The Afghan Martyrs — Page 129
beckons us to follow. Already a score and more, having trodden alone the trail he blazed, are clustered around him in joyful companionship. Among them is that greatly daring youth, N aimatullah Khan, who, not even yet out of his teens, made his deliberate choice when life with all its beguiling pulled in one direction and the example of the martyred Sahibzada pointed in the other. Before he crossed the border, an elder, tuH uf anxiety on his score, enquired: Naimatullah, if offered the choice that was offered to the Sahibzada, what will you choose? To this stripling, wise beyond his few years, made an answer: Sir, sitting here in security whatever I may say would be unrealistic. A true answer can only be given when the choice must be made. Inexorably the moment arrived. Naimatullah managed to scribe a note which found its way to the elder. Sir, it said, the choice must now be made. I choose that which the Sahibzada Sahib chose. May the Lord, of His grace, bestow upon me the strength and the steadfastness to go through to the end. Buried in the ground in an upright position up to his waist, Naimatullah eager to render his unsullied soul to his Maker, prayers and supplications rising up from the depths of his innocent heart, surveyed with a smile the jeering, cursing, pitiless crowd that ringed him round, poised to crush his limbs and bones and smother his young life out of him with the cruel, jagged pieces of rock that each of them carried. As the first one grazed and tore open his flushed, handsome, boyish face, thus sealing with his warm blood the fulfillment of the covenant that he had made with his Lord, there could be no doubt that Allah, of his abounding grace and mercy, deputed the soul of the martyred Sahibzada to comfort the soul of Naimatullah during his glorious progress to the Abode of the Blessed. As the example of the Sahibzada Sahib inspired young 129