Still, given our family’s belief that it was the not-quites alone who prevented us from replacing the Mughals, Rehana Apa was kind to point out the obvious: those sad, sad eyes of an emperor deposed could have been Dard-e-Dil eyes. So perhaps, in the case of Ibrahim and Zain, the not-quites indirectly brought about a blessing. That’s what Rehana Apa was trying to say; but, of course, taking the throne of the Mughals would not have meant replicating the actions – and the downfall – of the Mughals. I know what prevented us from being deposed, and worse, after the débâcle of 1857. It was not the fact that we didn’t sit on the throne of Delhi. It was all down to Taj’s mother. Yes, the woman whom Dadi had compared to Leda.
All right, let me clarify. Skipping ahead over three hundred years from the days of Babur, let’s consider what happened to the Dard-e-Dils during the Revolt or Mutiny or War of Independence, or whatever your preferred name for the events of 1857. Near the start of the fighting, when Bahadur Shah Zafar, last Emperor of the Mughals, found himself whisked away from his poetry and music to become the figurehead around which the Rebels banded, the then Nawab of Dard-e-Dil sent his heir apparent to meet the Emperor’s representatives and assure them of Dard-e-Dil support. The heir apparent dawdled. Not because he thought joining the Revolt was a bad idea, but because he was lazy, dedicated to pleasure, and saw no reason to be galloping around the country like an ordinary messenger. He feared if he proved too efficient his father would make a habit of sending him off on such expeditions. He couldn’t dawdle around the palace, of course, because his father’s spies were everywhere. So he rode into the fields around Dard-e-Dil instead, where he saw Taj’s mother who looked him in the eye.
Why do we know this and nothing else, except what we can naturally assume given Taj’s birth, nine months later? Her elbows were not tantalizing, but she looked him in the eye. That’s the one line the family devotes to Taj’s mother, the woman without name. Did she look him in the eye to let him know she thought him worth looking at? Or to show she was no bowing and scraping royalist? Or to clarify that he was not worth a bow or a scrape? Did he find her gaze attractive? Offensive? Diverting?
She died in childbirth, so even her daughter could do nothing more than speculate. But the Dard-e-Dils don’t speculate, because motives and emotions aren’t pertinent. What is pertinent is that Taj’s mother delayed the prince, giving the Nawab’s chief messenger those few extra seconds needed to intercept him just before he extended a hand of support to the Revolt. The Nawab had dithered after his son rode away. Unable to decide whether to back Bahadur Shah or the British, he told his messenger, ‘Leave now. If you reach my son before he delivers a promise of assistance, then tell him to return at once. If he has made the promise, tell him we will stand by it.’ Taj’s mother looked straight at the prince, slowed his progress by … minutes … seconds, and thus we were spared the hangings, the stripping away of titles and possessions, the sad, sad eyes.
I know the prince’s name, but I will not mention it. This gesture is meaningless in the grand scale of things, but sometimes we need to be less than grand.
We were all too grand in the most petty of ways towards Taj. Her mother saved our family, in a manner of speaking, and even if she hadn’t … even if she hadn’t …
Taj’s mother gave birth near the entrance to the palace ground. Then died. It must have been those days of standing in the sun, waiting for the prince or the Nawab to allow her an audience, that sapped from her all energy except that needed to give her daughter life. Her family took Taj away, raised her, and kept her far, far away from the palace.
Such tales are common amongst royal families. But not ours. Taj’s mother is an exception and that’s what makes me think that Dadi was probably right when she said that Taj’s mother, and later Taj, came to symbolize that fateful decision to turn away from the Revolt. It was a decision that saved the Dard-e-Dil family, but we were too ashamed to rejoice. From the roof of the Dard-e-Dil palace you could see trees in neighbouring states from which the Rebels were hanged. And not just the Rebels. What was the name of that Englishman who, in the wake of 1857, said he wanted to see a Muslim hanging from every tree in India? Better he remain nameless, too.
