Shadow Princess (25 page)

Aurangzeb had risen from his seat when the scribe left and kissed his father’s hand. Then, he had resumed eating, his normally somber face splitting into smiles as though he could not help himself.

“I do not like this dissent among you,” Emperor Shah Jahan said finally. “Dara—”

“Bapa,” Dara said heatedly, talking for the first time since he had greeted all of them, “Aurangzeb didn’t do anything special. It was reckless of him to risk his life in front of a charging elephant; why does he deserve the weighing on his birthday? You have never given me that privilege.”

Shah Jahan frowned. “It’s not your place to question my orders, Dara. If Aurangzeb was thoughtless, he was at least brave and courageous, while you turned your horse’s head and escaped. You should be commending him. But I did not begin this conversation to answer to you, only to say this: the four of you are blood brothers, born of the same father and mother. When you are Emperor . . .
if
you are Emperor after me, it will be your responsibility to take care of your brothers, to provide them with ranks at court befitting their status. And the rest of you must revere your oldest brother, support him in all of his endeavors. To the Empire—and as we
are
the Empire—we must represent a united family.”

“I did as much as Aurangzeb, Bapa,” Shuja muttered.

“Not quite as much,” Emperor Shah Jahan said, “but enough for you to deserve a
khilat
. Aurangzeb”—the Emperor turned to face him now—“what I say here applies to you also. Think more of others, son, than of yourself. And show your smugness a little less; such an expression is improper in a royal prince.”

They all reddened. For two years Bapa had almost neglected them, and they had grown wild in their hearts, so to have him speak with such candor about thoughts they had only harbored in secret made them ashamed. But it was a short-lived shame, for they were more independent now of their father—and their dead mother—than they had been two years ago.

“Itimad,” Emperor Shah Jahan said in a weary voice. And when his eunuch bowed into the room, he said, “Bring them in.”

Twenty-five women came into Princess Jahanara’s apartments and lined up against one wall. They were clad in thin muslins, their legs bare and muscled under the sheer gowns of their
peshwaz,
their eyes outlined in kohl, their hair perfumed and aglitter with a freshly washed shine. In his younger days, when his wife had been pregnant, as she had been so often in their marriage, Mumtaz Mahal had allowed Emperor Shah Jahan to pick a woman from the imperial
zenana
for the night. Any woman he wanted or was attracted to. And in the morning, she had pensioned off the woman and banished her from the imperial
zenana,
so that her husband would never again see her or enjoy her charms.

With his children watching, Emperor Shah Jahan deliberated. He did not leave his seat or even change his position on the divan. The singing had stopped, and for a whole five minutes, the only sounds Jahanara could hear were Dara’s and Shuja’s discontented breaths, Aurangzeb grinding his teeth, Roshan with her legs stretched out in front of her, her toes tapping dully against each other. Then her father pointed. To Jahanara, the choice seemed unclear, and, yet, the others bowed and left the apartments. The Emperor raised himself from the divan and went out. The woman hesitated, then followed her king to his chambers.

Jahanara put her hands over her face, her skin warm under her fingers. She could no longer recall instances when her father had spent the night, or a part of it, with a woman other than her mother, even though she must have seen this occur often enough. But in the last two years, he had been so completely . . .
hers
, she thought, a tear escaping to wet her face, that she had forgotten he was a man also. Her brothers and sister departed, mumbling their farewells, their voices subdued. But Princess Jahanara Begam stayed on her divan, sobbing quietly, her heart filled with an ache. When the pain had lessened, she realized what Bapa had done—taught them all a lesson in kingship. It was not in the choosing of a slave to pleasure him for a few hours—that in itself was inconsequential; this was her father’s
zenana,
and the women not related to him by marriage or by blood were his to use as he pleased. And he could well have done this in his chambers, so that only the morning would bring the news to them, and they would shrug, accept it, and go on.

But Emperor Shah Jahan had paraded his women in front of his squabbling children, each itching to wear the crown, or to be able to determine who would wear the crown after him, as though he had already lost his life. So he had ordered the women, considered one carefully (although he had decided earlier; this much was clear to Jahanara from the casual pointing), and waited until they knew and realized that he was still, very much, the Emperor. Who was sovereign not just over the lands and the people of Hindustan but over them also. Mama was dead; Bapa had left off mourning for her and exercised his right as the master of his harem.

