While we were chewing the leaf, she asked us boldly whether she could have the privilege of sharing our couch for the night. We were a little taken aback. But it was not for nothing that it was said of our Mughal ancestors that they could take women till the last day of their lives. Though little else remained of our inheritance no one could deprive us of our ancestral blood. At the age of seventy we had run a
nilgai
across a boulder-strewn hillside and sliced its head off with our sword.
Allah had given our loins the same strength as He had bestowed on our arms. It was not the years but the holy law that set our head and heart at variance with each other. She read the conflict in our eyes. She assured us that the
shariat
provided for dispensation in times of stress, and since we had launched on a holy war, a little indiscretion would be forgiven us. In her sweet coquettish voice she recited Hafiz:
Do not sit one moment without your love or wine
For these are days of celebration, roses and jasmine.
So fragrant was the smell of her mouth, so great the warmth of invitation of her soft, fleshy hips that despite our eighty-two years, and the tumult of the long day, we banished fatigue from our limbs. We replied in the words of the very poet whose lines she had recited:
O how many vows of repentance are undone
By the smile of wine and the tresses of a girl?
We took a large spoonful of the aphrodisiac that Hakeem Ahsanullah had prepared for us. A little later we took our begum with the same passion with which we had consummated our first union. When we had finished our business, we again quoted Hafiz to convince her that we did not regret what we had accomplished:
I do not restrain desire
Until my desire is satisfied
Or until my body touches hers,
Or my soul from my body goes.
When I am dead, open my tomb,
You will see my heart on fire
And my shroud in smoke.
Thus like young lovers we lay in each other’s arms with nothing save the hairs of our bodies between us. We were roused from our slumbers by the firing of cannon. Zeenat Mahal opened her large almond-shaped eyes and was overcome with shyness. She quickly dressed and asked: ‘Who is firing guns at this hour of the night?’ She began to count the reports. ‘One, two, three...twenty-one,’ she said finally. ‘A salute to the Emperor of Hindustan. Permit your maidservant to be the first to pay Your Majesty homage.’ She bowed,
salaamed
thrice and glided out of the room.
We took our pen and put the final touches to a poem we had been composing for some weeks:
In love it’s not the loss of peace
Or patience that I mourn.
Love’s sorrow has become my friend
When other friends I have forsworn.
‘Tis a thousand wonders that even now
The cup-bearer brings not jug and wine,
Knowing the days of pleasure, the rounds of mirth
Not forever last upon this earth.
Of myself nothing did I know
But others’ good and bad I knew
Then fell my eye upon my evil deeds
Remained none so evil in my view.
With the dazzling glory of the Sun
Today, after many days, she came.
All calm and patience did I lose
Not all her shyness did her restrain.
O Zafar! know him not as a man
However clever, wise, benign
Who in pleasures’ pursuit forgets his God
In anger’s passion wrath divine.
So was the candle of our hope lit in the gale of fortune. So did we launch our frail and ageing bark upon the stormy seas of Hindustan.
*
In youth the slumber that follows the night of love is oblivious of the progress of the sun. What use is it to the days that are past? We were roused by a gong striking the midnight hour. We rose from our beloved’s couch with the weight of our years heavy in our limbs. We went to the mosque, performed our ablutions and said the
isha
prayer craving Allah’s forgiveness for transgressing the rules of Ramadan.
We continued to sit in the mosque for some time. The moon was directly over our head. The marble courtyard was as cold as the snows of the Himalayas. We recalled that it was in the third week of Ramadan that the Almighty had summoned our Prophet (on Whom be peace) and charged him with His divine mission. We recited
sura
96, the first that Allah transmitted to the world:
Recite: In the name of your Lord who created,
Created man from a clot.
Recite: And your Lord is most generous,
Who taught by the pen,
Taught man what he does not know.
No, but man is rebellious
Because he sees himself grown rich.
Indeed the return is to your Lord.
We had a strange feeling that Allah heard our prayer and forgave us. We left the mosque with a lighter heart and were able to get a few hours of restful sleep.
We were up before any of our servants had risen and went to the octagonal tower to spend some moments with ourselves. It was then that the enormity of the events that had taken place the day earlier came crowding into our mind. Had we acted rightly? Were we master of our destiny? Or a mere puppet in the hands of some wilful puppeteer?
We penned the following lines:
We are caught in the whirligig of time
Gone are sleep and life of ease
Death is certain, that we know
At dawn or dusk our life may cease.
The mirror of our mind was not clear. We were King only by title. We lived in a palace which was once said to be the most beautiful in the world; it was now a palace only in name. And even that was to be denied to our sons. We had been informed that on our demise (would that Allah send for us soon!) our family would be asked to quit the Red Fort. The
firangi
had given us only a drop out of the ocean of fortune that our great ancestors had bequeathed to us; we accepted that drop and called it a tribute. What other word can one use for what is owed to an emperor? But the
firangi
insisted it was a pension. An emperor a pensioner of his subjects!
One after another the great kingdoms of Hindustan (at one time all vassals of our great ancestors) were swallowed up by the
firangi
. He spared neither friend nor foe. Only a few months ago the great house of Oudh which had befriended the
firangi
was by the
firangi
deprived of its dominion. And before Oudh there were Nagpur and Jhansi and Satara and Tanjore and Murshidabad and Karnatak.
The holy book says: ‘God does not love the oppressors.’ No one could oppress the poor as did the
firangi
because he even interfered with matters of faith. For him religion made no distinction between clean and unclean flesh. He was allowed to eat both cows and pigs. But what right had he to order our Hindu and Muslim soldiers to put cartridges smeared with the fat of cows and pigs in their mouths? Did we need more to prove that he meant to despoil both Islam and Hinduism and make everyone Christian? His
padres
vilified the name of our Holy Prophet and the sacred
Quran
. What did a man live for except his faith and the honour of his name? What lived after a man died but his name? We put our trust in God. It is rightly said: ‘What fear of the waves of the sea has he whose pilot is Noah!’
