The Honey Thief (18 page)

‘Brother,’ he said, ‘what matter has brought Zahir Shah to see the Americans?’

The soldier, a young man, explained, ‘The King of the Americans is dead.’

‘Aiee! An evil day in the world! Was he old, the American King?’

‘No. Too young to be my father.’

‘Aiee! A disaster!’

In Afghanistan, the most common way for a king to lose his life is to be shot. The father of Zahir Shah had been shot by the king-killer, Abdul Khaliq. And so the chestnut seller asked the soldier, ‘Was he shot by one who hated him?’

‘Yes,’ said the soldier. ‘He was shot in his car.’

The chestnut seller was greatly saddened to hear this news. He felt ashamed that he had whispered to himself earlier in the afternoon ignorant things about the laziness of the Americans in taking holidays without warning. The metal drum that kept his chestnuts hot was mounted on wheels and capable of being moved to another place, a busier place, but he remained where he was outside the gate as a mark of respect for the dead King of the Americans.

After the space of an hour, Zahir Shah and all the important people with him came out of the embassy and returned to their black cars. The American who was known as the ambassador walked to the biggest of the black cars with Zahir Shah and shook his hand before the King departed. As the ambassador and an Uzbeki assistant who helped him with the Dari language walked back to the gate, the chestnut seller asked the American to accept a gift of chestnuts, a very large portion wrapped in fig leaves that had to be stolen each evening from an orchard on the outskirts of Kabul.

‘What does he say?’ the American asked the assistant.

‘Sir, he wishes to give you chestnuts as a mourning gift. It is our custom to give such gifts.’

‘Is that a fact? Well, I can’t refuse such a gift, can I? Thank him for me.’

The assistant thanked the chestnut seller, who added some further words of condolence for the ambassador.

‘Sir, he says that he weeps for your grief and for the sad day that has come to America. He says it is a tragedy for the American King to die so young. He means “president”, not king.’

Tears sprang into the eyes of the ambassador, for the murder of the President had come as a terrible blow to him. ‘Tell this good fellow that Mrs Kennedy and her children would be comforted to hear of his sympathy,’ he replied. Then he added, ‘Find a gift for him.’

The assistant said that he would of course find a gift for the chestnut seller, but what gift that could be was a puzzle. All that he could find was a set of four famous American books in Dari, each book with the English version at the back. The embassy kept several sets of these books to give to schools in Kabul. Embassies in other countries kept such sets in the language of that country. The assistant walked down to the gate and handed the set of books to the chestnut seller, with the thanks of the embassy and the special thanks of Mrs Kennedy and her children and Mr Lyndon B. Johnson, the new American President.

The chestnut seller was honoured to be given such a gift as the strange books. Although he could not read Dari and certainly could not read English, the books were kept safe in the house he shared with his brother and brother-in-law, with his wife and three children, with the wife of his brother-in-law – his sister – and with their three children, and with the wife of his brother and their two children. The set was wrapped in a cloth and tied with string and placed at the bottom of a tin chest that held bedding reserved for guests. Only once in two years did the chestnut seller take the books from the chest, when he showed them to a mullah. His wife had told him that the books might be considered impious and should be approved by someone who knew about such matters. The mullah kept the books for a week and looked at every page and at the pictures on the covers. He said that the books were foolish, but not impious.

It was a season of feasting ordered by Zahir Shah that led to the strange books coming into the hands of the Baluchi merchant. Zahir Shah had paid many visits to the nations of Europe and it was well known that he wished Afghanistan could become a modern country with its own tall buildings and steel bridges and aeroplanes. Two years after the chestnut seller became the owner of the strange books, Zahir Shah invited important people from Europe to Kabul to talk with them about the future of his country. The important people stayed for weeks, and when they left, more arrived, and then even more. Each day for three months, all of the chestnuts in the market were purchased by the cooks of Zahir Shah’s palace to make a special meal for the King’s guests. The chestnut seller in his despair went a long way out of the city to find chestnuts, but without success. Finally he asked the Baluchi merchant, who was making one of his visits to Kabul, to come to his house and choose amongst his possessions those he wished to purchase.

