
morning for not accompanying us more than half a mile. He said that
he had blood-feuds with most of the villages round, and could not,
therefore, venture farther. The fame of the Bannu Mission Hospital,
however, was our best escort, and passport too, and we got a welcome
at almost every village we passed, through the mediation of numerous
old patients, who had recounted in all the villages the kind treatment
they had received at the hands of the feringis (Europeans) in Bannu.
Progress was somewhat delayed by frequent calls to visit a sick person
in one or another village, but openings
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