Then there was the vexing question of our succession. Our beloved Zeenat Mahal was anxious that Mirza Jawan Bakht, born of the conjunction of our groins, should be nominated in preference to the elder Mirza Dara Bakht. The Governor-General refused to take our advice. Allah in His divine wisdom took Shah Rukh then Mirza Dara Bakht as well. It was after we had lost these two sons that we gave in to Zeenat Mahal’s pressure and forwarded the claim of Mirza Jawan Bakht. Once again the Governor-General brushed aside our advice and recognized another of our many sons, Mirza Fakhroo.
Fakhroo was bribed to sign an agreement whereby he would give up the Red Fort for a small pension. Then Allah sent for Mirza Fakhroo as well. After Allah deprived us of three of our sons, the
firangi
proclaimed his intention of depriving our successors of the fort and palace—and our successor, whoever it would be, of even the title of His Majesty. ‘O Zafar, this rule is but for thy lifetime; after thee there will be no heir nor name to the kingdom for anyone to rule.’ So eager was the
firangi
to shorten our sojourn on earth that once when we were ill he posted his own guard at the palace gates. We were constrained to write to the President: ‘Honourable Sir, are we not to be accorded the privilege of dying in peace? Do you suspect our corpse will rise up in arms against you?’
Saadi had so rightly said: ‘
Ten dervishes
may sleep under the same blanket but no country can hold two kings.’ We have the same saying in Hindustani: ‘A country can no more have two rulers than a scabbard hold two swords’ It had to be us or the
firangi
. This was clear to us.
We summoned a council of princes, noblemen and representatives of the sepoys. We advised them to reorganize the administration and draw up plans to expel the foreigners from our domains. The Council chose our elder son, Mirza Mughal, to be supreme Commander. Mirza Abu Bakr who was most eager to draw his sword was made a colonel.
After business was finished we sent for Hassan Askari. Askari was a
dervish
who, as it is said, had ‘deeply plunged his head in the cowl of meditation and had been immersed in an ocean of vision.’ He was possessed of eyes that could peer into the future. He lived in Daryaganj in the house of our lately departed daughter, Nawab Begum. While we awaited the
dervish
we ordered the daily papers to be read to us. The
Delhi
Urdu News, Siraj-ul-Akhbar and Sadik-
ul-
Akhbar
had eyewitness accounts of the explosion of the arsenal at Kashmiri Gate with the names of the hundreds of martyrs who had fallen in the attempt to capture it. We asked if the English newspaper,
Delhi
Gazette
, had written anything on the subject. Our newspaper reader informed us that there was no issue of the
Gazette
as its English staff had been slain and only one man, an American who had accepted Islam, had been spared. We heard all this without making any observation and dismissed the newspaper reader.
Hassan Askari was ushered in. We rose to receive him. He was a man of God. He had also petitioned Allah to take twenty years of his life and add them to ours. We seated him beside us on our couch and asked him what he felt about the storm that was blowing over our city. The
dervish
hoarded his words as a miser hoards gold. He shut his eyes and began telling the beads of his rosary. After a few minutes he raised his face to the ceiling, brushed his beard with both his hands and exclaimed:
‘Shukr Allah! Shukr Allah!’
We became impatient and implored him: ‘
Dervish
Sahib, you who read the future in the book of destiny, tell us what fate has in store for us?’
The
dervish
pointed to the sky and replied, ‘Only Allah knows the future. I am dust under the feet of the faithful. Occasionally I have glimpses into the mirror of time.’
He fell silent again and resumed telling his beads. We entreated him again: ‘In the name of Allah, look into the mirror of the future and loosen your tongue. Do not torture this poor man any more.’
At last the
dervish
spoke: ‘Your Majesty may recall my dream of the flood engulfing everything save the throne of the Mughals.’
‘Indeed we do!’
‘At the time we had interpreted it as presaging the invasion of Hindustan by the Persians or the Russians. Now we know that the flood has risen from within Hindustan itself. It will drown the enemies of Your Majesty’s dynasty. Only the peacock throne will be borne above the floods.’ (Although the peacock throne had been taken away by Nadir Shah over a hundred years ago, our people continued to speak of the wooden stool covered with silver leaf which was now our throne as the peacock throne.)
‘
Ameen! Ameen!’
We exclaimed. ‘Allah will surely fulfil the prophecy of those beloved of Him!’
We asked him of the prospect of the Persian army coming to our aid in the crusade against the
firangi
. He assured us that the armies of Islam were ever eager to measure swords with the Nazarene. The
dervish
told us of the birth of triplets to a Hindu woman in Hauz Qazi. The girls spoke immediately on birth. The first said: ‘The coming year will be one of great calamities.’ The second said: ‘Those who will live will see.’ The third said: ‘If Hindus burn Holi in the present season they will escape all these evils. God alone is omniscient.’ The Hindus, said
dervish
Askari, were burning Holi fire now instead of the usual time at the end of winter.
We thanked Hassan Askari and requested him to continue praying for us. We pressed a gold
mohur
in his hand, and before he could protest, walked away to our harem.
*
We were anxious to tell Zeenat of what the
dervish
had told us. She dismissed her visitors and maidservants. ‘The
dervish
Hassan Askari was here,’ we said. We paused to heighten her sense of expectancy.
‘And he told Your Majesty of his dream of the flood. And the Hindus lighting Holi fires. And the three girls who began talking as soon as they were born. Your slave should also be given a gold
mohur
for predicting the end of the Nazarene and the restoration of the Mughal dynasty,’ Zeenat said.