The Baluchi merchant was a clever man but he was not a greedy man. He paid the chestnut seller a fair price for his saucepans and bedsheets and rugs. The strange books delighted him and he paid the chestnut seller twice their value, although in truth he didn’t know what they were worth. ‘Where did they come from?’ he asked the chestnut seller, and he was told, ‘When the American King was shot in his car, they came to me as a gift.’

In the year that followed the Baluchi merchant’s purchase of the strange books, he suffered such ill fortune that he began to feel that a curse had been fixed on him by an enemy. First, his wife went mad and jumped into a well, then the older of his two horses choked on a pomegranate. Worst of all, the merchant grew a mole above his right eye where no mole had existed before, and this was a sure sign of a deep curse. He went to see a woman in the west of Hazarajat who understood curses and she searched through everything in his two wagons until she came upon the strange books.

‘Little wonder your wife went mad!’ said the woman. ‘Have you lost your senses? Get rid of them!’

But it is no simple matter to rid yourself of a possession that attracts ill fortune. The owner cannot simply throw it away – that would only double the bad luck. He must pass it on to someone else, and the person it is offered to must accept it freely. A saucepan or an oil lamp or a birdcage would quickly find a new owner ignorant of what he was accepting, but a book was of no use to anyone; besides, it aroused suspicion. And so it was only when the merchant came upon the unfortunate Hameed that he was able to end his year of bad luck.

The merchant spied Hameed in the apricot orchard of his father just to the side of the track that passed between the trees on one side and a building on the other side that had been the church of a Christian from Germany many years past. The German was shot by soldiers of Nadir Shah for hiding Hazara children in the time of massacres. When the merchant first saw Hameed, the young man was talking to the dog he had with him in the manner of a man who expected answers from the animal. The merchant thought, ‘I have found the simpleton I have been seeking!’ He called out to Hameed, ‘Friend, good morning to you and the blessings of God forever!’

Hameed walked over to the merchant’s cart, stumbling twice on the way, and the merchant was even more convinced that God had given him a chance to cast away the curse of the strange books.

‘What name do you go by?’ asked the merchant.

‘Hameed Behsudi of my father’s house on the hillside by the big orchard,’ said the young man.

‘Ah, I know him well! Ahmed Behsudi, a most honoured man! I sold him a sugar bowl. Friend, would it be within your power to pick me a few apricots on this morning? I am tormented by hunger.’

‘Well, I will,’ said Hameed. ‘But for my father’s sake, I must ask you to pay.’

‘Would I take fruit without payment? Never in life!’

Hameed picked twenty of the finest apricots he could find on the nearest tree and brought them to the merchant.

‘If these do not satisfy you,’ he said, ‘then God has given you no taste for fruit.’

‘Would I complain of apricots such as these?’ said the merchant. ‘Never in life, I tell you from my heart. But friend, do you know, I have searched in my purse and have never felt it lighter. Not a coin to be found. Would you accept a trade?’

‘What do you suggest?’ replied Hameed, on his guard.

‘What do I suggest? Not a second sugar bowl, since your father’s house already boasts the finest sugar bowl in our land of Afghanistan. A new pestle for your wife – would that please you?’

‘Alas, I am yet to find a wife.’

‘Is that so? You surprise me, a handsome chap like you. Hmm, let me see. Well, I have something here that came to me from the King of the Americans who made a visit to our city of Kabul and asked me to accept it. Have you ever seen books like this, friend?’

Hameed’s interest was pricked as soon as he saw the books. Slow as he was at the tasks that are favoured amongst the Hazara, he was a good student at the school he had attended in years past. He could read our language of Dari, and he could write at the speed of five words per minute.

On the cover of the first book, in both Dari and English, the words ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ were written in gold. The word ‘adventures’ appealed to Hameed, and the picture on the cover was a wonder. It showed a boy with hair of a strange colour and a tall man coloured black. The boy and the man were standing on a craft of wood and the craft itself was floating in a river. Hameed had never seen a boat – this was not to be wondered at for very few in Hazarajat had seen one – but he had heard of them. He had never seen a stream like that which was shown in the picture either, and the boat, the boy with strange hair, the tall man coloured black and the great stream excited him.

