Dark Diamond

by Shazia Omar

  Aurangzeb glared at Shayista. ‘Give me the diamond and the witch can live.’

  Shayista lowered himself to his knees before Champa, her bruises flashing before him, her eyes pained. His meager offering he lay before her: the diamond.

  ‘Champa, I bring to your feet all my failures and my life’s most precious possession. If you can forgive me or look at me with compassion even for a moment then all my wasted efforts I will bury and begin anew.’

  Champa’s eyes glazed over with tears. ‘I forgive you, Talib,’ she said. ‘Let it go.’

  Shayista turned to the Emperor. ‘You want it? This cursed diamond? Take it then.’ He tossed it to the Emperor who had murdered Dara and Huzur. He deserved the curse.

  Aurangzeb caught the dark diamond, his eyes expanding at the sight of its fantastical proportions.

  ‘All that you cherish will perish,’ Shayista warned, laughing.

  Aurangzeb turned abruptly and stormed out. With him marched the Englishman followed by Madeline, his Vizier, his Amir-i-Akhur, his Diwan-i-Baksh and his guards.

  The trajectory of the cursed diamond was a mystery to Shayista: Delhi, London, Paris. What did it matter? So long as he stayed positive, he was free from its curse. He would love again and Bengal would thrive.

  CHAPTER 54

  ‘A

  re you alright?’ Shayista asked.

  Champa nodded. Her eyes twinkled with love.

  Dhand approached with a captive: the Maratha warrior princess. Her fugitive spirit, her passionate animosity, even her snarl was a canvas of perfection. Dhand had not bound her but he had confiscated her weapons.

  ‘Sire, she was found scaling the fortress walls,’ said Dhand, stupefied by the lady’s remarkable resemblance to Pari.

  ‘I only came for what belongs to me,’ she said.

  Shayista saw in her eyes a defiant young girl. He wept inside for the childhood he had missed: the lullabies he had not sung, the nightmares he had not chased away. ‘First tell me this,’ he said. ‘How did you learn about Kalinoor? I have kept it hidden for twenty years, almost your entire life.’

  The truth spilled out. She told him everything. ‘Every Maratha knows you captured my mother and kept her imprisoned in Lal Mahal. When my grandfather attacked to reclaim his fort, he found her there. She was wearing a dark diamond of unspeakable beauty that you gave her to mark her as your chattel. Since I was a child, I have dreamt of fighting you to avenge my mother. I will take back the diamond that was hers.’

  ‘And what would you do with it?’ asked Shayista.

  Miri’s face softened. ‘My people are tired of being oppressed by Mughals. The diamond will buy us a truce so we can live in harmony in Hindustan.’

  Shayista understood the noble efforts of his daughter. His heart warmed. ‘The diamond will not bring harmony to Hindustan,’ he explained. ‘The Emperor wants to sell it to the English to finance the Deccan wars.’

  The princess frowned. ‘Why should I believe you? You killed my mother.’

  ‘No. I loved her,’ said Shayista. ‘More than life itself. She gave my life purpose till she was snatched away from me. It was Kalinoor that killed your mother. The dark diamond is cursed.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘History is not objective,’ he said. ‘Facts are changed, truths are lost. It doesn’t matter. Your mother taught me how to love. This bougainvillea I planted for her. This one I planted for you. This one, for your twin.’

  Miri looked at the bougainvilleas and then at him, stunned.

  ‘Miri,’ said Shayista gently, ‘For that is what your mother and I named you ... I am your father.’ His eyes glistened.

  To show her the truth, Champa read Miri’s palm and revealed some long-forgotten memories. Miri’s face underwent a series of transformations, from anger to shock to denial to acceptance. Caught in a maelstrom of emotion, she began to sob.

  ‘I promise to tell you about your mother someday,’ said Shayista. ‘And your sister. Keep this. It was hers.’ He handed her the protective amulet.

  ‘My sister?’ asked Miri.

  ‘She died last year,’ said Shayista.

  Miri was shaking with grief. Shayista offered her a chamber to rest in and watched her retreat from the durbar.

