Salt and Saffron

by Kamila Shamsie

  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 wi
thout 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’.)

  Zain had heard of Babur’s homesickness and so he sent his envoys with this message: ‘I, too, am from the Timurid family, and there are many still in Samarkand and Bukhara who tremble in awe at the name of my ancestor, Nur-ul-Jahan, founder of Dard-e-Dil, a prince of Transoxania by birth. We are brothers, you and I, and brothers must help brothers. My armies are at your disposal to recapture Samarkand, land of fabled beauty and honey-sweet melons, where the power of the Uzbek is weaker than it outwardly seems. In return, I ask only that I may administer your lands in Hindustan, and rely upon you to help me defeat the infidel forces of Rana Sanga.’ (I blush, of course, to know my ancestor used the religion card to claim an alliance.)

  The throne of Samarkand in return for his portion of India? Babur did not hesitate to say, ‘Let us meet, my brother, to talk of this.’ Zain’s envoys galloped home to find Zain assassinated, and Ibrahim on the throne. By the time Ibrahim had consolidated his position and cooled his rage towards his brother sufficiently to realize what a brilliant offer Zain had made the Mughal, Babur had decided that a mango in the hand was worth two melons in his dreams. I did not intend for that to sound vulgar.

  Dard-e-Dil was absorbed into Mughal territory soon after, with little fuss or fanfare, and spent most of the next two centuries reduced to an administrative unit of the Mughal empire.

  ‘Those Johnny-come-latelies,’ my relatives are wont to say when the Mughals are mentioned. ‘You know, their empire could have been ours. Those not-quites!’

  (And here, again, we must pause to account for the history books which show that the Mughals were certainly not willing to allow powerful rulers to remain powerful once the Mug
hal Empire was established. And Dard-e-Dil was a northern state, not one of the Deccan kingdoms out of Mughal reach. So why don’t we hear of any marriage alliances – except fairly minor ones – between the Mughals and the Dard-e-Dils? Why don’t we hear of Mughal plans to cut the Dard-e-Dils down to size? Before answering those questions, consider this one: Why don’t we see the kingdom of Dard-e-Dil on maps of pre-Mughal India? The truth, according to the history books, is this: the founder of Dard-e-Dil, Nur-ul-Jahan, was indeed from the royal Timurid line, but after his victory in the Battle of Surkh Khait he failed to consolidate his power, and the Dard-e-Dils remained minor figures in the power game, so minor you wonder if Babur could have taken Zain’s proposal seriously, so minor it’s no surprise the Mughals allowed the Dard-e-Dils (on an on-again, off-again basis) to administer the land which Nur-ul-Jahan and his descendants sometimes held and sometimes didn’t in the years between Surkh Khait and Paniput. The sad truth is that Nur-ul-Jahan’s so-called kingdom was little more than a patch of land and it was only after the fall of the Mughals that his descendants gained control of enough of the surrounding areas to claim real power (and to confer upon their ancestors the posthumous title of ‘Sultan’ which those early Dard-e-Dils never really held in their lifetimes – and later, when the British invented the term ‘Nawab’, the Dard-e-Dils decided they preferred that title, and airily replaced ‘Sultan’). That’s what the history books say, but they also acknowledge that the Dard-e-Dils were among the first northern kingdoms to throw off Mughal rule, soon after the eighteenth century had dawned and Aurangzeb, the last Great Mughal, had died, which is not explicable if they really were as insignificant as the historians make them out to be. Who says it’s true just because it’s in print?)