10 A TALE OF A TALIB

Chapter 10 A TALE OF A TALIB

MUHAMMAD TAIB was born in the village of Thandkoi, in the Peshawur district. His father was a small farmer, a good example of the better sort of Muhammadan of the Yusufzai tribe, thoroughly religious, yet not fanatical, and honest withal. He was careful not only to bring up Muhammad Taib in a knowledge of his religion, but to preserve him from the vices which are rife among the youth of the Pathan villages. Taib’s inclinations were towards study, and he showed a great aptitude for books. His father, however, was of the old school, which looked with suspicion on the education of the feringis; so it happened with him as with most young men in Afghanistan who desire to cultivate their minds: he became a religious student, or talib.

There happened to be a Mullah in the village known as the Khani Mullah, who took a great fancy to young Taib, so he was placed under his tutelage, and passed his days studying Arabic and Persian in the village mosque, while at the same time all the tenets and rites of the religion of Islam were inculcated and explained. A talib could, however, never attain the knowledge and experience expected of a Mullah if he were to remain in his own town; he must travel and sit at the feet of several at least of the Mullahs most renowned for their sanctity and learning. So, when young Taib was fifteen years of age, he tied up his few books in a shawl, and set out from home to sit at the feet of the renowned Manki Mullah. The learned man himself would not condescend to teach so immature a pupil, but he was surrounded by his Sheikhs, who acted as his staff, and taught the talibs who flocked there from all parts of the country. Besides, here Taib met with Mullahs from Delhi, Lucknow, Bukhara, Kabul, and other far-famed seats of learning, contact with whom could not fail to widen the horizon and enlarge the experience of the pupils who sat around them, and listened to their arguments and dissertations on the various schools of thought, and engaged in wordy polemics, which practiced the budding Mullahs in the art of drawing fine theological distinctions on the interpretation of a Hadis or the difference of a vowel point in the Qur’an Of a night the talibs would wile the hours away by telling tales of their respective countries or capping verses from the Persian poets. But Taib must travel and visit other Mullahs, too; so it happened that, when seventeen years old, he visited Bannu, and lodged in the mosque of a noted Mullah near the bazaar. One day, when passing down the Bannu bazaar, he saw a crowd, and, going up, he found an animated discussion going on between two Afghans. While one was obviously a Mullah, the other seemed not to be; but with him was a companion dressed as a Mullah, whose face struck Taib as not quite that of any of the Afghan tribes he knew. He began to listen to see if the enigma would be solved, but was still more surprised to find that the argument was as to whether the Injil (Gospel) and Tauret (Pentateuch) should be read by Muhammadans or not. The Mullah was arguing that the books had been abrogated by the mission of Muhammad and the descent of the Qur’an on that Prophet, saying that, though it was right to read them till Muhammad came, since then it was only lawful to read the Qur’an The stranger, on the other hand, pointed out that Muhammad himself expressly referred his followers to the perusal and study of the " former Scriptures," and clinched his argument by quotations from the Qur’an itself.

Finally, the Mullah, finding himself getting into a dilemma, obtained a release by the artifice with which we are very familiar by now. " It is time for afternoon prayers. I must hurry off, or my prayers will lapse by default," he said ; and, folding up his Qur’an in his shawl, hurried off. Finding their champion gone, another in the crowd called out : " All who are Mussalmans go away; he is no true Mussalman who stops to listen to these kafirs. There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God." And then with one voice all the crowd took up the last sentence, and shouted in unison: "La ilaha ilia ’llahu, Muhammad rasulu ’llah!" till the bazaar echoed with the sound; and then, with jeers and curses at the two preachers, in which Taib thought it the proper thing to join, the crowd dispersed.

" Who were those two kafirs?" said Taib to a Bannuchi tallb who was walking away with him.

" The one in the dress of a Mullah is a feringi whom we call the Padre Sahib. He has built a hospital here, where he preaches to the people about Hazrat ’’Esa, and he has, indeed, misled many ; in fact, the other kafir who was with him was led astray by him: he is an Afghan from Laghman, and has brought disgrace on the Prophet. May God destroy them both!"

