Authors: Indu Sundaresan
A woman stood on the highest terrace of the mansion and looked out over the broad, sandy expanse of the Ravi River. She had an erect bearing, a mass of black hair untouched by gray, the blue eyes of her Persian father, an enviably unlined face, even though she was approaching her sixth decade and had lived a sometimes turbulent and always rushed life. It was in her hands, clasped in front of her, that time showed, in fine wrinkles at the knuckles and the hardening of veins along the backs. She spent most of her time thus, in contemplation of the scenery around her—the fields heavy and green with winter wheat, the dormant waters, the walls of the fort etched against the horizon. Here she had stood a few days ago, watching the skies smudge with brown as Emperor Shah Jahan’s entourage ended its long journey from Agra and arrived at the fort. The dirt had settled over one long day and one night as every segment of the eight-mile-long caravan came to a halt, as mansions were claimed again by the noblemen, as the merchants set up ramshackle shops within the city, as the women of pleasure found houses for hire and the army erected tents and encampments. The woman felt a twinge of pain in her chest and laid a hand over her ribs. Once, she would have been at the center of it all. The welcome would have been for her, the
zenana
would have hummed with her orders, at night she would have laid her tired head on her husband’s shoulder and slept, listening to his breathing, knowing that, when she woke, the world would still be hers to command. And now, she thought, a sardonic smile twisting the still-present beauty of her face, she had lived for six long years here outside the gardens she had constructed, where she oversaw the building of her husband’s mausoleum in Dilkusha.
A movement, more a blot of dust, caught her attention in the far distance near the fort, and she raised a hand to shade her eyes, even though the sun was westerly this late in the afternoon and behind her. Yes, someone had left the walled city and was proceeding toward the river’s bank, and, if that was indeed true, then they could only be headed here. Another visitor, she thought with some irony; she was not allowed at court, but in the few short days that the court had been at Lahore, she had already received one member from it.
“Hoshiyar,” she said.
Her eunuch came to stand by her side, gazing beyond her pointing finger. “I see, your Majesty. I wonder which one of Emperor Shah Jahan’s children it will be. Not the Emperor himself”—and here he chuckled lightly—“there are too few guards, but enough to make me suspect that she comes from the
zenana.
Which one?”
“Jahanara, I think,” Mehrunnisa said. She hesitated, and then the words came diffidently from her. “Do you miss court life, Hoshiyar?”
He rewarded her with another laugh. Hoshiyar Khan had been the head eunuch of Emperor Jahangir’s harem when Mehrunnisa entered it as a twentieth wife. He was not that much older than she, ten years at the most, though he did not know or care about his age and was not given to talking about it. But he had established himself as paramount in the women’s quarters and, with an inner determination, had attached himself to one of Emperor Jahangir’s wives—Empress Jagat Gosini, mother of Emperor Shah Jahan—and been her helper, her guide, her mentor in all matters in the
zenana.
And then, in 1611, twenty-five years after Emperor Jahangir had married Jagat Gosini, Mehrunnisa had stepped into the harem and wrested power away from her. She had known, from a long association with the
zenana
’s affairs, that she would never be omnipotent in that world of women unless she had the support of the two principal men in it—her husband and Hoshiyar Khan. He had known this too and had disappeared one day from Jagat Gosini’s chambers and presented himself to the woman whom his Emperor loved beyond everything in the world, steadfastly and for the rest of his life, for Jahangir had married Mehrunnisa when he was forty-three years old and she an aged thirty-four. It was a love that was bound to endure.
“Do you, your Majesty?” he asked now, tenderly.
“I miss the Emperor,” she said. “And perhaps if Shahryar had been a little less of a dimwit and become sovereign after his father, I might have had a place at court. But this”—and she gestured behind her, not meaning the mansion in which she lived but the mausoleum beyond it in the Dilkusha garden—“is where I am now meant to be.”
“Come,” Hoshiyar said, leading her in, “we must prepare for our distinguished guest. She has courage, that little one, to step out of the harem and come to visit you—her father would be horrified if he were to hear of it.”
“And we both know that he probably will,” Mehrunnisa said. “I must confess that I have longed to see this child. I know her brothers well from all the time they spent at the court as surety against their father’s further rebellions, but the girls, they are an enigma, one, I think, already a little clearer as Jahanara nears.”
