Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/88

THE RIVER OF HATE

"The Wrath of the Thunder Gods," the Kafiri hillmen called the river that dropped to the western plains of Afghanistan and over into soft Persia in a succession of overlapping falls like the feathers on the breast of a pouter pigeon, while the Afghan nobles who, armed with the great, carved seal of the Governor of Kabul, came there to levy the quota of young men for the Ameer's army, called it the "River of Hate."

And Kafiri, as well as Afghans, spoke the truth.

For, during three months of the year, the North wind was riding a wracked sky and met the shock of the racing, roaring river, and the thunder crashed from the high ranges, splintering the young pines, occasionally taking toll of human life; and it was hate, even more than the swirling breadth of the river, which divided the villages that squatted on either bank.

South of the river, the Red Village lay spotted and threatening, like a tiger asleep in the sun, while North the flat-roofed houses of the White Village seemed snow flakes dropped on slabs of sullen granite—as sullen as the temper of the people when they looked across and saw the men of the Red Village sweep the whirlpool of the Black Rock with crude, effective net traps made of jungly rattan and hempen ropes; when they saw the catch of fat, blue-scaled, red-eyed khirli fish drawn up on the bank and flopping in the quivering light like dusky flecks of sunshine.