Chapter XVI: "guard Your Shoes"

A wide, sandy plain with trees and a little scrub. Here and there camels were feeding on this poor herbage or, where they could reach them, upon the leaves of trees.

I was on my way from Amritsar in the Bombay mail-train, and after passing Wazirabad and Lalamusa the country changed from flat plain to irregular humps and hillocks of mud, as far as eye could see. Mud everywhere--grey, desolate, monotonous mud. I passed mud towns. Here and there accumulated stores of great mud-coloured logs lay near the line river-floated from the hill forests of Kashmir. Then slabs and ridges of grey rock thrust out of the mud. I could see away over a plain of pathless distances to where a range of mountains slowly grew. Then, as in a world of crumbling fossil cities, all the grey desiccated land was dust. Presently, wild yellow grasses appeared near the dry beds of former pools and quivered a little in the faint evening breeze.

I reached Peshawar a little before dawn and got out at the cantonment and not at the city {226} station. A powerful electric light illuminated the wide platform. It gleamed on the white sides of the carriages and caught with light the creepers on long strips of wooden trellis between the upright posts of the long station veranda. A man huddling a blanket round him was leaning back against the bookstall, and as he turned his head, his beard shone fiery red. In a drizzling rain (thrice blessed for previous shortage) mail-bags were being pitched from the train into a trolley-box. In the stationmaster's room a group of great-coated men with rifles crowded round a fire. The city station had been raided only one week before, and although the cantonment was safer "than houses" there was an invigorating air of excitement.

I drove to the Alexandra Hotel and slept for a few hours in a tent in the compound, as the rooms were all occupied by the wives of officers returning from a military expedition.

All that day Peshawar seemed a veritable slough, but the night was clear and starry and the following morning sunshine reigned. Snow glittered on the distant mountains, white cherry-blossom gleamed in orchard and garden. English children, some on ponies and some in "prams," were out with their ayahs, and the wide tree-bordered and well-kept roads through the cantonment looked not unlike English parkland in spring.

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I entered the city by the Kissa Kahani--the Peshawar Lombard Street--through the pointed arch of the Edwardes Gate, the Kabuli Dariwaza. This led me to the Kotwali, with its own wide gateway leading off at right angles into the silk market and the older parts of the city. Immediately on the other side of this white-washed police station is a wide and busy space. The Kotwali faces an octagonal rest-place, called the Hastings Memorial, with seats on a platform some ten feet above the road at the other end, and between the two was a dazzling scene.

Red and white and yellow, hung out to dry in the sun after being dyed, were a myriad skeins of silk (brought hither from Bokhara and from China), on long lines up and down one side of the oval space. Opposite to these, bordering as it were the central way, were stalls of bankers and money-changers--four of them side by side and each with their large pile of rupees and other coins (which is really a mud-cone covered outside to look like a solid heap of silver). Then at the back, behind the silk on the one side and the money stalls on the other, were the lines of bazaar shops.

I turned right from the Hastings Memorial and presently reached a building called the Gor Khatri which stands on a piece of rising ground, and here I found Mr Agha Khan--not {228} the celebrated head of the Aligar College, but a junior Tehsildar who had been deputed to show me Peshawar.

We went first up to the roof of the building from which there is a fine view over both country and city. Mr Agha Khan was a short Mohammedan with a black beard, many clothes, and a large stick. He pointed out to me a small Hindoo temple about forty yards away called the Gorak Nat, the name of a Hindoo saint who lived there many years ago and gave the name _Gor_ Khatri. This building was originally a guest-house built by Nour Jehan, Jehangir's queen, and is sometimes called still the Sarai of Nour Jehan Begum. Its greatest title to fame, however, lies in its having been occupied for many years and largely added to by the Italian General Paolo Crescenzo Martino Avitabile, one of the most romantic characters in history and, under Runjeet Singh, Governor of Peshawar, which he was the first man to keep really in order.

Walking on the flat roof with Agha Khan I looked over all the city. In the distance to the right rose Mount Tartara from the line of hills that surround Peshawar on three sides like a horseshoe. Cutting through the flat-roofed town, and coming straight to our feet, was the long sharp shadow of the Bara Bazaar. To the left I could see the red-brick Mission Hospital; {229} the large cupola of the mosque of Dilawar Khan, a Kardar in the time of Chaghatta; and still farther to the left, a tower called the Burj of Said Khan; while far away beyond Peshawar, a dip in the nearer hills, marked the position of Jamroud guarding the entrance to the Khyber Pass. Behind us, across the compound of space belonging to the Gor Khatri, was another of its buildings used at times of Mohammedan festival and as quarters for any representative of the Amir of Afghanistan coming to Peshawar.

The Gor Khatri itself is now used for municipal offices. The unglazed window spaces are fitted with dull red wooden shutters; shoes were lying about everywhere in the large rooms, and the brick floors, covered with rush matting, were littered with books of paper made in the Peshawar gaol--that revered building which gives compulsory shelter to so many saintly characters. Amid a heap of documents officials squatted with reed pens, each under his own particular cupboard let into the thickness of the wall.

