Sunday, June 30, 2019

But you may take liberties with a Waziri if only you can make him laugh

From Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie. Page 475.
When Hamilton encountered Roger Keyes off the Dardanelles, it was a family reunion of sorts. Hamilton’s first overseas assignment, in 1873 when he was a twenty-year-old army subaltern, was to an Indian army unit commanded by Keyes’s father, General Sir Charles Keyes. Roger Keyes’s mother, wrote Hamilton, “of whom . . . [Roger] is an ugly likeness, was as high-spirited, fascinating, clever a creature as I ever saw. Camel-riding, hawking, dancing . . . she was the idol of the Punjab Frontier Force. His father . . . whose loss of several fingers from a sword cut earned him my special boyhood veneration, was really a devil of a fellow. . . . Riding together in the early morning . . . we suddenly barged into a mob of wild Waziri tribesmen who jumped out of the ditch and held us up—hand on bridle. The old general spoke Pushtu fluently and there was a parley between them. . . . Where were they going? To buy camels at Dera Ghazi Khan. How far had they come? Three days march, but they had no money. The general simulated amazement. ‘You have come all that distance to buy camels without money? These are strange tales you tell me. I fear that when you pass through Dera Ismail you will have to . . . [sell] your nice pistols and knives. Oh yes, I see them quite well; they are peeping at me from under your poshteens [cloaks].’ The Waziris laughed and took their hands off our reins. Instantly, the general shouted to me, ‘Come on—gallop!’ And in less than no time we were going hell for leather along the lonely frontier road. . . . ‘That was a narrow squeak,’ said the general, ‘but you may take liberties with a Waziri if only you can make him laugh.’”

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