The Feast of Roses

by Indu Sundaresan

  • • •

  At Lahore, Shahryar paced excitedly in his apartments. He glanced at the letter in his hand. The Emperor was dead and Mehrunnisa had called upon him to gather an army and defend his rights. Shahryar skipped around the edges of the carpets, his feet barely touching the cool stone floors. He would be Emperor soon. He was already Emperor of Hindustan! That would make everyone take notice of him. They had called him nashudani, and ever since the onset of the leprosy, Shahryar had felt even more incompetent. But not anymore . . . his wig fell over his eyes as Shahryar danced around the room, and he set it straight on his head. Not anymore. He shouted for his attendants.

  “Inform the city of the Emperor’s demise,” he said. “Further, send a proclamation that I am Emperor now.”

  He then called for his guards and ordered them to seize the royal treasury still at Lahore and all the wealth of the state of Lahore kept under guard at the fort. An army was prepared to meet Abul Hasan. In order to guarantee the support of his army, Shahryar distributed the royal treasury among his soldiers, buying their loyalty. The army was then sent to the Ravi River to prepare for battle with Abul Hasan.

  • • •

  Abul Hasan and his soldiers moved swiftly from Bhimbar to Lahore. His army met Shahryar’s army three miles outside the city. They had hardly begun the battle when Shahryar’s men, faced with the might of the imperial army, took fright and fled, leaving Abul to march victorious toward the fort at Lahore.

  When Shahryar heard news of the defeat, he ran back to the fort and barricaded himself inside with two thousand of his infantry. The next morning, many of Shahryar’s nobles defected to Abul Hasan and allowed the minister access to the fort. He went searching for the prince, who was hiding in the zenana apartments, literally under the skirts of the women of his harem. Abul dragged Shahryar in front of Bulaqi and made him pay homage to his new Emperor. Then, he had the prince blinded and thrown into prison.

  All this transpired before Mehrunnisa arrived at Lahore with the funeral cortege. She was ordered confined to her apartments. Every meal she ate, every breath she took, every word that came from her lips—these were all reported to Abul. She tried to see Shahryar, to find out what had happened, how this could have happened. She tried to call for Abul, but he would not take her messages or even acknowledge them.

  A few days later, Emperor Jahangir was interred in the Dilkusha gardens on the banks of the Ravi. Abul did not give Mehrunnisa permission to attend the burial.

  • • •

  For three months, Mehrunnisa plotted in her rooms, but she could not buy a single person’s loyalty. The empire had its Emperor—she was now merely a Dowager Empress. And all this while Khurram sped toward Agra from the Deccan.

  As he neared, he sent a message to his father-in-law. Abul was still at Lahore, keeping sharp watch over Bulaqi and Mehrunnisa. Early in January 1628, Abul entered Bulaqi’s apartments, wrenched the imperial turban off his head, and threw him into prison. The muezzins’ voices rose over the city of Lahore later that day, still haunting in their sweetness, but calling out another Emperor’s name. All hail Emperor Shah Jahan, Lord of the Mughal Empire.

  Abul had received Khurram’s message. On January 23, 1628, the sun woke to witness a mass execution in the grand courtyard of the Lahore Fort. Four men, blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs, stood against the far wall of the courtyard. Abul was to one side, near the two neat rows of archers. The soldiers fitted solid silver arrows into their bows, drew the bowstrings taut, and waited. Abul shivered in the quiet and cold of the early morning, but his hand did not waver as it lifted into the air. The arrows flew straight and strong through the courtyard, taking with them the lives of Bulaqi, Shahryar, and two of Khurram’s cousins.

  The khutba had been read three times in the last three months since Emperor Jahangir’s death. First calling out Bulaqi’s name, then Shahryar’s, albeit for one short day, and now Khurram’s. A bewildered empire struggled to find a home for its loyalties. Who was Emperor? Toward whom should their heads bow?

  But as news of the royal princes’ deaths spread around the empire, the doubts were banished. There were no claimants to the throne left who could not link their bloodlines directly to Khurram and Arjumand.

