1. Hasan Afghan
Listen.
Hear now the account of that mighty dervish, that dear friend of God, that crocodile gliding through the sea of divine unity, Hasan Afghan:
Once, while Hasan Afghan was passing through a town in the shadow of the northern mountains, he came to a mosque. The muezzin gave the call to prayer, the imam stepped up, and the congregants assembled. Hasan Afghan was there in the first row, looking at the imam’s back. In the sight of the unlettered, the imam was merely going about the normal bows and prostrations of prayer. Yet Hasan Afghan’s eye of certainty perceived otherwise. Even as the imam’s lips moved through the sweet speech of revelation, his thoughts were circumambulating news of the prince’s fresh conquest of some rebel villages. The men had been slain, the storehouses pillaged, the young women put in fetters. The imam was already counting out how many mohurs he could spare on buying a new girl at the bazaar when the prince came back with the spoils.
Hasan Afghan was stepping forward even as the imam was reciting the final salutations, seizing the man by his beard and slapping him. “What the hell kind of prayer is this, when the likes of you lead us in it?”
Bibi Mubaraka raised the cup to her lips, hiding a joyless smile. “We were being taken through the sands of the Registan at the time. Chains around our feet, heads bare to the sun. I could still smell the smoke of home burning. At the same moment Hasan Afghan struck the imam, the wind howled up at our feet into a sandstorm, wrapping the sun in a veil of dust. The soldiers on their horses were shouting and wheeling, grabbing at us. Protecting their goods. I knew it was the only chance I was going to get, so before the horsemen could get us into line, I bolted into the desert.”
The sounds of the coffeehouse were coming back to me, after her telling. The afternoon shadows were deep under the awning, the sunlight glossy on the near wall of Hasan Afghan’s tomb. The samovar was running hot, steam laced with the scents of saffron and cardamom, but for a moment I could have sworn I smelled smoke.
“The prince’s conquest was many years ago,” I said. A lifetime, in truth, too deep in the past for the young woman before me to have seen it, but it would have been rude to say so.
“Was it?” Bibi Mubaraka said, almost to herself. “It certainly doesn’t feel that way.”
“Forgive me,” I said. “Pashto isn’t my strongest language. Do you mean it was one of your ancestors taken captive during the campaign?”
“You heard me.” Bibi Mubaraka cocked her head. “What kind of historian comes to write a shrine guide for the saints of Wilayat and doesn’t have good Pashto?”
I gave her a sheepish look. “The vizier wanted to present the king with a gift for his son’s circumcision. He has people cataloguing the saints of every country in the kingdom, to assemble a chronicle of holy sites. I just happen to be the one he sent here.”
“You’ve come to ask questions,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “But that’s not how the tombs of saints work. Every pilgrim knows that you come to have questions asked of you.”
I had talked to many pilgrims along the way, gathering legends for the vizier’s book, but this was the first I was hearing of such sentiment. There was something about the way she said it, the angle at which her eyes caught the dying light. A watchfulness, like a sparrow looking at a worm in the shadow of its wings.
I raised my own cup, as if it were a veil.
2. Bul Shinwari
The memorialists of sweet speech relate that in ancient times, long ago, before the children of Adam flourished across the seven climes, the world was full of giants.
The greatest warrior among them was Bul Shinwari, who roamed the mountain passes even after the winter snows clogged them, battling any human fool enough to challenge her and feasting on their hearts. So unstoppable was Bul Shinwari that the kings of men cried out with once voice, seeking the greatest warrior of their time and any time. So it was that Hazrat Ali, the Lion of God, rode forth against Bul Shinwari.
Their battle-cries were thunder, rolling out over the distance covered by twenty days. The clash of their swords was lightning snapping across the black sky. As Bul Shinwari’s blade rose, Hazrat Ali slipped under her and grabbed her by the waistband, hauling her up over his head. Try as she might, she could not get free.
It is said that this is the moment when Bul Shinwari fell in love with Hazrat Ali.
When news of their marriage reached the ears of men and giants alike, all of them balked. Such a union was not to be tolerated. The kings of men sent missives out to Hazrat Ali’s foes, fearing to face him themselves. Those enemies fell upon the Lion of God in a sudden raid, chasing him from Wilayat even as he was settling down to enjoy a melon.
As for Bul Shinwari, she was cast out of her tribe, exiled from her beloved mountaintops for the desert. This alone saved her when the armies of humankind reached her people and put them to the sword. When the news at last came to Bul Shinwari, alone in her haunts, her tears cut a groove in the foothills of the Registan, on the banks of which our golden qayamat flowers still bloom.
Bibi Mubaraka handed me the qayamat blossom, one of the season’s last. There were only a handful left beside the withered canal where we stood.
