Equal of the Sun (5 page)

After entering palace service, I had begun making friends and had asked those close to me to help me find out more about my father. Mahmood’s mother had been too young to remember him, and as a slave, she did not have connections to leading families who might know more. Khadijeh had asked Sultanam once on some excuse, but Sultanam knew nothing about what had happened. Balamani and Anwar had pleaded ignorance.

I had also tried to obtain access to the court histories to examine them for information about my father’s murder. Each time, I was told that a servant of my station was not permitted to lay eyes on confidential court documents. Years passed without progress. I had yearned to rise up through the ranks so that I would have access to powerful men who possessed the information I sought.

After Pari hired me, I went to the office of the royal scribes to introduce myself as the princess’s new chief of information. The scribes worked in a large room illuminated by light streaming through tall windows. The men sat upright on cushions, their wooden desks over their laps, or wrote on top of chests made of inlaid wood that contained their supplies. The room was as quiet as a grave. The reed pens the men used hardly made a sound. The scribes who wrote letters for the Shah worked side by side with court historians who documented every breath of importance in the realm.

I made the acquaintance of the head of the guild, a venerable old master named Rasheed Khan, who wore a black turban, a long white beard, and had wise eyes that looked red and tired from too
much close work. He was known for the clarity and beauty of his handwriting, and had trained many of the men who now worked for him.

My new employer has a scholarly bent, I told Rasheed. Once in a while, I might need to look at the court histories, perhaps even one currently being written about Tahmasb Shah’s long reign. Would that be a problem? Oh no, I was assured, any business required by the favorite daughter of the Shah would be treated with the utmost respect. All I would need was a note of permission written by Pari. Manuscripts could even be borrowed if she so wished, so long as they were not currently being worked on.

Praise be to God! The princess’s name worked like a magic spell.

In the middle of the night, there was an urgent tugging at my bedclothes, as if a jinni of ill fortune were disrupting my dreams. He was small, with large dark eyes and a crooked smile, and he would not let go. He tugged and tugged, and I batted his hand away, trying to lose myself in the blackness. But the tugging grew more insistent until I opened my eyes and, in the moonlight, perceived Massoud Ali, the nine-year-old errand boy Pari had placed in my service. His face was unwashed, and he hadn’t wrapped his head in the tiny turban that he was usually so proud to wear.

“Wake up! Wake up, by God above!”

I sat upright, tensed for attack. Balamani, who was a heavy sleeper, turned over on his bedroll in the small bedchamber we shared.

“What is it?”

Massoud Ali leaned close to my ear and whispered, as if it were too terrible a thing to say out loud, “Alas, the light of the universe has been extinguished. The Shah is dead.”

There was fear in his dark eyes.

“Balamani!” I called. He mumbled that I was the son of a dog and rolled over.

“Wake him gently,” I told Massoud Ali.

I threw off the bedclothes, slammed my arms into a robe, and shoved my hair inside my turban.

Tahmasb Shah, who had ruled for more than fifty years, dead? He who had survived several poisoning attempts and a grave illness that lasted nearly two years? It was as if Canopus had been extinguished, leaving all of us mariners struggling to navigate in darkness.

Only a few weeks before, the Shah had granted me the boon of serving his favorite daughter. “Do not forget, no other child is dearer to my eyes,” he had said, stabbing his finger at the air to emphasize his point. “You must swear to sacrifice your very life for hers if need be. Do you swear it?”

I rushed into the gardens near my quarters, which bloomed without shame in the early dawn. Birds sang in the cedar trees, and the purple and white petunias were in full flower. A wave of vertigo assailed me; everything at the palace would now change—the ministers, women, eunuchs, and slaves the new shah favored. What would happen to Pari? Would she retain her role as a favorite? And what would become of me? Who would survive?

I found Pari in a dim room illuminated by flickering oil lamps. Her eyes were red with weeping, and her face looked drawn and old. Two of her ladies, Maryam and Azar, attended to her, holding her hands and dabbing at the tears on her cheeks with a silk handkerchief.

“
Salaam aleikum,
esteemed lieutenant of my existence,” I said. “My heart sheds tears of blood over your loss. If I could take away the poison of your pain, I would consume it with as much joy as if it were halva.”

The princess beckoned me to approach her. “It is the worst heartbreak of my life. I accept your condolences with gratitude.”

“How could this have happened so quickly?”

Pari’s eyes looked like glass. “I went to his side yesterday evening as soon as I learned he had a fever,” she replied in a voice thick with grief. “He told me his problems had started at the hammam. After his manservant coated his lower limbs with a depilatory, he felt a stinging pain, but ignored it until he noticed that his legs had turned bloodred.”

How like the Shah to want his body to be spotless when it was time to pray.

“He leapt up from his bedroll and jumped into a pool. His manservant, who had been fetching sliced cucumbers, followed him into the water fully clothed, ripped off his turban, and used the cloth to wipe the sticky cream off my father’s legs. By then, they were already badly burned.”

“May God save us from harm!” I said.

Pari took a sip of her tea and cleared her throat. “Naturally, he suspected poison and instructed his chemists to examine the depilatory. His physician applied a soothing balm to his legs and told him he would recover. My father continued about his daily business, although he said his legs felt like poles of fire. By evening, he could no longer stand without agony, and he took to his bed. That is when he called for me.”

