The Architect's Apprentice

by Elif Shafak

  Pakeeza would lift her head, a slow, reluctant gesture, yet enough of one to show she had heard him and that, despite her weariness, shared his hope. Then the sun would inch its way across the sky, paint the horizon in streaks of crimson, and another day would be over. It was the last few weeks before the wet season, the air muggy, the moisture unbearable. Secretly Jahan suspected something might have happened to the calf in the womb. It even occurred to him that Pakeeza was suffering from a bloated tummy, and that behind her swollen flesh there was nothing but emptiness. Yet, whenever he placed his ear on her huge, sagging belly, so low it almost touched the ground, he heard a heartbeat, timid but steady. The little one was there but, for reasons obscure to everyone, he was biding his time, waiting, hiding.

  Meanwhile, Pakeeza had developed an appetite for the strangest things. With gusto she licked muddy puddles; smacked her lips at the sight of dried clay; gobbled down cow-dung bricks. Whenever she had a chance she chomped the flakes off the barn’s lime-washed walls, inciting Jahan’s uncle to whip her.

  Pakeeza’s family dropped by every other day to see how she was faring. Leaving behind the forest, they ambled past in single file, their eyes fixed on the dusty path, their steps beating to a rhythm only they could hear. Upon reaching the place, the males fell silent while the females drew closer, calling out in their ancient tongue. Inside the yard Pakeeza pricked up her ears. Occasionally she answered them. With what little strength she had, she told them not to worry for her. Mostly she stayed still – whether numbed by dread or soothed by love, Jahan could not tell.

  People came from far and wide to see the miracle. Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs and Christians swarmed around their shack. They brought garlands of flowers. They lit candles, burned incense and sang airs. The baby must be blessed, they said, his umbilical cord stuck in an unseen world. They tied scraps of cloth on the banyan tree, hoping their prayers would be heard by the skies. Before they left, the visitors made sure to touch Pakeeza, promising not to wash their hands until their wishes had been granted. The most impudent tried to pluck a hair or two from her tail; for them, Jahan kept a lookout.

  Every so often a healer appeared at their gate, either out of a desire to help or sheer curiosity. One of them was Sri Zeeshan. A gaunt man with flaring eyebrows and a habit of embracing trees, rocks and boulders to feel the life within them. The year before he had lost his balance and toppled down a cliff while trying to enfold the sunset in his arms. He had remained in bed for forty days, unspeaking and unmoving, except for a nervous twitch behind his eyelids, as if in sleep he was still falling. His wife had already begun to mourn him when, on the afternoon of the forty-first day, he scrambled to his feet, wobbly but otherwise fine. Since then his mind moved back and forth, like a saw at work. Opinion was divided as to the result of the accident. Some believed it had propelled him to a higher realm no other sage had ever reached. Others said that, having lost his wits, he could no longer be entrusted with the sacred.

  Either way, here he was. He put his ear on Pakeeza’s belly, his eyes closed. He spoke in a low, husky voice that sounded as though it came from the bottom of that precipice he had tumbled into, saying, ‘Baby’s listening.’

  Jahan held his breath, awed and thrilled. ‘You mean, he can hear us?’

  ‘Sure. If you shout and cuss, he’ll never come out.’

  Jahan flinched as he recalled the many times there had been cursing and chiding in the house. Clearly, his brute of an uncle had scared the young one out of his wits.

  The healer waved a gnarled finger. ‘Hear me out, son. This is no ordinary calf.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This elephant is too … sentimental. He does not want to be born. Comfort him. Tell him it’ll be all right; this world is not such a bad place. He’ll come out like an arrow from a bow. Love him and he’ll never leave you.’ With that he gave Jahan a wink, as though they now shared an important secret.

  That afternoon, as Jahan watched the sky grow dark, he racked his brains. How could he persuade the baby this world was worth being born into? Rumbling, bellowing, roaring, elephants conversed all the time. Even so, it was a task beyond his powers. Not only because he didn’t speak their tongue, but also because he didn’t have anything to say. What did he know about life beyond these walls, beyond his eggshell heart?

