The Moghul

by Thomas Hoover

  *

  Arangbar moved groggily through the arched corridor carrying a fresh silver cup of wine and quietly humming the motif of his favorite Hindustani raga. His afternoon nap in the zenana had been fitful, unusually so, and when he finally admitted to himself why, he had dismissed the two young women who waited to pleasure him, retrieved his jeweled turban, and waved aside the attending eunuchs. He had announced he wanted to stroll among the fruit trees in the courtyard of the Anguri Bagh, which lay down the marble steps from the Khas Mahal, the breezy upper pavilion of the zenana. But when he reached the trees, he had turned and slipped through his private doorway leading to the women's apartments in the lower level of the fort.

  The zenana was quiet, even the eunuchs were dozing, and no one noticed when he passed along the shadowed afternoon corridor toward the circular staircase leading to the lower apartments. As he began to descend the curved stone steps, he felt his legs momentarily grow unsteady, and he paused to rest against the hard polished wall, tightening his light brocade cloak against the cooler air and taking a short sip of wine for warmth. Then he continued on, carefully feeling for each step in the dim light of the overhead oil lamps.

  He emerged on the next level and stopped to catch his breath on the balcony that opened out over the Jamuna. This was the level where he had built private apartments for his favorite women, and behind him was the large room, with a painted cupola ceiling high above a large rose-shaped marble fountain, which he had granted to one of his Hindu wives. (Now he could no longer recall precisely who she was; she had reached thirty some time past and he had not summoned her to his couch in many years.) Since she was a devout Hindu, he had ordered it decorated with brilliantly colored scenes from the Ramayana. The room itself was cooled by a high waterfall in the rear that murmured down an inclined and striated marble slab. Stairways on either side of the room curved around to an overhead balcony, directly above where he now stood, which was the post where eunuchs waited when the women came to cool themselves by the fountain.

  The balcony where he now stood jutted out from the fort, supported by thick sandstone columns, and from his position he could look along the side of the fort and see the Jasmine Tower of Queen Janahara. When he realized he also could be seen, he instinctively stepped back into the cool corridor.

  The women were inside their apartments, asleep, and the corridor empty as he began to descend the circular stairs leading to the next level below, the quarters for eunuchs and female servants. As he rounded the last curve of the stair and emerged into the light, three eunuchs stared up in shock from their game of cards. It vaguely registered that they probably were gambling, which he had strictly prohibited in the zenana, but he decided to ignore it this afternoon.

  The circular pasteboard cards of the eunuchs' scattered across the stone floor as they hurried to teslim. He paused to drink again from the cup and absently studied the painted faces on the cards dropped by the eunuch nearest him. It was not a bad hand. Lying on the marble were four high cards from the bishbar, powerful, suits—the lord of horses, the king of elephants, the king of infantry, and the throned wazir of the fort—and three from the kambar, weaker, suits—the king of snakes, the king of divinities, and the throned queen. He stared for a moment at the king of elephants, the suit he always preferred to play, and wondered at the happenstance that the king had fallen beneath the queen, whose face covered his golden crown. He shrugged it away as coincidence and turned toward the stairs leading to the next lower level.

  Two more levels remained.

  The air was increasingly musty now, noticeably smoky from the lamps, and he hurried on, reaching the next landing without stopping. The windows on this level had shrunk to only a few hand spans, and now they were secured with heavy stone latticework. The eunuchs were arguing at the other end of the corridor and failed even to notice him. He told himself to try to remember this, and drank again as he paused to listen to the metrical splash of the Jamuna lapping against the outer wall. Then he stepped quietly down the last flight of stairs.

  The final level. As he emerged into the corridor, two guarding eunuchs who had been dozing leaped to their feet and drew swords before recognizing him. Both fell on their face in teslim, their turbans tumbling across the stone floor.

  Arangbar said nothing, merely pointed toward a doorway at the end of the corridor. The startled eunuchs strained against their fat as they lifted torches from the walls and then turned officiously to lead the way. As they walked, Arangbar paused to stare through an arched doorway leading into a large domed room off the side of the hall. A dozen eunuchs were inside, some holding torches while others laced a white cotton rope through a wooden pulley attached to the lower side of a heavy wooden beam that spanned the room, approximately ten feet above the floor.

  The two eunuchs with Arangbar also stopped, wondering if His Majesty had come to supervise the hanging that afternoon of the two zenana women who had been discovered in a flagrant sexual act in the Shish Mahal, the mirrored zenana baths.

