The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman Read Free Book Online

mountains and the snow, for in Hazarajat the snow lies on the ground for six months of the year. We speak with knowledge and pleasure of the fleece and hides of sheep and goats that we rely on for warmth in the coldest months. We celebrate the beauty of the moon when it stands above the mountain peaks, so much bigger than the moon of the plains and valleys. We hear the voice of the wind as it rushes down the slopes and howls between boulders and we can tell when the wind is warning of bad weather to come, and when it whispers of spring rain, or sunshine. The Hazara know the weather that is on its way before anyone else in Afghanistan.
    When times are bad in Hazara settlements a long way from Hazarajat, the fathers and mothers of families will begin to debate in quiet voices the possibility of taking to the mountain road that leads to the homeland. And some will say, ‘But is it our homeland? We have never lived there in the past, but in Helmand.’ All the same, the desire to be secure amongst other Hazara will prevail and they will put their feet to the mountain road. Hazarajat is all we have and it is precious in the same way that a golden ring that has been passed down through generations of a family is precious. You don’t want to lose the golden ring. It has circled the fingers of your ancestors. It has been taken from the hand at death and placed on the hands of those who survive. If you were to lose the ring, you would search the ground for days, for weeks, cursing yourself for your carelessness.
    Of all the Barakzai who ruled Afghanistan, the most ambitious was Abdur Rahman, the son of Afzal Khan and grandson of Dost Mohammad. The time would come when he would send his soldiers to murder Hazara in such numbers that in some villages, blood formed in pools like the puddles that lie in the gutters after a storm. No Hazara can hear the name of Abdur Rahman spoken without spitting on the ground and putting his hand over his eyes, but the Emir’s daring is freely acknowledged. It is usually the father who drives his son’s ambition, encouraging him to aim high. But with Afzal Khan and Abdur Rahman, it was the son who drove the father. He led the soldiers who seized Kabul in 1866, and led them again when they defeated the army of his uncle Emir Sher Ali at Sheikhabad later that year. Abdur Rahman put his father on the throne in Kabul, then roused his army with fine speeches and travelled with it south to Kandahar in the spring of the following year, where he slaughtered more of Sher Ali’s soldiers. No doubt Abdur Rahman knew how to lead an army, but when it came to advising his father about the way in which to rule Afghanistan, his imagination went no further than murder. He was like many powerful men who seize a land by force: he used the same methods to rule that he employed to take power. Abdur Rahman was the Saddam Hussein of his age; either you fell to your knees to worship him, or your throat was cut. It took no more than a year or two for Abdur Rahman and his father to rouse the disgust of the Afghan people, and Sher Ali regained the throne in 1869 when the people demanded an end to tyranny. Abdur Rahman and his father Afzal Khan made their escape to Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, to plan their return to Kabul and Kandahar.
    In Samarkand, the Russians controlled everything. Their great empire, ruled by their own Emir from the city of Moscow, strove to include Afghanistan in its dominions. In Hazarajat, the words ‘Russia’ and ‘Russians’ were always spoken with a shake of the head, the same as ‘Britain’ and ‘Englishmen.’ It was not that the Hazara feared the Russians or the Englishmen, only that the ambitions of these foreigners always unfolded in such a way that Hazara were left on the roadside with their belongings on their backs while smoke rose from their houses. It was a curious thing. The Hazara didn’t fight in the armies that attacked the English over the ages, or in the armies that attacked the