Текст книги "Salt and Saffron"

Автор книги: Kamila Shamsie

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

‘It’s my sleeve,’ was all I could say.

‘No, Aliya, it’s mine. But it looks a lot better on you so you can have it.’

‘Just the sleeve,’ Aba said. ‘The rest of the kameez goes back to your mother’s cupboard. What’s the matter, little bug?’

So, finally, I told them about the family tree.

Aba snorted.

Ami rolled her eyes.

Dadi looked at me. And nodded. And sighed.

Aba turned to his mother. ‘Mama, don’t you dare,’ he said.

Dadi stood up in her most regal way. ‘The one thing left to us was the ability to hold our heads up high. She took even that from us. The curse has already come to pass.’ She looked at me. ‘You had no part in it. The histories teach us that the twins aren’t always directly responsible for what happens. Sometimes they are victims of others. Sometimes only one twin is responsible. Sameer, escort me to my car.’

Sameer glanced at me, and I loved him for that moment of treason. I nodded, inclined my head towards Dadi. Should I be angry with her for saying Mariam had brought a curse upon us; or should I be grateful for her declaration that I had no part in the curse? Just before she turned to walk out with Sameer, Dadi bent down and kissed the top of my head.

Aba watched her go, his expression bordering on petulance. ‘She gets worse with age.’ He threw a stick of ginger at me, his expression of paternal command restored. ‘Ignore what she said. The twin thing hits a raw nerve in her.’ He pointed at Ami. ‘Your mother didn’t want her filling your head with all of that from such an early age, but I said they’re good stories. Nothing more.’

‘Are you saying you don’t believe any of it, Aba?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Ami said. ‘He wants not to. But he was raised on the stories, too.’

‘You and Mariam aren’t twins. Not in any sense of the word. What she did, she did. She would have done it even if you’d been born a day later.’ Aba folded and unfolded his napkin repeatedly. ‘I should have fired Masood when—’

‘Nasser!’ Ami said. ‘Be quiet.’

Sameer came back in and sat down. ‘Clones,’ he said, picking up the stick of ginger that had bounced off my shoulder, and pointing it at me. ‘Human cloning. Theoretically, it’s possible.’

‘Point?’ I said.

‘If someone … say, Ghair Insaan, is cloned, then he and his clone are … what?’

‘Used to settle the nature versus nurture debate?’

‘Wrong. They are twins. More than twins. So they’re not-quite-twins. Yes?’

‘Point?’

‘Theoretically, in the next generation or two of Dard-e-Dils there could be dozens of sets of clones. Imagine every baby cloned in all the extended family. If that were to happen it would be impossible for every set of not-quites to bring downfall upon us because, after all, there’s only so much downfall that can happen in one generation, and only so many people who can be responsible for it.’

Aba nodded. ‘Point.’

I shook my head. ‘Rubbish.’

Sameer threw the ginger at me. I ate it before it could be used as a missile again. ‘Theoretically, it’s possible. Theoretically, a mass cloning across the family would prove that the theory of not-quite-twins fated to bring about disaster is rubbish.’

Ami stood up. ‘This whole family is mad, bhai, cent percent banana bread. I’m going to lie down with cucumbers over my eyes.’

‘There’s something you should know, little bug,’ Aba said. ‘Your Dadi didn’t believe the legend of not-quites when she was young. It’s just that with Partition, the horror of what went on then, and the whole Akbar and Sulaiman thing, believing the legend was the easiest way of making sense of things. Even your mother admits it was strange how everything unfolded – the break-up of the family and my father and uncle’s roles in it. It makes it hard to dismiss family lore.’ He walked out of the room, turning in the doorway to glance briefly at me.

He still couldn’t dismiss family lore entirely.

Chapter Thirteen

A couple of days later, at Dadi’s house, the Starched Aunts entered the room and I said, ‘At last! The tarts are here.’