  Arangbar studied the hanging room for a moment with glazed eyes, not remembering that he had sentenced the women that same morning, and then waved the guards on along the corridor, past the doors that secured dark cells. These were the cells used to confine women who had broken zenana regulations.

  At the end of the corridor was a door wider than the others, and behind it was a special cell, with a window overlooking the Jamuna. He walked directly to the door and drank again from his cup as he ordered it opened. The guards were there at once, keys jangling. The door was massive and thick, and it creaked heavily on its hinges as they pushed it slowly inward.

  From the gloom came the unmistakable fragrance of musk and sandalwood. He inhaled it for a moment and it seemed to penetrate his memory, calling up long forgotten pleasures. Grasping the door for support, he moved past the bowing guards and into the cell. There, standing by the small barred window, her face caught in a shaft of afternoon sun, was Shirin.

  Her eyes were carefully darkened with kohl and her mouth red and fresh. She wore a gossamer scarf decorated with gold thread, and a thin skirt that betrayed the curve of her thighs against the outline of her flowered trousers. The musty air of the room was immersed in her perfume, as though by her very being she would defy the walls of her prison. She looked just as he had remembered.

  She turned and stared at him for a moment, seeming not to believe what she saw. Then her eyes hardened.

  "Shall I teslim before my sentence?"

  Arangbar said nothing as he examined her wordlessly, sipping slowly from his almost-empty cup. Now more than ever he realized why she had once been his favorite. She could bring him to ecstasy, and then recite Persian poetry to him for hours. She had been exquisite.

  "You're as beautiful as ever. Too beautiful. What do you expect me to do with you?"

  "I expect that I will die, Your Majesty. That, I think, is the usual sentence for the women who disobey you."

  "You could have stayed in Surat, where you were sent. Or gone on to Goa with the husband I gave you. But instead you returned here. Why?" Arangbar eased himself onto the stone bench beside the door.

  "I don't think you would understand, Majesty."

  "Did you come because of the Inglish feringhi? I learned yesterday that you conspired to meet with him. It displeased me very much."

  "He was not responsible, Majesty. I met with him because I chose to. But I came to Agra to be with Samad again." Her voice began to tremble slightly. "Samad is guilty of nothing, except defiance of the Shi'ite mullahs. You know that as well as I. If you want to hear me beg for him, I will."

  Arangbar seemed not to notice the tear that stained the kohl beneath one eye. "It was a death sentence for you to disobey me and come back. Perhaps you actually want to die."

  "Is there nothing you would die for, Majesty?"

  Arangbar stared for a moment at the window, its hexagonal grillwork throwing a pattern across his glazed eyes. He seemed to be searching for words. "
Yes, perhaps I might die for India. Perhaps someday soon I will. But I would never die for the glory of Islam." His gaze came back to Shirin. "And certainly not for some half-naked Sufi mullah."

  "Samad is not a mullah." By force of will she held any trace of shrillness from her voice. "He is a Persian poet. One of the greatest ever. You know that. He defies the Shi'ites because he will not bow to their dogma."

  "The Shi'ites want his head." Arangbar examined his empty cup and tossed it to the floor, listening as the silver rang hard against the stone. "It seems a small price for tranquility."

  "Whose tranquility? Theirs?" The tears were gone now, her eyes again defiant.

  "Mine. Every day I'm flooded with petitions about this or that heresy. It wearies and consumes me. Samad ignored the laws of Islam, and he has followers."

  " You ignore the laws of Islam."

  Arangbar laughed. "It's true. Between us, I despise the mullahs. You know I once told them I had decided to become a Christian, because I enjoyed eating pork and the Prophet denied it to all men. The next day they brought the Quran and declared although it was true pork was denied to men, the Prophet said nothing specifically about what a king could eat. So there was no need for me to become a Christian." He paused and sobered. "But Samad is not a king. He is a well-known Sufi. The mullahs claim that if he's dead, the inspiration for heresy will die with him. They say his death will serve as an example. I hear this everywhere, even from Her Majesty."

  "Her Majesty?" Shirin searched for his eyes as she spoke, but they were shrouded in shadow. "Does she make laws for you now?"

  "She disrupts my tranquility with all her talk about Islam and Shi'ites. Perhaps it's age. She never used to talk about the Shi'ites. But now she wants to bring the Islam of Persia to India. She forbade Sunni mullahs even to attend the wedding. But if it pleases her, what does it matter? I despise them all."