By the time Princess Jahanara arrived at the dwelling of her grandaunt Mehrunnisa, Empress Nur Jahan, the cool winter night had flung its cloak over the city of Lahore and the village of Shahdara. In Mehrunnisa’s apartments, coal braziers wrought in silver and gold sent perfumed smoke to eddy around the room and warm the air. Mehrunnisa received the princess seated on a silk divan at the very edge of the room and forced her to enter at the far end and walk the length of the room on the thick white Persian carpets so that she could study her leisurely. Jahanara came through the door without hesitation, but as she reached Mehrunnisa, she stopped, bent down, and performed the
chahar taslim
with a graceful hand.
“
Al-salam alekum,
your Majesty,” she said.
“
Walekum al-salam,”
Mehrunnisa replied, and beckoned with her finger. “Come here, child, and kiss me.”
When Jahanara had done so, putting cool lips against her cheek, the older woman held her back and looked into her face. She had strength, Mehrunnisa thought—courage, yes, they had already established that, but also a streak of stubbornness in that firm chin and that upright neck and that balanced gaze. And . . . something else . . . some sorrow that flickered in those eyes.
“You have the look of your mother,” Mehrunnisa said. “She was always a pretty child and an exquisite woman, but I think you have your father’s tenacity. How does he enjoy being Emperor?”
“Very much” was Jahanara’s impudent reply, and Mehrunnisa felt a smile bloom inside her, which she stifled. “We all do, thank you.”
Now Mehrunnisa had to laugh, and she did, a rich sound that echoed off the walls and caused Jahanara’s solemn face to lighten.
“Are you well, your Majesty?” Jahanara asked.
The manner in which it was said was not patronizing, but the question itself undoubtedly was—the condescending concern of a Padshah Begam for a displaced member of the
zenana
—and Mehrunnisa felt herself bristle. Ten years ago, she would have reacted, but time and age had given her a wisdom she could well have used during the battle for succession, Mehrunnisa thought, and then perhaps this girl would have been just that—a child to be petted and looked after, and not the premier woman of her father’s
zenana.
What a curious state of affairs this was. Shah Jahan’s other wives were nonentities, to be sure, but the position was a burden for a daughter, which had probably led to the rumors she had heard even this far away in Lahore.
Mehrunnisa waved her hand. “The title means little now,
beta.
”
Jahanara made a little sound of dissent at the back of her throat. “We stopped at the Nur Sarai in Jalandhar on our way here. It is spectacular, your Majesty. But perhaps more splendid is the tomb you have built at Agra for your father and my great-grandfather.”
Mehrunnisa leaned forward and pulled the girl to sit beside her—until now, she had not dared to sit without permission, and for this little courtesy, Mehrunnisa was glad. “Tell me about it,” she said. “I will never see it again, and when we left Agra for Kashmir that last time, it had not been completed. Tell me. Everything you saw, everything you remember.”
And so Jahanara talked for an hour about the confection of marble and semiprecious inlay that was Itimadaddaula’s tomb, about the gardens, the luminosity of the inlay, the monkeys on the pathways, the sounds of a city awakening when the first rays of the sun caressed the stone. Mehrunnisa kissed her when she was done, a choking in her throat, her eyes filled with tears. Beneath all that regret was a little bit of fierce pride, for she had heard also that her niece was to be buried under another white marble tomb south of the fort, along the western bank of the Yamuna River, and she knew that Shah Jahan had taken her vision for his own. Perhaps, only perhaps, he would improve upon it, though she did not think it very likely, and
she
—the daughter of a Persian refugee—would always have been the first to build a tomb of all-white marble in the Mughal Empire.
“Thank you,
beta,
” she said, and held Jahanara’s strong hands in her own, placing both in her lap. “Now tell me why you are here.”
Jahanara wavered, began to speak, and allowed her face to be covered with blushes.
“A man,” Mehrunnisa said slowly. “Who?”
“Mirza Najabat Khan.”
“I know of him,” Mehrunnisa said. “His lineage is good, his ancestors were worthy men, good servants of the Empire. . . . I do not understand, what is the problem?”
Jahanara would not reply for a long time, and then she said, finally, “Bapa.”
“Ah,” Mehrunnisa said. “I have always thought that your father’s love for his wife was excessive, unusual. You are very much like your mother, my child. I can see why he wishes to keep you by his side. But what is this other ugly rumor I hear? I know there is no truth to it, but why have you allowed it to fester so around the Empire?”