I was referring to the lemon tarts which Dadi’s bearer wheeled in on the tea-trolley, just after the aunts entered, but it was an inauspicious start to the evening, nonetheless. The two aunts did their round of the room, kissing their aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews and nieces, and when it was my turn they both pinched my cheeks and said to each other, ‘She still gets excited about pastries. Like a baby! Sho shweet.’

They pulled their signature crisp, starched kurtas taut as they sat down, so that the material wouldn’t crease, and the older sister spread her hands as though to ward off any accusations. ‘So sorry to arrive in this haalat —’ she pointed at the incongruous running shoes on her feet – ‘but we’ve both been for a walk and came straight over from the park. Bhai, I said maybe we should skip the walk today, but you know, have to look good for Kishoo’s wedding next week. We saw Kishoo’s mother yesterday and tobah! She’s put on so much weight and was wearing a sari on top of that and I swear a tidal wave of fat came lurching towards us when she walked into the room. And Kishoo’s in-laws-to-be are so stylish. I mean if I looked like that at my daughter’s wedding I’d do her a favour and stay away altogether.’

‘Or claim overflowing of religion and cover yourself in a burkha,’ said Younger Starch.

The sisters beamed and looked around. ‘So good to be with family. Why don’t we do this more often?’

Any of the twenty or so relatives in the room who might have been asking the same question minutes earlier were not doing so any more.

‘Kishoo? You mean Kishwar? Lily’s daughter? Hanh, I heard she was getting married. Who to?’ While Dadi was asking the questions she was also using hand gestures to direct two of my young cousins to hand around plates and tea things and find out how much sugar everyone took in his or her tea. Sameer and I watched this with great satisfaction; not too long ago we were the two considered both old enough and young enough to have this chore placed on us.

‘Quite a catch!’ Younger Starch said. ‘The oldest son of the Ali Shahs. He has the family seat in the National Assembly.’

‘Really?’ Great-Aunt One-Liner sniffed. ‘Lily’s daughter is marrying a Sindhi?’ Great-Aunt One-Liner generally made only one comment in an evening. She usually waited until late to make it; just when she realized everyone was about to leave and she hadn’t said anything memorable to leave her stamp on the occasion she’d speak, and then everyone would feel that the evening had truly come to an end. The only exceptions to her policy of delayed vocalization occurred, as now, when someone gave her an opportunity to reveal her disdain for anyone not from Dard-e-Dil or the states around it.

I glanced over at Sameer’s father, whose mother was Sindhi. He winked at me.

‘They’re very important people, the Ali Shahs,’ Older Starch said. ‘Kishoo’s parents are thrilled with the match. After all, why should the Ali Shahs have settled for a girl who isn’t from a political family? They won’t get any mileage from the match. And yet, they’re conscious of lineage, they understand these things matter, so they’re welcoming her with open arms.’

‘In fact —’ and here both the sisters looked at me – ‘the Ali Shahs have a younger son. Unmarried. Very intelligent, very ambitious. They say he won’t remain in the shadows long. In fact, some say, if democracy survives, future prime minister. And he’s looking for a girl from a good family. He’ll be in Karachi for the wedding. Aliya, you should come with us to all the functions. We’ve been invited to everything – even the really small dholkis.’

I opened my mouth and Sameer shoved a sandwich in it. Cheese and tomato. Too much butter.

Great-Aunt One-Liner leant forward and, shockingly, spoke again. ‘Have they expressed an interest? In Aliya.’

‘My granddaughter is not a confectionery item,’ Dadi said. ‘And in any case, she’s got two years of university ahead of her.’ I felt the urge to stand up and cheer.

A bachelor uncle shook his head. ‘She’ll be twenty-four then. Her “best before” date will nearly have passed.’

Aba turned to him. ‘I have a stone aimed at your glass house. Should I throw it?’

‘The lemon tarts are really wonderful,’ Ami said. ‘For years they were too sweet, but this is how I remember them from my childhood.’ She put a hand on Sameer’s mother’s wrist. ‘Zainab, remember how your mother always used to have two lemon tarts waiting for us, by the side of the pool, when we finished our fifty laps at the Club? When is your mother arriving?’