  And so Khurram came riding into Agra, triumphant and assured that the crown was his. As the royal party progressed down the main street of Agra, up the sheer and blind-cornered ramps of the fort constructed to confuse enemies, and into the thronging Diwan-i-am, Arjumand leaned out of her howdah, one hand clutching a pillar to steady herself, and flung out silver rupees into the crowd. Finally, their life of exile was over. They would no more be hounded around the empire like fugitives, no more living with mere canvas cloth for a roof, no more packing and fleeing in a few hours’ time when bad news came. Khurram was Emperor, as he should be, as was his due.

  Abul Hasan had met them outside Agra. Arjumand tugged at the sleeve of her father’s qaba. “Bapa, the Empress—”

  “You are Empress now, beta,” he said gently. “You must become used to this title.”

  “Is she under guard, Bapa?”

  Abul caught her by the shoulders. “She is. And this is not for you to worry about, Arju. Let us . . . let the men think of the safety of the empire.”

  She melted back into the confines of her howdah then, yanking the curtains shut. She was Empress because of Khurram and because of her father, nothing in her own right. At least her aunt was no longer a threat. But this hard-won, hard-fought-for victory over Mehrunnisa would not stay with Arjumand for very long. Even as she sat behind Khurram, pride overwhelming her at the sight of the heron’s feather in his turban, death came stalking.

  For Arjumand Banu Begam, newly styled Empress Mumtaz Mahal, would die in four years—four years during which if she dared something innovative, something outside the zenana, she was stifled with kind words by everyone around her. This is not for you, your Majesty, or this is too much like the Dowager Empress. Do what you do best and be content. So Arjumand did just that. Her income was enormous, and she used it for charity, for jewels and clothes. She kept the royal seal and the title of Padshah Begam of Khurram’s harem. She gave him more children, almost one for each remaining year she had left. And then her fourteenth child came into the world, and with its coming, took away Arjumand’s life.

  Mehrunnisa lived though, for quite long after Arjumand’s death, banished to her mansion at Lahore, and though still on the empire’s soil, officially in exile.

  Arjumand did not know that Khurram would build the Taj Mahal in her memory. Or that the Taj would come to symbolize this land her grandfather had adopted as his own. Or that as much as she had envied that feast of roses Emperor Jahangir had laid out for her aunt, posterity would remember her, Empress for four short years, two, three, even five hundred years from now.

  EPILOGUE

  On December 18, 1645, the Taj Mahal was very near completion. Arjumand died in 1631 at Burhanpur, but she would reside forever in Agra. Her body was disinterred and moved there, to a plot of land along the banks of the Yamuna that Khurram bought from a vassal raja. Twenty thousand men and women were employed in the building of the Taj. An entire city of tents—Mumtazabad—was erected around the building site, and here masons, stonecutters, bullock drivers, silver and gold craftsmen, engineers, architects, and lay laborers lived for years, rearing children into adulthood in the shadow of the Taj. The money spent on the mausoleum was enormous, for the work was at a lavish scale. Khurram had hills leveled, the ground flattened, and trees cut down, all to improve the views of the Taj Mahal. Even the Yamuna was carved away from her original, millennia-old path to curve gently past the Taj. There were gold wall panels inside the tomb, the main doors were solid carved silver, a gold railing surrounded the sarcophagus, the lamp fixtures were of gold, and a velvet canopy with pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds would cover the sleeping Arjumand.

  For the outside and inside walls, marble was carted, slab by slab, to Agra from
Jodhpur, a hundred miles away. And each was carefully inlaid with semiprecious stones. Turquoise came from Tibet, jasper from Cambay, malachite from Russia, lapis lazuli from Ceylon, carnelian from the bazaars of Baghdad, along with jade, black marble, amethyst, and quartz.

  Khurram dedicated the first anniversary of Arju’s death with a sumptuous, extravagant party, wine flowing in fountains, alms given in millions to the poor, verses from the Quran chanted day and night by the muezzins until the air was ripe with them. And he bowed his head in front of the Taj Mahal.

  Mehrunnisa laughed. In the silence of her apartments, with just the fire in the coal brazier hissing softly in one corner, and Hoshiyar’s gentle snores in another, the sound was like the rippling of water over pebbles. Each day that Khurram bowed his head in front of the Taj Mahal, he bowed it in front of Mehrunnisa, for in the design and construction of the Taj, Khurram had copied her own style. She had not seen the Taj, of course—Khurram kept her at Lahore, here she was in exile from him and his court, and he was too afraid of her to let her live freely elsewhere. But Mehrunnisa heard about this marvelous pietra dura inlay of fantastically colored semiprecious stones in the marble from Jodhpur—how long it took for that inlay to be set into the stone, how hard the work was, how exquisite the final effect. How much like her father’s tomb that stood across the Yamuna River . . .

