The Honey Thief (4 page)

‘Hai-wah!’ said Abbas. ‘He knows my stone would hit him!’

‘Do you think I could hit the wolf from where I stand?’ said the old man.

It took a lot of strength to throw a stone all the distance to the wolf. Abbas doubted the old man could throw so far at his age – well over eighty years. But to be polite, he said, ‘Yes, surely.’

The old man spoke. ‘At your age, yes. But not now. The wolf knows my age. Watch.’

He took Abbas’ stone and drew back his arm, as if he were about to throw. The wolf had come out of the deep shadow. He remained where he was while the old man held his arm back.

Now the old man told Abbas to take the throwing stone and go back six paces. Abbas did this. The wolf was watching. When he raised his arm, the wolf didn’t move.

‘He knows how far you can throw,’ said the old man, and he laughed. ‘You see, Abbas. The most intelligent creature in the world.’

*   *   *

In the middle of the day, Abbas and the old man ate their second sandwich and drank a little water. The old man praised the honey, which came from the beehives of Abbas’ brother Barush. Then the old man stretched out beneath a small tree that grew by itself above the pastures and fell asleep in a minute. Abbas remained awake, as was his duty. Standing on the mountainside with his staff and his dog, he worried that his grandfather would not live long enough to teach him all he knew. Thinking this, he looked down to the boulder where the wolf had waited earlier. He could no longer see the wolf. But after staring for five minutes, he saw its shape in the shadow. The wolf was lying down, perhaps asleep. Abbas thought of waking his grandfather to tell him, but he wanted the old man to enjoy his sleep and didn’t disturb him.

*   *   *

Late in the afternoon, Abbas and his grandfather herded the sheep back to the fold, with the help of the dog. Three of the ewes had given birth during the day. The new lambs were unsteady on their legs and had to be nudged along by their mothers. Two of the lambs were still bloody from birth and the ewes stopped to lick them on the way to the fold. The old man was pleased that the wolf would be able to feed on the afterbirth left in the pasture. ‘He is too old to hunt,’ said the old man. ‘He doesn’t have a family to care for him. He doesn’t have an Abbas.’

*   *   *

When Abbas went to the pasture the next day, he looked for the wolf exactly where he’d seen it with his grandfather the day before. Sure enough, the wolf was there in the shadows of the boulder. It must have been the wolf’s plan to stay for the whole of the lambing season and live on afterbirth, but that would only be for another month. Abbas began to worry about the wolf, in the way that he worried about the old man. Where would the old wolf find his dinner when the lambing season was over? Such a strange thing, but after living in dread of wolves ever since his brothers had warned him of their savagery, he now could not bear to think of this wolf, his grandfather’s wolf, struggling through the seasons to come. That day and the next day, he called out to the wolf, ‘I don’t fear you and you have no need to fear me! Find what comfort you can!’ The wolf gave no sign of having heard, and when the lambing season was past, it disappeared.

*   *   *

The old man remained strong through the summer and the autumn, but in the winter he began to show more signs of age. Often he would stop eating his breakfast and begin gazing into the distance. When Abbas said, ‘Grandfather!’ and touched his shoulder, the old man’s face would take on an expression of bewilderment, as if he did not remember where he was, or who Abbas was. Abbas grew more and more concerned and took charge of the old man’s affairs, as best he could. When people came to ask for his grandfather’s advice, he told them that the old man was not well. There were complaints, but Abbas was firm. ‘Go to the mullah,’ he would say. If he felt impatient, he would say, ‘Write a letter to the Ayatollah, he has a secretary.’ Ali Hussein al-Sistani was a famous Shiite who lived in the holy city of Najaf, in Iraq.

When the old man’s sons and daughters spoke to their father, Abbas told them to talk to him as if he would still be alive for years to come, for very often they would say, ‘When you are gone, there will be many who will miss you.’ They took it for granted that the old man knew he was nearing the end of his life. And in this they were right, but it wounded Abbas to hear them say so. Amongst the Hazara, people are not sentimental about old age. It is natural for a man to die when his strength is used up. When Abbas said, ‘Grandfather will be with us for many Ramadans to come,’ Esmail’s sons and daughters said, ‘Oh, surely!’ but they didn’t believe it.

Abbas had asked his teacher many times if he could bring home the
Saturday Evening Post
for his grandfather to see, but the teacher always refused. ‘If I allow you to take it home, many others will make the same request,’ he said. ‘It will be damaged, and it is the only one in Afghanistan.’ But Abbas persisted. He told his teacher that he would bring the wood for the furnace that gave heat to the classroom in autumn and winter, and he made sure he did. He tutored other students whose minds were not as quick as his. He brought ewes’ milk for the teacher two days a week. One afternoon, the teacher said, ‘Take home the magazine, Abbas. Keep it for a week. But if it is damaged, there will be a whipping.’

Abbas wrapped the magazine in cotton cloth and carried it home with the greatest care. He showed it to his grandfather, who was lying in bed. The old man looked puzzled at first, but then his eyes came to life and he smiled. He remembered what the magazine was called but had trouble pronouncing its name. Abbas sat beside his grandfather and showed him the picture on the cover, of a woman teaching a class of boys and girls combined. The picture was very skilfully painted. The date on the cover read March 17, 1956. Abbas explained to the old man that the days of Americans were different from the days of Afghans, but that the American date was the same as Sha’ban 4, 1375.

‘How strange!’ said the old man.

‘The Hijra of our faith starts from the time of the Prophet,’ said Abbas, ‘but Americans have the Christian faith.’

‘I met a Christian once, when I was younger,’ said the old man, ‘but he was not American.’