‘Don’t have the exact date yet. You know what she’s like. Loves the element of surprise. For all we know she could be in the air right now, halfway between Greece and here.’

The bachelor uncle returned the conversation to its earlier topic. ‘Aren’t the Ali Shahs related to that Jahangir? The one whose lands Mariam was on when she … What’s the preferred family euphemism? … Disappeared.’

I had the desperate urge to yank off his toupee.

‘Oh, everyone is related to everyone,’ my mother laughed. ‘And you have ketchup on your silk shirt. I think it’ll stain.’

‘Well, I think this is as good a time as any to say it,’ Older Starch said. ‘My children, as you all know, have both, Allah ka shukar, been admitted to Karachi Grammar School and Maliha will be joining the Senior School. You know what kids are like at that age. Anything to tease about they’ll tease about. So I’ve said it plain to them, if anyone mentions Mariam they’re to say she is no relation to them. She was an imposter. And I’m not just saying this for my children’s sake, because of course you have to teach them to speak the truth. I truly believe it and why no one else has thought of it already I don’t know.’

I had been about to pick up the lemon tart on my plate, but drew my hand back when I heard the word ‘imposter’. Anything I ate now would taste like ashes.

‘Thought of what?’ Ami said, and now she wasn’t even pretending to keep her voice cordial.

‘Ayeshoo, this is no reflection on you, sweetie.’ If there’s one thing my mother dislikes more than being called ‘sweetie’ it’s being called ‘Ayeshoo’. ‘We were all taken in by her, and no one has anything but praise for the hospitality you showed her, but what proof did we ever have that she was one of the Dard-e-Dils?’

‘She looked just like her father,’ Great-Aunt One-Liner said. She was having a wild, wild day. ‘Didn’t she, Abida?’

‘Just like him,’ Dadi said. ‘Right down to her smile.’

What a smile it was. I had taken with me to college the one picture in the world which captured it and Celeste, remarking on it, said, ‘Looks like she’s seeing angels beckon in the camera lens.’

‘Well, Booby looks like Orson Welles,’ Bachelor Uncle said, pointing at his stocky cousin. ‘That doesn’t mean he should be getting percentages from video rentals of Citizen Kane.’

Older Starch leapt upon that with alacrity. ‘Exactly! I’m not saying she wasn’t clever, probably looked around to find a family she could fit into and, let’s face it, we’re prominent. Pictures in the papers all the time. Social pages. Business pages. Art pages. Front pages. My theory is this …’ She leant forward, and I tried to determine the trajectory of my lemon tart if I were to get so engrossed in her theory that my hand pressed down with all its weight on the edge of my plate. I shifted the plate slightly. But I couldn’t help listening. ‘I’m not saying Mariam was some dehati who’d never seen a big city before. Clearly she had learnt social graces somewhere. But we’ve all heard the stories of girls from good families who go bad and are disowned. Usually because of some man. So what if Mariam was disowned. Because of some man. Probably lower class. And then he didn’t want her because it was only her money he was after. And maybe somehow she’d heard the story of our family. It’s no secret. And she saw pictures and saw her features repeated in those pictures. So she wrote a letter, sent it to Nasser and Ayesha. The address is in the phone book, always has been. Then she arrived. But she couldn’t speak because speaking would mean answering questions which would mean revealing the truth. So she remained quiet. Except about food because she knew if she developed one eccentric trait it would shield her. Then if she ever did something odd, something out of keeping with the way our family behaves, we would just say, “Oh, that’s just Mariam. She lives by her own rules.” And we did. We said it often.’

You bitch, I thought. You absolute stupid bitch.

‘And what about Masood?’ Bachelor Uncle asked.

