Equal of the Sun (4 page)

The princess’s home was located behind high walls. I knocked, and when the door was opened by a servant, I stepped into a courtyard filled with the invigorating scent of pine. A long fountain led the way to a small but elegant building decorated with yellow and white tiles patterned with interlocking hexagons. After entering the house through a carved wooden door, I was escorted right away into Pari’s
birooni,
the formal rooms in which she greeted visitors. To my surprise, her staff had already assembled. Dozens of eunuchs and errand boys stood in order of rank awaiting her command, and maids moved in and out soundlessly with trays of tea. I was struck by the taut air of discipline in the room, so different from what I had experienced when serving Mahmood’s mother.

“Javaher, you are late,” Pari said. “Come in and let’s get to our business.” She indicated the place where I should stand and frowned, her coal-black eyebrows darkening her forehead.

Pari’s birooni was more austere than any of the other women’s, who often competed with one another by adding lavish touches to their quarters. She sat on a cushion atop a large dark blue carpet, but rather than displaying golden songbirds or gardens of flowers, it was illustrated with mounted princes pursuing onagers, zebras, and gazelles, as well as bowmen aiming their arrows at lions. In alcoves lay neatly placed reed pens, ink, paper, and books.

A latticed wall at one end of the room permitted Pari to receive male visitors to whom she was not related. A young man in a blue velvet robe was standing on the other side of the lattice. We could see him through the lattice, but he couldn’t see us.

“Majeed, I am pleased to introduce my new chief of information, Javaher Agha,” Pari said, adding the title used for eunuchs. I had asked around about her vizier and learned that Majeed was young but destined for high service. He was from an old Shiraz family, which, like mine, had served the court for generations.

“Majeed is my liaison to the nobles of the court,” Pari added. “Javaher, you are my liaison to the world of women, both inside and outside the palace, as well as to places where Majeed’s nobility would not permit him to go without being detected.”

She might have said the same thing about my own nobility, had my father not been accused of treason and killed. The old shame of it brought heat to my cheeks, and I bristled with the urge to prove myself the better servant.

“Javaher, you will observe me at work. I will deploy you later once you understand what I do.”

“Chashm, gorbon,”
I replied, the short form of “by my eyes, I would sacrifice myself for you.”

For the rest of the morning, I watched Pari attend to routine business. Her first task was to check on the progress of the annual celebrations at the palace of the life of Fatemeh, beloved daughter of the Prophet. Women schooled in religion must be hired, food prepared, and rooms decorated. Then one of the Shah’s eunuchs arrived to ask Pari how to process an unusual document because no one else could remember the protocol. The princess rattled off the order of the necessary signatures and named the men who must provide them, without even looking up from the document she was signing. Next, Pari read through a stack of messages and suddenly burst out laughing.

“Listen to this,” she commanded us.

    
Princess, I wrote forty-eight sparkling lines about your dad

    
You said you liked them: Are you in fact mad?

    
If not, please send me what you pledged

    
A rain of silver to keep me and my children fed.

    
I humbly beg you to deliver what is overdue

    
Then I will pen more dazzling gems for you.

“Who could resist such a plea? Go to the head of the treasury and make sure the court poet is paid at once,” she ordered Majeed.

In the afternoon, Pari held her usual public hours and saw palace women with a variety of requests: donations for the upkeep of a
saint’s shrine, positions at court requested for relatives, the need for more tutors. At the end of a long day, the princess agreed to see an out-of-town petitioner, even though she was tired and the woman was described to her as unfit for royal company.

The woman was shown into the room holding a sleeping baby, whose breath rasped when it exhaled. Her purple cotton robe was tired from days of journey. Her feet had been bound with dirty rags. My heart filled with pity at the sight of this friendless pair.

The woman bowed deeply and took her place on the visitor’s cushion. She told Pari that her name was Rudabeh and that she had come all the way from Khui, not far from the border with the Ottomans. Her husband had divorced her and banished her from the home she had inherited from her father; he claimed it was his. She wanted it back.

“I am sorry to hear of your troubles,” Pari said, “but why didn’t you take your case to one of the Councils of Justice that aid citizens with disputes?”

“Revered princess, we went to the Council in my town, but the members are friends of my husband, and they said I had no claim. I had no choice but to appeal to someone here in the capital. I came to you because I heard that you are a protector of women.”

Pari quizzed her on the details of her loss until she was convinced that the woman had a strong case. “Very well, then. Javaher Agha, you must escort our guest to a Council of Justice so that she may present her problem, and tell them I sent her.”

“Chashm,” I said. “The next meeting is in a week.”

“Have you any money or any place to stay?” Pari asked.

“I have a few coins,” the woman replied gravely, “and I will make do,” but as she glanced down at her drowsy child, her eyes filled with fear.

“Javaher, take this mother to my ladies and ask them to shelter her and give her plenty of fresh herbs so that milk flows for her child.”

“Thanks be to God for your generosity!” Rudabeh exclaimed. “If I may ever assist you, I would gladly offer my eyes to cushion the steps of your feet.”

“It is my pleasure. After you return home, write to me and tell me all the news of Khui.”

“I promise to be your faithful correspondent.”

