The Years of Rice and Salt

  The villagers began to dismember her body. Bistami left the village, unable to watch. His brutal older brother was dead; his other relatives, like his brother, had no sympathy for his sufi interests. “The high look to the high, and so they can see each other from a great distance off.” But he was so far away from anyone of wisdom, he could see nothing at all. He remembered what his sufi master Tutsami had told him when he left Allahabad: “Keep the haj in your heart, and make your way to Mecca as Allah wills it. Slow or fast, but always on your tariqat, the path to enlightenment.”

  He gathered his few possessions in his shoulder bag. The death of the tiger began to take on the cast of a destiny, a message to Bistami, to accept the gift of God and put it to use in his actions, and regret nothing. So that now it was time to say Thank you God, thank you Kya my sister, and leave his home village for ever.

  • • •

  Bistami walked to Agra, and there he spent the last of his money to buy a sufi wanderer’s robe. He asked for shelter in the sufi lodge, a long old building in the southernmost district of the old capital, and he bathed in their pool, purifying himself inside and out.

  Then he left the city and walked out to Fatepur Sikri, the new capital of Akbar’s empire. He saw that the not-yet-completed city replicated in stone the vast tent camps of Mughal armies, even down to marble pillars standing free of the walls, like tent poles. The city was dusty, or muddy, its white stone already stained. The trees were all short, the gardens raw and new. The long wall of the Emperor’s palace fronted the great avenue that bisected the city north and south, leading to a big marble mosque, and a dargah Bistami had heard about in Agra, the tomb of the sufi saint Shaikh Salim Chishti. At the end of his long life Chishti had instructed the young Akbar, and now his memory was said to be Akbar’s strongest link to Islam. And this same Chishti in his youth had travelled in Iran, and studied under Shah Esmail, who had also instructed Bistami’s master Tutsami.

  So Bistami approached Chishti’s great white tomb walking backwards, and reciting from the Quran. “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. Be patient with those who call upon their Lord at morn and even, seeking his face: and let not thine eyes be turned away from them in quest of the pomp of this life; neither obey him whose heart we have made careless of the remembrance of Us, and who followeth his own lusts, and whose ways are unbridled.”

  At the entry he prostrated himself towards Mecca and said the morning prayer, then entered the walled-in courtyard of the tomb, and made his tribute to Chishti. Others were doing the same, of course, and when he had finished paying his respects he spoke to some of them, describing his journey all the way back to his time in Iran, eliding the stops along the way. Eventually he told this tale to one of the ulama of Akbar’s own court, and emphasized his master’s relation-by-teaching to Chishti, and returned to his prayers. He came back to the tomb day after day, establishing a routine of prayer, purification rites, the answering of questions from pilgrims who spoke only Persian, and socializing with all the people visiting the shrine. This finally led to the grandson of Chishti speaking to him, and this man then spoke well of him to Akbar, or so he heard. He ate his one meal a day at the sufi lodge, and persevered, hungry but hopeful.

  One morning at the very first light, when he was already in the tomb’s courtyard at prayers, the Emperor Akbar himself came in to the-shrine, and took up an ordinary broom, and swept the courtyard. It was a cool morning, the night chill still in the air, and yet Bistami was sweating as Akbar finished his devotions, and Chishti’s grandson arrived, and asked Bistami to come when he had finished his prayers, to be introduced.

  “A great honour,” he replied, and returned to his prayers, murmuring them thoughtlessly as the things he might say raced through his head; and he wondered how long he should delay before approaching the Emperor, to show that prayer came first. The tomb was still relatively empty and cool, the sun just rising. When it cleared the trees entirely, Bistami stood and walked to the Emperor and Chishti’s grandson, and bowed deeply. Greeting, obeisances, and then he was obeying a polite request to tell his story to the watchful young man in the imperial finery, whose unblinking gaze never left his face, or indeed his eyes. Study in Iran with Tutsami, pilgrimage to Qom, return home, a year’s work as a teacher of the Quran in Gujarat, a journey to visit his family, ambush by Hindu rebels, salvation by tiger: by the end of the story Bistami had been approved, he could see it.

