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Some say that the Amir's authority reaches no farther than a rifle bullet can range; but as none are quite certain when their king may be in their midst, and as he alone holds every one of the threads of Government, his respect is increased among men.
It has been the practise of our statesmen to adopt the attitude that because the Amir was by treaty precluded from interfering with our tribes, therefore he must have nothing to do with them. This is a short-sighted view. We found during the Great War the late Amir's influence, particularly over the Mahsuds, of the greatest value, when he agreed to use it on our behalf.
Thus history repeats itself, and the people of Bajaur their tactics. There was, however, no doubt as to the ability of the brigades to take and burn any village they might select. At the same time it was certain that they would encounter relays of Afghan tribesmen, and regular soldiers from the Amir's army, and that they would lose officers and men in the operation.
Marshalled by the guard, we issued from the precincts, and after walking a hundred yards entered the Amir's second palace, which we were told to consider our home.
Between the lot of 'em they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that come out of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir's Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.
Now his mother was a frequent visitor to the house of the Master of the Police and used to go in to her son in prison and say to him, 'Did I not warn thee to turn from thy wicked ways? 'God decreed this to me, would he answer; 'but, O my mother, when thou visitest the Amir's wife, make her intercede for me with her husband. So when the old woman came in to the Lady Khatoun, she found her bound with the fillets of mourning and said to her, 'Wherefore dost thou mourn? 'For my son Hebezlem Bezazeh, answered she, and the old woman exclaimed, 'God keep thy son!
We had been absent from our goods and chattels a whole fortnight: the people of Harar are famously fickle; we knew not what the morrow might bring forth from the Amir's mind in fact, all these African cities are prisons on a large scale, into which you enter by your own will, and, as the significant proverb says, you leave by another's.
Noon was generally followed by a little solitude, the people retiring to dinner and siesta: we were then again provided with bread and beef from the Amir's kitchen. In the afternoon the house again filled, and the visitors dispersed only for supper. Before sunset we were careful to visit the mules tethered in the court-yard; being half starved they often attempted to desert.
But while the Amir is watching his people, they are watching him; for his chief officers hire men to listen to the Amir's conversation, that they may know if he intends to kill them. Yet every person appears to approve all the Amir does, saying on every occasion, "It is the act of a king; it must be good." They are such people as Jeremiah describes in the Bible.
The Amir's son was vexed at this and said to the broker, 'Who is it that bids against me for the slave-girl? 'It is the Vizier Jaafer, answered the broker, 'who is minded to buy her for Alaeddin Abou esh Shamat. Alaeddin continued to bid for her till he brought her price up to ten thousand dinars, and her owner sold her to him for that sum.
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