Younger Starch raised a hand for attention. ‘That letter which announced she was arriving, we’ve all read it, we all agree it’s strange. Clearly not written by someone like us. So what if this man – the one who waltzed her up the garden path – what if she made believe, to herself, that he was the one writing the letter. To make herself feel better about him not wanting her. She imagined she was the one choosing to leave and he was the one writing the letter. So she wrote it the way she imagined he would write it. That tells us what kind of man he was. Lower class. Definitely. So from him to Masood was no big leap. For some reason she’s just attracted to that type.’

‘She had no birth certificate, it’s true,’ Bachelor Uncle said. ‘Remember all those strings I pulled to have a passport and ID card made for her? Broke the law, but anything for family, I said. But there’s no way of knowing if that’s what she really was.’

Around the room I saw people nodding their heads, murmuring to each other. Great-Aunt One-Liner seemed to be crying; Aba had gone red; Ami had gone white; Sameer’s mother was trying to restrain her husband from attacking the Starched Aunts, though it might have been the other way round.

The oldest of the relatives, a woman who had doted on Mariam Apa said, ‘Perhaps it is best to say just that. For the sake of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Family reputation is the most precious jewel in a young bride’s jahez.’ She sighed. ‘There was a time we were so close to the heavens no stigma could reach us. But what we were we no longer are.’

I could almost hear the scissors snipping away the strings which bound Mariam Apa to our lives. Here, now, the story was shaping; the one that would be repeated, passed down, seducing us all with its symmetry. In parentheses the storytellers would add, ‘There are still those who say she really was a Dard-e-Dil, but a new identity was fabricated for her by those who felt she blemished the family name.’ Would she hear the story one day, wherever she was, whatever she was doing? Was her life so separate now from ours that even the wind carrying our lies would never play with her hair, swirl it away from her ears and make all hearing possible?

Or did she know us better than we knew ourselves?

Who starred her name and mine on the family tree?

If Mariam Apa were ever to send me a message it would be wordless. A strain of music pushing open my window and creeping through; a fistful of saffron sprinkling over my eyelids while I slept; a shell yielding to my cochlea the whisper of waves allied to the sound of footsteps running away from the rushing tide. These were the signs I waited for. But how could I forget the stars?

Mariam Apa used to point out constellations to me; she’d show me the clusters of light as a lesson, not in astronomy but in our lives. No star, except the brightest, has meaning on its own. During nights at the beach she’d sweep her arm in the direction of the sky, showing me this star and that and the other one there, and we could not discern the difference between them. But when we saw the middle of Orion’s belt or the handle of the Big Dipper, then the stars ceased to be interchangeable, one no different to the other. Mariam would point out a star and make a shadow picture of a bear against the wall of the beach hut. Her hand would reach out as though to extinguish that star and as she did so the shadow picture would disappear. Without that star, there’s no Ursa Minor. Without Ursa Minor the sky is less than it can be. Somehow Ursa Minor became our favourite and we’d talk (so to speak) of buying a boat and sailing for ever within sight of that constellation as the seasons shifted and the bear moved away from us.

She had starred the family tree. She wanted me to know we were bound together, she and I and all of us. I had to buy that boat. I had to find out where she had gone. Maybe the only way of doing so was to find out where she had come from.

‘It could be true,’ I heard. It was a mousy cousin speaking. ‘It could be true that she’s not a relative. But if I ever see her again I’ll put my arms around her and I’ll hold her so close. And there’s no one else in this room about whom I can say the same.’

Dadi rang the bell to have the tea things cleared away. ‘She is Taimur’s daughter. If she wasn’t, don’t you think I would know?’

Chapter Fourteen

The next morning, reclining on the sofa in Mariam Apa’s old room, I thought that the only thing shocking about the Starched Aunts’ version of Mariam’s life was that it took them four years to come up with it. Still, after four years you’d expect them to do better than the psychobabble of ‘she imagined she was the one choosing to leave and he was the one writing the letter’. Not to mention ‘she knew if she developed one eccentric trait it would shield her’. Honestly. That made about as much sense as the theory my cousin, Usman, had propounded when he was little more than a toddler: ‘Maybe she doesn’t know any words that aren’t about food.’

