35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

206
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
showmanship and teamanship was about ten cents. Ray muttered
something to the old man that I didn’t catch. A small boy was
immediately dispatched on an errand of some sort.
The people passing in the street reminded me of those
Mountstuart Elphinstone described in 1809. He was the first
Englishman to visit Peshawar. ‘Men of all nations and languages in
every variety of dress and appearance’ walked the streets, he wrote,
remarking particularly on the Peshawaris in their ‘white turbans,
white and blue shirts, and sheepskin coats,’ the Persians and Afghans
in their ‘brown woollen tunics and silk or sheepskin hats,’ the
‘Khyberees with the straw sandals and the wild dress and air of their
mountains,’ and the broad-faced Hazaras, with their little eyes,
‘remarkable for their want of the beard which is the ornament of
every other face in the city.’ Nearly two hundred years later, I also
observed just ‘a few women with long white veils that reach their
feet.’
‘Come,’ Ray suddenly said, pulling me up. ‘Let’s be tourists.’
We ascended a steep winding hill that was the Street of the
Silversmiths. Flanked by tall, narrow three- or four-storey houses,
it shrank to ten or so feet in width, leading like a canyon up to an
Aladdin’s cave. Oil lamps cast a jaundiced glow over the piles of
heavy anklets and curtains of necklaces displayed in the open
storefronts. About halfway up the hill, lit by a high-wattage moon
like some silversmith’s vision, gleamed the minarets of the Mahabat
Khan Mosque.
‘The Sikhs used to hang Pathans from them,’ Ray informed me,
adding, when this had sunk in, ‘Two a day . . . they say.’
Beneath the shimmering minarets, in the middle of a broad tiled
courtyard, rested a dark, still pool, the night breeze blowing cool off
its surface even in the heat of summer. Men with vast turbans, their
fearsome countenances accentuated by black beards, white beards,
red beards, glided around this area, occasionally kneeling and bowing
in prayer on a profusion of blood-red carpets.
‘Salaam aleikum, Ray Sahib,’ growled a low voice behind us.
I turned to see Ray embraced by a massive and dangerous-looking
fellow – four hundred pounds of Pathan. The man wore an
immaculate brown shirt that billowed over baggy trousers, which