The Years of Rice and Salt

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  Khalid was looking through the thing again.

  So now they looked at things. Distant ridges, birds in flight, approaching caravans. Nadir was shown the glass, and its military uses were immediately obvious to him. He took one they had made for him, encrusted with garnets, to the Khan, and word came back that the Khan was pleased. That did not ease the presence of the Khanate in Khalid’s compound, of course; on the contrary, Nadir mentioned casually that they were looking forward to the next remarkable development out of Khalid’s shop, as the Chinese were said to be in a turmoil. Who knew where that kind of thing might end?

  “It will never end,” Khalid said bitterly when Nadir had gone. “It’s like a noose that tightens with our every move.”

  “Feed him your discoveries in little pieces,” Iwang suggested. “It will seem as if there are more of them.”

  Khalid followed this advice, which gave him a little more time, and they worked on all manner of things that it seemed would help the Khan’s troops in battle. Khalid indulged his interest in primary causes mostly at night, when they trained the new spyglass on the stars, and later that month on the moon, which proved to be a very rocky, mountainous, desolate world, ringed by innumerable craters, as if fired upon by the cannon of some super-emperor. Then on one memorable night they looked through the spyglass at Jupiter, and Khalid said, “By God it’s a world too, clearly. Banded by latitude — and look, those three stars near it, they’re brighter than stars. Could they be moons of Jupiter’s?”

  They could. They moved fast, around Jupiter, and the ones closer to Jupiter moved faster, just like the planets around the sun. Soon Khalid and Iwang had seen a fourth one, and mapped all four orbits, so that they could prepare new viewers to comprehend the sight, by looking at the diagrams first. They made it all into a book, another gift to the Khan — a gift with no military use, but they named the moons after the Khan’s four oldest wives, and he liked that, it was clear. He was reported to have said, “Jewels in the sky! For me!”

  Who is the Stranger?

  There were factions in town who did not like them. When Bahram walked through the Registan, and saw the eyes watching him, the conversations begun or ended by his passage, he saw that he was part of a coterie or faction, no matter how innocuous his behaviour had been. He was related to Khalid, who was allied with Iwang and Zahhar, and together they formed part of Nadir Devanbegi’s power. They were therefore Nadir’s allies, even if he had forced them to it like wet pulp in a paper press; even if they hated him. Many other people in Samarqand hated Nadir, no doubt even more than Khalid did, as Khalid was under his protection, while these other people were his enemies: relatives of his dead or imprisoned or exiled foes, perhaps, or the losers of many earlier palace struggles. The Khan had other advisers — courtiers, generals, relatives at court — all jealous of their own share of his regard, and envious of Nadir’s great influence. Bahram had heard rumours from time to time of palace intrigues against Nadir, but he remained unaware of the details. The fact that their involuntary association with Nadir could cause them trouble elsewhere struck him as grossly unfair; the association itself was already trouble enough.

  One day this sense of hidden enemies became more material: Bahram was visiting Iwang, and two qadi Bahram had never seen before appeared in the door of the Tibetan’s shop, backed by two of the Khan’s soldiers, and a small gaggle of ulema from the Tilla Karia Madressa, demanding that Iwang produce his tax receipts.

  “I am not a dhimmi,” Iwang said with his customary calm.

  The dhimmi, or people of the pact, were those non-believers who were born and lived their lives in the khanate, who had to pay a special tax. Islam was the religion of justice, and all Muslims were equal before God and the law; but of the lesser ones, women, slaves and the dhimmi, the dhimmi were the ones who could change their status by a simple decision to convert to true belief. Indeed there had been times in the past when it had been ‘the book or the sword’ for all pagans, and only people of the book — Jews, Zoroastrians, Christians and Sabians — had been allowed to keep their faith, if they insisted on it. Nowadays pagans of all sort were allowed to keep their various religions, as long as they were registered with the qadis, and paid the annual dhimma tax.

  This was clear, and ordinary. Ever since the shiite Safavids had come to the throne in Iran, however, the legal position of dhimmi had worsened — markedly in Iran, where the shiite mullahs were so concerned with purity, but also in the khanates to the east, at least sometimes. It was a matter for discretion, really. As Iwang had once remarked, the uncertainty itself was a part of the tax.

  “You are not a dhimmi?” one of the qadi said, surprised.

  “No, I come from Tibet. I am mustamin.”

  The mustamin were foreign visitors, permitted to live in Muslim lands for specified periods of time.

  “Do you have an aman?”

  “Yes.”

  This was the safe conduct pass issued to mustamin, renewed by the Khanaka on an annual basis. Now Iwang brought a sheet of parchment out of his back room, and showed it to the qadis. There were a number of wax seals at the bottom of the document, and the qadis inspected these closely.

  “He’s been here eight years!” one of them complained. “That’s longer than allowed by the law.”

  Iwang shrugged impassively. “Renewal was granted this spring.”

  A heavy silence ruled as the men checked the document’s seals again. “A mustamin cannot own property,” someone noted.

  “Do you own this shop?” the chief qadi asked, surprised again.

  “No,” Iwang said. “Naturally not. Rental only.”

  “Monthly?”

  “Lease by year. After my aman is renewed.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Tibet.”

  “You have a house there?”

  “Yes. In Iwang.”

  “A family?”

  “Brothers and sisters. No wives or children.”

  “So who’s in your house?”

  “Sister.”

  “When are you going back?”

