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seen a snow leopard?’ said Abbas.
    ‘Yes,’ said Ahmad Hussein. ‘In the high mountains I saw a snow leopard. It carried a dead weasel in its jaws.’
    ‘But a snow leopard can’t sing, can it? It can’t sing songs, as we can?’
    ‘No, a snow leopard cannot sing.’
    ‘Someone told me that snow leopards could sing,’ said Abbas. ‘And that bears could talk. I didn’t believe him, but then I began to doubt my own doubts.’
    Ahmad Hussein called to the horse, ‘Hi, hi! Stay awake!’ To Abbas he said, ‘I was told the same stories.’
    ‘Yes?’ said Abbas.
    ‘Yes,’ said Ahmad Hussein. ‘By the same storyteller.’

4
    The Life of Abdul Khaliq
    The life of Abdul Khaliq, destined to end in pain and sorrow, began in the second decade of the twentieth century by the Western calendar. At that time, Afghanistan was ruled by Habibullah Khan, who was of the Barakzai dynasty and known as Emir, another name for ‘chief’. Habibullah enjoyed the friendship of the British – a friendship that won him gifts from time to time, some of them personal, such as English revolvers, and some designed to flatter his intelligence, such as an edition of the works of Charles Dickens. Habibullah was in fact an intelligent man, an educated man, and amongst those who ruled Afghanistan and made life a great torment for the Hazara, he was not the worst. His father Abdur Rahman Khan, who ruled before him, was more savage, and his great-grandfather Dost Mohammad Khan had not a single friend in the Hazarajat, the homeland of the Hazara. The Barakzai family for generations believed that every mountain, every stone, every river, every fish and bird in Afghanistan belonged to the Barakzai, and that those who lived within Afghanistan’s borders should honour the Barakzai above all other mortals. Sometimes two Barakzai each believed at the one time that Afghanistan belonged to him. In that event, one tried to kill the other. Dost Mohammad’s sons, all three of them, fought for the throne after their father’s death with the fury of baboons. His youngest son, Sher Ali, ruled first, since he had been his father’s favourite; then the second son, Afzal, stole the throne from Sher Ali; later still, the first son, Azam, became Emir. The Barakzai never knew whom they could trust, but they knew who they could never trust: their brothers, their uncles, their sons, their cousins, or anyone at all related to them by blood. It was said of the Barakzai that their sleep was plagued by nightmares. When they awoke in the morning, their first act was to check that head and shoulders were still joined at the neck.
    In the mountains of their homeland, the Hazara lived in hope of a ruler in Kabul or Kandahar who took no interest in them, who did not know a Hazara from a Turk, for whenever an emir turned his gaze towards the Hazara it meant bigger taxes, or the destruction of homes, or murder, or all three. When Dost Mohammad concerned himself with the Hazara, it was only to have his soldiers drive families out of Helmand and from the plains around Kandahar so that their land could be given as a gift to his followers. Those Hazara who could, journeyed north to Hazarajat and began life again. Most made the journey on foot, with the older children holding the hands of the smaller children and the mothers and fathers burdened by heavy loads. When these refugees arrived in Hazarajat, they were taken in without complaint by those who lived there. The sight of a family struggling along the road was a familiar one for any Hazara, not just in the time of Dost Mohammad but for centuries before. The rule was always this: if there is no room, find room, and then find more, for more Hazara will come.
    Over the centuries of their life in Afghanistan, the Hazara made their homes not only in the mountains of Hazarajat but in other regions too. Yet Hazarajat remained our spiritual home, our stronghold and our sanctuary. Most of the stories of the Hazara mention the