It wasn’t just toddlers, of course. Virtually everyone in the family had a favourite theory about Mariam’s silence, long before she became our official black sheep. My father’s theory was among the most succinct. ‘She’s taking the notion of a woman’s traditional role a little too literally,’ he had said after one of his attempts to get her to talk about her early life. Mariam Apa had smiled and walked towards the kitchen, from where I heard ‘biryani’ just before the door swung closed.

But my mother had laughed at my father’s explanation, and reminded me of Mariam Apa’s encounter with Dr Tahir.

I was very young when that happened. It was winter, and Karachi’s social elite were feverishly getting married and throwing parties before the hot weather and riots and curfew returned and impeded social activity. (Mariam Apa was, incidentally, extremely popular in the social milieu, praised for being discreet, a good listener and never interrupting anyone’s flow of loquaciousness.)

My parents and Mariam Apa were at a party, the last of their social stops for the evening. Mariam Apa was draped in a sari that was covered in intricate sequinned designs. As she and my mother wandered to the buffet table, a liveried bearer tripped on the uneven ground and sent a dozen glasses of pomegranate juice crashing to the floor, splattering Mariam Apa’s sari with red blots.

‘Oh, too bad,’ a male voice exclaimed, and she turned to see Dr Tahir – the man infamous for diagnosing mosquito bites as measles bumps – standing behind her. ‘Well, you’ll never wear that again,’ he said cheerfully. ‘That’s the problem with these fancy sequinned clothes. Can’t wash them. I always say that if you want proof that men are more practical than women you should go compare their clothes.’

Mariam Apa did not sleep that night. She sat in the TV room and unstitched every single sequin in the area around the stained section of the sari. When I woke up to get ready for school she was in the bathroom handwashing the sari. And when I returned home that afternoon she had just finished stitching back every sequin in its original place. That night she did the unthinkable and rewore the sari to a dinner where she knew she would see Dr Tahir.

‘So you see,’ my mother told me, ‘she has this, I don’t know, determination, stubbornness, whatever, that allows her to do things that most people wouldn’t. For all we know she’s like this because she lost a bet long ago, and someone said she would never be able to stick to the winner’s terms.’

I never found out which of my parents was right, or if they were both as far from the truth as Usman. To be quite honest, I didn’t really care.

It was enough for me to sleep curled beside her in the afternoons, our heads sharing the same pillow; enough to watch her fingers rise, curl, tap, fall as she listened to Beethoven played or Ghalib sung; enough to know she was watching me as I did my homework, watching me for the simple reason that I was not invisible in her world. And enough to eat the meals she ordered.

My enjoyment of summer holidays abroad, in London or Paris, was always tempered by two factors: the absence of Mariam Apa and the absence of Masood’s food. We always tried to persuade Mariam to come with us but a simple lift of the eyebrow was all it took for her to remind us that she wouldn’t be able to eat anything. One summer, when he was feeling particularly flush, Aba offered to buy a plane ticket for Masood. It was the only time I saw Masood exhibit anything approaching anger. He stood up straight and said that, of course, he was just a servant, he would cook in whichever kitchen we wanted him to cook in, even if it was in a country where he knew no one and couldn’t speak the language. Aba never broached the issue again.

Well, of course I’ve wondered what went on in those weeks when Masood and Mariam were alone in the house.

I always used to imagine that they used that time to cook together. Maybe they did. Early in the morning, before friends and relatives dropped in. I can see them both in the early morning light as they slide the skins off scalded tomatoes, unzip the casing of pea-pods, pour golden oil into a sizzling pan.

I should have invited Khaleel up for dinner.

Just seconds after that thought entered my head, Wasim brought a pile of letters into the room along with my morning tea. There was a letter for me. Mailed in London. My heart thudded so violently against my ribs it must have ricocheted back into my spine.