The old man enjoyed everything in the magazine. The writing was not American but English and when Abbas told him this he said again, ‘How strange!’ He thought the writing looked like lines of black ants marching across a field of snow. More than anything else, he enjoyed the pictures of cars. Abbas told him that Americans place pictures of cars in such magazines as the
Saturday Evening Post
in order to sell them. Americans had thousands of cars for sale, of many different colours and shapes. Abbas was able to tell the old man the names of the cars in English, such as De Soto and Oldsmobile and Chrysler and Dodge. He said the greatest of all cars for the Americans was the one called Cadillac. The old man put the tips of his fingers on the picture of the golden Cadillac, but very cautiously.

‘Americans have such a number of cars,’ he said, ‘and yet they speak the language of another people!’

The old man was suffering in his chest, and had to cough painfully. Nevertheless, his eyes remained bright and he thanked Abbas many times for bringing home the magazine. He was interested in all the pictures that were not of cars also, and the one that fascinated him most was of a woman in a dress of the sort that is worn in America. She was smiling as she stood beside what Abbas said was an oven powered by electricity. The oven was white and shining. Inside the oven, a huge chicken was cooking. The old man said that it was the strangest thing of all for the Americans to use ovens that were so white.

*   *   *

Early one morning the following spring Abbas went to the pastures after bringing the old man his breakfast. He released the sheep from the fold and saw that two ewes had lambed since the previous day. The new lambs kept close to their mothers and tried to feed even as they tottered along on their unsteady legs. The ewes would not let the lambs feed until the pastures were reached, and the lambs made small bleating sounds of protest.

When the light of sunrise reached the mountainside, Abbas looked down towards the boulder above the little stream to see if the old wolf had returned for the lambing season. He saw nothing. Even when the sun rose higher, there was no sign that the wolf had returned.

Towards the close of the day, when the sheep were back in the fold, Abbas called to his dog and called a second time. The dog was off the path, sniffing at something amongst the rocks. Abbas walked over to the dog, calling, ‘Hi! Come when I call you!’ The dog turned its head and looked at Abbas but didn’t come to him. Then Abbas saw that it was standing over a dead creature, a grey wolf. Abbas hurried to the carcass, suddenly sick with fear. The wolf lay with its lips drawn back from its teeth. It may have been the old wolf but it was impossible to say. Abbas put his hand on its flank. There was still a little warmth in the carcass, showing that the wolf had died only a few hours earlier.

Abbas waited no longer but began running along the path in the failing light, taking no care if he should miss his footing and fall. He ran with his chest burning at each gulp of air and kept running until he emerged from the uneven ground above his village onto the plateau. He then plunged across the creek without going further downstream to the stone bridge. He stopped to regain his breath only when he was within sight of his father’s house, bent over with his hands on his knees. The dog licked his face, puzzled and pleased at the same time over this strange behaviour.

When Abbas’ chest had ceased heaving, he walked slowly to the house, knowing before he reached the door that the old man had died. He could hear the sobbing of his sisters, of his mother and his aunts, and their cries of lament.

It was his father who noticed him first. He rose from the floor of the room in which the old man was laid out on a low table, his arms straight and his hands at his sides with the fingers spread. His white beard had been combed and looked much neater than it had in life. He seemed younger, too, than he had in the morning when Abbas had brought him his breakfast. He had not yet been dressed in his funeral gown but still wore the long shirt and loose trousers that kept him warm in bed.

Abbas’ father said, ‘Son, do not shame yourself.’ He meant, ‘Don’t weep like a girl.’ Abbas knew his responsibilities without being told. He walked to his grandfather and placed his hand on the old man’s chest above the heart. Then he left the house and walked about outside for an hour and more, and longer still.

3

The Honey Thief

Ahmad Hussein was a
perwerrish dahenda,
a beekeeper, a maker of honey. This is a craft honoured amongst the Hazara since honey is the prince of foods and the process by which it is made is one of the marvels of the world. It is the bees who make the honey, not beekeepers, but to know where to place your hives, and when, is the first lesson of making the bees work for you. Ahmad Hussein knew exactly where to place his hives and a great deal more. People said, ‘The bees work for Ahmad Hussein as if he were their king.’ And this was true. Ahmad Hussein was not an ordinary person. Bees obeyed him. Animals obeyed him. Sheep and goats obeyed him. He was honoured by the Hazara, but even strangers who were not Hazara respected Ahmad Hussein. When they saw his eyes, they knew that he was close to God in some way, and if they had thought of doing him harm they would change their minds.

Ahmad Hussein worked alone, but once in so many years he took on an apprentice and trained him in the craft. He had trained two of his own sons, but one had died of poliomyelitis at the age of twenty, and the other, who had shown even greater promise, had married into a family of tinsmiths and now made his living in a workshop far from the mountain pastures.

It happened that Ahmad Hussein was ready for an apprentice in the spring of Esmail Behishti’s death and he chose Abbas from amongst the many boys who asked him to train them. He chose Abbas as a mark of respect for Esmail, who had been his friend and was once his master, and also because he knew that the boy was grieving. Kindness had come Ahmad Hussein’s way in the person of Esmail, and because of that, he had some kindness to spare for this boy who had loved Esmail.

*   *   *

Ahmad Hussein’s bees lived their lives in special boxes of white and blue, known as
sanduqe assal
. He had many places for the hives, some of them a great distance apart, and in each place one hundred boxes stood amongst the grass and the wildflowers. I have said that it was one of Ahmad Hussein’s gifts that he knew where to place his hives. Such a skill is not uncommon, but it was rare for a beekeeper to take as much time as Ahmad Hussein in choosing a site. He did not say, ‘I will place the boxes in the field,’ and leave it at that, as Abbas came to know when he walked the fields with Ahmad Hussein in the first days of his apprenticeship. Ahmad Hussein strode down each side of the field and across from one corner to another. Often he would stop and think.