Mistress of the Throne (The Mughal intrigues) (12 page)

The slave girls, themselves weeping, tried to restrain me. “You must remain calm, Begum Sahiba. We can’t afford to lose you, too!”

Was I having a nightmare? This couldn’t be real. I started pounding my chest with my hands.
Wake up Jahanara! This isn’t real! This can’t be real! Your mother is fine. You’re having a nightmare. We’re still in Agra; we never left!
The Deccan, this jinxed Deccan, which many years ago took away my brothers from me and was the site of our exile, now had taken my mother. The maids grabbed hold of my hand.

“This is all my fault,” I cried. “I must have committed some offence; that’s why Allah took my Ami away. Forgive me, Ami!” The zenana women literally dragged me for the duration of the procession, begging me to control myself, though I continued to fall apart.

I somehow found myself finally at the burial site, a journey of several kos that seemed like it had taken no time at all. This was
where I would say a final goodbye. The slaves began lowering Ami’s body into a shallow grave, and the mullah poured a fist of dirt on it.

“No, stop that!” I cried out, breaking free from the maids holding me back. “You can’t lower her in that grave. She can’t breathe in there. Take off that cloak! She’s fine!” I began hallucinating and then lost all sense of self.

The hakim stared back at me with pity in his eyes. “Hakim!” I cried, “I am the Begum Sahiba! I order you to open the cloak and stop this! I’ll have you crushed for insubordination!”

The hakim stared fixedly at me. “She must rest, Begum Sahiba,” he said calmly.

I continued to resist. “You all are committing sedition against the King!” I shouted. “You’re killing the queen, and you’ll burn in hell!”

I couldn’t see straight, the tears had blurred my vision so badly, I scarcely knew where I was. Blinded by my tears, weakened by my weeping and hurting from my sorrow, I suddenly realised I was making a spectacle of myself. Kandari put my head on her shoulders and led me to the side of the grave. I continued to weep as Ami’s body lay in the grave with its head pointing north and turned towards Kaaba, the shrine in Mecca that contained the legendary black stone given by the Angel Gabriel to Abraham.

Chanted the mullahs: “Say God is One! Say I seek protection of the Lord of Daybreak! Say, I seek the protection of the Lord of Men! Say God is One! Say I seek protection of the Lord of Daybreak! Say, I seek the protection of the Lord of Men…”

My vision went dark after that, and I can’t recall much of what happened the rest of that day. Different women counselled and nurtured me. I don’t recall eating or sleeping. It was as if the candles in a room had been extinguished and all that remained was sheer darkness. In such darkness, one often loses track of time. Such was the case with me.

The next several days continued in a haze of confusion and bewilderment. Though officially only 40 days of mourning were to follow, the actual melancholy of the empire would last much longer.
No court events were held, no special food was made, and the immediate family members wandered around the fort like zombies themselves. It was as if everyone had lost a sense of purpose. A wet nurse took care of Ami’s newborn, named Gauhara, making sure at least someone in the royal family was getting the proper nutrition.

I started having daily nightmares of my mother dangling off of a cliff as I stood helpless, unable to pull her back up. Slowly my mother’s arm was slipping from me, inch by inch, until the arm was released and my mother fell to the ground, screaming for help along the way. I would wake up from these dreams devastated and crying; but unlike before, my Ami was no longer with me to comfort me when I awoke. The servants tried to play her part, but theirs was not the comfort I yearned for.

In my grief, I turned to the one person my mother had told me during our stay at Burhampur to look to if I needed anything: Sati. I awoke from my nightmare one day, distraught as always with servants rushing in to comfort me. I realised this couldn’t go on indefinitely, so I wrote a letter to Sati asking her advice:

My dearest Sati:

As you may have heard in Agra, Ami is no more. The light of our lives has been taken from us, and there is darkness everywhere. No one laughs or smiles anymore. The songs, festivals, poems, and shows have all ended. Ami took all of our smiles with her when she left this world. There is no hope for anyone now, it seems. We all stay in bed and wish to sleep in hope we may be visited by her in our dreams, but all that I see are nightmares. Nightmares where she is dying over and over again and I can’t help
.