There was one tree in particular which the Dard-e-Dil royals could not bear to look at – the tree from which the Nawab’s fourth cousin, ruler of a neighbouring state and participant in the Revolt, had been hanged. In Dard-e-Dil you could hear the creaking rope as his body swayed in the breeze. So the story goes. The British hanged all his heirs, too, of course, and annexed his lands. A portion of the lands was given to the Dard-e-Dils in recognition of their loyalty. It was a small portion, far less than that doled out to many of the royals who stayed out of the fray. That seems confirmation enough that the British knew how close we came to switching our allegiances, and wished us to always have a subtle reminder of what happened to the lands and lives of errant princes. And, now that I think of it, couldn’t they have hanged him from another tree, one less visible from miles away in a north-westerly direction?
No surprise then that we wanted no further reminders of that message intercepted and reversed. So we shunned Taj’s mother and we shunned Taj. Until the unnamable prince, who was by now a bare-handed killer of tigers, became Nawab and his wives bore him no children who survived the trauma of birth. As a last resort, one of his courtiers told him of a peasant girl, only fifteen, who was already skilled in midwifery. The Nawab called for her, and when she looked him in the eye with eyes that were his eyes he knew his children would live only if she delivered them and received royal favours for doing so.
For forty-eight years Taj delivered Dard-e-Dils. Delivered her brothers and sisters, her cousins, her nephews and nieces, her great-nephews and great-nieces. Received gold and umbilical cords in return. What did she do with the cords? She took them, that’s all. More to the point, in taking the cords she gave the Dard-e-Dils something her mother had never given them: a reason to remember her name. And then the three boys were born near midnight. At what times exactly? Only Taj knows, and maybe even she didn’t. Of course she left the palace immediately after that. She’d delivered them, announced the timings of their births, taken their umbilical cords. Without a doubt, no question of it, she’d secured a place in the family story.
I looked at the picture that Rehana Apa had sent with her letter. Dadi and the three boys, laughing in the palace grounds. If they knew they were fated to bring misery to the family you wouldn’t know it by looking at the photograph.
I showed Dadi the photograph that evening. She rested it on her lap and hung her head low. I waited for her to look up and when she didn’t I walked over to her and placed my hands over two of the brothers so that all that remained visible was Dadi angling her body towards the boy in the centre.
‘That’s the most romantic picture of you and Dada I’ve ever seen,’ I said.
‘That’s not your grandfather. It’s Taimur.’
She wouldn’t say any more about it, and no matter what I said the rest of the evening I couldn’t make her laugh.
Chapter Fifteen
‘Aliya, sweetoo, you must come over right away. Futafut. On the double take.’ It was Older Starch on the phone, disrupting my evening cup of tea with Sameer.
‘I would have loved to, but Sameer’s over.’
Older Starch clicked her tongue. ‘Bring him also. Where’s the problem? Don’t answer, I’ll tell you. The problem is here. I have out-of-town guests coming for tea with their children who are your age. First, Raunaq and Rusty were coming to keep them company but now Raunaq has piles, poor baby. Have you ever had piles, Aliya?’
I put her on speaker phone. ‘Piles? No. I didn’t think Dard-e-Dils suffered from piles.’
‘Arré, what a thing to say! Although, no, actually, you’re right. Usman is the only one among us who’s had them and that must be from his father’s side. He’s got Pathan blood, you know. But anyway, I said to Raunaq that last week there was an ad in the paper for a doctor wh
o has a herbal cure for piles. No operation and also no need to show the doctor any part of your lower body. What’s that noise?’
It was Sameer choking on his tea. I promised we’d drop in, and hung up. Afterwards, I wondered if Older Starch was wilier than I gave her credit for. Because if I hadn’t been so amused by her comments I would never have agreed to entertain her guests. But with my head full of images of Older Starch, boasting that she comes from a royal family which once owned vast tracts of land and never suffered from haemorrhoids, I walked right into her trap. And walked into it alone, because Sameer took off for a game of squash at the Club, declaring that he’d have to see more than enough of the Starched Aunts once festivities for Kishwar’s wedding to the Ali Shah son got under way.