‘Will these books pay for my apricots?’ asked the merchant, who was just as excited as Hameed, although for a different reason.

‘Oh, yes!’ said Hameed. ‘I thank you, sir, with all my heart!’

‘Just so we understand each other,’ said the merchant. ‘You are accepting these books freely? That is true, surely?’

‘Yes, the books are accepted freely, and I thank you again.’

‘You are quite sure?’

‘Very sure!’ said Hameed.

With no further words between them, the Baluchi merchant shook the reins of his cart and urged his horse to move along. Hameed waved to the merchant before he disappeared from sight around a bend, but the merchant, who seemed in haste, did not look back.

Hameed began reading without delay. Each of the four books he had to choose from had a different name. The first, of course, was named ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain.’ The second was named ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain.’ The third was named ‘Little Women Louisa May Alcott.’ The fourth was named ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe.’ He sat beneath an apricot tree, shaded from the sun by the leaves, sipped some water from his clay jar made to stay cool in the heat, and turned to a page in the Dari part of ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain’ headed ‘Here Begin’.

I must explain to the reader that the type of books called ‘novels’ in English hardly exist in Hazara culture. Such books come from the imagination of a writer, which is to say, the stories are not true, or not true in the way that a book about caring for fig trees is true, or a book about the moon, such as that read by the scholar Mohammad Majid. For this reason, Hameed was at first baffled as his eyes and brain struggled with the sentences. He believed the story of Huckleberry Finn to be true, but he could not understand why a boy from a poor family would tell his story in a book. The boy Huck was not a prophet, he was not a mullah, he was not a king. Then Hameed thought, ‘Ah, but the boy will become a king after many troubles,’ and was able to keep reading without feeling puzzled.

Hameed had the sense to keep the books to himself. He knew that it would be difficult to explain to his father that he had traded twenty choice apricots for strange books that had no value. He wrapped the books in cloth, just as the chestnut seller had kept them, then hid them under a rock in a place where any rain that came to Hazarajat would not reach them.

It was Hameed’s task the next day to walk all about the fig orchard and make sure that the fruit was not stolen. While he did this, his brothers harvested the apricot orchard, where the fruit was already ripe. Not only did Hameed remain in the orchard during the day but also at night, with his bedding under a tarpaulin held up by a pole. His father thought that even Hameed could not come to grief with such a simple task, so long as he didn’t again set fire to a tree. The truth was that few people in Hazarajat would ever steal the fruit from an orchard, but thefts had happened and it was wise to be cautious. Sadly, Hameed did not walk about the orchard but instead slowly read his way through the story of Huckleberry Finn by sunlight and candlelight. Sadly, some of the people known as nomads in Hazarajat – not Hazara, but not anything else either, a mystery people – happened to be in the valley of Masjed-e Negar at that time. Without kinship to the Hazara, they felt no guilt in taking the fruit from unguarded trees they came upon. But not all at once. They took a few from the trees nearest to the track each night. Hameed read the book of Huckleberry Finn slowly. It took him a month to finish the part with the heading ‘Here Begin’. In that month, two fig trees were stripped of all their fruit.

Hameed discovered the theft before anyone else noticed. He struck himself on the head as punishment for his stupidity. He knew that his father, if he found out about the theft, would fetch him a much stronger blow. But a clever scheme came to him out of the blue sky. He went to the far side of the orchard, the most hidden part, and picked all the figs from two trees. The figs were still four weeks from full ripeness, but that could not be helped. He brought the freshly picked figs home and said to his father, ‘I became bored, so I began the harvest. These are from the trees closest to the track.’

Ahmed Behsudi frowned at his son. ‘No harm is done, but in future wait until the figs ripen.’

Hameed returned to the orchard full of good intentions. He would put the book of Huckleberry Finn aside and walk about in the orchard all day. He would sleep at night thirty minutes at a time, and keep his eye out even in the darkness for the fig thieves. But the spell of the story had its way. Hameed looked up from the book every now and again, saying to himself, ‘I will go now and walk about the orchard.’ And so he did, but as he walked he read the book of Huckleberry Finn. A brown bear could have blocked his path and he wouldn’t have noticed.