“I found Bul Shinwari after three days and three nights,” she said. “Or rather, she found me. She took me back to her cave and nursed me back to health on sheep’s milk and golden grapes. Ever since her marriage to Hazrat Ali, she had sworn off human and animal meat alike. Though she did seem to enjoy telling war stories from the beginning of her life, when she used to fight the children of Adam. We were interlopers to her, trespassers on ground that had been stewarded by her people for longer than humanity has existed. Even so, between her and Hazrat Ali, there could have been a better world between us all.”
I was still surprised to have run into Bibi Mubaraka again. I had not told her where I was headed after Hasan Afghan’s tomb. I had not known myself. The chances of finding her once more had been next to impossible. Yet here we were, together on the banks of the canal carved from Bul Shinwari’s sorrows.
“I heard this canal was cut from Bul Shinwari’s blood,” I said. “After Hazrat Ali spilled it in battle. After he defeated her, he turned her corpse to stone, forming the foothills where we stand right now.”
“A lie,” Bibi Mubaraka said.
“Because Bul Shinwari is alive,” I said slowly, “and you got the story from her.”
“More than the story.” Bibi Mubaraka pushed up the robe of her sleeve, showing me the ancient pesh-kabz lashed to her forearm, the blade curving up towards her elbow. I was startled, but none of the other pilgrims even seemed to even notice her, much less the dagger.
“She gave me this weapon,” Bibi Mubaraka said, “filled my saddlebag, set me on the road to the prince’s city.”
“And what is it you were planning to do once you got there?” I said.
Bibi Mubaraka smiled.
3. Arif Tarin
Such is the story of that malang who wandered the seven climes, that God-drunk pigeon who soared through the skies of love, Arif Tarin:
It is said that Arif Tarin used to dwell on the banks of the Tarnak, chanting the names of God under his breath, living off grass and leaves. Seventeen years passed in this manner, until even his neck had turned green.
One day, Arif Tarin was patching his robe as a bridal procession passed, a cedarwood palanquin borne aloft at its heart. A needle of divine inspiration stitched itself into Arif Tarin’s chest, and he trailed after the band.
As the procession passed through the city gate, under the hollow eyes of dead rebels’ piked heads, Arif Tarin darted forward and snatched the bride from within her litter. Before her relatives could stop him, he had disappeared with the girl down an alleyway. The alert went off, the soldiers dashed through the streets like hunting dogs. When they found Arif Tarin, the bride was nowhere to be seen.
Enraged at the breach of peace, the prince at once ordered the executioner to come. The leather mat was unrolled, the curving blade hefted. Arif Tarin was put to his knees, still humming his devotions. When the blade came down, it shattered into ninety-nine pieces on the back of the malang’s neck, and each of the shards caught the full force of the midday sun. For one glorious heartbeat, the prince’s city was filled with nothing but light.
“I hadn’t been in the city for a day before I ran into Arif Tarin, dragging that girl with him,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “Before I could say anything, he put her hand in mine and said, ‘Go quickly. She doesn’t want this marriage, and they’re close behind.'”
“Was it true?” Before me, an elderly pilgrim got up from beside the nest of flags marking Arif Tarin’s grave. In her hands was a round of naan folded about cooling halwa. The pilgrim broke off half the offering and gave some over me as she left. I broke it in turn, handing a part to Bibi Mubaraka.
“It was,” Bibi Mubaraka confirmed. “The bride was there for one of the prince’s captains, a marriage meant to let her lands fall into the prince’s grasp without struggle. She knew what they wanted from her, didn’t want to give it. They were going to take it anyway.”
“I’m sure they found another way,” I said.
“They did,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “Eventually. But not through her.”
“So what became of the bride?”
“We fled,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “That very same day. There was a riot when the sword broke against Arif Tarin’s neck, and in the chaos, the bride and I slipped out the gate. She knew a place in the mountains where we could take refuge. The shrine of another saint.”
“And your own plans?” I said.
“She was very beautiful,” Bibi Mubaraka murmured.
“Of course,” I said.
“Have you never been driven from your road by love?” she asked.
I looked away. “I’ve seen what happens to those who are.”
“Is it so terrible a fate?”
“For the children left orphaned by mothers and fathers driven to martyrdom? Yes.” I spoke before even considering the words.
“Your rage is better suited for the hands wielding the swords, not the necks under them,” Bibi Mubaraka said.
“The rage of the grass doesn’t matter against the rhinoceros trampling it,” I said.
“Even grass might cut the rhino’s foot and bring it down,” Bibi Mubaraka replied.