A note of disgust crept into Jahanara’s voice. “It is distasteful to me even to consider it with seriousness, your Majesty. Any reasonable person would know it to be incorrect. Why”—she spread her hands—“how can I refute it?”
Mehrunnisa shook her head. “But you must, my dear. Find the source of the rumor—it is sure to have come from within the
zenana
—and destroy it. Has Mirza Najabat Khan heard? But he must have,” she said, responding to her own question, “and how has he reacted?”
Jahanara told her of that moonlit night in the
chaugan
grounds in Agra, and the subsequent summons, to which he had not responded. Mehrunnisa saw the princess’s understanding grow as she talked. She was clever, she thought, though perhaps not with quite the amount of ruthlessness required to be supreme in the harem. She had her position because of her father’s love for her, and now that love was oppressive and not enough for a girl grown into womanhood. But there were ways around every situation.
“Aurangzeb came to see me earlier,” Mehrunnisa said.
Jahanara’s head snapped up. “Why?”
“To show me what a fine young man he has become. He’s a restless spirit, your brother, and if Dara and you are not careful, he has aspirations to become Emperor after your father.”
“That is plain talking indeed, your Majesty,” Jahanara said thoughtfully. “But it will never happen; Dara is the next heir.”
Mehrunnisa gestured dismissively. “Dara is at times a weakling, Jahanara. Remember this. Ah, I see that you already know this, but
I
know all three of them—Dara, Shuja, and Aurangzeb—well; they were with me and your grandfather for three years. Watch Aurangzeb, and make Dara watch him also.”
“I will, your Majesty,” Jahanara said. “I worry . . . also about Dara. His confidence is wearying. He”—she paused, but then this was why, among other things, she had come to her grandaunt—“insulted Mirza Sadullah Khan the other day. It was a little thing. A little thing only,” she repeated again.
The Empress’s gaze was shrewd. “And yet it causes you anxiety? Dara can be taught manners; you must consult with your Bapa if this indeed concerns you. No,” she said, “your Bapa will not listen; he’s stubborn himself. Then you must talk with Dara, my dear.”
Jahanara shook her head.
“No? Not even that? Send an apology to Mirza Sadullah on his behalf; Dara need never know.”
“But how?”
Mehrunnisa shrugged. “A gift for his wife—some silk, a perfume she has admired—or invite her and her daughters to stay in the
zenana
as your guests. Show them every courtesy when they are there. You cannot write to him directly; do so through his women. He will know and realize the reason for your interest.”
“And will it be enough?”
“Who knows? It is Dara who must make this move, but,” she said when she saw Jahanara shake her head again, furiously this time, “you don’t think he will. Watch for him carefully, my dear. Though,” Mehrunnisa said meditatively, “I have heard of Dara’s liberality also, his conversations with the priests of other faiths. He is imitating Emperor Akbar and his Ibadat Khana—the House of Worship where he invited the monks and saints of other religions—but Dara forgets that he is not yet Emperor. How does this sit with the other
amirs
at court?”
“They dislike it, your Majesty.”
“As they did when Emperor Akbar insisted on having his way. Him they could not dismiss, but Dara . . . it’s always ‘but Dara.’ He’s become a fool, Jahanara; perhaps you should support Aurangzeb instead.”
Jahanara’s upper lip curled. “The very idea is abhorrent to me, your Majesty.”
“Oh? Well, maybe you are right. And keep an eye on Roshanara,” Mehrunnisa said slowly.
“Why?”
“Aurangzeb talked of an alliance with her. I wonder what the five of you are doing under your father’s lax gaze, but she seems to dislike you. Why?”
“She wishes to marry Mirza Najabat Khan,” Jahanara said with distaste. “But that is impossible. Bapa says so.
I
say so.”
From the far end of the room, Hoshiyar rose and came toward them. He bowed to Jahanara and said, “Your Highness, I beg pardon, but your visit has tired her Majesty. It is time for you to leave.”
And she
was
tired, Mehrunnisa thought with some surprise. Excited by the conversation, the intrigue, the planning, and no longer willing to be a part of it. That portion of her life was over. For this child it was just beginning. Mehrunnisa bent her head in a little prayer that Jahanara Begam, who had taken the time to call on an all-but-forgotten Empress, would have the courage to see the fight through till the end and that, because she wished for it so much, Dara would be Emperor after his father.