She took a long breath and sighed deeply, while her ladies murmured soothing words. “When I arrived, I applied cold compresses filled with rosemary to his forehead, but his fever continued to mount. In the darkest hours of the night, it was as if his brain were boiling like a stew. Before long, he lost his ability to speak or to reason. I prayed and tried to comfort him, but his crossing into the next world was racked with anguish.”

“Revered princess, no daughter could do more! May his soul be in peace.”

“For this I hope and pray.” Pari wiped the tears angrily from her cheeks. “If only I could just grieve!” she cried.

A look of understanding passed between us. If she had been anyone else, she would have visited her father’s grave site every day for forty days and watered it with an ocean of tears. But Pari did not have the luxury of woe; she must get to work on the succession. I pitied her.

Shortly after dawn prayers, I arrived at the mourning ceremony in Sultanam’s quarters, where the royal women had gathered to lament the loss of the Shah. The Shah’s first wife was known by her honorific,
which meant “my Sultan.” Her home had an open-air sitting area on the ground floor with views of the rose gardens, and the guest rooms were furnished with pink silk carpets and embroidered pink and white velvet cushions. Today the rooms were filled with the plaintive wails of the women.

I entered a large sitting room and put out my hands to accept the sprinkles of rose water offered to me by a servant. In the center of the room, an old woman seated cross-legged on a wooden platform was reciting the Qur’an from memory. The words flowed out of her so easily that I guessed she knew the entire blessed book by heart. The ladies seated on cushions on the floor around her wore black robes, and their hair was uncharacteristically loose on their shoulders, uncombed and wild. They wore no kohl on their eyes, no armbands, no earrings. Adornment was prohibited by grief, and its absence made them look more vulnerable than in their ordinary courtly attire.

Sultanam greeted a new arrival and accepted her condolences. Upright, she seemed to consume the space of two women. Her layered robes made her appear even wider than she was, despite her tiny feet and ankles, which looked too small to support her. Her curly white hair fanned out like a pyramid from her tea-colored face and slanted eyes, and it was easy to imagine her as a proud horsewoman of the Mowsellu tribe, which she had been long ago. Her face did not bear any of the puffiness that comes from sincere weeping, nor did tears well up spontaneously in her eyes. I imagined that nothing could be more joyous to her than the possibility that her son Isma‘il would be released from his confinement—and perhaps even crowned shah. But that was the kind of loyalty you would expect of a mother. Who knew if after nearly twenty years of prison, Isma‘il was fit to rule?

Close at hand was Sultanam’s plump maid, Khadijeh, whose face glowed like the moon. My heart sped up, but I forced myself to turn away as if she meant nothing to me.

The room was crowded with dozens of women who had been favored by the late Shah during his long life. His three other wives, Daka Cherkes, Sultan-Zadeh, and Zahra Baji, had claimed the best
places close to the reciter. Next came eight or nine adult daughters of the Shah and their children—too many to count—followed by several consorts and their children, and finally, a much larger circle of women who had never shared his bed.

Pari was sitting close to her mother, Daka Cherkes. The two women had wrapped their arms around each other, and their heads were leaning together in sympathy. Daka was known for having a mild and placating personality, quite the opposite of her daughter, whom she often tried unsuccessfully to rein in. Copious tears watered Daka’s cheeks, and I suspected she was concerned about what the Shah’s death would mean to Pari’s future.

Sultan-Zadeh, the Georgian mother of Haydar, began tearing at her fine camel-colored hair. The older women disliked her because she was one of the few who had ensnared the Shah’s heart, and they had done everything they could to thwart her attempts to gain status. No wonder the tears in her green eyes looked real.

Pari whispered something in her mother’s ear, arose, and disappeared down a corridor. I followed her into one of the side rooms, where women were comforting one another in smaller groups. My blood froze at the thought of the Shah lying silent and cold in his death room in the palace. Something started to loosen in my own breast, and I concentrated on quieting myself as I scanned the room. Pari was sitting with Maryam at her side. Her walled-in silence was far more awful than the shrieks and cries of sorrow from the others.

I crouched down beside her and whispered, “Lieutenant of my life, is there any service I can provide to you right now?”

“Watch them all in the main room,” she replied, “and when this terrible day is through report everything you have seen.”

The women in that room had not moved except to keen. But behind them, servants were whispering to one another as if bursting with news, and Balamani was talking to a slave; he had a disturbed look in his eye.

As the reciter’s voice rose high and sharp, the women filled the air with terrible moans, and the space grew hot and thick with the smell of rose water and sweat.

When Balamani stopped talking to the slave, I walked toward him softly. He didn’t notice, so I tugged his robe to get his attention. He jumped like a cat about to pounce, his big belly bouncing.

“It is me,” I said soothingly, “your doctor.”

The gray skin under his eyes looked darker than usual. He smiled slightly and said, “If only you could cure me this time.”

“I can see that something new ails you,” I replied.

“Ah, friend of mine, if only you knew what I know.”

I felt a twinge of disappointment that he had won this skirmish.

“What is it?”

“The succession.”

“Who will it be, then?”

“That is just it,” Balamani whispered, an edge of terror in his voice. “No one knows how to proceed.”