CUT-THROATS AT PLAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 324, 9 April 1928, Page 7

CUT-THROATS AT PLAY

PATHANS LOVE GAMBLING “ATTRACTIVE RUFFIANS’’ Meet a Pathan in the high and mournful hills beyond the Ivhyber and the chances are he will cut your throat as cheerfully as pass the time \ of day. At the best he will weigh ! professionally the pros and cons of j highway robbery—a natural instinct —and regard murder as a mere incident in the proceedings (writes Sir Percival Phillips, in “The Daily Mail”). But see him at the Peshawar races or amusing himself in what is the Pathan equivalent to a week-end at Brighton, and he is a harmless and rather attractive ruffian. His vices sit lightly on him and he confronts the West with a fine swagger in which tolerance and defiance are about equally mixed. Beyond everything he is a man. It is a relief to the traveller who has come up from the plains of India, where the sun saps the vitality of her children, to leave behind the spineless, fawning creatures one finds in Bengal and to encounter these fine, tall hillmen, with their damn-y our-eyes stare of inspection and the bearing of a king among his subjects. They are incredibly dirty and unpleasant at close range, but they wear their ragged garments with a savage dignity that demands respect.

Even a cut-throat has his time for play. At such a time he can be detected —if you are a close observer g«.zing with undisguised longing at a native bookmaker who foDdles his open satchel of rupee notes on the other side of a very necessary barrier. I have even seen him give what is known in some circles a 3 ‘ the once over” to a payer-out of sweepstake prize money, much as the head man in an abattoir might survey his next batch of unwilling clients. At such a moment his traditional devotion to the business of loot and his indifference to the human element involved are really sinister. But nothing ever happens. He cuts his losses like any gentleman at Kemp- ! ton Park, and the unconscious objects S of his regard never know that the : shadow of death has hovered over them. • • • He lends picturesque novelty to the races. These gymkhanas help break ; the monotony of garrison life on the ! inhospitable North-West Frontier. They bring together the little Euro- ; pean colony, with its assorted horses j and gentlemen riders, in a cheerfully informal atmosphere which is lacking at race meetings nearer hq*ne. On one side of a somewhat ragged course is a little bit of England: tweeds, gloves-in-hand, a scattering of monocles, silk stockings, smart frocks, and easy gossip. Across the way, watching it all with a gleam of satirical amusement in his

glowing eyes, lounges your Pathan. He leans carelessly on the decrepit railing, commenting to his hairy neighbour on the smart Indian pipers in green tunics that play themselves briskly up and down between the races or the scarlet band of brass that awaits its turn before the tea tables. He misses nothing of the shifting scene, yet seems carelessly aloof—until he sees a horse.

Then the arguments over form would do credit to any gang of professional backers on an English course. Your Pathan likes a flutter —and he likes to win. He follows the horses with his hawk's eyes as they come home, perhaps tugging excitedly at his henna-red beard, and if his favourite is first he scrambles towards the paying-out window, waving his ticket triumphantly in the air. His sense of humour is keen, but grim. Like the Chinese, misfortune makes him laugh—when it is the other man’s. I saw a group of these hairy highwaymen enjoy what to them was an exquisite joke at the Afghan frontier. The solitary sentry on the Afghan side of the barrier baited himself into blind fury because some amateur photographers in India wanted him in their snapshots. The Afghan was a dusty youth in illfitting drab uniform and a comic little grey felt hat, the brim of which was pulled over his receding forehead. He looked more like an overgrown Boy Scout than a real soldier. The Pathans for whom he provided a Roman holiday were on the Indian side of the barrier. As the photographers j stalked him with their cameras the sentry tried to take cover behind h»s 1 Indian comrade. But he had to walk • his post, and whenever he emerged—j click went the shutters, j His eyes blazed with anger and he ' screamed protests to the sympathetic but amused sentry in India, two feet away. How* the Pathans laughed! They dislike being photographed themselves. but the discomfiture of someone else was another matter.