The Honey Thief (11 page)

On this morning early in spring the small clearing was empty. It would be another week before farmers carried down their new onions and snow peas and green beets. But it took only a minute or two for the clearing to begin filling with those who’d been startled by the loud cries of Mohammad Barzinji’s wife.

‘I heard it in the hills!’ she was shouting. ‘Latifeh was with me! It destroyed my wits!’

‘Heard what?’ Mohammad Barzinji’s wife was asked.

‘A sound not from this earth!’ she wailed. But Latifeh said, ‘It was music.’

The people of the town were much more inclined to listen to Latifeh, who was known for her quiet temperament, than to her mother, who had been in a strange state since a moth had died in her ear. But no more questioning was required, for the music that Latifeh spoke of could now be heard by all. Such a strange matter, for music to be heard in the village; in normal times, it would only be at weddings when musicians were hired from far off that such sounds would fill the air.

‘Who can explain this?’ people asked, their eyes wide with surprise.

‘The new madman,’ said Latifeh. ‘It is coming from his house.’

Twenty people made their way up the rocky track to the house of the new madman, Red Beard as he was now called, but more properly, Karim Zand. With every step the crowd took the music became louder and sweeter. It was surely the instrument known as the
rubab
that was producing the music – that much was obvious. Everyone knew the sound of the
rubab
from weddings, and also from a strange device that played music when a small package was pushed into a machine with batteries. Such a device was once brought to the village by a scholar from England, a cheerful man with a fair beard and spectacles whose trousers were so short they showed his knees. He had been searching far and wide in Afghanistan for people who knew songs from ancient times.

I will say something more here about the
rubab
. It is an instrument that makes music with twelve strings that are plucked and stroked with the fingers. It has a belly like a lute, but not so broad and not so deep. The
rubab
is the great musical instrument of Afghanistan, although it is said to have originated in Iran at a time when Iranians called their country Persia. To master the instrument requires a long period of training, beginning with an apprenticeship that might commence at a very young age. It was no wonder that Karim Zand was thought to be mad, for the masters of the
rubab
are a strange breed to those who know only the beauty of the music the
rubab
makes, but not the way in which it is made.

On that day in spring the people of the village knew that they were listening to music made by a master. Each was glad in his heart that the new madman had turned out to be a madman of the better sort – one who did something useful. He could have revealed much more difficult tastes. When the wool-dyer went mad, he walked about the village unclothed and claimed he was a lizard. If the new madman intended to sit in his house all day and night without eating or drinking, what harm in that if he also played his
rubab
? But then something unfortunate happened. Just as people were beginning to clap their hands and sing little bits of song to go with the music, the madman himself, Karim Zand with his huge red beard, burst out the front door of his ruin of a house and roared like a bull.

‘Clear out!’ he shouted. Then he went back inside his house and slammed the door behind him.

The people of the village didn’t take the warning seriously. Why should they? The man was mad. He had no idea what he was saying. After a few minutes had passed, Karim Zand began playing the
rubab
again, and people began to clap and sing again – not everyone, just those who wanted to show that they didn’t take orders from a madman.

But mad Karim Zand again burst from his doorway and commanded everyone to clear out. Again, he was ignored. Then he appeared to give up on being granted the privacy he desired. He played for another hour and kept indoors.

Amongst those listening to the madman was a boy of fourteen by the name of Abdullah. The boy carried through life the misfortune of silence. From the moment of his birth, not a sound had come from his mouth other than croaking noises such as a frog might make. After the age of four, he ceased making the frog noises, either because he no longer could or because his father hissed at him and told him to say nothing. It was said that his silence had something to do with the colour of his eyes, a bright green like wet vine leaves, unknown amongst the Hazara. He was thought to be an idiot, although he was capable in every way other than speaking and wrote his Dari script with clarity unequalled amongst the children at the school he attended for three years. He prayed in silence and those who saw him at prayer wondered how God would know of his existence when his voice could not carry his devotion to Heaven. He lived with his uncle, Ali Reza, for as if having a child who couldn’t speak was not enough of a disaster, the boy’s father had died when Abdullah was only seven years old. The man had eaten the flesh of an owl he’d found in the hill pastures – an unwise thing to do, for the owl was not native to the region and Abdullah’s father should have known better. Besides, the owl was dead. Abdullah’s mother remarried when he was nine years old but her new husband, who made his living as a tooth-puller and limb-setter travelling from village to village, would only take on Abdullah’s two older brothers. He considered Abdullah cursed.