Here upon dhurries spread over the rough matting sat the "Siahnavis" who keeps the general revenue accounts of the Tahsil. Opposite to him, also on the floor, sat the cashier, the "Devidial" (salary 15 rupees per month). Then at 20 rupees per month, in the midst of a huge litter on a red and blue striped dhurry, {230} sat the Wasil Baganavis, keeping the accounts from the separate villages of the Tahsil. Opposite to him again was the "Ghulam Mahdi" (15 rupees per month). He keeps accounts of income tax and wears silver studs. "Every man who makes a profit of 1000 rupees or more in a year," said Agha Khan, "has to pay income tax."

In the next room, Mr Faujuin, a Pathan, fair, and speaking some English, keeps for 20 rupees per month the Urdu records of cases, criminal, civil revenue, and judicial revenue. He is called the judicial "Muharrir." Then I came to the "Kanungo," the highest of these minor officials who keeps (for 40 rupees per month) records concerning crops and agricultural matters. In this Tahsil, the Kanungo informed me, among the chief things grown are rice, maize, cherry-maize, bajra, sugar-cane, cotton, chilis, cabbages, carrots, turnips, wheat, barley, grain and sesamum--also a little tobacco and, among fruits, grapes, pomegranates, melons and water-melons. There are eighty-two patwaris, lesser officers for the villages in this Tahsil and four field Kanungos who bring in the village reports. Finally, I was introduced to the Tehsildar under whom, with his two assistants, all these other officials work. The Tehsildar owns to 200 rupees per month and the assistant Tehsildars to 60 rupees each.

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Inside the main gateway of the Gor Khatri, in a room behind iron railings, were a couple of prisoners. In cases of non-payment of taxes the Tehsildar has power to keep a prisoner for ten days before sending him for trial before the Deputy Commissioner, who may then sentence him to a month's imprisonment. In criminal cases the Tehsildar can himself sentence up to six months.

Mr Agha Khan and I now drove half-way down the Bara Bazaar and then walked up a very muddy side street called the street of Hakims (native doctors). We stopped to talk to one sitting on the raised floor of his shop with its rows of strange bottles and drug jars.

Mr Agha Khan and I were getting on famously. He did not seem at all wearied by my questions, and appeared to enjoy my happiness in being in what is largely still an Afghan, if not a Persian, city. But the doctor--this old turbaned, black-bearded magician with so much spare drapery! I would not ask his name lest I should be told it was not Abenazer and that he never had a nephew, but I did ask what money he charged for his advice and drugs. And the Hakim answered, "A rupee if I go to the patient's house, but if the sick man come himself to the shop only the medicine do I charge him for and the cost of that would be three to five rupees." I wondered if the latter price {232} was in expectation of any possible demands of my own and remarked, "That would surely be a very great deal if the sick man were a poor man." "If the illness is serious," said Mr Agha Khan, "he will be able to pay--otherwise he will not."

Near by was a barber's shop, combined with a bathing establishment. We went inside and as I wished to see the baths the barber got a small lamp and took me to the back of the shop where the baths were: stone boxes like tiny cachots with wooden doors. There was just room for a man to stand upright or squat upon the floor, and in the middle of the wall on one side was a small hole in which the bowls of water could be placed from without.

A woman at the corner of the street was cooking or "popping" maize. She put the maize into a bowl-shaped depression over the fire with some black sand which was afterwards sifted back from the corn. She was paid by retaining a small portion of each lot brought for her to cook.

Near by was the mosque of Dilawar Khan, of brick-work and decorated plaster, and a tank of turbid green water in the middle with red goldfish swimming about in it. Mr Agha Khan said that Dilawar Khan was a Khardar of the Chaghattai kings. I noticed a long wooden trough _inside_ the mosque. "It is to put the {233} shoes for safety," said Agha Khan; "there are many thieves here who would take them if left outside," which indexed one side of the Peshawar character and showed that the Pathan's passion for thieving is greater than his respect for religious observance.

We watched some goldsmiths for a while and then a baker making round flat cakes called "gird" of wheaten flour and water and others of the Afghan pattern shaped like a flat spoon. These are called "Nan," and have ghee (butter) mixed with the flour so that they cost two annas each whereas the girds cost but two pice. The oven is like a spherical kiln in the floor with the fire inside on the bottom and a small round opening at the top on the floor level where the baker sits. When he has kneaded the dough and marked his cake with various thumb-marks for decoration, he takes a _rafida_, a kind of small stiff pillow, wets it and on it puts the cake. Then, reaching down through the oven-hole with his hand, he slaps it up on to the curved wall and leaving the cake adhering brings out the pillow again. Then when the bread is cooked, with a hooked bamboo stick called a kundi he brings out the baked loaf. "I am very wise and clever to do this work," said the baker, "this is not easy work."