Jahanara rose, walked to the outer verandah, and looked at the blurred lights on the other bank of the Yamuna River. It was a close and uncomfortable night, as heated as the day had been, without a trace of wind. Earlier, she had watched Mirza Najabat Khan in the courtyard below, but he had not even deigned to glance up or acknowledge her presence. She had not asked for him to visit her again after that afternoon spent in futile waiting in the
zenana
gardens. She had not asked whether her letter had gone astray; she knew Ishaq would have deposited it in Najabat Khan’s hands himself.

She said without turning, “Ishaq, are you there?”

Her eunuch came forward from the shadows to listen to his mistress, and if he was surprised, his expression betrayed nothing. And so, for the first time, Princess Jahanara Begam took a lover.

The Luminous Tomb

And from all parts of the empire, there were assembled great numbers of skilled stonecutters
(sangtarash)
, lapidaries
(munabbatkar)
, and inlayers
(parchingar)
, each one an expert in his art, who commenced work along with other craftsmen.

—From the
Padshah Nama
of Abdal-Hamid Lahauri, in
W. E. BEGLEY AND Z. A. DESAI
,
Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb

Agra

Saturday, July 23, 1633

16 Muharram
A.H.
1043

A
s the birds stirred in the trees and the indigo of the sky disintegrated into the coming dawn, two men stood on the sandstone platform of the Great Gate and looked down the gardens to the riverfront terrace.

Work for the day had not yet begun, and in this moment of peace, the men were motionless and thoughtful. The previous day’s stultifying heat had died in the darkness, and it was coolest now, just before the break of dawn. The air was unsullied, scented with the imperceptible aroma of the budded
ketki
flowers that some worker had planted around the platform. When the sun rose, the flowers would unfurl themselves in spiky petals, each the size of a man’s arm to his elbow, and send their heady aroma into the scorching air.

“Will this indeed be a paradise on earth, Mirza Amanat Khan?” the older man asked. He towered five inches above his companion. Ustad Ahmad Lahori had reached his sixty-second year on this earth, and most of those years had been spent in service to the Mughal Emperors of Hindustan.

Amanat Khan laughed, the lines deepening around his mouth. He was not young himself, fifty-seven, but he was robust, stocky, and a man of means. This showed in the fine thin silk of his
qaba
; the gleam of diamonds on his expressive hands when he moved them in the dull light; the clean bouquet of sandalwood that curled around him, indicative of a bath; slave girls at his bidding; a palanquin to transport him so he did not have to waste energy in sweat.

“You are the architect, Ustad Ahmad,” Amanat Khan said, bowing to his companion. “It is your hand that has fashioned this masterpiece, your name that will blaze in the minds of those men who will behold this wonder after we are dead, your—”

“I beg your pardon, Mirza Amanat,” Ahmad said, “but you must not speak thus of our Emperor’s most precious possession. Our lord is the one who has planned every aspect of this tomb, it is his hand that scurried in glory across my meager sketches, changing lines of the building here, the aspect of the mosque and the assembly hall there. He has consulted extensively with the landscapers and given us his ideas on where to plant the cypresses, the guavas, the oranges, the frangipani, so that each might bloom in one part of the garden to best showcase the Empress’s final resting place. I am merely his servant. And, I beg of you again, please do not call me
‘ustad’;
I feel as though that title belongs to someone else. I am merely Ahmad Mim’ar—Ahmad the architect.”

Amanat Khan looked up at the man he had called a master at his craft. Ahmad Lahori had been born in Lahore, hence his name, and had attached himself at an early age to Mir Abdal Karim, who was currently Superintendent of Buildings under Emperor Shah Jahan. This humble man was a classically trained academic, a thinker, an engineer, an architect, skilled at subjects that Amanat had never been able to fathom deeply when he was younger—astronomy, mathematics, and geometry. Amanat had seen the completed plans for the Taj Mahal and had marveled at the meticulous detail laid out by Ahmad Lahori, measurements down to an inch on every monument in the complex, thorough notes on the construction of the foundations, the consistency of the mortar that bound the slabs of sandstone and marble together, the panels for the inscriptions, and the dado panels inside and outside the marble tomb. And he denied himself the designation
ustad
—master—one he so richly deserved.