Taib thought here would be good opportunities for acquiring the art of theological polemics, so he came regularly every day with other talibs to support the Muslim champion and jeer at the Christians if they appeared at all discomfited. He could not help, however, being struck by the forbearance of the Laghmani, who preserved an equable temper, though the talibs tried to excite him by all the opprobrious epithets with which their repertory is so well supplied. He saw, too, that the more difficult their champions found it to answer his arguments, the more they resorted to the expedient of crying him down with derisive shouts and jeers, and he began to have a feeling of sympathy, if not admiration, for him.

Then one day he waited behind till the talibs with him had gone, and the Afghan preacher, seeing him lingering, took him by the arm and entered into conversation with him. They went on talking till they reached the mission compound, and Taib accepted the invitation of the preacher to stop the night with him. Instead of finding him a reviler of the Prophet and a miscreant, as he expected, he found that all he said was quite reasonable and free from the rancor which his talib friends always introduced into their theological arguments. Then the peace and comfort of a Christian home, where the wife, instead of being a chattel or a drudge, was a real helpmate, opened up new trains of thought in his mind. The Laghmani, too, was a Pathan, like himself, with the same Afghan prejudices and predilections, and yet there was an undefinable something in him, a spirit of self-control and self-abnegation and inward peace of mind, that he did not remember having met with in any Pathaii before. In short, Taib, instead of being the guest of one night, as he had at first, not without misgiving, consented to be, stopped on to learn more of the new doctrine and discover the secret of the change that had been effected in the Afghan preacher.

Taib proved an apt pupil, and the natural gentleness and fairness of his character made Christianity all the more attractive to him, and he applied himself with assiduity to the study of the Christian Scriptures, and attended the Christian worship. There were struggles without and doubts within to contend against. His former talib companions came in a body to see whether the Padre Sahib had kidnapped him, and when they found him stopping in the mission compound of his own freewill abused him and threatened him, but did not succeed in getting him away. One of the chief Bannu Mullahs came and argued with him for hours, telling him he was guilty of mortal sin in even allowing himself to entertain doubts about the truth of Islam. But Taib had become fascinated with the Scriptures, and especially with the teaching of the Gospels, as is often the case with those who have never read them till adult life, and he had no intention of forsaking his host till quite decided one way or the other.

Ultimately he decided that the Prophet Christ must indeed be the Son of God, the very Saviour that He claimed to be, and he asked for baptism. It was thought better to let him wait a few months till he had a maturer knowledge of the doctrines of Christianity, and had shown his sincerity by standing some of the fire of persecution. There was no lack of the latter. When he accompanied us to the bazaar preaching, the foulest abuse was showered on him, and sometimes stones were thrown, and on one occasion, when he was caught alone, he received a beating from some talibs and others. The Bishop of Lahore visited the station about that time, and Muhammad Taib was baptized under the new name of Taib Khan, and was radiant with delight at having been at last admitted to the Christian Church. I was going on a long medical itineration about that time, and he accompanied me, and was zealous in his new-found faith, taking every opportunity of drawing Mullahs and others into conversation about the claims of Christ and the witness of the Qur’an to Him. Those were perhaps the happiest days he ever experienced.

Then came a new trial. Taib had been betrothed to a girl in his village, and his relations, having heard of his baptism, came to Bannu. In nothing is the honour and sharm of the Pathan more nearly touched than in his marital relation, and the taunt that he had lost the sharm which every Pathan so dearly loves, came nearer home to him than persecution or loss of land and patrimony. One morning I found that Taib had disappeared. No one knew exactly when or how, but he had been seen with the people from his village the night before, and nothing more was known. I assumed that by inducement or force they had taken him away to his village, and therefore would have gone by the Kohat road ; but they had already had at least eight hours’ start, and the sun was now declining. However, no time was to be lost, so I got an ekka; or native pony-cart, and, taking with me a young Bannuchi convert, Sahib Khan by name, started off in pursuit. For a long time we could get no news of the fugitives ; then, at a village thirty-five miles from Bannu, I was told that some Pathans answering to the description of Taib and his captors had said their afternoon prayers in the mosque there and then gone on. Our pony was too tired to go farther; it was already midnight; the next stage was eleven miles on, and they would certainly leave there before daybreak. What was to be done? While we were debating this, we heard the bugle of the tonga with the mails. This runs between Bannu and Kohat every day in the winter and every night in the summer, and accommodates three passengers. If the seats had not been taken, we might go on in this. It so happened that two seats were vacant, so we got in, and soon arrived at the next stage, a village called Banda.