  Lightning in the distance. Jahan waited for a thunder that didn’t come. It was in that lacuna, as he was expecting something to happen, that an idea rushed through his head. He didn’t know much about the world, true, but he knew how it felt to be afraid of it. When he was a toddler and got scared he would hide under Mother’s hair, which was so long it reached down to her knees.

  Jahan ran into the house, to find Mother washing her husband in a wooden tub, scrubbing his back. His uncle loathed bath times and would never agree to them were it not for the fleas. He would emerge from the water, the colour of his skin having changed, but not his character. Now he was lying in the tub, eyes closed, while the camphor oil worked its wonders. Jahan gestured at Mother, begging her to follow him into the yard. Next he whisked his sisters – all of whom had inherited Mother’s hair, though not quite her pretty looks – out of the house. In a tone he hadn’t known he was capable of, he asked them to stand beside Pakeeza. To his relief they did, holding hands, unsmiling, as if there were nothing queer in any of this. They inched closer, as he instructed them, their copious hair billowing in every direction. With their backs to the wind, and their heads bent forward, their hair caressed Pakeeza’s enormous belly. Together they made a mantle that hung halfway in mid-air, like a magic carpet. Jahan could hear his uncle bellowing from inside the house. No doubt Mother heard him too. Even so, they didn’t budge, not one of them. There was something beautiful in the air, and if he had had the word for it back then he might have called it a benison. In that passing moment the boy whispered to the calf in the womb, ‘See, it’s not bad out here. You might as well come now.’

  Afterwards his uncle beat his mother for her disobedience. When Jahan tried to interfere, he received his share of the blows. He slept in the barn that night. In the morning he woke up to an uncanny stillness. ‘Mother!’ he yelled. Not a sound.

  He was standing beside Pakeeza, who looked the same as she did on any other day, when he saw her midriff convulse, once, then twice. Noticing that her rear was swollen, he called out to Mother again, and to his sisters, though by now he had understood there was no one in the house. Pakeeza began to trumpet as her pouch twitched and quivered, expanding horribly. Jahan had seen animals give birth before, horses and goats, but never an elephant. He reminded himself that this was her sixth calf, and she knew what to do; however, a voice inside his head, a wiser voice, warned that he should not trust nature to take its course and that he should lend a helping hand – whether now or later, the voice didn’t say.

  A sac emerged, wet and slimy as a river stone. It fell on the ground, sending forth a gush of fluid. Astonishingly fast the calf was out, bespattered with blood and a sludgy substance so pale as to be translucent. A boy! Dazed and frail, he looked worn out as if he had come a great distance. Pakeeza sniffed the baby, nudging him gently with the tip of her trunk. She chewed the glassy sac. Meanwhile, the calf clambered to his feet, blind as a bat. There were ivory wisps of hair all over his body. It was his size and his colour that perplexed Jahan. In front of him was the tiniest elephant in the empire. And he was as white as boiled rice.

  Pakeeza’s son was almost half the size of other newborns. Like them, his trunk being too short, he needed to use his mouth to drink his first milk; but, unlike them, his head did not even reach his mother’s knees. In the next hour Jahan watched the mother elephant prod the baby, at first mildly, soon with growing impatience, pleading with him to come closer, to no avail.

  Convinced that he had to do something, the boy sprinted towards the back of the barn, where they kept all kinds of oddments. In one corner stood a rough-hewn barrel, half filled with the fodder they fed the an
imals in winter. A rat scurried past when he moved it aside. His feet now dredged with a layer of ancient dust, he emptied the barrel and rolled the clumsy thing to where the mother and baby stood. Then he ran to the house to fetch a stewpot. Lastly, he shoved the barrel as close to Pakeeza as he could and climbed up on it.

  He was taken aback by the sight of her swollen teats. Cautiously, he wrapped his thumb and forefinger around one of them and squeezed, hoping to milk her like a goat. Not a drop. He tried using more fingers and more force. Pakeeza flinched, almost knocking him down. Doing his best not to inhale, Jahan placed his lips around one of her nipples and sucked. As soon as the first drops reached his mouth he retched. It was the smell that got to him. He never knew milk could smell so foul. His second and third attempts were no more successful than the first, and before he knew it he was outside in the yard, throwing up. Elephant’s milk was like nothing he had tasted before. Sweet and tart at once, thick and fatty. The nape of his neck was slick with sweat and his head felt dizzy. Covering his nose with a handkerchief helped. After that he was able to make headway. He sucked and spat the liquid into the pot, sucked and spat. When the pot was one third full, he stepped down and proudly carried his gift to the calf.

