Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 by William Dalrymple

Author:William Dalrymple [Dalrymple, William]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780307958297
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Burnes is sitting pretty in all his conceit

When will there be a better moment than this?

Time is running out, there is no room for delay

We cannot choose to sit by, we must contrive

Lest the rabbit become aware

And the prey slip through our fingers

Let us make haste towards Burnes, the wicked soul

And take care of this business by daybreak90

In the end, however, it was agreed that they would wait for an incident of bad conduct on the part of the occupiers to justify rising up in insurrection. On the evening of 1 November, in the first week of Ramazan (Ramadan), the leading sardars found the flashpoint they were waiting for. “It so happened, by God’s will, that that night a slave girl of Abdullah Khan Achakzai ran away from his house to the residence of Alexander Burnes,” wrote Mirza ‘Ata. “When on enquiry it was found out that that was where she had gone, the Khan, beside himself with fury, sent his attendant to fetch the silly girl back; the Englishman, swollen with pride, cursing and swearing, had the Khan’s attendant severely beaten and thrown out of the house.” This was a provocation too far. According to Mohan Lal, “Abdullah Khan Achakzai, with his relatives, went to Aminullah Khan Logari, and holding the Qur’an in his hand, implored him to be his comrade in exciting sedition in the city. When he had agreed to this, some other disaffected chiefs were sent for into the house of the Achakzai chief.”91 Once the jirga had assembled, the nobles were addressed by Abdullah Khan:

“Now we are justified in throwing off this English yoke: they stretch the hand of tyranny to dishonour private citizens great and small: fucking a slave girl isn’t worth the ritual bath that follows it: but we have to put a stop right here and now, otherwise these English will ride the donkey of their desires into the field of stupidity, to the point of having all of us arrested shortly and deported into foreign imprisonment. I put my trust in God and raise the battle standard of our Prophet Muhammad, and thus go to fight: if success rewards us, then that is as we wished; and if we die in battle, that is still better than to live with degradation and dishonour!” The other Sardars, his childhood friends, tightened their belts and girt their loins and prepared for Jihad—holy war.92

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