Hamid

Hamid is Farook’s servant, a man who stays behind in a besieged city to protect his master’s house and its contents. He enters the narrative not as a soldier but as someone caught between a personal duty and the risks of remaining amid the assault. His efforts to secure medical help through a promised treasure make him a crucial intermediary in the episode: he can offer the surgeons a reason to follow him, but the truth and safety of that offer remain uncertain.

Identity and Circumstances

When challenged about why he has not fled with the others, Hamid identifies himself as a servant rather than a sepoy and explains that he is guarding Farook’s property. His stated obligation is practical and specific: to protect the moneylender’s house and what it contains. The exchange places him in a vulnerable position. He is still in the city after the assault has begun, and he must persuade armed medical personnel to act on his behalf.

Hamid’s first attempt to obtain help meets resistance. Corbyn tells him that they cannot help and that he should leave. Hamid persists, turning to the promise of treasure as an inducement. The child is present with the medical party, and Hamid offers assistance in exchange for help. His appeal thus joins an immediate human need to a claim about material wealth, without establishing whether the child is related to him or what precisely binds them.

The Offer of Treasure

Hamid says that he can show the men two lakhs in gold and jewels. To give his claim substance, he produces a small kidskin pouch from his tunic and offers it to Corbyn. Corbyn opens it, examines the coins in his palm, and passes them to Wilkie. Hamid insists that there are many more like them. The pouch gives the promise a visible basis, but it does not prove the scale or location of the larger treasure he describes.

The offer changes the medical party’s response. Corbyn orders three men to go with Hamid and tells them to take Price, arm themselves, and shoot Hamid if anything seems wrong. He says he will remain with the child. He also specifies how the prospective reward is to be divided: four equal shares, with an additional tithe for Price. The arrangement makes the expedition both a rescue-related undertaking and a private bargain, concealed from the prize agents. Hamid’s promised wealth draws the party out of the medical station, while Corbyn’s instructions show that their willingness to follow him is guarded by suspicion.

The Courtyard Expedition

Hamid leads the group through narrow alleyways and out onto a wider street. Shops have been ransacked, houses are shuttered, and no one is visible; nearby sounds of carousing and more distant cannon fire keep the violence present even in the apparent emptiness. At sunset, amid smoking heaps of discarded material, Price stops at an open doorway. The party enters a small, square courtyard with worn whitewashed walls, patches of exposed mud brick, and a ragged wooden balcony.

Hamid is already at work in the courtyard. He has shifted a flagstone and is scraping at the loose earth beneath it, indicating the place where he says the treasure is buried. He asks the men to help and insists that they must be quick. The setting lends the promise a definite location, but the digging has only begun; the treasure itself has not yet been produced. Hamid’s role shifts from petitioner to guide, as the group follows him from the crowded medical setting to the concealed site he has identified.

Urgency and Narrative Role

The expedition’s confidence falters when the situation changes. Hamid says they must leave, offers no explanation, and tries to pull Price toward the street by the sleeve. Price pulls free and raises a fist in warning. The exchange leaves the cause of Hamid’s urgency unresolved in the available account. It does, however, turn the promised treasure from an apparent destination into a source of immediate distrust: Hamid has led the armed party to the courtyard, but now presses them to abandon it.

Hamid is characterized through action and negotiation rather than through a fuller account of his past. He states a duty to Farook, persists after being refused, produces coins, identifies a burial place, and then abruptly urges departure. These acts establish both his agency and the limits of what the episode confirms about him. The men follow because of the bargain and the visible coins, yet they remain armed and prepared to turn against him. His brief appearance binds care, property, and danger into a single uncertain transaction, without resolving what he intends or what lies beneath the courtyard floor.