The Twentieth Wife Read online

  “Hey, peasant! Watch your step.”

  Ghias felt a jolt, and the packets of meat and bread fell to the ground. He bent down hurriedly, arms spread out, before the crowds could step on the food.

  “I beg your pardon, Sahib,” he said over his shoulder.

  There was silence behind him. But Ghias, intent on grabbing his packets of food, did not realize that the merchant had stopped to look at him. He turned to the man and looked into kindly eyes in a sunburnt, lined face. “I am sorry,” Ghias said again. “I hope I did you no harm.”

  “None at all,” the merchant replied, his gaze assessing Ghias. “Who are you?”

  “Ghias Beg, son of Muhammad Sharif, wazir of Isfahan,” Ghias replied. Then, seeing the surprise on the man’s face, he gestured ruefully at his torn qaba and at the dirt-smudged pajamas he wore. “In another time, these were splendid and pristine. But now . . .”

  “What has happened, Sahib?” The merchant’s voice was respectful.

  Ghias looked at him and saw his blunt capable hands, the dagger tucked into his cummerbund, his worn heavy leather boots. “We were on our way to Qandahar when we were robbed of our belongings,” he replied, hunger slurring his words.

  “You are far from home.”

  Ghias nodded. “A long story. A change in fortunes, so I had to flee. May I know whom I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  “Malik Masud,” the merchant said. “Tell me your story, Sahib. I have the time. Shall we go to the chai shop?”

  Ghias looked toward the shop across the street, where steam rose from a cauldron of boiling milk and spices. “You are kind, Mirza Masud, but I cannot accept your hospitality. My family waits for me.”

  Masud put an arm around Ghias and pushed him toward the shop. “Indulge me, Sahib. I want to hear your story as a favor, if you will grant me that.”

  Still hesitating, Ghias allowed himself to be led to the shop. There, his precious package of lamb kebabs and nans secure on his lap, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the other patrons, he told Masud of all that had happened, even Mehrunnisa’s birth.

  “Allah has blessed you, Sahib,” Masud said, putting down his empty cup.

  “Yes,” Ghias replied. And blessed he was, even though things were difficult now. Asmat, the children—they were indeed blessings. The baby too . . .

  Ghias rose from his bench. “I should go now. The children will be hungry. My thanks to you for the chai.”

  As he was leaving, Masud said, “I am on my way to India. Would you like to accompany my caravan, Mirza Beg? I cannot offer you much, only a tent and a camel to carry your belongings. But it is well guarded, and I can assure you that you will be safe on the journey.”

  Ghias abruptly turned back and sat down, his face mirroring the shock he felt. “Why?”

  Masud waved the question away. “I will be going to pay my respects to Emperor Akbar at Fatehpur Sikri. If you follow me that far, I may be able to present you at court.”

  Ghias stared at him, unable to believe what he had just heard. After so much trouble, when one problem seemed to come at the heel of the other, here was a gift from Allah. But he could not just accept this offer. He had nothing to offer in return. And as a nobleman’s son, and a nobleman himself, he should never be indebted to another for kindness. Why was Masud doing this?

  “I . . . ,” he stammered, “I do not know what to say. I cannot—”

  Masud leaned forward across the rutted wood table of the shop. “Say yes, Sahib. Perhaps if I fall to ill times in the future you can assist me.”

  “That I would, Mirza Masud, without hesitation, even if you did not do this for me. But this is too much. I am grateful for the suggestion, but I cannot accept.”

  Masud beamed. “For me this is nothing much, Mirza Beg. Please agree. You will give me the pleasure of your company on the journey. It has been lonely since my sons stopped traveling with me.”

  “Of course I will,” Ghias replied. Then he said, smiling at the merchant’s insistence, “Any thanks I can give will be inadequate.”

  Masud gave Ghias the directions to his caravan, and the two men parted in the bazaar. During the next few hours, as Asmat and the children packed their meager belongings, Ghias sat outside the tent, thinking of his meeting with Masud. Once, a long time ago, Ghias’s father had told him that a nobleman was as gracious in accepting help as in giving it. Remembering his father’s words—the only memories he had now of Muhammad Sharif—Ghias thought he would accept Masud’s help and repay him later.