  “We welcome you,” Akbar said. The whole city of Fatepur Sikri served to show how devout he was, as well as displaying his ability to create devotion in others. Now he had seen Bistami’s devotion, exhibited in all the forms of piety, and as they continued their conversation, and the tomb began to fill with the day’s visitors, Bistami managed to lead the discussion to the one hadith he knew that had come by way of Chishti to Iran, so that the isnad, or genealogy of the phrase, made a short link between his education and the Emperor’s.

  “I had it from Tutsami, who had it from the Shah Esmail, teacher of Shaikh Chishti, who had it from Bahr ibn Kaniz al-Saqqa, that Uthman ibn Saj related to him, from Said ibn Jubair, God’s mercy on him, who said, ‘Let him give a general greeting to all the Muslims, including the young boys and the adolescents, and when he has arrived at class, let him restrain whoever was sitting from standing up for him, since neglecting this is one of the banes of the soul.’ ”

  Akbar frowned, trying to follow it. It occurred to Bistami that it could be interpreted as meaning that he had been the one who had refrained from asking for any kind of obeisance from the other. He began to sweat in the chill morning air.

  Akbar turned to one of his retainers, standing unobtrusively against the marble wall of the tomb. “Bring this man with us on our return to the palace.”

  After another hour of prayer for Bistami, and consultations for Akbar, who was relaxed but increasingly terse as the morning wore on and the line of supplicants grew rather than shrank before him, the Emperor bid the line to disperse and come back again later. After that he led Bistami and his retinue through the raw worksites of the city, to his palace.

  The city was being built in the shape of a big square, like any other Mughal military encampment — indeed, in the form of the empire itself, Bistami’s guard told him, which was a quadrilateral protected by the four cities of Lahore, Agra, Allahabad and Ajimer. These were all big compared to the new capital, and Bistami’s guard was particularly fond of Agra, where he had worked in the construction of the Emperor’s great fort, now finished. “Inside it are more than five hundred buildings,” he said as he must always have said when speaking of it. He was of the opinion that Akbar had founded Fatepur Sikri because the fort of Agra was mostly complete, and the Emperor liked beginning great projects. “He is a builder, that one, he will remake the world itself before he is done, I assure you. Islam has never had such a servant as him.”

  “It must be so,” Bistami said, looking around at the construction, white buildings rising out of cocoons of scaffolding, set in seas of black mud. “Praise be to God.”

  The guard, whose name was Husain Ali, looked at Bistami suspiciously. Pious pilgrims were no doubt a commonplace. He led Bistami after the Emperor and through the gate of the new palace. Inside the outer wall were gardens that looked as if they had been in place for years: big pine trees over jasmines, flower beds in all directions. The palace itself was smaller than the mosque, or the tomb of Chishti, but exquisite in every detail. A white marble tent, broad and low, its interior filled by room after cool room, all surrounding a fountain-filled central courtyard and garden. The whole wing at the back of the courtyard consisted of a long gallery walled with paintings: hunting scenes, the skies always turquoise; the dogs and deer and lions rendered to the life; the skirted hunters carrying bow or flintlock. Opposite these scenes were suites of white-walled rooms, finished but empty. Bistami was given one of these to stay in.

  That night’s meal was a feast, set sumptuously in a long hall opening onto the central
courtyard. As it proceeded, Bistami understood that it was simply the ordinary evening meal in the palace. He ate roast quail, cucumber yoghurts, shredded pork in curry, and tastes of many dishes he didn’t recognize.

  That began a dreamlike period for him, in which he felt like Manjushri in the tale, fallen upwards into the land of milk and honey. Food dominated his days and his thoughts. One day he was visited in his rooms by a team of black slaves dressed better than he was, who quickly brought him up to their level of raiment and beyond, outfitting him in a fine white gown that looked well but hung heavily on him. After that he was given another audience with the Emperor.

  This meeting, surrounded by sharp-eyed counsellors, generals and imperial retainers of all kinds, felt very different from the dawn meeting at the tomb, when two young men out to smell the morning air and see the sunrise, and sing the glory of Allah’s world, had spoken to each other chest to chest. And yet in all these trappings, it was the same face looking at him — curious, serious, interested in what he had to say. Focusing on that face allowed Bistami to relax.

