The doings of a najhaya malang did not pall quite so quickly. A malang is the same thing as a darwish, a holy beggar, and even up on top of the Roof of the World there were beggars, both native and transient. Some of these offered entertainment before demanding bakhshish. A malang would sit down cross-legged in front of a basket and tweedle on a simple wood or clay pipe. A najhaya snake would raise its head from the basket, spread its hood and gracefully sway, seeming to dance in time to the raucous tweedling. The najhaya is a fearsomely cross and venomous snake, and every malang maintained that none but he had such power over the serpent—a power acquired in occult ways. For instance, the basket was a special sort called a khajur, and could be woven only by a man; the cheap pipe had to be mystically sanctified; the music was a melody known only to the initiated. But I soon perceived that every snake had had its fangs drawn and was harmless. It was also apparent, since snakes have no ears, that the najhaya was simply swaying back and forth to keep its impotent aim fixed on the wiggling pipe end. The malang could have played a melodious Venetian furlàna and got the same effect.
But sometimes I would hear a sudden burst of music and follow it to its source and find a group of handsome Kalash men chanting in baritone, “Dhama dham mast qalandar …” as they put on their red shoes called utzar, which they donned only when they were about to charge into the stamping, kicking, pounding dance they called the dhamal. Or I might hear the rumbling drumbeat and wild piping that accompanied an even more frenzied, furious, whirling dance called the attan, in which half the camp, men and women alike, might join.
Once, when I heard music swelling forth in the darkness of night, I followed it to a Sindi train’s encampment of wagons in a circle, and found the Sindi women doing a dance for women only, and singing as they danced, “Sammi meri warra, ma‘in wa’ir … .” I found Nostril also looking on, smiling and beating time with his fingers on his paunch, for these were women of his own native land. They were rather too brawny for my taste, and inclined to mustaches, but their dance was pretty, being done by the light of the moon. I sat down beside Nostril, where he sat propped against a wheel of one of the covered wagons, and he interpreted the song and dance for me. The women were recounting a tragic love story, he said—the story of a Princess Sammi, who was a girl much in love with a boy Prince named Dhola, but when they grew up he went away and forgot her and never came back. A sad story, but I could sympathize with Prince Dhola, if his little Princess Sammi had grown meaty and mustached as she matured.
Every woman in the train must have been recruited into the dance, because, inside the wagon against which Nostril and I leaned, an unattended and restive baby was bellowing loud enough to drown out even the sonorous Sindi music. I endured it for some time, hoping the child would eventually doze—or strangle, I did not much care which. When after a long time it did neither, I grumbled irascibly.
“Allow me to hush it, master,” said Nostril, and he got up and climbed inside the wagon.
The child’s wails subsided to gurgles and then to silence. I was grateful, and bent all my attention on the dance. The infant remained blessedly quiet, but Nostril stayed in there for some time. When at last he climbed down to sit beside me again, I thanked him and said in jest, “What did you do? Kill and bury it?”
He replied complacently, “No, master, I had an inspiration of the moment. I delighted the child with a fine new pacifier to suck, and a creamier milk than its mother’s.”
It took me a little while to realize what he had said. Then I recoiled from him and exclaimed, “Good God! You did not!” He looked not at all ashamed, only mildly surprised at my outburst. “Gèsu! That miserable little thing of yours has been foully diseased, and filthily inserted in animals and backsides and—and now a baby! Of your own people!”
He shrugged. “You wished the infant quieted, Master Marco. Behold, it still sleeps the sleep of contentment. And I do not feel half bad myself.”
“Bad! Gèsu Marìa Isèpo, but you are the worst—the most vile and loathsome excuse for a human being that I have ever met!”
He deserved at least to be beaten bloody, and surely he would have got worse than that from the baby’s parents. But, since I had in a way incited him, I did not strike the slave. I merely scolded and reviled him and quoted to him the words of Our Lord Jesus—or Nostril’s Prophet Isa—that we should always treat tenderly little children, “for of such is the kingdom of God.”
“But I did it tenderly, master. Now you have peace in which to enjoy the rest of the dancing.”
“I will not! Not in your company, creature! I could not meet the eyes of the dancing women, knowing that one of them is the mother of that wretched innocent.” So I went away before that performance was concluded.
But happily, most such occasions were not spoiled for me by any such incident. Sometimes, when I heeded the call of music, it led me not to a dance but to a game. There were two kinds of outdoor sport popular at Buzai Gumbad, and neither could have been played in a much smaller area, for both involved a considerable number of men on horseback, riding hard.
One game was played only by the Hunzukut men, because it had been originally invented in their home valley of Hunza, somewhere to the south of these mountains. In that game, the men swung heavy sticks, like mallets, batting at an object they called the pulu, a rounded-off knot of willow wood which rolled on the ground like a ball. Each team comprised six mounted Hunzukut, who tried to strike that pulu with their sticks—meanwhile often and enthusiastically striking their opponents, their horses and their own teammates—in order to drive the pulu past the six opponents’ flailing defense until it rolled or flew beyond a winning line at the far end of the field.
I often lost track of a game’s progress because I had a hard time telling the members of the two teams apart. They all wore heavy garments of fur and hide, plus the typical Hunzuk hat, which makes a man look as if he is balancing two thick pies atop his head. The hat actually consists of a long tube of coarse cloth rolled from both ends until the two rolls meet, and the whole then plopped onto the head. For a contest of the pulu, the six men on one team would don red pie-hats and the other six put on blue ones. But, after a very short time of play, the colors would be almost indistinguishable.
I also often lost sight of the wooden pulu itself, among the horses’ forty-eight pounding hoofs and the thrown-about snow and mud and sweat, and the intermixed clashing mallets and, not infrequently, some unhorsed players being whacked and kicked about as well. But the more experienced game-watchers, meaning almost everybody else in Buzai Gumbad, were keener of eye. Every time they saw the pulu bounce past the winning line at one or the other end of the field, the whole crowd would shout, “Gol! Go-o-o-ol!”—a Hunzuk word signifying that one team had tallied a point toward winning the game—and simultaneously a band of musicians would pound drums and blow flutes in a cacophony of celebration.
A game did not end until one team had nine times put the pulu past the opposing gol line. So that herd of twelve horses might spend a whole day thundering up and down the increasingly sloppy and treacherous field, with the players bellowing and cursing and the spectators roaring encouragement, and the sticks waving and crashing and often splintering, and the churned-up terrain plastering the players and horses and watchers and musicians, and the riders falling from their saddles and trying to scurry to safety and being cheerfully ridden down by their fellows, and, toward the end of the day, when the field was a mere swamp of mud and slime, the horses also slipping and slewing and falling down. It was a splendid kind of sport, and I never missed a chance to watch it.