I pushed her words away. What did a child’s anger matter, weighed against what I had achieved, what I was meant to achieve? What did it matter, when the past’s shadows might be banished by the glare of a bright future, one even brighter than the day Arif Tarin knelt before the executioner?
4. Khizr Sarban
Listen to the tale of that powerful fakir, that abundant wellspring of divine mercies, that jewel dangling from the ear of existence, Khizr Sarban.
Of all the miracles wrought by this greatest of saints, few surpass what he has done since his death. Every autumn, the nomads gather at the grave of Khizr Sarban to elect their winter caravan’s khan, who will lead them across the mountains and into the countries of Hindustan. The cooks prepare a barley porridge out of the iron pot at the foot of Khizr Sarban’s grave, ladling its contents into hundreds of waiting bowls. Despite the crowds, never once has the pot of Khizr Sarban run empty.
In the ages since Khizr Sarban was buried under his plain hilltop dome, many wealthy men have attempted to erect forts and mosques and caravanserais in its vicinity. But no sooner does one rise than it is consumed by an earthquake, or a rainstorm, or a ravaging swarm of flies. This is a marvelous example for those who would consider it.
I stared at the shattered dome where Khizr Sarban had once rested. “I can’t take this story.”
“You can’t?” Bibi Mubaraka said. “Or won’t?”
“Khizr Sarban was a symbol for the rebels,” I said. “They would gather at his grave with the nomads, plotting to overthrow the dynasty. That’s why…”
“Why the prince came with his soldiers,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “I remember the day. They dug him up and set fire to his bones. Then they set fire to everything else.”
I pressed my lips together. I had not crawled out from under the weight of my father’s treason to destroy myself now. How he would have loved to hear the story of Khizr Sarban. How my mother would have loved to sing litanies in praise of the rebel saint. But they were gone and I was still here, crawling up towards some position at court where I might do some good. Where I might at last be safe.
Bibi Mubaraka put a hand to the blackened wall. “That was the second time the prince burned my life down. I swore on Khizr Sarban’s memory there wouldn’t be a third.”
“How could you expect to stop it?” I said. “What could you possibly do, alone?”
“But I wasn’t alone,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “I had all the saints of Wilayat.”
“Fables of dead men.”
Bibi Mubaraka laughed. “Is that what you think?”
“If they had any power at all,” I said, “don’t you think Khizr Sarban’s shrine wouldn’t have burned?”
“Spoken like a historian,” she said. “Every day, pilgrims come to press their brows against the holy dust at these graves. Every day, the stories of Wilayat’s saints rest on the lips of new devotees. Every day, the memory of their power and the dynasty’s impotence nests in the hearts of this country’s women and men, waiting, waxing, feeding. And one day, that blessed memory will flood the bodies of the faithful and sweep corruption away. Truth will come and falsehood will perish. Falsehood will always perish.”
“The rebellion is dead,” I snapped.
“Yes,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “But much like the dead, it has not come to an end.”
5. Ashob
Among the host of Khizr Sarban’s companions, none were so dear to him as his dog Ashob.
It is said that once, a mullah came to visit Khizr Sarban and was shocked to find the saint wrestling in play with the great hound. At once he launched into a harangue about unclean beasts and ritual impurity and the fallen standards of dervishes in our day. When he was done, the mullah retired to his own home. The next Friday, the king’s secretary came by with the mullah’s salary, drawn from the royal treasury. But whenever the mullah tried to touch the coins, the mohurs and rupiyas would sear his fingers.
When his hands had been reduced to a blistering mess, the mullah sought out Khizr Sarban once more. He found the saint sitting in the mosque, Ashob curled at his feet. When the mullah presented his petition, Khizr Sarban raised his eyes and told him there was nothing to be done: for if the mullah was so concerned with unclean and ritually impure things, the king’s money could never be lawful to him.
There was an old gold collar around Ashob’s neck, etched with words in Mongolian script. In another time, he had belonged to a mighty emperor, who one day issued orders to exterminate an entire village. In that moment, the prayer of our beloved Prophet Muhammad—”O God, may a dog from among your dogs overcome him!”— reached out from across the centuries and gripped Ashob’s teeth. Ashob sprung up from the base of the throne to tear out the emperor’s throat, and amidst all the hue and cry after, he padded through the door, out into the desert.
The air itself trembled with the vizier’s rage. One moment he was screaming about how I dared put a dog into a list of saints, the next he was thundering on about the mention of the accursed Khizr Sarban. This, he said, was not what he had sent me to do. How dare I waste the time and money of the royal court? How dare I make the vizier look the fool for having looked past the flaws in my bloodline?
That night I returned to the cattle track outside the city, along which Ashob’s small grave lay. The vizier’s threat still rang in my ears. This was my last chance. If I did not submit an appropriate chronicle, I would be lucky to avoid the prison under the palace grounds.
