by L. Todd Wood
Sugar
By L. Todd Wood
Copyright 2013 L. Todd Wood
Published by IceBox Publishing at Smashwords
This book is available in print at most online retailers
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
To Erica and Aaron
My firstborn
Special thanks to Daniel Gallagher
My good friend and former boss
Who I’m pleased no longer looks like a cancer patient
"Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority"
Quran (3:151)
Prologue
Saccharum officinarum
This story starts several hundred million years ago. The exact timing doesn’t really matter. You only need to get the gist of what happened.
The day started the same as they had for tens of thousands of years. The sun rose and the temperature followed. The cold-blooded animals stirred. The heated air cloaked all life on Earth in an embryonic cocoon. And the air was warmer today, noticeably warmer than usual.
There were many more animals as of late, all different kinds. The diversity of life was exploding all around. That’s what happens when an ice age ends, when the Earth warms. The resulting tropical conditions foster all kinds of evolutionary experiments.
It was the end of the Paleozoic era. It was one of those fulcrums in the history of the Earth, a springtime to end all springtimes, a great awakening.
Plants were large in this day. Giant ferns dominated the interior, but in the coastal plains near the oceanic waters, another type of organism thrived. These were the grasses. One of these specimens in particular grew in giant clumps. This invasive plant had large, noded reeds that reached to the sky. It was a perennial and therefore multiplied in abundance along the coast. It was the ancestor of what today we call sugarcane. However, this organism was much larger than the cane we are familiar with in the twenty-first century. The reeds were massively tall and looked like today’s pine trees, flowing in the summer wind.
Millions of years later, this part of the Earth was to become known as Southeast Asia. To be exact, it would be called New Guinea. At this point in history, however, the area still shared a coastline with the landmass that would become Australia. But alas, this was not to last.
The animals became agitated. Something strange was happening. The large array of reptiles was moving to higher ground. Somehow that sixth sense that animals often possess had kicked into high gear. Something was going to happen. The air became very still.
There was a deafening crash as the natural dam made from glacial-carved rock in the mountains gave way high above the coastline. A few hundred thousand years of melted ice behind it had created enormous pressure. It could no longer hold. The water cascaded down from the higher ground like a prehistoric Niagara Falls, only bigger. The seas began to rise.
One particular clump of the cane was perched on an outcrop of rock overlooking the rising ocean. The water from the breached natural dam rushed over it and instantly knocked the entire plant into the sea. The resulting deluge of sediment from the oncoming flood covered the plant entirely. It had no chance to decay. Over the millennia, the layer of sediment above it slowly turned into rock, becoming a hard seal.
Layer upon layer of sediment was deposited above it across the ages. These too turned to stone.
Over a few hundred thousand years, the pressure began to build.
Part One
Chapter One
She was a Jatt of the Kharral clan. The time was the Christian year 1098 and it was no longer summer in the Punjab, the northwestern territory of India. The rainy season had just ended, and the cane was large in the lush, green fields. It was a time of harvest.
The Ravi River meandered like a snake through the valley near her home. It emanated from a confluence of five rivers of the Indus Valley, with the Himalayan Mountains decorating the horizon to the north. The territory was soaked with rain and runoff from the melting snow on the mountains. This provided ideal conditions for growing food. The abundant, flat farmland was extremely fertile. Things grew here, no matter what was planted. The Punjab was the breadbasket of the world, at least as the world was known at the time.
The people were happy. This was a celebratory time of year. They would garner money and staples from the sugar they would produce. It had been a grand harvest, and there would be plenty of food and shelter for everyone. No one would go hungry or cold in the following winter, the deadliest season of the year.
Historically the Jatts were nomadic herders but had settled in the Punjab and now were skilled farmers. They were a people that would be successful at whatever they put their mind to. This trait was in their genes. There was an unwritten rule that you didn’t get in a fight with a Jatt, because they didn’t stop fighting until they were victorious or dead.
Jatts were members of the upper castes. They were not Brahmin, but due to their technocracy, they were placed above many in the hierarchy. For instance, the girl’s father ran the cooperative sugar mill, which serviced the fields arrayed around her village as far as the eye could see. The cane beautifully swayed in the wind as the warm breeze flowed down from the Himalayas.
Her name was Roopa, meaning “blessed with beauty.” And beautiful she was, shockingly so. Like the other women in her clan, she had wheat skin and long, dark hair to her waist. However, her eyes were blue, which was very rare in her people. The contrast was mesmerizing. Many unmarried men in the village had been watching her for some time, dreaming of making her his wife. There was much talk among the village as to who the lucky man would be. Marriages were arranged in her clan, causing much consternation among the young maidens. Their lives changed forever with the decisions of their parents. The parents tended to look for a wealthy widower to provide for their daughter, whereas the young girls dreamed of a young prince. The parents usually got their wish.