The letter was from Rehana Apa.

Dear Aliya,

My cousin for whom my degree of affection must prove that blood and water rule. I’ve been thinking a great deal of our conversation in the park, and have extracted from Baji the confession that she didn’t really believe that you would take the myth of not-quites seriously. It’s important you know this so that you know she wanted only to surprise you with the family tree, not to set you wondering how you, and Mariam, will bring down the family. She was stunned when I said I, too, believe there is something to the old legend. She’s quite sure, you see, that the story of not-quites is a self-fulfilling prophecy, or a tool used to others’ ends. Like Taj, the midwife, whose quest for revenge may have led her to say the brothers were not-quites when really they were plain and simple triplets. I do believe the not-quites are special. But does that mean (putting aside the question of whether you and Mariam are qualified to enter their ranks) they always trail destruction? Remember Zain and Ibrahim?

But here my eyes scanned ahead and caught the word on the next line which emptied my mind of everything that had gone before.

Remember that photograph of Bahadur Shah which you mentioned to Khaleel (Samia and I ran into him when we were having tea together at a café round the corner from your flat. Samia introduced us and then had to take off, so Khaleel and I had a very pleasant time talking about how we both know you so little and yet think of you so much and also think so much of you. He’s really quite delicious. I’ve invited him over to meet Baji. Samia will be there, too – I’m sure she’ll report all).

Write to me.

Love,

Rehana Apa.

P.S. The photograph is from Baji. As a token of apology, though she won’t admit that.

I looked at the postmark on the letter. Only four days ago. Why didn’t she say if Khaleel was planning to come to Karachi? The café round the corner. That had to be the one we’d been to together. Surely it wasn’t just coincidence that had brought him there again. Liaquatabad had to be a lie. He’d said it just to test me. He’d talk to Baji and Samia for just a few minutes before they’d ferret out names of his relatives who were known to our family, either pre– or post-Partition. Maybe it would turn out he was somehow distantly related to us.

Damn.

I looked at the letter again, the flat of my hand hovering slightly above the paper to block out that part which referred to him without running the risk of smudging his name.

‘Remember Zain and Ibrahim,’ Rehana Apa had written. Zain and Ibrahim? Dadi had a cousin called Zain, but as far as I could remember the only thing noteworthy about him was the absence of his left eyebrow. And who was Ibrahim? I picked up the phone and dialled Dadi’s number. I had never got out of the practice of dialling Dadi’s number. In the past, whenever I was home for the summer, I would dial that familiar configuration of digits, just to allow myself to believe that she would answer the phone and everything would be as it used to be.

This time, for the first time in four years, she did answer. ‘I had a feeling it was you,’ she said. ‘Are you calling about Usman’s piece?’

I picked up the newspaper, which was lying unread beside me. My cousin, Usman, was interning at the newspaper office, and every day the whole family would scan the papers for his name and call each other up to discuss his journalistic strengths and weaknesses. ‘No, which page?’

‘Two,’ Dadi said. ‘So why are you calling?’

I turned to page two. OFFICIAL FLAYS FLIGHT FAILURE, ran the headline. The story below read:

Saboteurs are responsible for sabotaging the runway controls which caused chaos at Karachi airport yesterday, says an airline official. Further details will be unveiled when an enquiry has uncovered further details. Other sources say shady people were seen lurking near the control tower. When questioned by airport police they claimed they were not lurking but loitering. When this reporter asked the airline official if miscreants were involved, the official responded, ‘We have not yet looked into the creant factor.’

‘Little Usman!’ I said. ‘Never realized he had the Dard-e-Dil humour gene.’ Dadi’s earlier remark struck me for the first time. ‘Did you say, “So why are you calling?” Can’t I call you on a whim?’

‘Well, we haven’t really clarified that, have we? Or should I say, you haven’t decided whether we’re friends again yet.’