Next we called at a dispensary where a native doctor, trained at a medical school at Lahore, {234} told me he sees an average of 200 patients per day. Eyes and throats were the most frequent trouble. We saw another mosque--one founded by Gangeli Khan, another official under the Chaghattai kings--with a fine old Imam. The Imam must be ready at all times to go to the house of one dying and read the Arsin as well as to wash the body and perform various ceremonies after death.

In another part of the city I went to see a house in the street called Undar Shahr which had been recently raided by Zakka Khels. Two bankers, Nan Dan and Chela Ram, had the upper floor where the raid took place. Going through an open passage-way in this building I came into an Afghan merchant's go-down, where raisins brought from Kabul were being sampled by a group of men sitting upon the floor. Among these merchants, bargaining with them, I saw, somewhat to my surprise, an enterprising Teuton!

With regard to the raid and the probability of its having been engineered by friends living in the city, I was told the following native proverb:--

"Chori Yaru naukri
Baj Wasila nahi."

Of which the meaning is:--

"Theft, love and service
All require a go-between."

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Near the Katchari Gate is the Government High School, a large red-brick building next to a white Hindoo house. I went in one day and found the lowest class sitting in a circle on a large dhurry in the garden, the boys' shoes taken off and carefully put aside. The classmaster, Abdul Rahim, was teaching reading and writing. These children pay from one to three annas per month, while boys in the higher classes pay from three to eight rupees each. Some higher classes were doing gymnastics in the playground. They were all Mohammedans except four and very few of them were married, marriage in the North-West Provinces being usually later than elsewhere. While Mr Hargreaves, the enthusiastic headmaster, was telling me this, a small boy in black velvet came up to him. The boy brought a message from two others in one of the classes in the schoolhouse. He said he wanted "leave" for Chan Bad Sha (which means moon king) and Phul Bad Sha (which means flower king), because the sister of Chan Bad Sha's mother was sick. I was then shown a boy whose father, the Shahzada, Abdul Karim, was King of Kokand, the district from which Babar came. This lad, who wore a long-sleeved Chitral coat, talks five languages--Turki, Urdu, Persian, Chitrali, Pushtu and English. "My home is two months' journey from here--from the way {236} of Kabul, Bokhara and Samarkand," he said.

Another clever youngster was Fazal Rahman whose father was a C.S.I. Fazal was enormously fat and appeared proportionately good-tempered. Many of the boys show an altogether precocious and surprising memory. Mr Hargreaves told me he had caught them knowing by heart, without understanding it, an epitome of English history they had got hold of surreptitiously to save all bother of studying the proper history book.

Several men and a boy who had been waiting some while for the headmaster's attention now received audience. The youth was an Afridi, whose name had been crossed off the books for continuous absence and who wanted to be re-admitted. He was very fair, with beautiful brown eyes unusually large, and declared he would never be absent again if they would take him back. He had been sick--very sick--but was well again. His white turban was dirty. His lungs had been wrong since June, but at last he had been put in a freshly-flayed sheepskin for some hours and was quite cured!

Outside the school I passed an old Hajji who had lately come from Mecca and was on his way home. A number of his fraternity, waiting for some days in one of the Sarais, had {237} just cost the schoolmaster twelve annas for rope. The cause was as follows:--Moti (which means Pearl) was the name of an exceptionally ugly buffalo whose only labour was the daily drawing of a little water on a piece of land belonging to the school. Moti was well fed, and at night was always taken by the man who had charge of him to sleep in the Sarai, now crowded by the ponies of the Hajjis. The buffalo resented the unusually close quarters and in the silence of the night, charged right and left into the Hajjis and their ponies. The pilgrims thereupon attacked Moti's guardian with sticks and belaboured him soundly, and thus it was that Moti's keeper required 12 annas for new rope wherewith to bind the outraged buffalo.

The schoolmaster introduced me to a great friend of his, an American archæologist, Dr Brainerd Spooner, whose charm is only equalled by his energy and whom I found in one of the trenches at Shahijikidheri a little way from the city where he was superintending excavations in search of the great Buddhist stupa of Kanishka or its foundations.

A thorough organization of archæological survey in India was one of the fruits of Lord Curzon's viceroyalty and Dr Spooner, who is a specialist in ancient Oriental languages, was superintendent of the survey in the North-West Frontier circle.

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Kanishka, according to Vincent Smith, lived about A.D. 125, and is supposed to have erected near Peshawar the most lofty and important stupa of all India, so celebrated indeed that it, or rather its adjacent monastery, was occupied for a thousand years. "We are trying to prove," said Dr Spooner as we tramped along deep trenches and clambered over mud hillocks, "that this is really the spot where Kanishka did build." I saw some masses of masonry and lines of wall which had already been uncovered, and later, at Peshawar museum, some pieces of sculpture and plaster reliefs showing very strong Greek influence; but since my visit, far greater success has rewarded Dr Spooner's labours including the discovery of the Buddha relics which have now been presented to the Buddhists at Rangoon.

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