His men were sailors, but Khalifi had them move stone and mortar, and five times a day they paused in their labours to fall to their knees and pray. The people of the region stared at the men more than the mosque. What religion was this that demanded that a man think of God as punctuation marks to space the day? They stared at the men, puzzled, and promptly named them Anjuvanthanar—they who prayed five times a day.
Arabipatnam, the dream of the acolytes, became Arabipatnam, a living breathing city. Khalifi’s ship sailed back and forth and slowly more men arrived, bearing in the bellies of their ships a cargo that would fetch them the fine spices they wanted. Look at this, the traders said, touting their cargo: the finest of Arab horses. In our desert lands there is nothing more precious than these horses that stand sixteen hands high! Look at their coats, like satin. And see this mane …when you pleat it, it will rival the finest braid of silk!
The king of the region looked at the horses and the Anjuvanthanar. The lines of the horses matched the straight gaze of the men in their white robes. The king ordered a fleet of ten thousand horses and promised to fill the bellies of the ships with pepper, cardamom and ginger.
The horses arrived, and with them in the stables, the traders did a brisk business in saddles, bridles, stirrups and reins. Ten thousand Arab horses strengthened the king’s army all right, the Commander-in-chief said, but his men couldn’t ride. ‘What are we to do with the horses?’ he asked the leader of the Anjuvanthanar.
The leader sighed. He had his men, who rode the horses as well as the seas, teach the king’s men to ride and groom the beasts. Then the Anjuvanthanar left, promising to return when the monsoon winds could be harnessed again.
Ten thousand Egyptian Arab horses, all descended from the
purebred Keheilan. Each one a descendant of the horses that were part of the royal stables of the Pharaoh and so beloved to him that he, Ramses II, proclaimed: Henceforth these horses shall be fed before I am. Every day.
Ten thousand Egyptian Arab horses, each bearing the imprint of the creator in the line that ran from eye to nostril, mane flowing and tail carried high. The horses enchanted the king and his men. And such was the spell they cast that the soldiers, who had mounted no creatures apart from their women, now wouldn’t stay away from their saddles.
In the saddle, each soldier, no matter how puny or riddled by fear, knew a transformation. The power of horse muscles between his legs, the lordly height, the mastery over this being that was so light on its feet and yet so steady, devouring vast distances with no sign of fatigue, made him in his own mind a warrior prince. Blessed by the gods, untouched by the vagaries of destiny.
Ten thousand Egyptian Arab horses. In less than a year’s time, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine were dead. And the one that survived stood with its head hanging, maimed and lame.
The Anjuvanthanar couldn’t believe their ears. Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine horses dead! ‘How could you do this?’ their leader wept. ‘It grieves my heart that you have killed these horses. It grieves my heart more than any evil deed you could do.’
‘We did nothing wrong,’ the Commander-in-chief protested. ‘We fed them, groomed and rode them …and then they dropped dead. There is one horse left. Come see for yourself this wonderful specimen you saddled us with!’
The leader of the traders went to the stables. The stalls were haunted with ghostly neighing. In a stall stood a lone horse.
The leader crooned to it in Arabic. The horse limped towards him. The leader stroked its head and when the horse looked into his eyes as if to ask, why did you leave me and my kin here with these barbarians, his heart almost broke.
The leader fell to his knees to plead forgiveness of this magnificent beast and saw that the horse had just one shoe left.
He turned to the soldier who had gone with him and snapped, ‘You tell me that you cared for these horses, but all I see is neglect. Have your blacksmith shoe this horse.’
‘What shoe?’ the soldier asked. ‘Do horses wear shoes?’
‘Not real shoes, you imbecile kafir,’ the leader screamed in rage, in Arabic. ‘This,’ he said, pointing to the horse’s foot.
‘No one here would know how to do this,’ the soldier said.
Then it dawned on the leader that nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine horses had been ridden to ground by these moronic men who didn’t know that horses had to be shod.
He sought an audience with the king. ‘Send a few of your men with us and we’ll teach them how to shoe horses, our Arab horses,’ he added as an afterthought.
The king stared at the ceiling and then at a point beyond the leader’s ear. He scratched the side of his nose and tugged at a lock of his hair. The king didn’t like being forced into decisions. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of sending his men away to a distant land. God knows what new ideas they would come back with. He thought for a while and said, ‘That will be impossible. It is a sin for us to cross the seas. Send us a few of your men instead and let them teach mine how to shoe horses.’
Who would want to come here, the leader wondered. Who would agree to do so? Then he thought of the Prophet’s teaching: Every man must love his horse. He thought of the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dead horses and the sole maimed survivor. The spectre of a fleet of horses would haunt him forever, he thought, and agreed.
The men arrived a few months later. Their nostrils, almost as fine as the horses’, flared at what they saw. Their eyes, used to the poetry of the circles that formed when the wind raised the sand, the rise and fall of the dunes as they stretched to the horizon, were distressed by this flat brown land that was pock-marked with shrivelled bushes; here and there, like hair on a fourteen-year-old’s chin stood a scraggly tree. And worse were the people. Kafirs with skin as dark as coal, and emitting a bodily odour that was unlike anything they had smelt before. Even their homes bore the same reek.
‘We must live apart,’ they told the leader. ‘In a place where we can recreate a semblance of home.’
‘Yes, you must,’ the leader agreed. ‘I shall ask the king for some land near the Juma. You will be a kingdom within a kingdom.’
The men smiled. They liked the thought of a kingdom within a kingdom. Then one who wasn’t as shy as the others voiced aloud what was on all their minds. ‘It is imperative that we remain who we are. But we are men, men with male needs. What are we to do about that?’
