It is well
known that when God created the earth He first fashioned this tangle of
hill land, and set thereon a primitive Bada-Mawidi, the first of the
clan, who was the ancestor, in the thousandth degree, of the excellent
Fazir Khan, the present father of the tribe.
The houses clustered on the scarp and enclosed a piece of well-beaten
ground and one huge cedar tree. Sounds came from the near houses, but
around the tree itself the more privileged sat in solemn conclave. Food
and wine were going the round, for the Maulai kohammedans have no taboos
in eating and drinking. Fazir Khan sat smoking next the tree trunk, a
short, sinewy man with a square, Aryan face, clear-cut and cruel. His
chiefs were around him, all men of the same type, showing curiously fair
skins against their oiled black hair. A mullah sat cross-legged, his
straggling beard in his lap, repeating some crazy charm to himself and
looking every now and again with anxious eyes to the guest who sat on
the chief's right hand.
The guest was a long, thin man, clad in the Cossacks' fur lined military
cloak, under which his untanned riding-boots showed red in the
moonlight. He was still busy eating goat's flesh, cheese and fruits,
and drinking deeply from the sweet Hunza wine, like a man who had come
far and fast. He ate with the utmost disregard of his company. He
might have been a hunter supping alone in the solitary hills for all the
notice he took of the fifty odd men around him.
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