Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/14

A true Russian man he calls himself, and his name, too, has a Russian purring and deep ringing to it—"Pavel Alikhanski." Also there is talk in the town that he is in the pay of that great Bokharan magnate, the kushbegi, friend of the Russians, bringing tales to him about his Highness the ameer, and receiving milled gold for the telling.

But ten years ago, when I called him friend, his name was not Alikhanski. Then he called himself Wazir Ali-Khan Sulaymani, that last name giving clue to his nation and race; for "Sulaymani" means "descendant of King Solomon," and it is known in half the world that the Afghans claim this resplendent Hebrew potentate as their breed's remote sire.

In those days he lived in a certain gray and turbulent city not far from the northeastern foot-hills of the Himalayas, where three great empires link elbows and swap lies and intrigues and occasional murders, and where the Afghan mist falls down like a veil of purple-gray veil. In those days neither Russia nor the czar was on his lips, and he called himself an Herati, an Afghan from Herat, city-bred and city-courteous, but with a strain of maternal blood that linked him to the mountains and the sharp, red feuds of the mountains. But city-bred he was, and as such he lisped Persian, sipped coffee flavored with musk, and gave soft answer to harsh word.

He did not keep shop then, and none knew his business, though we all tried to find out, chiefly I, serving the Ameer of Afghanistan in that far city, and retailing the gossip of the inner bazaars from the border to the rose gardens of Kabul, where the governor sits in state and holds durbar.

But money he had, also breeding, also a certain winsome