Kha with descender (the “ҳ” symbol)

Question

So, using pdfLaTeX, I need to write the Kha with descender symbol (which looks like ҳ). Taken from Wikipedia:

It comes up with Afghan history, if anyone's curious why I need it...

I know this can be done with XeLaTeX, but I'd prefer avoiding XeLaTeX if possible (I'm also using microtype).

Using Babel for one character seems excessive...what other options are there?

Answer 1

These characters are available in font encoding T2A, for example. They can be used without babel:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T2A,T1]{fontenc}

\begin{document}
  U+04B2: {\fontencoding{T2A}\selectfont\CYRHDSC}

  U+04B3: {\fontencoding{T2A}\selectfont\cyrhdsc}
\end{document}

In order to avoid PK-Fonts the package cm-super should be installed.

Answer 2

Adding to Heiko's excellent answer, one can also input the character directly, provided the file is UTF8 encoded:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T2A,T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{newunicodechar}
\newunicodechar{Ҳ}{{\fontencoding{T2A}\selectfont\CYRHDSC}}
\newunicodechar{ҳ}{{\fontencoding{T2A}\selectfont\cyrhdsc}}

\begin{document}
  U+04B2: {\fontencoding{T2A}\selectfont\CYRHDSC} Ҳ

  U+04B3: {\fontencoding{T2A}\selectfont\cyrhdsc} ҳ
\end{document}

Of course Russian (or other language using the character) babel should not be used.