The music of the
rubab
came as a great revelation to Abdullah. He heard voices in the music when others heard only the sound of the strings. He sat with his legs crossed as close as he dared to the madman’s house and listened with a smile on his face. It seemed to him that the
rubab
was telling a tale that had no end; a story such as Abdullah had only ever known in dreams. But the music produced yet another response in Abdullah. The people of the village who noticed him smiling to himself said aloud, ‘Look! The idiot is trying to speak!’ Without being aware of it himself, Abdullah’s lips were moving soundlessly. ‘One madman is talking to another!’

Every day for a fortnight the people of the town gathered to listen to Karim Zand playing the
rubab
, and Abdullah was always amongst them. It seemed that the madman preferred to play late in the afternoons and often his music continued well past the time of
maghrib
. Most of those listening would drift off to the
hussainia
to attend to their devotions and touch their foreheads to the
turba
, but Abdullah remained outside the madman’s house for as long as the music lasted.

This time-wasting of Abdullah’s could not go on. His uncle Ali Reza had work for the boy, who was really now much more than a boy; fifteen is very close to the time at which you are considered an adult amongst the Hazara – it was certainly that way for me. In spring the apple trees of Ali Reza’s orchard attracted small blue beetles that climbed the trunks and if left unchecked, would lay eggs in the blossom that would later ruin the fruit. It was necessary to wrap coarse cloth soaked in a poison made from ragwort around the trunks to kill the beetles off. But some beetles would survive the poison. It was Abdullah’s task at this time of the year to go from tree to tree, capturing the beetles and crushing them with his fingers. He also carried baskets of soil from the sunless valleys below the village up to the orchard. Finally, it was Abdullah’s responsibility to keep the soil of the orchard fertilised by adding the ash of wood fires and the dung of sheep from the mountain meadows.

So Abdullah was forbidden to go to the madman’s house in the afternoon. Ali Reza’s words were law in his household, and Abdullah would not disobey. But nothing had been said about not going to the madman’s house at night. Abdullah left his bed when his uncle and his uncle’s two wives and the five children of the family were asleep and sat on the rocky ground close to Karim Zand’s small house. It was his hope that the madman would begin playing the
rubab
late in the night, as unlikely as this seemed. Abdullah kept his vigil for two hours each night for five nights on end without ever hearing a single note of the
rubab
’s music, but on the sixth night, although no music came from the house, he at least saw Karim Zand himself step from his front door and stand gazing up at the moon. Abdullah remained still, even when the madman noticed him and took three huge strides to loom above him.

‘Will you feel the force of my hand on your head?’ the madman roared, and he lifted his fist as if in readiness to strike Abdullah. The boy kept his peace in a way that must have impressed the madman because he lowered his fist and accepted from Abdullah’s hand a small piece of paper on which some words were written. Karim Zand turned the paper about this way and that until the light of the full moon illuminated the words: ‘Teach me’.

‘“Teach me”?’ said Karim Zand. He looked down at Abdullah, and his long face and nose like the beak of an eagle and the great tangle of his red beard gave him the look of a monster. ‘Teach you to hide in the shadows like a wolf? Is that what I should teach you? Teach you to destroy my peace?’

Abdullah climbed to his feet. He looked the madman in the eye without fear. Then he put two fingers to his lips. He made a sign with his hands, spreading them out from each other like a bird unfolding its wings. It was a sign that meant, ‘I can say no more.’ A man might make such a sign at a certain point in an argument when words have failed to settle an issue. But Abdullah wished Karim Zand to understand that he had no power to speak. Karim Zand frowned and put his hand to his chin, as if in doubt about the boy’s meaning. Then he said suddenly, ‘Will I kill you now? Will I strike you dead where you stand?’ and he again lifted his fist. Abdullah didn’t make a sound, nor could he. He stood his ground. Karim Zand said, ‘God’s grey hair!’ – a strange expression, and not the sort of thing that a pious man would utter. ‘You are one of the silent ones?’ Karim Zand motioned for the boy to follow him into the house.