‘I love you Dods.’ I’d been wanting to say that ever since I heard her footsteps in the hall, the morning after I had returned home.

‘That’s not quite the same thing.’

‘We’re friends, so long as we don’t talk about Mariam Apa.’

‘A strange kind of friendship.’

‘We’re a strange kind of family.’

She laughed. ‘All right. For the moment, all right. So you’re really just calling on a whim?’

‘Well, no.’ I felt light-headed with relief that we’d got that conversation so painlessly out of the way. ‘Who are Zain and Ibrahim?’

She made a noise of exasperation. ‘Have you forgotten everything? Ibrahim and Zain …’

‘Oh, Ibrahim and Zain! Now I remember. Thanks Dadi. I have to go. There’s a letter I’m trying to understand. I’ll come over this evening, is that okay?’

‘Yes, fine. There are still lemon tarts left over. I’ll see you at five.’

Ibrahim and Zain. Of course I remembered them. They were one of the not-quite pairs. Their father, Nawab Assadullah, had two wives. One was high-born; the other was the Nawab’s favourite. But he couldn’t have been entirely discriminatory in his treatment of his wives because they were both found to be pregnant within days of each other. For months the court was gripped by rumour and speculation, and a lot of heavy gambling. Which of the wives would bear a son? If both, which would bear a son first?

Cliques formed around each wife, praying, fasting, bringing unguents and holy water from distant lands (those were less prejudiced times – distant lands were trusted). Mid-wives were consulted. What was the earliest a child could be induced without greatly reducing chances of survival?

Sometime around the seventh month of the pregnancies, the high-born wife’s father, cousin and Vizir to Assadullah, could take the anxiety no longer. He swallowed a diamond and waited for the sharp edges to lacerate his insides and catapult him into the embrace of an afterlife without intrigue. It didn’t work. After a few minutes of lying in bed feeling mildly uncomfortable, the Vizir got up, drank a glass of water, and realized that his father – a man who lost all sense of judgement at the mere sight of a pack of cards – had gambled away the family jewels, cunningly replacing them with fakes so as to avoid detection by his wife. With his fortunes lost and the future holding a fifty percent possibility of bleakness for his family, there remained only one course of action for the Vizir.

That afternoon, a midwife, her pockets heavy with diamonds and pearls, entered into the presence of the high-born wife. Within minutes the word went round the palace: she was in labour.

Another midwife was summoned to a different part of the palace, and for the rest of the night the courtiers couldn’t move anywhere without tripping over someone prostrate on a prayer mat. At dawn, at opposite ends of the palace, two umbilical cords were snipped; two premature sons were born. One must have been born first, if only by seconds, but no one was ever to know which. Two sons. Brothers. Princes. Twins? Well, no. But sort of.

Nawab Assadullah declared that Zain, the son of the favourite, was his heir, and Ibrahim, the other son, was not. But he showered the Vizir with money and jewels all the same, and when the old man tried diamond suicide again he died smiling.

So where’s the calamity?

Assadullah died in 1525. Zain ascended the throne. The next year was 1526. The year of the Battle of Paniput and the beginning of Mughal rule in India. Zain, sent his envoys to Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, shortly after the battle. The envoys found a man who spoke not of wars or empires, but of melons. Read Babur’s memoirs if you want confirmation. To him, India was an ‘unpleasant and unharmonious’ place, a second-best territory he’d settled for when it seemed clear he would never again rule over his ancestral home and one-time kingdom, Samarkand. He was, in modern parlance, homesick. This homesickness manifested itself primarily in his yearning for the honey-sweet melons of Central Asia. (A great deal of attention is paid to fruit in the Baburnama and, by and large, India failed to impress Babur in that all-important regard. While he appreciated the mango he thought it unworthy to be considered, among all fruit, second only to the melon. Still, at least the mango fared better than the jackfruit – which, he wrote, ‘Looks exactly like sheep intestines turned inside out’ – and the fruit of the clustered fig – ‘an oddly insipid fruit’.)