Salt and Saffron (6 page)

You may wonder, Then what? And you may wonder, How did that lead to a fall in the family's fortune? I'll say this: Think of the Mughals. Think of an image that captures and preserves the glory of the Mughals, and if you have any sense of anything you'll say the Taj Mahal. Well, the fact is, Shah Jahan bought – in secret and in gold – the plans to that Dard-e-Dil mausoleum from the keeper of the Dard-e-Dil archives, and the only thing he changed when he had the plans copied for the benefit of the contractor was the name. But we know, though you'll laugh, that Taj Mahal is, was, should have been, Dil Mahal. Other not-quite-twins denied the family wealth, power, freedom, unity; Masooma and Inamuddin's curse was that they deprived us of posterity. And, oh God, we deserved it.

(When? you might demand. When did this happen? And now I'm forced to concede that it happened during the
glory days of the Mughals, when Dard-e-Dil was not a kingdom at all but merely part of the Mughal Empire and Nawab Hamiduzzaman was not a Nawab, not really, no; that title was only conferred upon him posthumously by the Nawabs that followed after Dard-e-Dil became independent of the Mughals. So really old Ham was merely a scion of a once important family which had the good sense to ingratiate itself with the Mughals early on and received, in return, the position of
subehdar-
chief administrator – of the province comprising those lands which earlier may have been, and later certainly became, the kingdom of Dard-e-Dil. The position was not hereditary and the Dard-e-Dils were sometimes sent to cool their heels in outposts of the Empire but somehow, in contravention of the standard Mughal policy of keeping administrators on the move, the Dard-e-Dils always returned to those lands. Because they were sycophants, competent as administrators, but otherwise so grovelling and seemingly ineffectual that the Mughals saw them as no real threat? Perhaps. But also perhaps because the Mughals trusted them, admired them, acknowledged them as cousins of the Timurid line, and felt that a few years away from Dard-e-Dil was all it took to remind those cousins that they were entirely dependent on the bounty of the Mughal for their own prestige and power. By and large the plan worked through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By and large. But Hamiduzzaman was less than happy to play the role of needy relation. It was, I believe, the desperation to be ruler not vassal, coupled with an awareness of his own impotence against the Emperor, that made him so susceptible to an act as mad as infanticide. He saw that the reign of the Great Mughal, Akbar, was past and, sensing the faintly
glimmering possibility of breaking free from Mughal rule, he was willing to sacrifice anything that might stand in the way of an auspicious future for Dard-e-Dils, even if that thing was a pair of mewling babies.)

‘Taj,' Baji said, interrupting my thoughts. I assumed she must have been thinking, like me, of Shah Jahan's architectural wonder. But no.

‘Taj, the midwife,' she said, one manicured nail circling the name of the Nawab who killed a tiger with his bare hands. ‘With her head full of family lore and no reason to love those oh-so-legitimate babies she brought into the world. How do we know she didn't invent, make up … Oh, let's say it straight. How do we know Akbar, Taimur and Sulaiman didn't enter the world on the same day, all just before or just after midnight?'

‘Because their mother—'

‘Samia, please. I've given birth in the days before these super painkillers and epidurexes – Rehana, you wouldn't laugh if you'd been through it yourself – and I would have believed anything, yes anything, anyone said to me afterwards about when the clock chimed and when it didn't.' She smiled, as though thinking of something that pleased her inordinately. ‘Maybe Taj saw triplets and wondered if they qualified as not-quite-twins. And then maybe she saw the clock and thought, Why not. Let me make them believe it's so. Let this be my revenge for their treatment of my mother and me.'

I was thinking, believe me, of my earlier conversation with Samia about Taj. I was thinking that, and thinking also that of course I wasn't the first woman in the family to be bothered by Taj's role in our narrative. So I said, ‘Well, I can understand why you feel a sense of affinity with Taj.'

Was it the air, the company, the tilt of my head? I don't know. I just know that as soon as the words were out something transformed them. At the periphery of my vision, Samia was shaking her head at me and Rehana had turned her face away, but Baji only laughed, throwing her head back and showing all her cavities. ‘Oh, I see Abida in you. I see her so clearly. You with the untainted blood. Here …'

She swooped forward and picked the trailing end of the family tree off the floor, unrolling it on to my lap. ‘Here's a pair of not-quites you don't know about.'