‘Well, I’m avoiding the wedding,’ I said. ‘Kishwar said some things about Mariam Apa—’
‘Everyone said some things about Mariam Apa.’
‘Okay, more to the point, I’m not getting involved in the Aunts’ ploys to get me married off.’
‘Weddings breed weddings,’ Sameer laughed, and twirled his racket in farewell.
‘Aliya!’ The Starcheds rose to greet me, minutes later, as I entered Older’s drawing room. ‘Have you met the Ali Shahs?’
Starched Aunts-1. Aliya-0.
Mind you, the four-wheel drives parked outside with their tinted windows and armed bodyguards should have tipped me off.
My aunts introduced me to the Ali Shah parents and daughters, then turned in triumph to the two boys. ‘This is Khurrum, Kishoo’s fiancé. You know Kishoo, Aliya. She couldn’t be here, unfortunately.’
Younger Starch whispered, ‘Stays at home when the sun’s out. Wants to look fair on her wedding night.’
‘And this is Murtaza. Just graduated from an Ivy League. Aliya was also in America, Murti. You two have a lot to talk about.’ And with that, both the Starched Aunts pushed me down on the sofa beside Murtaza.
Murtaza and Khurrum’s sisters caught my eye and turned away, giggling. Their father, engaged in a discussion with Older Starch’s husband about the dangers of allowing the masses to have access to Internet porn, gestured to his wife in a manner clearly meant to indicate that she was responsible for seeing to it that her daughters behave themselves. Younger Starch pulled a little bottle out of her handbag and, after instructing the Ali Shah boys to admire the painting on the wall, hastily rubbed concealer over the pimple just above my eyebrow.
Oh, please Scotty, beam me up. I’d rather face Klingons than this.
‘So what did you major in at college?’ Murtaza said.
‘English,’ I replied, quite confident that he would be unable to follow up on that.
‘Really?’ Khurrum leant forward. ‘That was my minor.’
Older Starch distracted him with a plate of sandwiches, and Younger Starch said, ‘Murtaza studied World Politics.’
‘Whirled Polly Ticks.’ Khurrum made a spiralling motion with his finger.
‘The revolving parrot is really a bomb!’ I laughed back.
‘Khurrum, please go and call Kishwar. I need to know who will be at dinner tonight.’ Now Mother Ali Shah was getting in on the act. Attack from all quarters.
Khurrum raised his shoulders helplessly and disappeared from the room with a mobile phone.
‘Always Murtaza was standing up to his professors. Always!’ His mother beamed at me and nodded.
‘Really?’ said a Starch. ‘American professors?’
Murtaza nodded. ‘They’re all idiots there. When they talk about Pakistan, which they almost never do, they say such stupid things. One of them said our biggest problem is feudalism. Other than the usual rubbish about paying taxes, he said we treat the peasants badly. I made him look like such an idiot in front of the whole class.’
‘What did you say? Aliya, did you hear? He took on his professor.’
I smiled benignly at my aunt and hid behind a samosa.
‘I told him he should come to Pakistan. See how my family looks after the people on our lands. We’ve built medical facilities; every year we bring in someone from the cities to talk to the women about birth control; if anyone has a dispute they come to us and we resolve the situation without bribery or favouritism. And they are so grateful they want to kiss our feet. But we tell them they don’t have to do that. Then I said, “Professor, sir, has anyone ever tried to kiss your feet?” That really shut him up.’
‘Tell them what you said about cities,’ his mother urged.
‘Hanh. I also said the poor people on our lands are much better off than poor people in the city, who have to rely on the government for justice and medical care and things like that’
This was too much for me. ‘But you are the government! The National Assembly is teeming with landowners. Both on the government and the opposition benches. And incidentally, in all your talk of the largesse you provide to these benighted souls, you never mentioned education.’ Masood so often said he wanted to learn to read and write English, and I never even offered to teach him. Worse, the few scraps of English I threw in his direction were worthless words such as ‘thyme’.