When I had first joined palace service, a eunuch from the Malabar coast of Hindustan asked to train me. Balamani was a charcoal-skinned fellow with a big belly and dark circles under his wise old eyes who spent his day in casual conversation with maidservants, gardeners, physicians, and even messenger boys. He had an easy laugh and an avuncular manner that made his people feel that he cared about them. That is how he learned everything about the day-to-day news of the palace: who was jealous of whom, who was in line for promotion, and who was on his way out. His informants would tell him about things like the bloody contents of a noble’s chamber pot long before anyone else realized the man was dying. Balamani’s currency was information, and he traded it like gold.

Balamani told me to memorize the
Tanassour,
a book that listed the proper titles used to address every type of man. I had to learn that
mirza
placed after a man’s name, as in Mahmood Mirza, indicated that he was a prince of royal blood, whereas
mirza
used before a man’s name was merely an honorific. When I made mistakes, Balamani sent me back to the book: “Otherwise the nobles will flay your back until it resembles a red carpet.”

Once I knew how to address all the palace inhabitants, Balamani taught me the art of gathering information from them in such a clever way that I appeared to be dispensing it, as well as how to pay for it when necessary and how to use it as political capital. “You have no jewels between your legs or on your fingers,” he said once, “so make sure to acquire currency in your mind.”

Balamani called every bit of information a “jewel”—
javaher
—and asked me daily if I had any for him. The first time I offered a gem to Balamani, I earned my nickname. After shadowing an errand boy who served one of the Shah’s ministers, I discovered that
he was delivering messages to an unsavory book dealer. It turned out that the minister was trying to sell a priceless gold-illuminated manuscript he had intercepted before it reached the court treasury. When Balamani informed the Shah, the minister was dismissed, the book dealer was disciplined, and I was reborn with a new name. “Javaher” was normally used for women, but it became my badge of honor.

I loved and respected Balamani like a favorite uncle. Now that he was older, I nursed him when he had bladder complications, probably due to the removal of his male parts, which caused a susceptibility to painful infections. I also did his work when he was too sick to do it himself. As second in command to Anwar, the African eunuch in charge of the harem, he had plenty to do.

Working for Pari, I used all I had learned from Balamani to forge deeper connections with people close to the women of the royal household—maids, ladies, and eunuchs. Of special interest to the princess were those wives and consorts of the Shah who had adult sons. She wished to know their aspirations for their boys, particularly if they sought to place them on the throne.

One afternoon, I returned from an errand and chanced upon Pari and her uncle, Shamkhal Cherkes, talking quietly together. Shamkhal was an unusually big man, broad of shoulder, with large hands and forearms the width of a mace. His face was sun-browned from riding, and when he talked, thick muscles bulged in his neck. His enormous blue and white turban, fashioned of two fabrics twined together, made him appear even bigger than he was. Pari looked as fine as a vase next to him, as if she had a different maker altogether.

“. . . prepared for what happens after . . .” I heard Pari saying.

Pari began naming kinsmen and Shamkhal replied either “with us” or “not with us.” A few times, he said, “I don’t know.”

“Why not?” asked Pari each time, until finally she became exasperated and said, in a tone that brooked no argument, “We must know these things or we will fail.”

“I promise to have more information the next time I see you.”

His deference toward her surprised me.

A few days later, I found a way to ask Pari about which man she
planned to support for the throne. I told the princess that I had been hearing rumors about how Sultanam, the Shah’s first wife, had been searching for a suitable wife for her son Isma‘il, even though he was imprisoned. She suspected that Isma‘il’s lack of male children might be the result of a curse placed by enemies, and she had been consulting herbalists about how to open the gates of his luck.

Pari drank in this news. “Good work.”

“The speculation is that she intends to make him the next Shah,” I added.

“So does every mother of a prince. We will have to wait and see. But we must be ready.”

“For what?”

“For whatever happens, so we can rally behind whomever my father designates as heir. The nobles have shown themselves to be divided, and I want to avoid another civil war at all costs.”

“How will you do that?”

“By making sure that the heir gets all the help he needs to be successfully crowned shah.”

“And who is that?”

“My father hasn’t announced his selection.”

“Some say Haydar is the best man,” I said, trying to gauge her reaction, “although he has lived all his life in the palace.”

“He is untested.”

“And some think Isma‘il is better, because he was such a brave warrior.”

Pari’s eyes were sad. “He was my hero when I was young. My heart has ached for him in his exile. None of the royal family has been permitted to write to him or receive his letters, except for his mother.”

“Do you think he would govern well after an absence of so many years?”

“Choosing an heir is my father’s concern,” Pari replied sharply. “Ours is to ensure that a strong network of supporters is in place well before it is needed. Do you understand?”

“Yes, esteemed lieutenant,” I answered, “but I would have thought you might advocate for your brother, Suleyman.”

Pari’s mouth flattened. “I am not a sentimentalist. He is no match for the men he would have to rule.”

So Pari was planning a decisive role in the succession! I suspected that a large batch of letters she had recently sent were intended to rally support, but for whom?

For me, it wasn’t merely a matter of curiosity. If Pari’s star fell with the Shah’s death, mine would plummet.