Here we alighted. It was 1 a.m. The village was silent and dark except for the light of the half-rnoon. On the side of the hill above the village was the village mosque, and we knew that was the most likely place for travelers to lodge; so we passed through the silent village, and, removing our shoes, entered the courtyard of the mosque. Thirteen men were stretched on the ground fast asleep and covered with their chadars, the sheet or shawl which an Afghan always carries about him and uses as a girdle or shawl during the day, and wraps himself up in cap-a-pie at night. As Afghans always sleep with their heads covered in their sheet or quilt, we could not recognize the object of our search, and to wake all would mean certain defeat. But the Bannuchies are at home in any night-work requiring stealth, so by the light of the setting moon my companion lifted the corner of the sheet from off the faces of the sleepers without waking any of them, and the last one was Taib himself. A touch on his shoulder and he was roused, and recognized us. I merely said to him : " Will you come back with me to Bannu?" He answered, " Yes, Sahib," and got up, wound on his turban, and left with us without another word. We had to walk back to Khurram, the village where we had left our pony-cart, and, finding it still there, drove back to Bannu with the lost sheep, found none too soon.

Months now passed in study and in learning the work of a ward assistant in the mission hospital, so that he might be able to earn his own living, and use the opportunities of the mission hospital in working among the Afghans attending it. There was a Mullah in a village not far from Bannu, where he acted as the imam and village schoolmaster. At one time Taib had himself been his pupil, and was much attached to him. He had long been desirous of getting this Mullah, his quondam teacher, or ustad to study the claims of Christ, and one day he had visited him with this object. When the Mullah mentioned that he had been suffering from some deafness for some months past, " Come to the mission hospital," said Taib; " the Padre Sahib there will certainly cure you." The Mullah hesitated at first when he heard that every day an address on Christian doctrine was given to the assembled out-patients before they were treated. He thought it hardly seemly that he, a Mullah and an ustad, should sit and listen to heretical teaching without being able to protest. However, tales of others who had been under treatment and recovered won the day, and he decided to go. " After all," he said, " I need not listen, and I can say extra prayers to atone for any sin there may be in my going."

He came regularly till the cure was complete, but he did not keep up his intention of not listening to the preacher; in fact, some things that were said riveted his attention, and made him go home and search his Qur’an, and his curiosity was aroused, and he talked over many things with Taib Khan, and finally came to me to ask me if I would read the Gospels with him. He was careful to say that he had not any intention of becoming a Christian, but merely desired to read them because every Muhammadan regarded them with veneration as the word of God. The Sermon on the Mount entranced him, and he used to kiss the book and place it on his head, as Muhammadans do with their Qur’an He would read by the hour, but as I had not much time to devote to him, he used to betake himself to the room of Taib Khan, and sit there half the day studying the Scriptures. This could not go on, of course; the people of the village heard of it, and said that they must have an imam who was free from the suspicion of heresy; he lost his pupils, and at last a Synod of the chief Mullahs of Bannu formally excommunicated him.

He then came to live in the mission compound, and spent some happy months in study, while supporting himself as custodian of the mission bookshop. Seldom have I seen so remarkable a growth of the Christian graces in the character of any of our converts as in this man, and it was a great delight to see him admitted to Christian baptism, already more mature in Christian character than many who had been in the visible Church for years. He bore the most scurrilous abuse with exemplary forbearance, and even when struck, as happened several times when going through the bazaar, forbore to retaliate, which for an Afghan is the acme of self-control.