  The Emperor said, “We invite you to join us and share your knowledge of the law. In return for your wisdom, and the rendering of judgments on certain cases and questions that will be brought before you, you will be made zamindar of the late Shah Muzaffar’s estates, may Allah honour his name.”

  “Praise be to God,” Bistami murmured, looking down. “I will ask God’s help in fulfilling this great task to your satisfaction.”

  Even with his gaze steadfast to the ground, or returned to the Emperor’s face, Bistami could sense that some of the imperial retinue were less than pleased by this decision. But afterwards, some who had seemed least pleased came up to him and introduced themselves, spoke kindly, led him around the palace, probed in a most gentle way concerning his background and history, and told him more about the estate he was to administer. This, it appeared, would mostly be overseen by local assistants on site, and was mainly his title and source of income. and in return he was to outfit and provide one hundred soldiers to the Emperor’s armies, when required, and teach all he knew of the Quran, and judge various civil disputes given to his charge.

  “There are disputes that only the ulama are fit to judge,” the Emperor’s adviser Raja Todor Mai told him. “The Emperor has great responsibilities. The empire itself is not yet secure from its enemies. Akbar’s grandfather Babur came here from the Punjab, and established a Muslim kingdom only forty years ago, and the infidels still attack us from the south and the east. Every year some campaigns are necessary to drive them back. All the faithful in his empire are under his care, in theory, but the burden of his responsibilities means in practice he simply doesn’t have time.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Meanwhile, there is no other system of justice for disputes among people. As the law is based on the Quran, the qadis, the ulama and other holy men such as yourself are the logical choice to take on this burden.”

  “Of course.”

  In the weeks following, Bistami did indeed find himself sitting in judgment in disputes brought before him by some of the Emperor’s slave assistants. Two men claimed the same land; Bistami asked where their fathers had lived, and their fathers’ fathers, and determined that one’s family had lived in the region longer than the other’s. In ways like this he made his judgments.

  More new clothes came from the tailors; a new house and complete retinue of servants and slaves were provided; he was given a trunk of gold and silver coins numbering one hundred thousand. And for all this he merely had to consult the Quran and recall the hadith he had learned (really very few, and even fewer relevant), and render judgments that were usually obvious to all. When they were not obvious, he made them as best he could and retired to the mosque and prayed uneasily, then attended the Emperor and the evening meal. He went on his own at dawn every day to the tomb of Chishti, and so saw the Emperor again in the same informal circumstances as their first meeting, perhaps once or twice a month — enough to keep the very busy Emperor aware of his existence. He always had prepared the story he would relate to Akbar that day, when asked what he had been doing; each story was chosen for what it might teach the Emperor, about himself, or Bistami, or the empire or the world. Surely a decent and thoughtful lesson was the least he could do for the incredible bounty that Akbar had bestowed on him.

  One morning he told him the story from Sura Eighteen, about the men who lived in a city that had forsaken God, and God took them apart to a cave, and made them to sleep as it were a single night, to them; and when they went out they found that three hundred and nine years had passed. “Thus with your work, mighty Akbar, you shoot us into the future.”

  Another morning he told him the story of El-Khadir, the reputed vizier of Dhoulkarnain, who was said to have drunk of the fountain of life, by virtue of which he still lives, and will live till the day of judgment; who appeared, clad in green robes, to Muslims in distress, to help them. “Thus your work here, great Akbar, will continue deathless through the years to help Muslims in distress.”

  The Emperor appeared to appreciate these cool dewy conversations. He invited Bistami to join him in several hunts, and Bistami and his retinue occupied a big white tent, and spent the hot days riding horses as they crashed through the jungle after the howling dogs or beaters; or, more to Bistami’s taste, sat on the howdah of an elephant, and watched the great falcons leave Akbar’s wrist and soar high above, thence to dive in terrific stoops onto hare or fowl. Akbar fixed his attention on you in just the same way the falcons did.

