The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman

rubab that was producing the music – that much was obvious. Everyone knew the sound of the rubab from weddings, and also from a strange device that played music when a small package was pushed into a machine with batteries. Such a device was once brought to the village by a scholar from England, a cheerful man with a fair beard and spectacles whose trousers were so short they showed his knees. He had been searching far and wide in Afghanistan for people who knew songs from ancient times.
    I will say something more here about the rubab . It is an instrument that makes music with twelve strings that are plucked and stroked with the fingers. It has a belly like a lute, but not so broad and not so deep. The rubab is the great musical instrument of Afghanistan, although it is said to have originated in Iran at a time when Iranians called their country Persia. To master the instrument requires a long period of training, beginning with an apprenticeship that might commence at a very young age. It was no wonder that Karim Zand was thought to be mad, for the masters of the rubab are a strange breed to those who know only the beauty of the music the rubab makes, but not the way in which it is made.
    On that day in spring the people of the village knew that they were listening to music made by a master. Each was glad in his heart that the new madman had turned out to be a madman of the better sort – one who did something useful. He could have revealed much more difficult tastes. When the wool-dyer went mad, he walked about the village unclothed and claimed he was a lizard. If the new madman intended to sit in his house all day and night without eating or drinking, what harm in that if he also played his rubab ? But then something unfortunate happened. Just as people were beginning to clap their hands and sing little bits of song to go with the music, the madman himself, Karim Zand with his huge red beard, burst out the front door of his ruin of a house and roared like a bull.
    ‘Clear out!’ he shouted. Then he went back inside his house and slammed the door behind him.
    The people of the village didn’t take the warning seriously. Why should they? The man was mad. He had no idea what he was saying. After a few minutes had passed, Karim Zand began playing the rubab again, and people began to clap and sing again – not everyone, just those who wanted to show that they didn’t take orders from a madman.
    But mad Karim Zand again burst from his doorway and commanded everyone to clear out. Again, he was ignored. Then he appeared to give up on being granted the privacy he desired. He played for another hour and kept indoors.
    Amongst those listening to the madman was a boy of fourteen by the name of Abdullah. The boy carried through life the misfortune of silence. From the moment of his birth, not a sound had come from his mouth other than croaking noises such as a frog might make. After the age of four, he ceased making the frog noises, either because he no longer could or because his father hissed at him and told him to say nothing. It was said that his silence had something to do with the colour of his eyes, a bright green like wet vine leaves, unknown amongst the Hazara. He was thought to be an idiot, although he was capable in every way other than speaking and wrote his Dari script with clarity unequalled amongst the children at the school he attended for three years. He prayed in silence and those who saw him at prayer wondered how God would know of his existence when his voice could not carry his devotion to Heaven. He lived with his uncle, Ali Reza, for as if having a child who couldn’t speak was not enough of a disaster, the boy’s father had died when Abdullah was only seven years old. The man had eaten the flesh of an owl he’d found in the hill pastures – an unwise thing to do, for the owl was not native to the region and Abdullah’s father should have known better. Besides, the owl was dead. Abdullah’s mother