He was a Seyyid that is, one who claims descent from Muhammad and when he came with us to the bazaar preachings, and stood by our side, the people were furious with him, saying that it was bad enough that he, a Mullah and a Seyyid, should have become a Christian, but to parade it there in the bazaar in that shameless way was too much, and if he did not desist they would certainly kill him. I recommended him to abstain from accompanying us to the bazaar preachings, because I feared that the people would indeed put their threat into execution, but he would not hear of it. He had read, he said, that our Lord said He would be ashamed of those who were ashamed of Him before the world, so how could he refrain from showing publicly that he had become a Christian? He would think it an honour if he could obtain the crown of martyrdom for the sake of the Saviour in whom he had believed.

One morning he found an Afghan dagger lying outside his door. We thought perhaps his enemy had come in the night, but had been startled by the night watchman and escaped, dropping his weapon ; or it might be that it had been left there to scare him, as much as to say, "That is what is waiting for you if you do not desist." As a precaution I told him not to sleep there any more, but gave him a bed in the house of a native Christian near where I slept myself; for it was summer, and we were all sleeping in the open. Three nights later I was awakened about one o’clock in the morning by the report of a gun, and, running over instinctively to Seyyid Badshah, found the enemy had indeed come and shot him through the stomach.

Everything possible was done for him, but the wound was mortal, and that evening he passed away, his last words being : " O Lord Jesus, I am Thy servant !" There were many moist eyes as we carried Seyyid Badshah to his last resting-place in the little cemetery at Bannu. His had been a very lovable character, and in his short Christian life he had been the means of influencing more than one Afghan towards Christ. One in particular was a Mullah from the Yusufzai country, Abdullah by name ; and we sometimes spoke of the " four generations," as in these few years Taib had been brought by the Afghan preacher from Laghman, whose story is given in Chapter XVI. ; then Taib had been the instrument in bringing Seyyid Badshah ; and through Sevyid Badshah’s influence this other Mullah believed.

Taib Khan continued in the work of the mission hospital, but fresh trials were about to test and sift him more severely than ever. The old friend of his boyhood, the Khani Mullah, and some relations came down to Bannu, and while pretending at first to acquiesce in his having become a Christian, recalled to him the memories and associations of his boyhood. He became violently homesick. The old village scenes, his patrimony there only waiting for him to claim, the girl to whom he had been engaged, and whom her parents were, they said, still keeping unmarried in hopes that Taib would recant and claim her all these old scenes and ideas came to him with such irresistible force that he came to me one day and asked for a month’s leave, that he might revisit his village. I well knew the dangers to which he would be exposed, but I sympathized with his homesick state of mind, and knew it would be futile to expect him to stifle it, so I gave him leave, and, warning him of the specious nature of the suggestions and temptations which would be offered to him there, reluctantly parted from him. At the same time I told him that if he did not return at the expiration of the month, I should conclude that something was wrong, and go in search of him. The month passed, and Taib did not appear, so I started for Peshawur, and thence to Thandkoi, to get news of him. I took as my companion Azizuddin, an Afghan, who but for his conversion to Christianity would have been a distinguished Mullah, but now was a simple mission catechist. It was a long walk of about seventeen miles from the station to the village, and we were caught in a tropical thunderstorm. Watercourses that had been all but dry an hour before were now surging up to our armpits, and could only be forded with difficulty. We reached the village like drowned rats, and the people were kind to us and dried our clothes and gave us breakfast; but all inquiries as to Taib Khan were fruitless, though someone indeed told us that he had gone to the Akhund of Swat in company with the Khani Mullah. We had to return to Peshawur after a bootless search. A fortnight later, while on tour in the Kohat district, news was brought me that Taib was again in his village. This time I took a convert from Islam with the very Muhammadan name of Muhammad Hose’in. Though children born of Christian parents are never given names distinctive of Islam, yet when converts have such names, and are not desirous of changing them, we do not advocate a change of name, because we wish them to feel that the change is a spiritual and not a material one. So Muhammad Hose’in and I set off, but resolved to proceed more warily than in my previous visit ; so, instead of going straight into the village, we sat down by a well outside the neighbouring town of Zaida, and my companion, leaving me there, went into the town to make inquiries. Zaida is a larger and more important place than Thandkoi, and contains many mosques, while the overlord is a well-educated Muhammadan nobleman, an alumnus of the Peshawur mission school. He was led to believe that Taib was secreted in one of the mosques there, but would not be allowed to appear except perhaps at night.