  Hoshiyar stirred, harrumphed in his sleep, his white head nodding over his chest, and Mehrunnisa shut off the sound of her laughter, smiling instead into her pillow. The pietra dura inlay was her idea—if the Taj was going to be magnificent at all, it would be because of the woman its builder had hounded from the empire!

  The wooden door to her apartments swung open, and Ladli put her head around it. She smiled when she saw Mehrunnisa’s bright eyes turned toward her.

  “Are you awake, Mama?”

  Mehrunnisa beckoned. “Come here, beta. Where is Arzani?”

  “With me,” Ladli said, still softly so as not to awaken Hoshiyar Khan.

  They came into the room on bare feet, and Mehrunnisa watched them approach her bed. In these last eighteen years, Ladli had aged immeasurably it seemed. Like Mehrunnisa, lines now took hold of the skin of her face, her walk was slower, her voice less assured. But she had that same gentleness within her, that same tenacity of will nothing could shake. After Shahryar’s death in 1628, offers of marriage had come in abundance for Ladli, but she would agree to none, not even when the man was a minister at court, one possessed of vast mansabs and jagirs, willing to defy Khurram’s wrath. She did not want to be married anymore, it was as simple as that, she said. The first time, it was her duty, now no longer. She had her mother and her daughter and Hoshiyar. And for Ladli, they were enough.

  Mehrunnisa glanced at her granddaughter, and for a moment it was as though she were looking at herself in the mirror forty years ago. Arzani had the blue of her eyes, the same straight back, the thick mass of hair to her waist, but none of her quickness. Where at Arzani’s age Mehrunnisa had been forever restless, forever wanting something, Arzani had her mother’s quietness. What joy this child brought her, Mehrunnisa thought. She remembered how once she had so desperately wanted Arzani to be a boy . . . but if she had been . . . she would have died along with Shahryar. The only reason Khurram allowed Arzani to live was because she posed no threat to him. She was twenty-one this year, should have been married long ago, but, like Ladli, she found no one to interest her enough. The interest would come after the marriage, Mehrunnisa almost scolded her granddaughter. But she had neither the heart nor the strength to press for a match.

  She reached out to them, and they came to kneel on either side of her bed on the white and gold Persian carpets. Ladli’s eyes were red from weeping, but she smiled, not willing to bring her grief into her mother’s chamber.

  “Will you be all right, beta?” Mehrunnisa asked, cupping Ladli’s chin with her palm.

  “Of course.” Ladli’s voice did not falter. “Are you comfortable, Mama? Shall I change the sheets? The pillows?”

  “No,” Mehrunnisa said. In her mind, she was deeply grateful that she could face death so easily, awake to her child and grandchild, able to talk with them. She listened while Arzani told her a story—some gossip from the neighbor’s house, a child who looked little like his father and too much like his uncle, whose vastly different looks bespoke the fact that the two men were stepsiblings.

  Ladli settled the cotton razai over her mother, tucking the top ends under her arms. They must be cold though, Mehrunnisa thought, for winter had laid hold of Lahore outside. She laughed at Arzani’s story, thinking how stupid the woman was to have made a child with a man who looked so different from her husband, how much easier if they looked just a little alike.

  This was peaceful, to lie here with her most beloved people around her, to not want anything anymore. It was time to go—not because she was unwell but because she had no will to live any longer. She had completed Emperor Jahangir’s tomb and her own, fighting Khurram for payment on every invoice, for he had frozen her vast wealth in the imperial treasury. Abul had died too, four years ago; he was buried here at Lahore, but Mehrunnisa had not gone to his tomb, or sent condolences to his other children.

  Only in the last year had some calmness come over Mehrunnisa. She rose each day with a simple joy within her. She finally understood how the Jain monk Siddhicandra felt, what he had talked about when he had said that peace came from a lack of want. Siddhicandra had found this when he had been little more than twenty; it had taken Mehrunnisa a lifetime.