“You, Mirza Amanat Khan,” Ahmad Lahori said, “will be better known. I am merely going to create the structure that will house your immense talent. An architect can be nothing in the eyes of Allah compared to the calligrapher who will inscribe phrases in praise of Him.”

And that was to be Amanat Khan’s duty in the building of the Luminous Tomb. Because he was a calligrapher, because his work was to pick out the
suras
that would adorn the panels of the tomb, set them in writing in his beautifully formed script, supervise their printing on the marble—black agate inlaid in the white—he was revered more, granted his title of Amanat Khan and a rank of a thousand horses by his Majesty. Amanat Khan had come to India only in 1608, when he was in his early thirties and already established as a calligrapher and a scholar in Shiraz. Both he and his brother Afzal Khan had left their homeland of Persia in search of fortune and economic security in the Mughal Empire, as so many of their fellow men had done in years past. Their rise had been swift, almost astounding to the other
amirs
at court. Although they had both been well educated and men of letters, Afzal had always been more of a soldier and a warrior than Amanat. He had entered as such in Emperor Jahangir’s service, become a favorite of the Emperor, and dropped a word in Jahangir’s ear about his brother’s genius. As a result, the first monument of any importance Amanat Khan had signed his name on as a calligrapher had been Emperor Akbar’s tomb in Sikandra.

Afzal had subsequently—with a prescience Amanat could still not understand completely—given his allegiance to the then Prince Khurram, who was in disgrace with his father. But in the end, Khurram became Shah Jahan, and Afzal had recently been made the Diwan-i-kul, Prime Minister of the Mughal Empire, and on this new morning in 1633, Amanat Khan found himself also with a new title and the honor of adorning Empress Mumtaz Mahal’s tomb with the calligraphy that would make him famous for the rest of time.

Hence Ustad Ahmad Lahori’s deference to him—as brilliant an architect as he was, called upon to help with the Emperor’s most treasured wish to construct this Luminous Tomb, Lahori was in the end but an exalted worker, with his fingers grimed by the mud and mortar that would build this tomb.

But Amanat Khan would not allow this obsequiousness. He bowed to the older man and said, “I hear his Majesty has charged you with another commission?”

Ahmad Lahori’s mouth split into a slow and satisfied smile. “He wishes to build an entire new city at Delhi and make it his capital. It will be called after his Majesty—Shahjahanabad. Emperor Akbar has this city”—he gestured around him to mean Agra—“he has left his mark upon it, and his grandson will leave his stamp on another. I am drawing up the plans right now, when I can get away from here to work two or three hours at night.”

“You have the vigor of three younger men put together, Ustad Ahmad Lahori,” Amanat Khan said wistfully. “I have no doubt that Shahjahanabad is going to be a marvel for all, but this”—he gestured toward the void on the marble platform of the riverfront terrace and drew the curves and lines of the tomb’s main dome—“is why we were put on this earth by Allah.”

In the end, these two men, and Mir Abdal Karim and Makramat Khan—the Diwan-i-buyutat, the Superintendent of Public Works for the Empire—met every day for the next decade to pore over plans for the tomb, check for inconsistencies, make adjustments to the measurements as the work progressed, beg for audiences with their Emperor so that they could discuss the changes and have them approved and execute them. By the time this lustrous mausoleum had taken root in the ground and all of its various components had been completed, the four men were to one another more akin than blood brothers. They knew one another’s joys and pains, celebrated together the births of grandchildren, mourned ones lost to death, breathed as though with one breath. Of the four of them, only Amanat Khan would leave his signature embedded in marble in the tomb, but it belonged—if it could be said to belong at all to any person but its patron, Emperor Shah Jahan—to all of them. They had sweated over their creation, buried workers killed in accidents, sat in dumbfounded awe on chill moonlit nights as their vision glimmered a serene white and seemed to reach out and embrace them in a blessing. They knew, with the instinct of highly trained men, experts at their crafts—nay, virtuosos of their crafts—that nowhere else in the world would there be a monument such as this.