“I met him,” Bibi Mubaraka said. I had not noticed her appear, had long since stopped wondering how she did. “After the dome burned. Seven days and nights I followed the prince across the desert, him and his men, until there was no strength in my limbs and I could drive myself no farther. On the seventh night I fell to the sand and resigned myself to the hereafter. Imagine my surprise when I felt water trickling into my mouth. When I could open my eyes, I saw it was a dog who had carried the water to me in his mouth. The collar around his neck was ancient gold, full of strange writing.”
“That’s more mercy than there is left in this entire kingdom,” I said.
“Mercy is everywhere in Wilayat,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “Maybe you’re looking in the wrong places.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t look elsewhere. If I do…”
“You’ll see what I saw,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “What my people saw. What your people saw. You’ll see what we might be, in a world without kings. You don’t want to see, but that won’t stop them from putting you down like they do giants and malangs and dogs.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I whispered.
In the moonlight she took my hand. My fingers in hers were like a scrap of cotton being embraced by tongues of fire.
“What you’ve been doing,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “Listen.”
6. Shahab Bakhtyar
Know the true story of that gentlest ascetic, that pole holding up the tent of reality, Shahab Bakhtyar:
They say that Shahab Bakhtyar was walking with his companions in the tracts of Atghar when he saw a soldier lashing his horse to urge it on faster. Yet no matter how hard the soldier beat his mount, no wounds appeared on its flanks. Shahab Bakhtyar watched them go, weeping quietly. Only later did his companions notice the blood seeping through his robes, the ribbons of cut flesh across his back.
It so happened that Shahab Bakhtyar was one day arrested by the governor of his province, on suspicion of giving refuge to criminals. That night, as the saint languished beneath the palace, the monsoon clouds scudded the night sky, even though the dry winds of winter had already come. Spears of lightning stabbed down into the governor’s stables and mansions. Even the pillars of his audience hall were left like so much chewed straw.
They say the only one who walked from that ruin was a quiet dervish with long scars down his back.
“There was a lightning storm the night I finally caught up to the prince’s camp,” Bibi Mubaraka said. “Monsoon clouds, even though the dry winds of winter had already come. A bolt struck each enclosure in the camp, and every man’s horse bolted, trampling the cookfires and tents.
“I walked through the mess of it, going straight towards the royal pavilion. The guards were distracted with the horses. They didn’t see me take out my pesh-kabz, slice a line in the back of the panels.
“There he was, the prince of Wilayat. Surrounded by his trophies and tapestries and curling lattice screens. Even in private he needed to be shielded from the world. They didn’t help him, in the end. They didn’t keep me from closing to an arm’s length. He didn’t notice me until I was already on top of him, no more than I noticed his sword coming out of its sheath, sinking into my stomach even as my blade carved a red spray through his neck.”
7. Bibi Mubaraka
Once, many years ago, the prince of Wilayat rode with his army to a string of villages and burned them. Out of the ruin he brought some booty ripped from their treasuries, and strings of women in chains, led like brood mares across the desert. One of those women slipped his grasp and, after some time, tracked the prince down a day’s march from his city, where she struck him dead.
The prince’s corpse had been borne on a bier back to the fort. In response, seven armies sallied from the city gates and wreaked havoc on Wilayat. Seven rebellions flared to life against their cruelty. Seven decades passed before the last brambles of sedition were swept from the courtyard of the kingdom, establishing this present state, which only kings could ever call peace.
Of the woman’s fate, nothing was ever said, until now:
Under the firmament and a waning moon, I rode out to the site of the prince’s camp, marked by a lonely shagh tree. I took out an adze and dug around the trunk. Half the night passed before I unearthed the grave.
Her bones were wrapped in the same mantle in which she had appeared to me. The roots had grown around and through them, as if cupping her in a protective hold. Lashed to her forearm was a rusty pesh-kabz.
Cutting boughs from the shagh, I kindled a fire and took out the vizier’s chronicle. I fed every page of it to the fire save those holding Bibi Mubaraka’s story, scrawled in the margins. One day, when the kings of this dynasty are but a half-remembered fable, someone will write the tale of this country’s spiritual masters in full.
For now, there is only one saint in Wilayat.
With these words I tie the blade of Bibi Mubaraka to my forearm, pour the earth back over her bones, fold these pages under my robe and above my heart.
Listen.
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Tanvir Ahmed‘s short fiction has been featured on Locus Magazine‘s Recommended Reading List and in The Year’s Best Fantasy, and his nonfiction has been long-listed for the British Science Fiction Association’s annual award. He demands a ceasefire now. |