  Throughout the afternoon he repeated this. The milk that he had so painfully extracted was always consumed by the baby in one happy slurp. After a dozen trips the boy awarded himself a break. While he rested, rubbing his sore jaw, he glanced at the calf, whose mouth had twisted into what he could only describe as an impish smile. Jahan smiled back, realizing they had become milk brothers.

  ‘I shall call you Chota,’* he said. ‘But you’ll grow big and strong.’

  The calf made a funny sound in agreement. Although there would be many who would want to rename him according to their hearts’ wishes, at no stage of his life, neither then nor later, would the animal respond to any name other than the one Jahan had given him. Chota he was and Chota he remained. In three weeks he had grown tall enough to reach his mother’s teats. Soon he was stomping around the yard, chasing chickens, frightening the birds, fully plunged into the discovery of the world. Loved and pampered by all the females in the herd, he frolicked. A brave elephant he was, scared of neither the thunder nor the whip. Only one thing seemed to fill him with fear. A sound that every now and then rose from the depths of the wilderness, gushing through the valley, like a dark, rowdy river. The sound of a tiger.

  When Jahan finished, still on his knees and having talked for the last hour at a tuft of grass, he dared neither to sit up nor to stare at her. If he had taken so much as a glance, he would have seen a smile etch on her lips, delicate as the morning mist.

  ‘Tell me what happened next?’ Mihrimah said.

  Yet, before Jahan could open his mouth, the nursemaid broke in, ‘It’s getting late, your Highness. Your mother might return at any moment.’

  Mihrimah sighed. ‘Fine, dada. We can go now.’

  Smoothing her long kaftan, the Princess rose to her feet and, with a swinging stride, trod down the garden path. Hesna Khatun watched her quietly for a while. Then, as soon as Mihrimah was out of earshot, she spoke, in a tone so soft and so caring that Jahan did not grasp the chiding underneath until the nursemaid, too, was gone.

  ‘Hyacinth eyes. Milk brother to an elephant. You are a strange one, Indian. Or else a gifted liar. If that’s right, if you are deceiving my good and gracious Excellency, I swear I’ll find it out and make you regret it.’

  The next time they came to see the elephant the nursemaid was seven steps behind and silent as a corpse. As for the Princess, Jahan thought that, in the receding light of the late afternoon, she looked more beautiful than ever before. On her finger shone a diamond, the size of a walnut and the colour of pigeon’s blood. Jahan was aware that if he could only get his hands on it, he would be a rich man all his life. And yet, somehow, he also knew he could never steal from her. After feeding Chota dried prunes, she sat under the lilac tree. A faint odour, of flowers and wild herbs, wafted from her hair.

  ‘I’d like to hear what happened afterwards.’

  Jahan felt a shiver run down his entire body, but he managed to say, calmly, ‘As you wish, your Highness.’

  The story the mahout told the Princess

  About a year after Chota was born, Shah Humayun received an unusual visitor in his magnificent palace – an Ottoman admiral who had lost half of his crew and all of his fleet in a terrible storm. After listening to his ordeals the Shah promised the man a new caravel so that he could return home.

  ‘I set sail to fight the heathen,’ said the Ottoman. ‘But a gale brought me to this land. I now understand why. Allah wished me to witness the Shah’s generosity and to convey this to my Sultan.’

  Pleased to hear this, Humayun rewarded the admiral with robes and jewels. Afterwards he retired to his private chambers, and it was there, in a bathtub full of rose petals, that an idea occurred to him. His troubles were endless; his enemies aplenty, including his own flesh and blood. His late father had given him some hard advice: do not harm your brothers even though they may well deserve it. How could he fight them without harming them, Humayun wondered. And if he did not defeat them, how could he remain in power? There he was, as naked as the hour in which he was born, drained by the steam, contemplating this quandary, when a rose petal caught his eye. Swimming gracefully, it slid towards him as if guided by an invisible hand and fastened itself to his chest.

