The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman Page A

remarried when he was nine years old but her new husband, who made his living as a tooth-puller and limb-setter travelling from village to village, would only take on Abdullah’s two older brothers. He considered Abdullah cursed.
    The music of the rubab came as a great revelation to Abdullah. He heard voices in the music when others heard only the sound of the strings. He sat with his legs crossed as close as he dared to the madman’s house and listened with a smile on his face. It seemed to him that the rubab was telling a tale that had no end; a story such as Abdullah had only ever known in dreams. But the music produced yet another response in Abdullah. The people of the village who noticed him smiling to himself said aloud, ‘Look! The idiot is trying to speak!’ Without being aware of it himself, Abdullah’s lips were moving soundlessly. ‘One madman is talking to another!’
    Every day for a fortnight the people of the town gathered to listen to Karim Zand playing the rubab , and Abdullah was always amongst them. It seemed that the madman preferred to play late in the afternoons and often his music continued well past the time of maghrib . Most of those listening would drift off to the hussainia to attend to their devotions and touch their foreheads to the turba , but Abdullah remained outside the madman’s house for as long as the music lasted.
    This time-wasting of Abdullah’s could not go on. His uncle Ali Reza had work for the boy, who was really now much more than a boy; fifteen is very close to the time at which you are considered an adult amongst the Hazara – it was certainly that way for me. In spring the apple trees of Ali Reza’s orchard attracted small blue beetles that climbed the trunks and if left unchecked, would lay eggs in the blossom that would later ruin the fruit. It was necessary to wrap coarse cloth soaked in a poison made from ragwort around the trunks to kill the beetles off. But some beetles would survive the poison. It was Abdullah’s task at this time of the year to go from tree to tree, capturing the beetles and crushing them with his fingers. He also carried baskets of soil from the sunless valleys below the village up to the orchard. Finally, it was Abdullah’s responsibility to keep the soil of the orchard fertilised by adding the ash of wood fires and the dung of sheep from the mountain meadows.
    So Abdullah was forbidden to go to the madman’s house in the afternoon. Ali Reza’s words were law in his household, and Abdullah would not disobey. But nothing had been said about not going to the madman’s house at night. Abdullah left his bed when his uncle and his uncle’s two wives and the five children of the family were asleep and sat on the rocky ground close to Karim Zand’s small house. It was his hope that the madman would begin playing the rubab late in the night, as unlikely as this seemed. Abdullah kept his vigil for two hours each night for five nights on end without ever hearing a single note of the rubab ’s music, but on the sixth night, although no music came from the house, he at least saw Karim Zand himself step from his front door and stand gazing up at the moon. Abdullah remained still, even when the madman noticed him and took three huge strides to loom above him.
    ‘Will you feel the force of my hand on your head?’ the madman roared, and he lifted his fist as if in readiness to strike Abdullah. The boy kept his peace in a way that must have impressed the madman because he lowered his fist and accepted from Abdullah’s hand a small piece of paper on which some words were written. Karim Zand turned the paper about this way and that until the light of the full moon illuminated the words: ‘Teach me’.
    ‘“Teach me”?’ said Karim Zand. He looked down at Abdullah, and his long face and nose like the beak of an eagle and the great tangle of his red beard gave him the look of a monster. ‘Teach you to hide in the shadows like a wolf? Is that what