'THIM DAYS IS GONE' [‎76r] (151/248)

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were sitting on the verandah of a village house on the crest of a
ridge overlooking a stupendous view of the Indus plains thousands
of feet below us, one of their maliks remarked ,"Black people
live down there!" and it was quite clear from the tone of his
voice what he thought of "Black people". •
I was at the time translating from Persian into Pashtu - in the
hope of improving my command of the language, and possibly of
doing something to break down the exaggerated awe in which the
priesthood were held - a well-known satirical book lampooning an
an asinine Mullah, called "Mullah Nasr-ud-din" , and told one of
the stories from it to a Khattak Malik . The story related how
the Mullah, on a journey, felt thirsty, and taking off his cloak,
draped it over his donkey's pack-saddle and went down to the
stream for a drink.
When he returned his cloak had disppeared, where upon he said to
the donkey "Since you have lost my cloak. I'll wear your
pack-saddle (a we 11-under stood symbol of degradation) until you
get it back", this reaction being quite in keeping with tribal
ideas of tit-for-tat justice. The malik looked at me very
straight and solemn and said simply, "I don't believe its true!"
The military operations in Waziristan against the Faqir of Ipi
and his followers (which had started over the abduction of a
Hindu girl) were still in progress, and some of the Khattak
villagers from my area were believed by the police to have paid
visits to Waziristan to fight with the rebel forces. One very
hot afternoon upwards of thirty of them were arraigned in my
court under the Frontier Crimes Regulation, and I had to demand
from each of them a bond to keep the peace and be of good
behaviour for a period of six months, with two sureties in the
sum of RsSOO each. Then, in every case, the security was
rejected and the men led off to prison. This was not justice and
I hated doing it - there was only the word of the Police against
the flat denials of the accused - but times were desperate and
desperate measures were needed. Things were worse elsewhere. A
friend of mine found himself in charge of a district in the
Panjab where law and order had almost broken down. Finally a
party of Sikhs entered the house of a woman living alone, whose
husband they suspected of being an informant, strung her young
son up to the ceiling by his feet and chopped him in two from
bottom to top with their swords in the presence of his mother.
Although everyone in the village knew perfectly well who they
were, there were no witnesses - nobody was prepared to admit
to having seen anything or recognised anybody. No prosecution
was possible in the absence of evidence, but the rules governing
excise raids were somewhat laxer, and one was duly organised.
The police seized the culprits and dealt with them as they
deserved. Litigious to the end, they filed a case against the
police and swore that the Deputy Commissioner stood by, heating
irons in the fire and passing them to the police who then applied
them to the soles of their feet. The Chief Justice, an eminent
Q.C. from London, threw the case out remarking that the
allegations against the D.C. were preposterous and quite