Philip Hensher - The Mulberry Empire

The nobles and the clergy stirred among themselves, restlessly. They were dressed splendidly, and in their thick brocades they seemed to whisper, although nobody spoke. Against them, the Amir looked like an angel, come down from heaven to reprimand them. Today, as every day, he was resplendent in his white muslin; a six-foot angel with a broad curving nose and bad teeth.

‘The Sikhs,’ he said finally. It was the end of a train of thought which had begun with the interloper, Masson, and ended with a British-funded invasion of the Amir’s empire. The angel, bad-toothed, imperial in white, looked into the middle distance of the throne room, and saw the far locked doors being flung open by British soldiers, each a fat little red-faced replica of Burnes, armed to the teeth; beyond it, the Amir’s empire, so carefully subdued and brought together, like a basket weaved of Jew’s-hair thread, was being trampled through by an endless line of similar red-faced replicas, backed up by the filthy stupid – the Amir pursued his own indomitable line of thought, and came to a single sounding conclusion. ‘The Sikhs,’ he said.

‘The Sikhs, Pearl of the Age?’ the Newab Mohammed Zemaun Khan said. None of the heavy crowd of nobles understood what the Amir meant; a moment ago, he had seemed to be talking, or to be about to talk, about the Englishman, and to have dismissed the idea that he could be a spy. And now he had moved on to the Sikhs, the thorn in the side.

‘I am talking about the Sikhs,’ the Amir said, calmly. ‘Did they send the English spy? What is he here to find out? Who sent him, if not the English? Why, may I ask, do you come here laden with gossip to weary the ears of women, and have no knowledge, no conclusion, nothing, nothing, nothing, of interest for your Emperor?’

Just at that moment, a hammer struck on metal, somewhere, three rooms away, and the court, with thanks, admitted silently that it had nothing to say about the Sikhs. In a moment, more food came in, borne at shoulder height; it was ceremonial food, and everyone gratefully arranged themselves around it. No one was hungry; everybody ate. It was easiest.

‘We need to know about the English,’ Dost Mohammed said.

The English? It was an unspoken question around the court. These abrupt changes of subject were familiar in the inner chambers of the Bala Hissar; the court took them as they took the vapid maxims of the mullahs. They demonstrated the workings of a profound mind. When a mullah emerged from deep thought to pronounce that Life is a dream, and therefore, a dream is life , he commanded a general flaccid assent. No one would contradict him, not knowing what thoughts had led to a conclusion so perfectly meaningless. Talking to the Amir was rather like that, except that the workings of his mind usually emerged in the end. His brief peremptory comments could be difficult to link, since they were only fragments of a brilliant, involved, silent analysis of a large subject. But the court fell silent when he made these remarks, and observed the Amir, eyes lowered, in respect.

‘We need to know about the English,’ the Amir said again. ‘So send a boy down to the spy.’

The spy? The Mir Wa’iz went so far as to cast a gaze at the Newab Jubbur Khan, raising an eyebrow; perhaps the Newab would know what his brother the Amir’s intentions were. The Newab’s inscrutable way with a fistful of lamb, however, was most likely due to bafflement. Naturally the Newab would not want to admit that he, too, had no idea. But in a moment the Amir took pity on them.

‘We can hardly talk to the English about their ambitions,’ the Amir said. ‘And we will not talk to the Sikhs, to find out who is the tool of whom, like the tale of the monkey on the elephant’s back. But we seem to have a spy here. Very badly disguised, and he has made no attempt to come and speak to Us, so – a stinking spy it is. Gentlemen!’ The Amir clapped his hands, three times. His voice had shrunk to a whisper, and the noise in the bare throne room was explosive as gunshot. The gentlemen of the court came running at the handclaps, like birds magically called back to a branch. ‘Take this away. No food is required.’

The court froze, mid-chew; it was the grossest breach of etiquette to eat while the Amir had refused food, and they were left, suddenly, with cheek pouches full of meat, to swallow slowly without any evidence of chewing.

‘Send a boy down to him. Does he like boys? Not a commonplace boy, a boy of parts. Does he like boys?’ The Amir, now, was businesslike.

‘Yes, Pearl of the Age.’

‘Have one sent. Not too young. A remarkable boy. We will wish to talk to him afterwards. How old are your sons, Khushhal? How old is the most beautiful of them?’

The least of the nobles, called forward suddenly from the back of the crowd, twitched, terrified, at this direct appeal. His betters parted, let him through, gazed at him with solemn disbelief. He stuttered, nervously, unprepared.

‘In my eyes, Pearl of the Age—’

‘Yes, yes,’ the Amir interrupted. ‘Yes, very estimable, Prince. You know the son I mean.’

‘Hasan is seventeen, Pearl.’ Khushhal seemed unaccountably cast down. He had seven sons, the court remembered, or possibly eight.

‘Is he a sensible boy, cousin? Is he worthy?’

‘He is the finest steed in my stable, Amir, and I give him to any task of his lord’s willingly, knowing that he will succeed where many others, where many others—’ Khushhal was losing his way in the stately sentence, ‘—might to their Amir have brought failure and sorrow.’

Dost Mohammed seemed content. ‘Very well, excellent. Make him understand that he may have to do something beyond talking to the English about the Sikhs. Don’t tell him what to do, cousin – it wouldn’t do to shock the English out of countenance. Or out of bed, I mean, Khushhal?’ Everyone laughed at the Amir’s heavy joke, covering their mouths genteelly. ‘You’re certain he likes boys, the English spy?’

‘Yes, Pearl of the Age, quite sure.’

‘Well, let us see. Is it Friday?’

‘Friday, Amir,’ Khushhal said, overstepping himself. The Vizier had been trembling at the Amir’s coat-sleeves to make this announcement.

‘Have the people come to see Us?’

‘Naturally, Imperial One,’ the Vizier leapt in, urgent with his own grandeur.

‘Well, show them in. No, no, no more food.’

Friday was, by decision of the Amir, set aside for any citizen of Kabul with a grievance to come and set it before the court. It was Dost Mohammed’s invention. None of his predecessors had carried out such a practice, as the scandalized nobility had muttered among themselves when it had become apparent that the young Sirdar – as he then was – was perfectly serious in proposing that any man at all might come and wear the court’s patience into rags with his trivial complaints. Only the Mir Wa’iz, however, had the nerve, as a licensed idiot whom Dost Mohammed liked to contradict, to say bluntly, ‘But no Amir before you, Lord of the Wind, has ever suggested such a thing.’

Dost Mohammed was ready for that, and reminded the court, and, particularly, the Mir Wa’iz (taking his sleeve firmly between thumb and forefinger and drawing the mullah’s face terrifyingly close to his own) that, although none of his predecessors had found it necessary to hold a weekly plebeian durbar, every single one of them had met a violent end. An end (beheading, hanging, dismemberment, crushing, and blowing into bits with gunpowder) which, the court would do well to remember, had invariably been meted out to the intimates of the Amir concerned at the same time. The court had swallowed, as one. All at once, precedent and the habitual practice of the court had seemed a much less important thing.