Roopa had just turned fifteen and her body was changing. It had been changing for a while. She was a woman now, she could feel it. She had strange yearnings that she did not understand. Her life was blooming in the spring of youth, her future ahead of her. She felt immortal.
Roopa had been raised in a privileged environment. Everyone in the valley depended on her father. This gave him a position of prominence and respect. Her life was easier than most due to her parent’s position in the clan, but she was still expected to work. The last few years had been tough on the sugar industry in the Punjab, so a successful harvest was a wonderful thing for the Jatts. However, there was always work to do, even for beautiful young girls. Besides, her father wanted her to learn the joy of creating something with her own hands.
Her family refined sugar, as they had done in this region for hundreds of years. In this way they had become important, even indispensable. If the mill was not in operation, the population suffered. Her father took this responsibility seriously and worked hard to keep the mill in working order and to improve its efficiency. He constantly looked for ways to increase the output from the raw cane, even inventing processes of his own to streamline and grow the operation. He was loved by the people that depended on him.
“You should put on your orhna,” her mother scolded as Roopa left the house on the way to the sugar mill to do her job for the day. There she would help package the
sugar loaves as they were taken from the molds at the mill. It was a critical job, to make the finished product attractive to their buyers on the Silk Road.
“You are a woman now!”
“It is too hot to wear it and work,” Roopa retorted with disrespect.
“The men will notice.”
“I am still a girl,” Roopa said and stood to face her mother in the doorway to the outside world. The intricate, religious carving accentuated the entrance to the dwelling. Metal accoutrements adorned the exquisitely detailed wooden door.
She knew her mother was right. She could feel the men staring at her nowadays and rather enjoyed it, but she was rebellious in the prime of her youth. Soon I will have to start wearing it when I leave the house, she thought to herself. The orhna was a shirt but also a veil. It was worn over her angia, or blouse, and ghagri, or heavy skirt. Her mother said it was so that she would not have to worry about men looking at her., that is was a luxury. Well, she didn’t want this luxury. Her breasts were full and the men loved to stare at them. Her hair flowed down her back soft as a sheaf of feathers.
Her family had very strict rules regarding women. She was a Muslim, but not all of the clans in the Punjab shared her religion. There were Sikhs, Buddhists, and some Hindu.
She left the house with her mother still preaching behind her, her voice trailing off in the wind.
Chapter Two
Roopa paused to take in the view from the garden in front of her home as she walked away from the entrance. The blooms on the colorful flowers were wilting as the air slowly cooled and winter approached. The view of the valley always amazed her at this time of the year. The house was set on one of the foothills leading up to the Himalayas. In front of her, the Punjab valley flowed with the green fields of sugar cane as far as she could see. The waves were mesmerizing as the breeze wove its web among the tall grasses. As a child, she had attempted to find images of local animals in the moving grass. She would keep this habit for life, as the cane would always be with her. It was also one of the last moments of childhood she would enjoy, though she didn’t know it yet.
After she had drunk her fill of the view, she made her way down to the structure that housed the sugar molds. The ancient stone stairway that she negotiated down the hill to the village was also a childhood friend. She knew every step, every crack. The familiar surroundings comforted her. She had played among the mill buildings as a child and knew them like the back of her hand. Blissfully, she had not a care in the world.
The men of the village were in the fields for the harvest. This was backbreaking work to say the least. The men worked tirelessly for many days to bring in the cane, bending over and hacking the base of the tall plants. That’s the thing about sugar cane: when it’s time, it’s time, and when it’s cut, it has to be processed right away, or the sugar will change into a less valuable fructose within forty-eight hours. It was a brutally busy time of year for the farmers, but days of celebration always followed when the sugar was in its final form. Then the village could relax and the fun could begin.
The cane, once hewn, was taken to a mill where it was cut into short lengths and crushed by a stone grinder to extract the liquid. Wind or water usually powered the mill in the eleventh century. Water was plentiful in the Punjab and so was the natural choice. The fiber was then pressed again with a beam and screw press to obtain any remaining juices. This was where Roopa’s family came in. Her father owned the mill that was supplied by hundreds of small farms in the area. India never developed the plantation system that was famous in the West Indies and elsewhere. It was every family for itself, but it was a collective effort.
In the end, they all had to come to Roopa’s father. He was the expert. He possessed the vast store of knowledge that had accumulated over the centuries on how to refine sugar. It was passed down through the ages in his family. He had even made his own adjustments to the process to increase the yield and the quality of the final product. There were always improvements to be made. That’s how humans made technological progress.