  Ghias and his family took leave of the kuchi who had sheltered them. In a fit of reckless generosity, Ghias gave away his last three gold mohurs to the kindly but poor nomads. They had sheltered his family when no one else had. To them was his first debt of gratitude, to Masud a lifelong one. He had kept the money to pay for their passage to India; now it was no longer necessary. They made their way to Masud’s camp. There, they were provided with a fine tent, and food from the common kitchen until Asmat was well enough to cook for them.

  The caravan, winding almost one kilometer from head to tail, started toward Kabul. As the weeks passed Asmat slowly recovered her strength, color blooming in her cheeks again, her hair regaining its shine. The older children were well fed and happy, sometimes walking along the caravan, sometimes climbing up on the camels to rest. But all was not well. Ghias still had no money to pay a wet nurse, and though Mehrunnisa did drink some goat’s milk, she was growing more and more feeble each day. He thought with a pang of the three gold mohurs; they would have been useful now. But then, the kuchi, poor as they were, had been helpful to his family . . . no, it had been the right decision. When Asmat asked after the money, Ghias said so, firmly, not looking at his daughter.

  One month after Mehrunnisa’s birth, striking eastward from Kabul, the caravan pitched camp near Jamrud, south of the Hindu Kush Mountains in the Khyber hills. The day was just failing, the clean sky ochre-toned. The colors of the land were muted: dull white of snow, smudged blue-black of rocks and boulders, dry brown of dying grass. The slow, biting cold of winter crept in through layers of wool and cotton shawls. Near the camp, lights twinkled from the last village they would come upon for the next few weeks, clinging to the hillside. And farther in the distance lay the first rising path into the mountains through the Khyber Pass.

  Ghias helped Asmat collect twigs and dry branches for a fire. Then he sat near her, watching her chop a wilted cabbage and some carrots along with a shank of lamb for the kurma. Her hands were raw in the cold, her knuckles white. Mehrunnisa lay wrapped in a bundle just inside their tent. Muhammad, Abul, and Saliha played with the other children in the twilight. From where he sat, Ghias could hear their screams of delight as they threw snowballs at one another.

  “They will get cold and wet,” Asmat said, looking up from her work. She put a cast-iron skillet on the makeshift chula: three flat stones in a triangle, holding the twig fire inside them.

  “Let them be,” Ghias said softly, watching her. Asmat poured a little oil from an earthenware jar into the skillet, waited for it to heat, and added cardamom pods, a few cloves, and a bay leaf. The lamb meat went in next, and she browned it deftly with a wooden spoon.

  “When did you learn to cook?” Ghias asked.

  Asmat smiled, tucking in a stray lock of hair behind her ears. She watched the meat on the skillet intently, her face red and glowing in the heat from the fire. “I never learned, Ghias; you know that. Meals were always brought to me. They appeared like magic, out of nowhere. But the woman in the next tent taught me this kurma.” She turned to him anxiously. “Are you tired of it? I can learn something else.”

  Ghias shook his head. “No, not tired of it. Even though,” he smiled wickedly, “we have eaten this every night for one month.”

  “Twenty-two days,” Asmat said, as she added the vegetables to the meat and poured water into the skillet. A few pinches of rock salt from a gunnysack, a sprinkling of pounded masala of cloves, chili powder, and cardamom, and
Asmat covered the skillet and sat back. She looked up at Ghias. “At least I do not burn the kurma anymore.”

  “Asmat, we have to talk.”

  Asmat turned away from him, pulling out a copper vessel. She dipped her hand into another sack, poured five handfuls of wheat flour into the vessel, and started to knead the flour into dough for chappatis with some water and oil. “I have to make dinner, Ghias.”

  “Asmat . . . ,” he said gently, but she would not look at him. Her back was stiff, her movements jerky.

  From inside the tent, Mehrunnisa cried. They both turned to the sound and waited. She cried again, feebly, without strength. Then, as though exhausted by the effort, the sound stopped. Asmat bent over the dough again, her fingers kneading it with a vengeance. Her hair fell over her face, sheltering her from her husband. One tear, then another fell into the dough, and she kneaded them in. Ghias rose and came over to her. He took her in his arms and she burrowed into him. They sat there for a few minutes, with Asmat leaning into Ghias, her hands still in the flour.