Beside Mariam Apa's name, a star.

A diagonal dotted line connected it to another starred name.

Mine.

I'd had the opening line of Mariam's story ready for a long time:
In all the years my cousin, Mariam, lived with us she only spoke to order meals.
The next line varied, according to my mood. Usually it was:
Strictly speaking, she was more aunt than cousin, though I always called her Apa.
But when I was feeling more fanciful I sometimes replaced that with:
She taught me the textures of silence, the timbres of it, and sometimes even the taste.

My first thought when Baji showed me those stars was, the opening line will have to change. The story must begin with the curse of not-quites.

I should have thought, How is this possible? Given chronology, given science, given my life. How? But Rehana Apa was up and moving towards me, distracting me with her purposefulness as she pulled me up and said, ‘Baji, remember Hamlet? I'm taking Aliya out for something to eat. Samia, stay and look after my grandmother. She's about to go into regret.' She turned to me. ‘Where to?'

I thought, Hamlet? I said, ‘Any doughnut shop.'

‘To Piccadilly Circus then,' Rehana Apa said. She allowed me silence as we walked. I suppose she thought I
was thinking of that star beside my name. But actually I was thinking of America. My college days, so recently finished, were days of empty spaces in my head. Spaces without chatter, spaces without textured silences. I was so utterly foreign there, so disconnected from everything that went on that I could afford to be passionate about the tiniest injustice in the domestic news.

‘I don't really want a doughnut,' I said. I put on my best academic voice. ‘The word “doughnut” is a sign, the visual image of the doughnut is the signifier and a nostalgia for another life is the signified.' I gestured vaguely with my hand. ‘Can we just go and sit under a tree instead?'

Rehana Apa said she knew a wonderful tree, and indeed she did. A shady beech in Green Park. Or perhaps it was an elm. Or an oak. I know nothing about trees, but I've read enough novels set in England to be pretty sure no other trees of importance exist there.

‘What about Hamlet should Baji remember?' I sat down, unmindful of the damp.

Rehana Apa touched her palm to the tips of the grass, found the grass wet, dried her palm with a tissue and sat down anyway. ‘When Polonius says he'll treat the players as they deserve, and Hamlet says, “Use them after your own honour and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit in your bounty.” ‘

‘Such an aristo remark,' I said. ‘Combat abuse with nobility; it'll make the other guy look so small.'

Rehana Apa shook her head at me. ‘I love Hamlet in that moment. It makes me weep for everything he's forced to become.'

I leant against the tree trunk and tried not to stare at her. My cousin. She must have been a dozen or so years older
than me, and suddenly that didn't seem very much. And here we were, talking about Hamlet. With everything else there was to talk about, we were talking about Hamlet.

‘Those kids at Baji's. Are they yours?'

‘Stinky and Smelly?' Rehana Apa laughed. ‘Yes. When the older one was born Baji said he had eyes like the old Nawab, Binky. So I said to my newborn child, “Should we call you Binky?” and he put his hand to his nose and scrunched up his face. My husband said, “He's saying not Binky but Stinky.” And it stuck as such names do. The second born didn't have a chance.'

‘Their real names?'

‘Omar and Aliya.'

‘Really? Aliya?'

Rehana Apa nodded. ‘Samia told me there's a Stinker in the Pakistani side of the family.'

‘Yes. And his brother is Pongo. Weird, isn't it? How our names overlap despite, you know, the complete lack of communication between the two sides of the family. How did Samia get in touch with you?'

‘We met at an art exhibition. Treasures of the Indian princes. We both kept circling back to a cabinet which displayed the sword our illustrious ancestor, Nur-ul-Jahan, used in the Battle of Surkh Khait. Once we started talking it took about seven seconds to work out the connection. Do you think your – our – relatives in Pakistan will criticize her for fraternizing with the enemy?'