Once the cane was pressed, the juices were boiled down to crystals in vast, copper pots. To filter impurities out of the mixture, ash or a similar material was added, which attached to foreign elements and forced them to the bottom of the container. The material skimmed off the top was molasses, a byproduct of sugar production but useful in its own right. The remaining liquid was placed in baskets or pottery to dry and harden. The mold was usually in the shape of an upside down cone with a hole in the bottom small end. Repeated draining of the refined sugar would result in a cone of white material. It was called a loaf. They were very valuable. Small cutting tools called sugar nips were manufactured to break off minute chunks of the hard sugar from the loaf to be used in cooking or just to please the palate. These chunks were called khandee, the origin of the western word candy.
Once finished, the loaves were groomed for sale to the highest bidder. This was Roopa’s duty: to prepare the loaves in an attractive way for sale to the wealthy foreigners of the West. She used a brightly colored wrapper from paper, which had been introduced and supplied by the Arab caravans decades earlier. The Persians to the Egyptians were already well versed in the use of paper packaging at this time. Her father loved her designs, and that is why she was given this job. Many girls from the village found work in this part of the process.
Roopa entered the structure that housed the finished, unwrapped product. The sweet smell was overpowering. The heat from the refining process hit her full in the face. She began to sweat as she made her way to the table where she worked. She was glad she had not worn the veil.
With fresh energy, she immersed herself in the task of creating designs for the sugar loaves that had cooled and were ready for packaging. The cones were like great white canvases with which to work. The only thing holding her back was her imagination. She enjoyed transforming them into something that would catch a customer’s eye. This always brought her pleasure. She had a way of bringing different colors together that was inviting to the traveling merchants. She was a creative girl and often lost herself in the task, ignoring the goings-on around her and the actions of the others in the room.
About an hour into her work, she noticed the boys who were working on the molds stop chatting and turn to look at her. She could feel their stares. Her mother was right; she would have to start wearing her veil. For the first time, she felt naked with her hair, arms, and neck exposed, not to mention the cleavage of her breasts. Suddenly she felt very alone and vulnerable. She had crossed some sort of rubicon and there would be no more childhood. She was an adult now.
She saw the boys making suggestive jokes about her and laughing amongst themselves. They were looking straight at her and making crude gestures with their fingers and hands. Horrified, she ran from the storage hut back up the hill to the house in shame.
Chapter Three
Roopa sprinted up the stone stairs and back into the house, slamming the ornate door. Her mother looked at her knowingly, but Roopa ignored her. Her face burned with shame. She ran to one of the back rooms of the relatively large structure and, once alone, put her head in her hands and wept.
She was so confused and upset. Why should those boys get to act like that? she thought. Then she understood what her mother had told her. Wearing the veil was a luxury. Young girls didn’t have to put up with the staring, the mocking. Muslim boys were scared of the female, her mother had said. They are threatened, so they attack. Her shame turned to apprehension as she thought of the future.
She had overheard her parents talking about marriage—her marriage—several weeks before. Once they thought she was asleep, they discussed which one of the families in the local area would be most beneficial for them to marry Roopa into. Since her father had wealth, she did not have to worry about being sold into one of the temples as a concubine for a priest. That was a horrible fate. After the priest tired of her, she would be sent to a brothel. Yes, at least she didn’t have to worry about that. But
to whom would she be married? The thought terrified her. She didn’t want to leave her parents, and she definitely didn’t want to be married off to some old, overweight merchant. She felt she had no choice but to trust her parents. They wanted what was best for her. They loved her very much, and she loved them. Together, they had a nice life, the only life she had ever known. Her pleasant yet simple existence among the mill and the village was coming to an end. Alas, she sighed, all things must change in time. She vowed to enjoy her remaining time at home.
She was a woman now. It was time she started acting like one. She would be more careful. She started to calm down as a sense of confidence swept over her. She washed her face from a bowl the servant had left near her bed and prepared to leave the room and face her mother. After all, she was a Jatt.
Then, in the back of her mind, she knew something was wrong, terribly, terribly wrong.
The first thing she noticed was the sound, a very frightening sound. It was the sound of the mountains moving. She could feel the ground shaking under her feet. Roopa was bewildered at first then very afraid, terrified in fact. She rushed to the window in her room and craned her neck in the direction of the fearsome noise. The hair on the back of her neck rose in horror.
“No!” she whispered to herself.
She was so frightened she was paralyzed. She knew deep in her soul at that moment that her short life was about to change forever in a way she had never expected. She could not move and stared out the window.