  Akbar loved his falcons, in fact, as kin, and always spent the days of the hunt in excellent spirits. He would call Bistami to his side to speak a blessing over the great birds, who looked off to the horizon, unimpressed. Then they were cast into the air, and flapped hard as they made their way quickly up to their hunting height, splaying wide their big wing feathers. When they were settled in their gyres overhead, a few doves were released. These birds flew as fast as they could for cover in trees or bush, but they were not usually fast enough to escape the attack of the hawks. Their broken bodies were returned by the great raptors to the feet of the Emperor’s retainers, and then the falcons flew back to Akbar’s wrist, where they were greeted with a stare as fixed as their own, and bits of raw mutton.

  It was just such a happy day that was interrupted by bad news from the south. A messenger arrived saying that Adharn Khan’s campaign against the Sultan of Malwa, Baz Bahadur, had succeeded, but that the Khan’s army had gone on to slaughter all of the captured men, women and children of the town of Malwa, including many Muslim theologians, and even some Sayyids, that is to say direct descendants of the Prophet.

  Akbar’s fair complexion turned red all over his neck and face, leaving only the mole on the left side of his face untouched, like a white raisin embedded in his skin. “No more,” he declared to his falcon, and then he began to give orders, the bird thrown to its falconer and the hunt forgotten. “He thinks I am still under age.”

  He rode off hard, leaving all his retinue behind except for Pir Muhammed Khan, his most trusted general. Bistami heard later that Akbar had personally relieved Adharn Khan of his command.

  Bistami had the Chishti tomb to himself for a month. Then he found the Emperor there one morning, with a dark look. Adharn Khan had been replaced as vakil, the chief minister, by Zein. “It will enrage him but it must be done,” Akbar said. “We will have to put him under house arrest.”

  Bistami nodded and continued to sweep the cool dry floor of the inner chamber. The idea of Adharn Khan under permanent guard, usually a prelude to execution, was disturbing to contemplate. He had a lot of friends in Agra. He might be so bold as to try to rebel. As the Emperor must very well know.

  Indeed, two days later, when Bistami was standing at the edge of Akbar’s afternoon group at the palace, he was frightened but not surprised to see Adharn Khan appear and stamp to the top of the stairs, armed, bloody, shouting that he had killed Zein not an
hour before, in the man’s own audience chamber, for usurping what was rightfully his.

  Hearing this Akbar went red-faced again, and struck the Khan hard on the side of the head with his drinking cup. He grabbed the man by the front of his jacket, and pulled him across the room. The slightest resistance from Adharn would have been instant death from the Emperor’s guards, who stood at each side of them, swords at the ready; and so he allowed himself to be dragged out to the balcony, where Akbar flung him over the railing into space. Then Akbar, redder than ever, raced down the stairs, ran to the half-conscious Khan, seized him by the hair and dragged him bodily up the stairs, armoured though he was, over the carpet and out to the balcony, where he heaved him over the rail again. Adhere Khan hit the patio below with a loose heavy thud.

  Indeed he had been killed. The Emperor retired into his private quarters in the palace.

  The next morning Bistami swept the shrine of Chishti with a tightness all through his body.

  Akbar appeared, and Bistami’s heart hammered in his chest. Akbar seemed calm, though distracted. The tomb was a place to give himself some serenity. But the vigorous brushing he gave the floor that Bistami had already cleaned belied the calm of his speech. He’s the Emperor, Bistami thought suddenly, he can do what he wants.

  But then again, as a Muslim emperor, he was subservient to God, and the sharia. All-powerful and yet all-submissive, all at once. No wonder he seemed thoughtful to the point of distraction, sweeping the shrine in the early morning. It was hard to imagine him mad with anger, like a bull elephant in must, throwing a man bodily to his death. There was within him a deep well of rage.

  Rebellion of ostensibly Muslim subjects struck deepest into this well. A new rebellion in the Punjab was reported, an army sent to put it down. The innocents of the region were spared, and even those who had fought for the rebellion. But its leaders, some forty of them, were brought to Agra and placed in a circle of war elephants that had long blades like giant swords attached to their tusks. The elephants were unleashed on the traitors, who screamed as they were mowed down and trampled underfoot, their bodies then tossed high in the air by the blood-maddened elephants. Bistami had not realized that elephants could be driven to such blood lust. Akbar stood high on a throne howdah perched on the biggest elephant of all, an elephant that stood still before the spectacle, the two of them observing the carnage.