Murtaza shook his head at me. ‘You citywallahs. You don’t understand. I thought at least you, because of your family background … For centuries your family ruled over its people with the same attitude as we have. What happened to you?’
‘Evolution.’
I would have won that point except that, just as I spoke, one of the Ali Shah girls whispered, quite audibly, to her sister, ‘Her cousin married the cook.’
How can I justify the shame I felt at that moment?
‘I should be going,’ I said, putting down my teacup quite calmly. ‘Only stopped in for a few minutes on my way to see Dadi. She’ll start worrying if I’m late. Nice to meet you all. No, no, no need to see me out.’
Khurrum was laughing on the phone, near the front door. ‘Going?’ he said. ‘No, not you, Kishwar. Hang on.’ He lowered the phone away from his ear. ‘But we haven’t even discussed Othello and cultural relativism.’
I put a hand on his arm. ‘Nice to know we’ve got people like you in the National Assembly.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, your vote’s frighteningly easy to come by. Are there more like you? Can you all register to vote in my district?’
‘Only if you treat me like any other voter and bribe me.’
‘I promise you a goat for a vote. See you at the wedding?’
I made some non-committal motion with my hand and opened the door. A hawk-nosed man was striding up the driveway and we nodded to each other as I exited and he entered.
‘Jahangir Bhai!’ I heard Khurrum say.
The Underpants Man? I turned round but the door had closed.
I got into my car and rested my head against the steering wheel.
What did he think of the whole Mariam-Masood affair? In four years we’d heard, either directly or second-hand, innuendoes and gossip and vicious conjecture aimed at Mariam, but none of it originated from Jahangir and, consequently, he’d acquired the status of a demi-god in our house.
He’d been unfailingly gracious right from the start, over four years ago, when Auntie Tano called him up to say that Aba and Mariam Apa were planning a trip to the town adjoining his lands to have a look at a mosque. ‘A mosque?’ Aba mouthed in horror as Auntie Tano chirped down the phone to Jahangir.
‘For architectural purposes,’ Auntie Tano added. ‘A client of Nasser’s wants the tiles of the outside wall replicated in his courtyard. So Nasser’s coming to have a look, and Mariam is going to sketch the tiles for the workmen in Karachi. They’re staying overnight. Do you know of any hotels … ?’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Jahangir said. ‘Tell them to stay with me. I’ll have my driver pick them up at the train station.’
It was that simple.
By the standard of the Ali Shahs, Jahangir was just a small landowner without the trappings of feudal power, but Aba was struck from the first by the deference of his servants.
‘It made me think that Masood must be a misfit here,’ Aba told me afterwards. ‘Oh, he was never anything but polite, but you always knew that he knew he could leave and get a job anywhere else if we crossed certain lines. Of course, maybe he couldn’t because of Mariam, but we never knew that.’
They arrived on Jahangir’s lands in the early evening, and before sunset Aba had forgotten his reservations about Jahangir, a man he’d been on nodding terms with for twenty years, but had never spoken to until that day.
‘He looked at Mariam when he talked. Didn’t act as though her silence meant she wasn’t part of the conversation. And he could interpret her gestures, her facial expressions, remarkably well. I thought, I really thought, maybe. But then dinner was served.’
When Aba told the story we all, all of us who’d ever eaten a meal prepared by Masood, put aside our reaction to the elopement to imagine, just for a moment, how it would feel to be in the presence of Masood’s food again. Aba, too, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, said, ‘Chicken vindaloo,’ and we all sighed.
‘Of course, you know my cook,’ Jahangir said. ‘I would say I regret taking him away from you, but you’d know that’s a lie.’
Mariam Apa did not fall upon the food as Aba had expected, given how long she’d been without eating. She brushed a hint of the vindaloo’s sauce on to her lower lip, and tucked the lip inside her mouth. She held it there for a few seconds, and then smiled. After that she ate with her customary delicacy, but her eyes were bright as she savoured each morsel, and when she finished her first helping she gasped at the incremental burn of the spices on her tongue.
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