  “Asmat,” Ghias said quietly, “we cannot afford to keep Mehrunnisa.”

  “Ghias, please,” Asmat raised her face to his. “I will try to feed her. Or she will take to the goat’s milk, or we will try to find her a wet nurse. The women were talking the other day of a peasant who just had a child. We could ask her.”

  Ghias looked away from her. “With what would we pay her? I cannot ask Malik for money.” He gestured around him. “He has already given us so much. No,” his heart strained as he spoke, “it is better for us to leave her by the roadside for someone else to find her, someone with the means to look after her. We cannot do so anymore.”

  “You should have kept . . .” Asmat pulled away and started sobbing. But Ghias was right. He was always right. The kuchi had needed the money. Now they could not possibly look after the child, and Asmat’s tears would not stop.

  Ghias rose, leaving his wife near the fire, and went into the tent. He had thought about this for a long time. Asmat could not feed the child because her milk had dried up, and at every cry her heart broke, for her child cried for milk, and she had none. They were feeding Mehrunnisa sugar water, into which they dipped a clean cloth and gave it to her to suck on, but it was not enough. She had lost weight at an alarming rate and was now much smaller than she had been at birth. Ghias was deeply ashamed that he could not take care of his family, that he had brought them to this. And he was terrified about this decision. But in his mind, it had to be done. He could not watch as Mehrunnisa became weaker and weaker each day. If he left her for someone else to find, they would bring her up and look after her. Others had done this, Ghias knew. Others had found children on the wayside and brought them into their homes as their own children. He picked up the baby and an oil lantern. She had fallen asleep again, a fretful sleep of hunger. When he came out of the tent he said to Asmat, “I should do so now, when she is asleep.”

  Leaving Asmat with silent tears running down her face, he walked away from the camp. When he had reached the outskirts of the village, he wrapped his shawl around the sleeping baby and laid her down at the base of a tree on the main highway. Then he turned the wick of the lantern up high and set it near her. Surely someone would chance upon the baby soon, for it was not dark yet, and this was a well-traveled road. With a prayer on his lips, Ghias turned toward the village, which straggled up the mountainside. A sharp gust of wind brought the aroma of wood smoke from the village chimneys. Perhaps someone from the village, please Allah, someone with a kind heart. He looked down at the baby again. She was so small, so slight; her breathing hardly made a dent in the shawl.

  Ghias turned to go. As he did a small whimper came from the bundle on the road. He went back to the baby and smoothed her cheek with his finger. “Sleep, precious one,” he murmured in Persian. The baby sighed, soothed by his voice and his touch, and went back to sleep.

  Ghias glanced down at Mehrunnisa, then swiftly walked away. Once, just once, shivering now in the cold, at a bend in the road he turned back to look. The light from the lantern flickered in the approaching darkness; the tree loomed over, gnarled arms stretching in winter bareness. Mehrunnisa, wrapped in a bundle, he could barely distinguish.

  • • •

  AS DUSK SETTLED, the mountains took on purple hues in anticipation of the coming night. The white of the snow gleamed briefly and then dulled, and silence laid its gentle folds over the camp. Voices were tempered with fatigue. The campfires spit bits of wood and ash in sparkles. A wind from the north picked up tempo, whistling through the barren trees. A musket shot reverberated through the mountains and faltered in soft echoes. Just as the last sound died, a sharp wail filled the air.

  The hunting party stopped in surprise, and Malik Masud held up his hand for quiet. They were near the camp, and for a moment the only sound they heard was from the crackling campfires. Then they heard it again.

  Masud turned to one of his men. “Go see what that is.”

  The servant kicked his heels into his horse’s flanks and rode toward the cries. In a short while he came back, holding Mehrunnisa in his arms. “I found a baby, Sahib.”

  Masud looked down into the bawling face of the child. He thought he recognized her; then he was sure. The shawl she was wrapped in belonged to Ghias Beg; he had given it as a gift to the young man.

