The Afghan Martyrs — Page 104
piece of land for their subsistence and a dilapidated house to live in. Nevertheless during this period of great adversity the martyrts family displayed an enviable example of unwavering faith, their minds and souls remained elated. Women and children of the family who had been brought up in the lap of luxury and had always had a host of servants all around them who were ever keen to serve, were now living hundreds of miles away from their homes and relatives purely for the sake of Ahmadiyyat. They were constantly presenting sacrifices of their lives and their assets, but during the course of adversity there was never the slightest vacillation or weakness in their resolve. The family endured this period of exile with patience and contentment while thanking the Almighty all the time. In 1911 Ameer Habeebulla Khan ordered that they be brought to Kabul where they took up residence in a very ordinary, hired house. At the time of martyrdom, Syed Abdul Hasan son of the Sahihzada's, was only three years old and Syed Mohammad Tayyab was one and a half years old. Let us peruse what the elder son has written in regard to what he himself saw and heard from his mother and other relatives. "After martyrdom, under supervision of the army the family, relations and servants numbering nearly a hundred were transported to KabuL There they were kept under house arrest in Toachi Bagh. The winter had just set in and after spending a month and a half under house arrest all of them were exiled to Turkistan where it was bitterly cold. Due to paucity of all kinds of provisions the family faced severe problems. In Turkistan the government provided a small piece of land for them to live on but the income from it was wholly inadequate. One member of the family, who lived in the British territory in the Bannu district and managed the family assets, made some remittances from time to time which enabled the family to subsist. This state of affairs 104