The house indoors was as poor as we might imagine. An oil lamp of the sort you might purchase in a bazaar for five hundred afghanis threw a feeble light across the floor, which was no more than the soil on which the foundations stood. In one corner of the room folded blankets formed a bed simpler than a
toichek
. Two pots and two pewter plates stood on the hearth of the fireplace in which a few embers blinked in the gloom, showing that those who said no smoke ever rose from the madman’s chimney were not paying attention. On the earthen floor two rugs were spread, one of high quality, the other not so special. Four cushions rested on the rugs. On the bare mud-brick of the walls such garments as the madman possessed hung from hooks. One of two smaller rooms served as a cupboard where a number of small ornaments sat on shelves – a tortoise made of stone, coffee cups, drinking glasses with gold rims. The other room was Karim Zand’s washroom.

The
rubab
that had been the cause of Abdullah’s bold plan to meet the madman and make his request rested on the largest of the cushions. Beside it lay another instrument, a
tula
, a pipe made of wood with stops and a mouthpiece. Its coating of varnish shone in the light of the cheap lantern.

Karim Zand said to the boy, ‘Make yourself seated.’ Once Abdullah had lowered himself onto a cushion, he looked up at the towering figure of the madman. In the light of the lantern, his red beard and hooked nose and fierce gaze gave him the appearance of one who intended harm to the world. Abdullah wished to say, but could not, ‘I honour you and your music.’ Instead he pointed at the
rubab
, then at the place in his chest where his own heart beat.

Karim Zand spoke. ‘Would that the whole world had ceased to speak! If you had uttered a word to me, I would have kicked your arse!’

Abdullah nodded. Then he pointed again at the
rubab
, and again at his heart.

The madman sat on a cushion facing the boy, and put his two hands into his beard, pulling at it in a way that seemed to help his thinking.

‘“Teach me”!’ he said at last. He threw back his head and let out a great roar. ‘Teach me! Ha!’ Then his mood appeared to change and he said, ‘Perhaps I will teach you. Or perhaps I will cut your throat and cook you. But if in my generosity I agree to teach you, how would you pay me? Now, go home.’

Abdullah went home, of course – what else could he do? But he came back the next night with a new note, and this time he was brave enough to knock on the door of the madman’s house. Karim Zand came out wearing a more fierce expression than ever. Abdullah thrust the note at him. The note read, in the beautiful handwriting that Abdullah had taught himself, ‘I will work for you at the end of the day when I have finished my tasks for my uncle.’

Karim Zand read the new note and his anger died away. Once again, he took the boy into his house. This time, however, he made him tea. He sat before the boy, and had this to say: ‘You say you would be my servant. Why would I wish for a servant? I am a man alone. Do you see a wife? Do you see any children? Go home!’

Abdullah did as he was commanded. But once again he returned, and he carried a new note for the madman. Karim Zand said to the boy, ‘What, are you more of a fox than a human being? Do you stay awake all night finding ways to be a nuisance?’

But he read Abdullah’s note. What the boy had written was this: ‘Teach me for the sake of my soul.’ The words must have found their way to the heart of the madman because he allowed Abdullah to come inside, and he made him tea. He sat stroking his chin for some time before he placed not the
rubab
but the
tula
on the rug before the boy. He said, ‘This is the instrument for you. The
rubab
must be part of your education from the age of five. The
tula
you may learn now.’ Karim Zand picked up the
tula
and put it to his lips. Within seconds the dark little house with its unplastered walls was transformed into the garden of an emperor filled with the song of nightingales. Karim Zand placed the
tula
on the cushion once more and said to Abdullah, ‘Pick it up.’ When Abdullah reached for the instrument with gladness, Karim Zand said, ‘Wait!’ Then he pointed at the top of the
tula
and said, ‘Do not pick it up at this end, by any means, unless you wish to offend me.’ Then he pointed to the bottom of the
tula
, from where the music emerged. ‘Do not pick it up from this end, by any means, or you will certainly offend me.’ Finally, he pointed to the middle of the
tula
and said, ‘Do not pick it up here, by any means, or you will offend me and I will use the instrument to bruise your skull!’