  Gentle by birth, mystical by disposition, Humayun gasped. Surely this was an omen. The rose petal had shown him his weakest side: his heart. He ought not to be enfeebled by his feelings. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that the shipwrecked captain had been brought to him just like this petal. God was telling him to wage war on his enemies and, if necessary, to get support from the Ottomans. He left the bath, delighted and dripping.

  Between the two Muslim sultanates there were sporadic exchanges – merchants, emissaries, mystics, spies, artisans and pilgrims travelled to and fro. Also, gifts. The last came in all sizes: silks, jewels, carpets, spices, mother-of-pearl cabinets, musical instruments, lions, cheetahs, cobras, concubines and eunuchs. From one ruler to the other, messages were carried along with tokens of largesse, and the answer, whether affirmative or not, would arrive with reciprocal flamboyance.

  Humayun, Giver of Peace and the Shadow of God upon Earth, was curious about Suleiman, Swayer of Sea and Land and the Shadow of God upon Earth. He had heard from his spies that every night before he went to sleep the Sultan wore the Seal of Solomon, the signet ring that had given his namesake command over animals, humans and djinn. Suleiman’s strengths were apparent. But what were the foibles and the fears that festered under those precious kaftans, each of which he was rumoured to wear but once?

  Humayun had also heard about Hurrem – the queen of Suleiman’s harem. Recently she had ordered a thousand pairs of turtledoves from Egypt that had been trained as carriers, tiny papers wrapped around their claws. The birds had been sent to Istanbul over seas and rivers, and when they were released, the sky above turned as black as pitch and the people ran to the mosques, fearing the Day of Judgement.

  Humayun decided to impress the Ottoman Sultana with a matchless present. His offering would honour the Sultan but at the same time remind him of the lands beyond his reach and, thus, of his limits. Swathed in a cape, the Shah called for his ewer-bearer, Jauhar, in whose wisdom he trusted.

  ‘Tell me. What would be the right gift to send to a man who has everything?’

  Jauhar replied, ‘Not silks or gems. Nor gold or silver. I’d say, an animal. Because animals have personalities and each is different.’

  ‘Which animal would best convey to him the greatness of our empire?’

  ‘An elephant, my Lord. The biggest animal on land.’

  Shah Humayun gave this some thought. ‘What if I’d like to imply that my kingdom, though splendid enough to have such an elephant, is in need of his help?’

  ‘In that case, my Lo
rd, send him a baby elephant. It’ll be our way of saying that we cannot do battle just yet. We need a helping hand. But we shall grow and fight, and when we fight, we shall triumph, God willing.’

  The morning Jauhar arrived with a regiment of soldiers, Jahan was feeding Chota, now weighing almost eight kantars and still the colour of ivory.

  Jahan’s uncle, delighted to have such a respectable guest in his courtyard, bowed and scraped. ‘Our noble Shah’s noble servant, how can I be of help?’

  ‘I heard you had a white elephant,’ Jauhar said. ‘You must give it to us. The Shah wishes to send it to the Ottomans.’

  ‘Of course, what an honour.’

  ‘You’re not giving Chota away, are you?’ came a voice from behind. Everyone turned to look at Jahan.

  His uncle threw himself on the ground. ‘Forgive him, venerable master. His mother passed away last month. Awful disease. She was fine one day, gone the next. She was with child, poor thing. The boy doesn’t know what he’s saying. Grief got into his head.’

  ‘Mother died because of your cruelty. You beat her every day –’ Slapped by his stepfather, Jahan tumbled down, unable to finish his words.

  ‘Don’t hit your son!’ said Jauhar.

  ‘I am not his son,’ yelled Jahan from where he had fallen.

  Jauhar smiled. ‘You are a brave boy, aren’t you? Come closer. Let me look at you.’

  Under the burning gaze of his uncle, Jahan did as he was told.

  ‘Why don’t you wish to let go of the animal?’ asked Jauhar.

  ‘Chota is like no other elephant: he’s different. He can’t go anywhere.’

  ‘You love the beast, that’s good,’ said Jauhar. ‘But he’ll be fine. In the Ottoman palace he’ll be treated like a prince. And your family will be rewarded.’ The Shah’s ewer-bearer then gestured to a servant who, out of his robe, produced a pouch.