‘No. Well, maybe one or two will. But I suppose the overwhelming emotion will be curiosity about how you've all fared. And the Indian relatives?' It occurred to me suddenly that we didn't support the same cricket team, this cousin and I. We'd never share that joy or camaraderie
or heartrending despair that Samia, Sameer and I – and various other cousins – had so often experienced as we sat together in Sameer and Samia's TV room, digging our nails into each other with anticipation during the final overs of a one-day game.

‘Probably react the same. Except, as you say, for one or two.' Rehana Apa pulled a twig out of my hair. ‘Besides, almost everyone who stayed in Dard-e-Dil is now locked in some kind of property dispute with other relatives, so we're expending our quotas of familial animosity within the national borders. And, for the record, I think Pakistan was a huge mistake.'

‘For the record, I don't see it that way. Glad we've got that part of the conversation over with.'

She laughed and slapped my hand lightly. For a while we were silent and I found myself thinking again of him. Khaleel. I tried to picture him in Liaquatabad, but I had no idea what Liaquatabad looked like, so I just imagined tiny storefronts and burst sewerage pipes and cramped flats with laundry hanging over the balconies, spattered with crow droppings. I didn't know if I was imagining a place I'd seen, or one I'd had nightmares about when I had nightmares about Mariam Apa. I looked at Rehana Apa's elbows and I knew I had lied to myself when I said that crippling memories were what made me recoil at the prospect of Liaquatabad. I was born into a world that recoiled at such prospects. If Rehana Apa were to tell me that she was in touch with Baji's mother's family, I'd be shocked. I'd wonder what she could possibly have to say to them, and how she could bear to be reminded that she was one of them just as much as she was one of the Dard-e-Dils. But for all I know, I reminded myself, they could have
risen in the world in the last few generations. They could be as polished and urbane as Rehana and I. They could be as polished and urbane as Khaleel.

Rehana Apa must have seen my brows furrowing deeper and deeper because she put a hand on my arm and said, ‘If I understand correctly, Mariam's older than you, older than me. What I mean is, you do realize that this twin stuff is absurd, don't you? Babuji won't say why he added it to the tree, but you know, just because we claim he's always right, it doesn't mean he is.'

So I told her the story of Mariam Apa's arrival, and of mine.

It started with a letter to my father; another one, like Taimur's, with an indistinguishable postmark. It was addressed to Sahibzada Nasser Ali Khan, and my mother was still new enough to our family to laugh at the pomp of that address. The letter (my mother still has it) said:

Huzoor! Aadaab!

I hope you are well and I hope you hope the same of me. I am writing because there is a young lady, Mariam, who soon before was motherless but since last month is an orphan. Her father (late) was Sahibzada Taimur Ali Khan whose name you must know and maybe even his face if you have old pictures. But even if not his face is your father's face and so you will recognize her also because she has the familiarity. She is coming to look you up and I like her so much that I want to say take care of her because even though she may come back here if you don't and that will make me happy I do not want her to be sad and so please make her happy. And also this way I can dream but when she is here I can only wait for what is never!

In true Hollywood fashion the gate-bell rang as soon as my parents finished reading out the letter and, in a further cinematic twist, my mother was so surprised by the sound she spilt her tea over the paper and it washed away the signature, which my parents had read when reading the letter, but could not afterwards remember because the letter's sentence structure convinced them that the writer was no one they knew.

So the bell rang and my father, certain that the laws of Hollywood had no part in his life, frowned at the spilt tea and told my mother it was probably just the night-watchman come to collect his monthly gratuity (which was and still is a tiny amount, but how much can you pay a man for riding through the neighbourhood on a bicycle while blowing a high-pitched whistle which sounds as if it's the shriek of something supernatural).

At this point in my tale, Rehana Apa stopped me to enquire what I thought of Pakistani movies. I had to concede I'd never seen one of Lollywood's productions, though Samia's brother, Sameer, once went to see a local flick with his driver and cook and came home howling with laughter. ‘So the hero's at this party, looking suave in his safari suit, and a waitress – not a waiter, a waitress! I ask you, From where? – asks him what he'll have to drink. And I'm thinking, Is he going to do a shocker and ask for alcohol? But no, he asks for Coke with ice. Except he says it in English in some pseudo-smooth accent, so how it really comes out is “Cock on rock.” ‘