'THIM DAYS IS GONE' [‎30r] (59/248)

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Apart from those detivities, there W3S the never-ending up-hill
task of learning Pashtu - the involved and complicated language
of the Pat bans.
The first phrase which every British officer was taught was the
greeting Sterai mashay and I believe for over a hundred years
wrongly translated as "May you never be tired." One couldn't
help thinking 'how silly, what's wrong with being tired - it can
be guite pleasant at times!' Of course it didn't mean that at
all, as I found out years later. Sterai , translated as "tired",
really means 'defeated', 'at your last gasp', 'at the end of your
tether, or, as we say in Ireland^'bet'. It was only later when
I found^ that the_Persian eguivalent among the nomads of Khorasan
was Wpandeh na bash id 1 that I realised the true meaning. Mandeh
na bash id means 'may you not be left behind'. One coul d” watch
tTTe co 1 umns of Ghilzai tribesmen, women and children, flocks and
chickens, tied on the back of camels, coming down the pass in the
autumn, to escape the cold and snow of the Afghan highlands to
graze their flocks and work as labourers in the warmer climate of
the Indus Valley - much as the ancient Persians used to move
continually between the highlands of the Elburz in the summer and
the plains of Irag in the winter, and realise that in such a
society the old and the feeble would have to be left behind when
only the infants (and the chickens) could be accommodated on the
backs of the camels. For those left behind, there would only be
the crows and the vultures and, at nightfall, the wolves and
jackals. Later I realised that the cry of our Lord on the cross
"Fli Eli Lama sabackthani (spoken in Syriac, but perfectly
intelligible in modern Arabic) means just "My God, my God, why
hast thou left me behind.?*
The Pathans were not of course, the only danger - there was
disease. Sitting on the lawn and enjoying a sundowner before
dinner, a major in the Bombay Grenadiers remarked jocularly that
I would have to stand Champagne all round that evening as I had
just heard that I had passed my Higher Standard Pashtu
examination. As he said it he fell off his chair. We carried
him to the hospital a few yards away, and the Doctor said "Go in
and have dinner. If he's alive when you finish he'll probably be
all right." As it happened he was dead by the time we finished.
It was cerebral (or tertiary) malaria, and we drank no champagne
that night.
Footnote :
* Matthew 27 vs 46
Arabic Sabaga - to outpace, outstrip. Hence Sabag = a race.