  He frowned. How could Ghias abandon such a beautiful child? As the hunting party returned to camp his expression became meditative. He thought back to his first meeting with Ghias. He had judged the young man quickly, as he had other men all his life, but correctly as usual. Looking beyond the young man’s torn clothes and grimy face, Masud had seen intelligence and education—two qualities he knew Emperor Akbar would appreciate. And there was something endearing about him, Masud thought. Over the last month, the two men had spent a few hours together almost every night; for Masud it was as though his eldest son, now settled in Kurasan, was with him again. When the hunting party returned to camp, Masud dismounted and commanded a servant to bring Ghias to him.

  A few minutes later, Ghias entered Masud’s tent.

  “Sit down, dear friend.” When Ghias was settled, Masud continued, “I have had the good fortune to find a child abandoned nearby. Tell me, hasn’t your wife just had a baby?”

  “Yes, Masud.”

  “Then will you request her to nurse this child for me?” Masud brought forward Mehrunnisa. Ghias looked at his daughter in surprise, then at Masud. The older man smiled at him.

  “She is now like a daughter to me,” Masud said, as he drew out a richly embroidered bag and took out some gold mohurs. “Please take these mohurs for her upkeep.”

  “But—” Ghias started, holding his arms out for Mehrunnisa. At his touch, she turned her eyes to him.

  Masud waved away his objections. “I insist. I cannot burden your family with another child without providing for her.”

  Ghias bowed his head. Here was another debt he would find impossible to repay.

  Asmat was in the tent when Ghias entered with Mehrunnisa. She stared at the bundle in his arms, knowing it was her daughter, reaching out for her instinctively. “You brought her back?”

  “Masud did.”

  Asmat hugged Mehrunnisa. “Allah wants us to keep this child, Ghias. We are indeed blessed.” She smiled fondly at the gurgling baby. “But how—”

  Ghias silently pulled out the gold mohurs. The coins gleamed dully in the light from the lantern. “Allah does want us to keep this child, Asmat,” Ghias said softly.

  The next day, Dai Dilaram, who was traveling with the caravan, agreed to nurse the baby along with her own. The caravan traversed the Khyber Pass safely, then went on to Lahore. From Lahore, Malik Masud guided his caravan toward Fatehpur Sikri, where Akbar held court. Almost six months to the day after Mehrunnisa’s birth, in the year 1578, the caravan entered Fatehpur Sikri.

  A few weeks later, when Masud went to pay his respects to Emperor Akbar during the daily darbar, he took Ghias along
with him. At Masud’s home, while the other children played in the street, Asmat waited for her husband in an inner courtyard, holding six-month-old Mehrunnisa in her arms. Mehrunnisa babbled at her mother’s solemn face, trying hard to draw a smile. Asmat, deep in thought, did not notice. She wondered whether they had reached the end of their long, tiresome journey, whether they could put down roots and survive in this foreign land, whether India would be home now.

  ONE

  When my mother came near the time of her delivery, he (Akbar) sent her to the Shaikh’s house that I might be born there. After my birth they gave me the name of Sultan Salim, but I never heard my father . . . call me Muhammad Salim or Sultan Salim, but always Shaikhu Baba.

  —A. Rogers, trans., and H. Beveridge, ed., The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri

  THE MIDDAY SUN WHITENED THE city of Lahore to a bright haze. Normally, the streets would be deserted at this time of day, but today the Moti bazaar was packed with a slowly moving throng of humanity. The crowds deftly maneuvered around a placid cow lounging in the center of the narrow street, her jaw moving rhythmically as she digested her morning meal of grass and hay.

  Shopkeepers called out to passing shoppers while sitting comfortably at the edge of jammed, cubical shops that lay flush with the brick-paved street. A few women veiled in thin muslins leaned over the wood-carved balconies of their houses above the shops. A man holding the leash of a pet monkey looked up when they called to him, “Make it dance!” He bowed and set his music box on the ground. As the music played, the monkey, clad in a blue waistcoat, a tasseled fez on its head, jumped up and down. When it had finished, the women clapped and threw silver coins at the man. After gathering the coins from the street, the man and his monkey gravely bowed again and went on their way. On the street corner, musicians played their flutes and dholaks; people chatted happily with friends, shouting to be heard above the din; vendors hawked lime-green sherbets in frosted brass goblets; and women bargained in good-natured loud voices.