  "But why Samad? Why sentence him to death?"

  "Frankly I don't really care about this poet, either way. But he has not tried to help himself. When I allowed him to confront the mullahs who accused him, he refused to recite the Kalima, 'There is no God but Allah.'"

  "What did he say?"

  "Perhaps just to spite them, he would only recite the first phrase, 'There is no God,' the negation. He refused to recite the rest, the affirmation. He said he was still searching for truth. That when he finally saw God he would recite the remainder; that to affirm His existence without proof would be giving false evidence. I thought the mullahs would strangle him on the spot." Arangbar laughed to himself as he watched her turn again to the window. "You have to admit that qualifies as blasphemy, by any measure. So if the mullahs want him so badly, why not let them have him?"

  "But Samad is a mystic, a pantheist." Shirin returned her eyes to Arangbar. "For him God is everywhere, not just where the mullahs choose to put Him. Do you remember those quatrains in his Rubaiyat that say,

  "Here in the garden the sunshine glows,

  A Presence moves in all that grows.

  He is the lover, the belov'd too.

  He is the bramble and the rose.

  We know Him when our hearts are moved;

  He, our lover and our loved.

  Open your eyes with joy and see

  The hundred ways His love is proved."

  "I've seen his poetry. It sings of the love of some God, although his God sounds a bit too benign to be Allah. But I also know his Rubaiyat will not save him. It may make him immortal someday, but he'll be long since dead by then."

  Arangbar rose unsteadily and moved beside her, staring out onto the glinting surface of the Jamuna. For a moment he watched a fleet of barges pass, piled high with dark bundles of indigo. "I believe I myself will die someday soon. I can almost feel my strength ebbing. But I hope I'll be remembered as my father Akman is, a ruler who tolerated all faiths. I've protected Hindus from the bigoted followers of Mohammed's religion, who would convert them forcibly to Islam, and I've allowed all religions to build places of worship. Did you know I've even built a church for the Portuguese Jesuits, who have to buy most of their converts with bribes? I even gave them a stipend, since they would starve otherwise. They tell me they're astonished I allow so much religious freedom here, since it's unheard of in Europe. But I can do all this only if I remain the nominal defender of Islam. Islam holds the power in India, and as India's ruler I must acknowledge that. I can defy the mullahs myself now and then. But I can't permit your Sufi mystic to do it too. There's a limit."

  "You can do anything. If you wish. The orthodox mullahs have always hated mystics. The Shi'ite mullahs are men who live on hate. You see it burning in their eyes. They even hate their own women, can't you see? They keep them prisoner, claiming that's the way they honor and respect them. The mullahs even resent that Samad allows me to come into his presence without a veil."

  "They say he's a poison in Islam."

  "Yes, his example is poison. His poetry is filled with love. The mullahs cannot bear it, since their own lives are filled with hate. God help India if it ever becomes an 'Islamic’ state. There'll be mobs in the streets murdering Hindus in the name of 'God.' Is that the tranquility you want?"

  "I want to die in peace. Just like your poet. And I want to be remembered, for the good I've done for India." Arangbar paused, seeming to search on the stone ledge for his cup. "I think Samad will be remembered too. Tomorrow I'll make him famous. Let him live on through his words. He knows, and I know, that he must die. We understand each other perfectly. I can't disappoint him now."

  Arangbar suddenly recalled the high-ranking Rajput raja who had asked for an early audience in the Diwan-i-Khas, and he turned and moved unsteadily toward the door. When he reached it, he revolved and looked back sadly at Shirin.

  "I found myself dreaming about you this afternoon. I don't know why. So I decided to come and see you, alone. I didn't come to talk about Samad. It's you I'm uncertain about. Her Majesty wants you hanged. But I cannot yet find the courage to sentence you." Arangbar continued on wearily toward the door. "Where will it all end?" He paused and, as though remembering something, turned again. "Jadar is plotting something against me, I sense it. But I don't know what he can do. Recently I've heard rumors you're part of it. Have you turned against me?"

  "If you kill Samad, I will defy you with every power I have."

  "Then perhaps I should execute you." He stared at her, trying to focus. "But you have no powers left. Unless you're plotting something with the Inglish. If you are, then I will kill you both." He turned to leave, tightening his cloak against the chill. The guards saw him emerge and hurried from the far end of the corridor. Arangbar watched them for a moment, then turned and looked one last time at Shirin. "Samad will die tomorrow. You will have to wait."