  And yet, even with this knowledge, she could not help wondering about her life, about those last moments after Emperor Jahangir’s death, if she could have changed anything. What if Ladli had married Khurram? What if Arjumand had approved of this? That was where she had made a mistake, Mehrunnisa thought. She should have asked Arjumand instead of Khurram. But Mehrunnisa had never asked for help, for advice, from any one woman within the zenana—except for Ruqayya—in the early years. She had simply never turned to a woman for support, always the men. Bapa, Abul, Khurram, Hoshiyar, and, of course, she had had Emperor Jahangir’s benevolence, without which none of the others would have meant anything. Perhaps that was where she had strayed, Mehrunnisa thought, in not consolidating her power among the women, in the women’s world in which she lived.

  “I wish I could live my life again.”

  Ladli kissed her mother’s hand, and that was when Mehrunnisa realized she had spoken aloud. “You have lived enough lives for ten women, Mama,” Ladli said.

  And then she started to cry, her arms around her mother’s waist, hiding her tears in the cotton of the razai.

  Mehrunnisa closed her eyes at the sound, remembering how she had not been able to cry when Jahangir had died. How the tears had come for years afterward with the laying of each slab of marble of his mausoleum, when she had lit the diyas inside the tomb each night, when she had knelt in prayer by his sarcophagus. I will be with you soon, your Majesty.

  An hour later, Ladli dried her tears and whipped her head to the corner where Hoshiyar sat, his head still curved into his chest. The sound of his snoring had stopped, and he was too still, how his neck must hurt at that angle, Ladli thought. And then she realized that he could no longer feel any pain, for his chest did not rise and fall with breath. She rose to go to the man who had been a beloved uncle, a cherished father to her for so many years, and as she did, her hand brushed against her mother’s.

  The room had grown cold as the coal braziers had died down, they needed to be fed, Mama must feel the chill, she must put her hand inside the razai. Ladli picked up her mother’s hand and dropped it again. When she looked into Mehrunnisa’s face, there was the same stillness, that same loss of breath.

  Empress Nur Jahan, too, had died.

  AFTERWORD

  Mehrunnisa is, of course, known more contemporarily as Empress Nur Jahan. Jahangir first bestowed on her the title of Nur Mahal, “Light of the Palace,” and later, sometime in 1616
, changed it to Nur Jahan, or “Light of the World.” In Mughal India titles were (as they were in the Europe of that time) marks of imperial favor and blessing. The nobles of the court and the women of the zenana, being closest to the Emperor, were all beneficiaries of this favor, in some cases posthumously.

  The word nur, signifying “light,” had its antecedents in Emperor Akbar’s time—he was known as a devotee of the sun, even conceiving a new religion that had at its basis the worship of the sun. When Jahangir ascended the throne, he used this sun imagery in his own title, calling himself Nuruddin Muhammad Jahangir Padshah Ghazi, the first of which was to denote “Light of the Faith.” So it was only natural for him to give Mehrunnisa this lofty title too, calling her the Light of the World, of the imperial world—she was the one in whom was lodged his well-being and comfort.

  I chose to retain the name Mehrunnisa—the name she was born with—for various reasons. Primary among these was the fact that it was a name I was comfortable with, having lived with her through The Twentieth Wife (Pocket Books, February 2002), which tells the story of her life before she married Jahangir. I also believe that both she and Jahangir would have, in private, thought of her as such—Mehrunnisa. The title of Nur Jahan was one for the more public world.

  If the other characters in the book are unfamiliar upon reading The Feast of Roses, it may be because they too are better known by their later titles. Ghias Beg, Mehrunnisa’s father, is known as Itimadaddaula, a title given to him by Emperor Jahangir. And his tomb at Agra, diagonally across from the Taj Mahal (and, in my belief, the early ancestor of the Taj, with its prominent and lavish use of pietra dura inlay of semiprecious stones in marble), is called Itimadaddaula’s tomb. Mehrunnisa’s first husband, Ali Quli Khan Istajlu, is known by his title of Sher Afghan. Her brother Abul Hasan is known as Asaf Khan IV. Her niece, Arjumand, is Mumtaz Mahal—the woman for whom the Taj was built, the woman from whose title of Mumtaz Mahal the very name of the Taj Mahal comes. Khurram is Emperor Shah Jahan; he is very little known as Khurram.