I can’t help but feel this is somehow all my fault. Maybe if I had done something different, Ami would be with us right now. Aba has lost all will to live. He took off his crown jewels and decorated robes and now wears only white shrouds. He has pulled all the hair out of his beard in grief, and what he has left of a beard has turned white, to match the shroud he wears always. I went to seek his comfort a
few days ago and saw him crying out in pain over the loss of his best friend. How could I seek comfort from him? We both lost our best friend, but his grief is at a whole other level than mine
.

I sometimes open Ami’s cabinet just to smell her scent, which is still in her clothes and possessions neatly tucked in drawers. But, Sati, I opened it yesterday and the smell is fading. Even her scent is fading from her belongings. I’m so sad, no words can describe how I feel. I’ve stopped eating and have lost so much weight. Yet I still vomit, though I’ve eaten nothing. I feel like I’m falling and no one is here to catch me. Please help me, Sati. I need you more than ever. Please catch me, please help me find a way to live again
.

Yours always
,

Jahanara

As I would later learn, Sati received this letter amid the grief that had overcome Agra as news trickled in of Ami’s demise. She reported to me that all the royal children were overcome with dismay and insisted on visiting the Deccan to attend our mother’s funeral, but their demands were put to rest by the news that her body had already been interred before news of her death even reached Agra. Aurangzeb took the news especially hard, and he now regressed to the state he’d assumed as Nur Jahan’s prisoner. He fell into a depression, during which his only companion was the Koran; it was his only comforting potion. I believe that like me, Aurangzeb felt like he was falling; but unlike me he was being caught by the mullahs who were counselling him about the Koran. For me, no such place of safety existed, nor would I have wanted one. As Sati wrote back to me:

My Dear Jahanara:

Your pain is pure, and were it not for the greatness of your mother, perhaps it would not be so deep. We all grieve with you at your loss. Losing a parent is never easy, especially one as special as
the Empress. She was a lone star in the midst of a vast darkness. Yet, your mourning must eventually pass, for you must fulfill your role now as both a daughter and a sister. You are the oldest female of the royal family. Your father, the King, needs you as do your siblings. You must not let your grief prevent you from taking care of them
.

Dara and Raushanara cry all day. Shuja and Murad have stopped eating. And Aurangzeb? Aurangzeb has again sought refuge in religious doctrines and sequestered himself inside the Pearl Mosque, claiming that’s the only place he finds any peace. Jahanara, your family needs you. It is up to you to lift this family out of despair. They will listen to you in ways they will listen to no one else. You have your mother’s gentleness and grace. The future of this great family and this country is now in your hands, my dear. I am here to catch you, but YOU must catch THEM. Don’t let your mother’s legacy be simply that all she cared for died in grief over her death. There are still battles to be fought, causes to be championed and hearts to be healed. Come back to Agra and give us again a reason to live again, my child
.

Love
,

Sati

I was deeply disturbed to hear how my siblings were reacting to my mother’s demise. I tried to be brave in my loneliness. I began to cope with the harsh reality that my mother’s voice and scent had permanently floated into the vast depths of eternity and now would be known only by God.

I went to Aba’s chambers and found him as always sitting in front of his copy of the Koran, sobbing as he chanted the prayers. Dressed in white robes from head to toe, he looked as if he’d aged ten years in the last ten days. He’d lost considerable weight, and his beard was now so completely gray, I thought for a moment he must have dyed it this colour to match his robes.

I sat right next to him, but was unable to distract him from his prayers even for a moment. He seemed mentally in another world. I put my head on his lap as he stared forward, his palms facing
upward, praying. Then he suddenly looked down at what was in his lap, and for an instant he must have thought Ami had returned to him: the same silky black hair, olive skin, the same scent, even the same features as Ami were lying in his lap. “Arju?” he muttered.

I corrected: “No, Aba, it’s me, your princess.”

As if suddenly waking from sleep, Aba sprang back to reality. “Of course, Jahanara. I don’t know why I got confused.”