The weary leader offered vast treasures as meher and women were found to satiate masculine needs. Brides for those who had no wives, and second wives for married men whose wives showed no inclination to share their husbands’ lust for adventure.
So the ship anchored again and this time in its belly were women. Each one light-skinned and with pale, kohl-rimmed eyes, sometimes brown and sometimes grey. With henna burnishing their hair and the fragrance of roses trailing their every step, the women enchanted the men, who felt their hearts fill with a wild happiness. Soon the men discovered that the natives were just as enchanted by the women and so was laid down the first rule of Arabipatnam: No strangers allowed within these walls.
Then, because by nature they were cautious, the men told their women, ‘None of you shall go out unless we are with you.’
‘We are far way from our homes. We have no one but each other. How can you deny us the little pleasure and comfort we find in each other’s company,’ the women wailed.
The men allowed themselves to be persuaded. For a while they let their women venture out, until one man caught his mate looking at another man’s wife. Thus came the second rule: ‘No man may look at a woman unless she is his wife, sister, mother or daughter. If a woman comes in his path, he must turn his back on her and let her pass.’
But what male eye can impose such curbs on itself? Not to gaze at the delicate patterns of henna on a palm, or feel a certain heat when an upraised arm contours a breast? Not to raise your eyes to trail the tinkle of an anklet bell nor feel the need to caress the curve of buttocks swinging this way and that under the confines of a skirt?
The leader, on his next trip to Arabipatnam, laughed himself silly. ‘You are becoming as moronic as these kafirs. In the beginning you were just blacksmiths, but now you are merchants. How do you expect to be successful traders when you are as blinkered as pack horses?’
‘What do we do then?’
‘Build alleyways for the women to use, connecting a side door or a kitchen door. The men will use the main entrances and the streets. The women will keep to the alleys. That way, they have their freedom and you yours. And what is this about “No strangers allowed here”? Won’t you allow my sons to come here after my time? To this town that I founded?’
‘Besides,’ the leader continued, ‘this is a growing community. We will need more and more supplies. Food, clothes, shoes. How are we going to get these if no strangers are allowed in here?’
The men looked at one another in dismay. They hadn’t thought of this eventuality.
‘Rules are necessary. I agree we must segregate and protect what is our own. But I suggest we amend this one to “No strangers allowed beyond the Juma during the day and none may stay the night.” You can then choose who you invite into your home,’ the leader said, listing the rules on a piece of parchment.
The rule was amended and the alleyways for women made. Two feet wide and paved with stone, these alleyways snaked through the town, connecting kitchen smells and bruised hearts.
It was here, hemmed in by the alleys, that Saadiya, good girl, descendant of those ancient Kahirs and daughter of the leader of Arabipatnam, waited.
Would he arrive on a stallion, like the prince in the stories Vaapa told her? Or would he sail in with a cargo of rubies, blue sapphires and emeralds, like the incomparable Malik?
He would come, that much she knew.
And so he did. On a bicycle.
Early in the evening, the water carts entered the high gates of Arabipatnam. Behind them came the two men, the doctor leading the way.
‘Wait here,’ he told Seth, leaning his bicycle against a wall. ‘I will tell them we have arrived.’
Sethu watched Dr Samuel walk towards a small mosque. He looked around him curiously.
Shops lined the road, and in the shops and on the road were many people, all dressed in white. Even the little boys playing a game on one side of the road wore white and on their heads were skullcaps
of white lace. When a jhutka went past, the pony, he saw, was adorned with white plumes. Sethu felt a smile tug at his lips. It was as if by entering the gates of Arabipatnam he had entered a storybook, where all was strange and echoed mystery. He felt a frisson of excitement and on the heels of it he realized that there wasn’t a single female in sight—child, girl or woman.
Where were all the women?
Saadiya stared at the square of blue above her head. Twenty feet by thirty feet. That was the measure of her sky, the peripheries of her life. She touched the grey walls of the terrace roof. Even if she stood on her toes, she couldn’t look over the wall. It stood a solid six feet and two inches high, making sure she would never see what was not meant for her eyes, ensuring that she was not visible to anyone. Saadiya felt what was by now a familiar sense of despair. Would she, like her sisters and every other woman born here, live and die hidden by these walls? Was there never to be a way out from here?
She raised her eyes to the blue skies again. In Vaapa’s recounting of history, he spoke of the Marakars—the navigators who had sailed the blue seas and found their way here. ‘It is their blood that runs in our veins. Do you understand that? We are of pure Arab stock …not like these local “tulkans” who are Hindu converts. We are the descendants of the Prophet himself and it is our duty to safeguard the bloodline,’ he said again and again.
Saadiya wanted to cry, ‘But Vaapa, don’t you see, if it is their blood that runs in our veins, then it is inevitable, the way I feel. There is a singing in my head that says, there is so much to see, so much to do, so much to know. It isn’t fair that you men get to go wherever you want, see and do whatever you like, and I am expected to be content with this patch of blue and this maze of alleys.’
But Saadiya would never speak her thoughts. She was too much in awe of her father, her venerable Vaapa Haji Najib Masood Ahmed, one of the six chiefs of the town and its most respected man. How could she tell him what was right and wrong?
Besides, Vaapa had been lenient enough with her. Her three elder sisters had been married off when they were thirteen. But here she was, fifteen and unmarried, and she even had a tutor who taught her Arabic. Vaapa was waiting for Akbar Shah’s second son to return
from Hong Kong to fix her nikaah.
Saadiya knew that the house next to theirs had already been bought and the deed made in her name. The workers had been brought in to make the repairs and when her groom arrived, she would be decked in her jewellery and wed to a man she had never seen. Her life would go on as it always had. Even the alley she used would be the same. The only change would be that she would exchange her patch of blue for a smaller one. Her new house wasn’t as big as her father’s.