  CHAPTER 55

  M

  adeline ran as fast as she could till her lungs wheezed and her legs threatened to collapse. Unable to continue, she hid under a leafy neem to catch her breath. There were no signs of pursuit. Not yet.

  She had to get to the docks before they realized the treasure was missing. They would send soldiers after her. And hunting hounds. Costa would be tracking her. Tavernier too. And the Emperor. She had to find a ship of European origin and pay her way home. She hadn’t thought this through. She hadn’t planned the escape. An opportunity came up and she grabbed it.

  She had kept an eye on the diamond from the moment Shayista gave it to the Emperor. Through the day, there seemed no hope but finally a chance came when the Emperor gave it to his bakshi for safe-keeping.

  The bakshi was an elderly man and easily seduced. Madeline charmed him in the privacy of his room then sedated him with some poisonous frog saliva tincture she had picked up in Chatgaon. Confiscating the diamond was then as easy as stealing bonbons from a sleeping baby.

  Gazing upon Kalinoor for the first time brought tears to Madeline’s eyes. Flawless divine beauty.

  Leaving the fortress was no challenge. The guards had seen her entering as the Emperor’s own guest earlier and suspected nothing of her. The real problems began once she was beyond the walls of the temporary garrison erected for Aurangzeb. Paranoia began creeping in. She thought someone was following her.

  She avoided the bazaar and the main road, walking close to the forest’s edge. She would rather face wolves than a tavern of nosy thieves. In the morning she would charter a ride out of Dacca. She thought of visiting Mumin one last time but it was too risky.

  Exhausted, she lay against a branch and retrieved the diamond from her purse. It glittered in her hands. Ominous and malevolent. She felt a thrill, such enormous wealth in her palms. Finally, freedom was hers! She was so transfixed by its beauty that she didn’t hear the beast approaching until it was too late.

  A deep growl rumbled the earth and reverberated within her gut. She swung around in time to see a Royal Bengal tiger, its eyes burning bright.

  Madeline scrambled to her feet, backing away slowly. The feline pulled back on its haunches then pounced on her. With one clean swipe, it broke her spine, killing her instantly. It devoured her over the next few days.

  Princess Miri witnessed it with her own eyes. Unable to accept such an exact end to what had been her life-long mission and her last connection to her mother, Miri too had kept a watch on the diamond. She saw the Emperor give it to his bakshi and saw Madeline steal it from him shortly after. As Madeline escaped from the fortress with the stone, Miri followed her.

  When the tiger attacked Madeline, Miri did not intervene but it occurred to her that Subedar Khan was telling the truth. The diamond was cursed. It brought the downfall of whosoever possessed it. This truth convinced Miri that the Subedar’s other words were true too, and heavy-hearted, she left the tiger to its feasting, returning to Lal Bagh fort to make peace with her father.

  CHAPTER 56

  N

  asim Banu lay in the hammam the next day contemplating the latest turn of events. With the Pir of Lal Bagh dead, there was no hope of speaking to Abul Fateh but at least the Emperor had relented to her pleas and promoted Iradat. This boon he granted her despite being entirely furious that Kalinoor had slipped out of his hands. Thank God it was stolen under his watch and not Shayista’s. There was nothing he could do to hold that against her.

  Imperial troops were sent out to search for the diamond and when they found the bones of the French jewel thief, they then tracked down the creature that had eaten her. The tiger’s stomach was torn open but there were no traces of the diamond. The
Emperor and his retinue left a few days later and Nasim was glad to be rid of them.

  Overall, she couldn’t complain. She had hired a new eunuch who was even more attentive than Ambar Khajah had been. Iradat was over the moon with his promotion. Shayista was happy to have found his long-lost daughter. And she had a new hobby. The jar of youth serum the pir had given her had worked wonders so she established a laboratory and employed a team of fifty experts to replicate it.

  CHAPTER 57

  S

  hayista called for his musicians to play a cheerful tune as Champa danced. Her shimmies were in perfect sync with the universe. Shayista smoked a hookah and recalled the morning only a month ago when he first met her at Jannat. Since then, his priorities had shifted completely.