I got up and looked at my father directly, worry etched in my face. “Aba, you were confused because I look just like her. Everyone thinks so. Sometimes I look in the mirror and even I think I’m staring at her. I even show some of the same facial expressions she did… you know… like when she knew you were lying to her, the way she’d put her hand on her waist and begin nodding with her finger? I did that the other day, just so I could trick myself into thinking she was alive again.”

Aba listened with a helpless look on his face, as if he understood exactly how I felt.

“But Aba,” I went on, “she’s gone! You can’t just keep mourning like this. You are the
king
! Your family, including your new daughter, needs you. The kingdom needs you.
I
need you!” My voice cracked as I told Aba of Sati’s letter and how Aurangzeb had locked himself in the mosque and the other royal children were punishing themselves in equally horrific ways.

“But I am so lost without her,” he confessed, gazing helplessly at me. “I can’t even get up from a chair, I feel I would fall…”

“You are a
Timurid
!” I insisted. “Timurid men have fought greater battles and endured greater hardships than these. What would your father, Emperor Jahangir say? That his kingdom was shattered because the King’s wife died? The House of Timur cannot be shattered by just the death of a queen!” As untrue as I knew this statement to be, I also knew that I needed to appeal to his manhood and familial legacy to jolt him out of this despair. Aba nodded and silently, if reluctantly, began to pull himself together. First he allowed the barber to trim his beard and even dye it black. This was my idea. I didn’t want the public to feel that their emperor was an old man. I
had his royal robes cleaned and ironed, but he refused to wear them, insisting instead on wearing his white robe, which looked more like a loincloth than a royal garment. So I had him sequestered in the rear palanquin when we set for Agra, so no one might view their emperor in such a dilapidated state.

The royal caravan left Burhampur with the same number of people as had arrived with it from Agra almost a year before, except for Ami, whose presence was replaced with infant Gauhara Begum. I stayed in the same palanquin as the King, convinced that he was unable to travel alone.

I made sure the royal caravan took the same route it had taken on its journey to the Deccan. This was intentional – I had to see if the royal relief efforts had borne fruit in the famine-stricken regions. Of course, this might also afford me an opportunity to steal another glance at Gabriel, though this I never admitted even to myself at the time.

As the procession approached the former famine-stricken regions, I saw in complete surprise that the villages I’d seen less than a year ago were now drastically transformed. As if I were travelling in some other region that had been unaffected by famine, these villages now had homes, people were working and children playing; it seemed the economy had completely revived here, in this former pit of death.

Peeking from behind the royal curtain of the palanquin, I remarked to one of my attendants, “This can’t be the same place!”

“Your Majesty, this is indeed that same village.”

“Is the young firangi doctor still here, or has he left?”

“Your Majesty, I’ve been informed that he’s still working here.”

“Tell him we would like to see him and set up the royal camp on the outskirts of the village. We will camp here tonight.”

The imperial camp was soon set in the grandiose manner typical of the Mughal times. As if palaces themselves, its golden embroidered tents were raised in lavish contrast to the mud and brick shacks that existed a few yards away in the village.

I arranged an audience with Gabriel from behind a thin screen that allowed us to see only halos of each other, without ever revealing
who was truly on the other side. I thanked him for his service and offered him 100 mohurs as a reward for his good work. But he shared some displeasure at not having an audience with the King.

I explained: “As you know, the Queen, my mother, is no more.”

Gabriel bowed his head to acknowledge his sadness at this news, which, I would later learn, he’d known for some time, though he hadn’t yet had the chance to express his condolences.

“The Emperor would be barely alive without me.” I confided. “His body exists, but his mind and heart are gone. He can’t even dress himself or shave. He has lost weight and is barely recognisable. If my mother were alive, we would surely have come here and given you the full court audience you deserve. But I cannot grant such a favour, nor would my father be capable at this time of meeting with you.”

For reasons I couldn’t fathom, in those moments together Gabriel made me feel more like a desirable woman than just a member of the royalty. He addressed me repeatedly as ‘fair maiden,’ a term I liked. At the end of the audience he asked to shake my hand in thanks for the gift of the 100 mohurs.