He returned to me at the well, and by this time it had become known who we were, so there was less hope than ever of Taib being allowed to show himself. As evening drew on we made as though we would return to Peshawur, but on reaching the first village on the Peshawur road I let my friend go on alone, while I returned for a night quest. At the same time I told him to wait for me till morning at the ferry over the Kabul River, fifteen miles distant. I bound my turban over my face, as is the custom with Pathans when they wish to be incognito, and, throwing my Iungi, or shawl, over all, returned to Zaida. I entered the mosques one by one, and finally discovered Taib seated with some Mullahs in one of them. I was still far from the attainment of my object, as to have made myself known to Taib under such conditions would, of course, have been fatal; so I betook myself to the chief of the village above mentioned. He, being in Government service, was away, but his brother received me, and I told him that I had reason to believe that Taib Khan was being kept there against his will, and wished him to call the young man and inquire from him whether he wished to return to Bannu with me or no. The chief, who had received me with the greatest good nature, even though he had been roused from his sleep for the purpose, acceded to my request and sent a messenger to have Taib and the other Mullahs called. Taib was much astonished, and apparently ashamed too, when he saw me; but when the chief addressed him, saying, "Do you wish to stop here as a Muhammadan or return with the Padre Sahib?" he at once replied: "I will go with the Padre Sahib" There was a great clamor from the Mullahs, on the one hand urging Taib not to leave, and reviling him when he persisted, and on the other insisting to the chief that Taib was really a true Muhammadan, and did not want to go, but the eye of the Padre Sahib had a mesmeric influence on him, and he should not, as a true Mussulman himself, allow Taib to go away with me.

Both Taib and the chief, however, stood firm, and the chief, turning to me, said: " Now take him away with you, and look better after him in the future; but make haste, and do not loiter on the way. I will see that no one leaves the village for half an hour; after that you must look out for yourselves.""

I thanked him for his courtesy, and Taib and I wasted no time on the road, and reached the Kabul River at dawn, just as Muhammad Hosei’n was about to cross over.

Some years passed, and Taib Khan became one of our valued mission workers, and I hoped that he was mature and strong enough to stand any vicissitudes ; but often one finds that, while a convert in his first enthusiasm will suffer much for the Gospel’s sake, afterwards an inordinate idea of his own power and importance grows upon him, and he falls a victim to the blandishments of false friends who seek his downfall. So it turned out with Taib Khan: he, like most of the Afghan converts, would not have shrunk from martyrdom, and, in fact, he had already undergone great hardships and sufferings for the Gospel’s sake. He was put in joint charge with another Indian Christian of a rather remote dispensary. The Muhammadans of the place became very friendly, and pointed out how needless it was for him to forsake his village, his relations, and the graves of his forefathers just because he wished to be a Christian; let him be a Christian if he liked it was no doubt written in his fate that he should be so but let him go and live in his village. With the knowledge that he had acquired of medicine he could easily earn enough to support himself and his wife and child, and besides that he could claim the piece of land that was his by right, if he took the trouble to prove his title to it.

Then followed a spiritual decline. Hypercritical objections to Christianity, which had never troubled him before, were made into excuses for returning more and more to his original Muhammadan position. Finally he went to live in his village, conforming himself outwardly at least to the Muhammadan standard, though, no doubt, professing in some respects still to have an attachment to the Christian religion. Who is to judge? Even through perverts Christian doctrine continues to permeate the great mass of Islam, and God will undoubtedly bring back His own at the last. So, "undeterred by seeming failure,"" we work and pray on, leaving the result with Him who knows the hearts of men.