  He let out a round of meandering smoke rings. Over the next few months he would help Miri erase her pain, help Champa with her madrasa, help Costa with his hunt for the Emerald Tablet and help Dhand marry the woman he loved. He would live for his friends. He would live for love.

  Destiny would have its way. If one accepted it rather than resist, one could ride it to incredible heights. A journey was charted for him the day he was born, the day two angels were sent to his mother’s womb to write his Fate, and having written it, the mighty pen moved on. Surrendering to the grander design felt like an immense relief. For the first time, Shayista felt free. He opened his heart so Destiny could be fulfilled.

  ~

  ‘Though Destiny a hundred times waylays you,

  in the end it pitches a tent for you in Heaven.

  It is God’s loving kindness to give you darkness,

  in order for you to see the light.’

  — Jalal ad-Din Rumi

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dear Readers,

  As a social psychologist and writer living in Dacca, I was hungry to learn about Bengal’s ancient history. My grandmother’s house in Lal Bagh triggered a lingering curiosity. As I began to explore, I discovered Subedar Shayista Khan: a poet, warrior, Sufi and visionary. Though Bengal flourished under his rule, he occupies only a few dry paragraphs in history text books. Thus I set out to give him some flesh (albeit, scarred flesh) so my children and others could know our hero. My kids are 5 and 7 and I daresay, Shayista’s biggest fans.

  Very little is written about the Mughal experience in Bengal, even less about the women of the time. Shayista Khan, Shobha Singh, Shivaji, Admiral Nicholson, William Hedges and Wara Dhamaraja are all real characters. Nasim Banu, Champa and Pari Bibi are real too but there is scarce evidence of them. What I did find was that Champa is buried at Lal Bagh Fort and rumors suggest she might have been Shayista’s late mistress. Legends claim Pari’s ghost haunts the fortress still and she may not have been Shayista’s biological daughter but rather, war booty, a princess from Assam. These conjectures led me to play with her origin, to bring Ellora into the story. Ellora is the only character completely constructed by my imagination though who is to say our handsome Subedar did not have a few princesses on the side? As for the diamond, certainly my readers have heard of Kohinoor, the French Blue and the Pink Diamond, all of which are said to have magical powers. Perchance then readers have also heard whispers of a dark diamond?

  Here are some of the books I read to write this: William Dalrymple’s White Mughal and The Last Mughal, Richard Eaton’s The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, John Richards’ The Mughal Empire, Tapan Raychaudhuri’s Bengal Under Akbar and Jahangir, Fergus Nicoll’s Shah Jahan, Joshua Ivinson’s Diamonds and East India Company, Seema Mohanty’s Book of Kali, Alex Rutherford’s Empire of the Moghuls, Hafez’s The Gift, Dr. Aye Chan’s An Arakanese from Myanmar, Abraham Eraly’s The Mughal Throne, Indu Sundaresan’s The Twentieth Wife, Richard Wise’s The French Blue, Niall Ferguson’s The Empire, Susan Ronald’s Sancy Blood Diamond, Richard Zaqcks’ The Pirate Hunter, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Nitish Sengupta’s Land of Two Rivers: A History of Bengal, and others. I also gleaned some juicy facts from a PhD titled ‘Life and times of Shaista Khan’ by Noopur Sharan of Allahabad, 2005, that was not available in print, for which I had the opportunity to visit the marvelous British Library.

  What I find sad is how history repeats itself. In Bangladesh and the world today we are threatened by many of the enemies Shayista Khan fought back in the 1680s. Does this mean we are not taking the lessons of history to heart? Or is this our predestined journey?

  I hope you enjoy the adventure. Thanks for reading.

  Yours,

  Shazia

  Shazia Omar is a social psychologist. She completed her undergrad at Dartmouth, USA, and her Masters at LSE, UK. She has written a novel, Like a Diamond in the Sky (Penguin 2009), a play, Karma Coffee (2014), and a mind-body-spirit book, Intentional Smile (Bloomsbury 2016). She teaches yoga, works for the poorest and enjoys being a mom.

  www.shaziaomar.com