Achmed Abdullah

“ He had died even as Ayesha Zemzem reached his side; had died, 'with the words on his frothing lips:
“Aziza Nurmahal—the mausoleum—the Afghan—Hajji Akhbar Khan ...”
And, with a choked rattling noise in his throat, he had sunk on the ground, one hand flung across his lacerated face as if to ward off Fate.
“Aziza Nurmahal? Hajji Akhbar Khan? The Afghan—what Afghan? What is all this blabbing and gabbing?” the old nurse had demanded, looking down at the dead man as if she wanted to shake the answer from his limp body; and, more gently:
“Who murdered thee, faithful old friend?! Who ...” ”

“ But the governor continued, very gently:
“Grant me life, Heaven-Born, and I shall pay for it a thousand times over. For I love life and what life brings.” Here he winked, shamelessly, at the princess who, Oriental to the marrow, was beginning to admire, even respect, the man's enormous, serene astuteness. “Grant me life, and then fortune will come to thy hand, unasked, like a courtezan—or a dog.” ”

“ Hereafter he had had to make his own way—his own way compared to which that of a New York newsboy is a path of roses, since the West holds firm to that weakening philosophy called sympathy of which the East knows nothing and wants less—through the strength of his brain and his body, every step on the ladder of success marked by the blood and sufferings of some one weaker than himself, until to-day he was what he was—shrewd, but callous; a man whose enthusiasm was without warmth, whose brutality with out imagination, whose passion without delicacy, whose submission without shame. ”

“ When Aziza Nurmahal's father was on his death-bed, Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, understood that there would be trouble with the Europeans begging and bribing and bullying for “concessions,” with none left of the old clan except a young girl unused to the intrigues of the palace, the mosques, and the bazaars, with the land sure to be torn by civil strife unless a strong man's hand took the helm of the ship of state.
Thus the Hajji had gone to the far places, to Europe, to England, on his mad search for the possessor of the Gengizkhani blade.
“And he found thee, Al Nakia!” ”

“ The blades! The ancient blades! The blade of the East and that of the West! Thy blade and mine, Al Nakia! The blades of the prophecy—which saved me—which saved Tamerlanistan
And then, realizing that here for the first time since he had come to Tamerlanistan he was alone with the princess without hidden eyes and ears watching and listening from behind the rustling zenana curtains, that here for the first time he had a chance to ask her straight out for a solution of the mystery. Hector demanded, rather bluntly:
“Tell me, Aziza. What is all this mad talk of blades and the wooing of blades? ”

“ The best friend in the world—friend closer than a brother ...”
“Rather!” said Hector to himself, thinking, bitterly, of his brother Tollemache, for whose sake he had taken on his shoulders the burden of dishonor; while the princess continued:
“Yes. We are friends. But—even so—why didst thou come here in the first place? What, if thou knowest nothing of the prophecy of the swords, made thee leave thy own country? What made thee come to India, to the house in the Colootallah? And by what right hast thou this in thy possession?”—touching the sword which rode at his hip. ”

“ And the princess fought on, frightened, in despair, but resolved with all the stubbornness of the Gengizkhani blood to die rather than submit, the point of her sword dancing in ever weakening circles, while, back in the palace, the old nurse raised lean arms to heaven.
“By Allah and by Allah!” the nurse exclaimed. “The little princess has more sense than I thought! Enough sense, at least, to have taken along the Luck of the Gengizkhani—and if Al Nakia reaches there in time, both ancient blades will sing the song of blood together. Wooing indeed! Mating indeed! ”

“ But, back here in the heart of Asia, in the course of the centuries, while they remembered the prophecy itself, the ancient prophecy which said that, in the Gengizkhani's hour of need, a man would come out of the West, in his hand the blade of Jaffar Sirajuddin, they had forgotten the name of the Englishman and his family. All they had to link them with the past was the Englishman's sword, the one with which he had vanquished the Ameer and conquered his bride, with its escutcheon engraved on the hilt, and a description of the Gengizkhani sword which the foreigner had taken with him. ”

“ Yet, going back to the old nurse's vituperations and tears and frantic appeals to Allah, the Prophet, and a variety of Moslem saints that reverberated through the Gengizkhani palace from turret to cellar, causing the eunuchs to touch their blue beads as a protection against evil, and the servants huddled over the cook pots to cringe as if expecting a beating, it was perhaps natural enough that the princess, in a moment of exuberant joy, should have obeyed the strange summons without suspecting a trap. ”

“ For be it remembered that he was an Oriental; not the type of Eastern potentate one sees so much in England and occasionally in New York, flashing the motley silk of his turban through the gray, stony thoroughfares of the West, a man spoilt in a way yet bred to the most delicate finesse of feelings and manners and emotions ”

“ Was there price and pride and logic in one's own bleeding, mutilated corpse? Was there not far greater price and pride and logic in one's living body, though it be humbled through the stress of circumstance—of force majeure? ”

“ Aziza Nurmahal!”
His call echoed through the vaulted, white-stuccoed halls where slept the princess' ancestors, from the rough shepherd who, followed by a few thousand yellow-skinned, high-cheeked men on horseback, had swept out of Central Asia, conquering the world from Pekin to the gates of Berlin, to the last male member of the Gengizkhani clan, the princess' father, who had spent a life-time sidestepping the financial traps, the “concessions,” of these same Occidentals whom once his ancestors had subjugated and ruled with rope and flame and scimitar. ”

“ For thou art a perfumed jewel, palace born, palace bred, palace spoiled. The longing in thy downy heart is for a silk clad, jessamine scented courtier, while I”—and he had had the unblushing effrontery to simulate a melancholy sigh—“am only a rough Afghan, a Soleymani of Soleymanis!”
“What then dost thou want with the princess—being only an Afghan?”
“News—I bring her! Splendid news! Happy news! Joyful news! News slashed with sun gold and nicked with the moon's silver glitter! News that will cause her to fill thy lap and mine with seventeen camels' loads of red Persian gold! ”

“ And again he raised his sword, to the little princess' encouraging shouts of “Kill him, Al Nakia! Kill him!” while Abderrahman Yahiah Khan sighed resignedly, rather pathetically, with an expression in his eyes, his lips, the drooping of his shoulders which seemed to say that Hector was taking an unfair ad vantage of him and that it was thus his right to feel hurt and abused. ”

“ He, the strong, the gentle, the just, to graze a little playing child in the fury of his gallop, causing it to cry and sob and run, frightened, to its mother—he, the sober, the sane, the patient, to leap his horse across a lumbering ox cart that was not quick enough to get out of his way! ”

“ For, after all, a high-caste Oriental girl is in everything except a frank knowledge and discussion of sex questions and a certain familiarity with the tortuous mazes of palace politics, very much like a European or American girl hedged in by the gently nefarious and nefariously gentle, inhibiting social regulations that are the result of the Mid-Victorian inheritance of cant—the world, to both the former and the latter, offering nothing to do except a rather functionless existence varied by calls, genteel literature, genteel athletics, and genteel dusting. ”