  A short pause. “I don’t know.”

  “You mean you have no plans to return to Tibet.”

  “No, I plan to return. But — business has been good. Sister sends raw silver, I make it into things. This is Samarqand.”

  “And so business will always be good! Why would you ever leave? You should be dhimmi, you are a permanent resident here, a nonbelieving subject of the Khan.”

  Iwang shrugged, gestured at the document. That was something Nadir had brought to the khanate, it occurred to Bahram, something from deep in the heart of Islam: the law was the law. Dhimmi and mustamin were both protected by contract, each in their way.

  “He is not even one of the people of the book,” one of the qadi said indignantly.

  “We have many books in Tibet,” Iwang said calmly, as if he had misunderstood.

  The qadi were offended. “What is your religion?”

  “I am Buddhist.”

  “So you don’t believe in Allah, you don’t pray to Allah.”

  Iwang did not reply.

  “Buddhists are polytheists,” one of them said. “Like the pagans Mohammed converted in Arabia.”

  Bahram stepped before them. “ ‘There is no compulsion in religion’,” he recited hotly. “ ‘To you your religion, to me my religion.’ “ That’s what the Quran tells us!”

  The visitors stared at him coldly.

  “Are you not Muslim?” one said.

  “I certainly am! You would know it if you knew the Sher Dor mosque! I’ve never seen you there — where do you pray on Friday?”

  “Tilla Karia Mosque,” the qadi said, angry now.

  This was interesting, as the Tilla Karia Madressa was the centre for the Shiite study group, which was opposed to Nadir.

  “ ‘Al-kufou millatun wahida’,” one of them said; a counter-quote, as theologians called it. Unbelief is one religion.

  “Only digaraz c
an make complaint to the law,” Bahram snapped back. Digaraz were those who spoke without grudge or malice, disinterested Muslims. “You don’t qualify.”

  “Neither do you, young man.”

  “You come here! Who sent you? You challenge the law of the aman, who gives you the right? Get out of here! You have no idea what this man does for Samarqand! You attack Sayyed Abdul himself here, you attack Islam itself! Get out!”

  The qadis did not move, but something in their gazes had grown more guarded. Their leader said, “Next spring we will talk again,” with a glance at Iwang’s aman. With a wave of his hand that was just like the Khan’s, he led the others out and down the narrow passage of the bazaar.

  • • •

  For a long while the two friends stood silently in the shop, awkward with each other.

  Finally Iwang sighed. “Did not Mohammed set laws concerning the way men should be treated in Dar al-Islam?”

  “God set them. Mohammed only transmitted them.”

  “All free men equal before the law. Women, children, slaves and unbelievers less under the law.”

  “Equal beings, but they all have their particular rights, protected by law.”

  “But not as many rights as those of Muslim free men.”

  “They are not as strong, so their rights are not so burdensome. They are all people to be protected by Muslim free men, upholding God’s laws.”

  Iwang pursed his lips. Finally he said, “God is the force moving in everything. The shapes things take when they move.”

  “God is love moving through all,” Bahram agreed. “The sufis say this.”

  Iwang nodded. “God is a mathematician. A very great and subtle mathematician. As our bodies are to the crude furnaces and stills of your compound, so God’s mathematics is to our mathematics.”

  “So you agree there is a god? I thought Buddha denied there was any god.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose some Buddhists might say not. Being springs out of the Void. I don’t know, myself. If there is only the Void enveloping all we see, where did the mathematics come from? It seems to me it could be the result of something thinking.”

  Bahram was surprised to hear Iwang say this. And he could not be quite sure how sincere Iwang was, given what had just happened with the qadis from Tilla Karia. Although it made sense, in that it was obviously impossible that such an intricate and glorious thing as the world could have come to pass without some very great and loving god to make it.

  “You should come to the sufi fellowship, and listen to what my teacher there says,” Bahram finally said, smiling at the thought of the big Tibetan in their group. Although their teacher would probably like it.

  Bahram returned to the compound by way of the western caravanserai, where the Hindu traders were camped in their smell of incense and milktea. Bahram completed the other business he had there, buying scents and bags of calcinated minerals for Khalid, and then when he saw Dol, an acquaintance from Ladakh, he joined him and sat with him and drank tea for a while, then rakshi, looking over the trader’s pallets of spices and small bronze figurines. Bahram gestured at the detailed little statues. “Are these your gods?”

  Dol looked at him, surprised and amused. “Some are gods, yes. This is Shiva — this Kali, the destroyer — this Ganesh.”

  “An elephant god?”

  “This is how we picture him. They have other forms.”

  “But an elephant?”

  “Have you ever seen an elephant?”

  “No.”

  “They’re impressive.”

  “I know they’re big.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  Bahram sipped his tea. “I think Iwang might convert to Islam.”

  “Trouble with his aman?”

  Dol laughed at Bahram’s expression, urged him to drink from the jar of rakshi.

  Bahram obliged him, then persisted. “Do you think it’s possible to change religions?”

  “Many people have.”

  “Could you? Could you say, There is only one god?” Gesturing at the figurines.

  Dol smiled. “They are all aspects of Brahman, you know. Behind all, the great God Brahman, all one in him.”

  “So Iwang could be like that too. He might already believe in the one great god, the God of Gods.”

  “He could. God manifests in different ways to different people.”

  Bahram sighed.

  Bad Air

  He had just gone inside the compound gate, and was on his way to tell Khalid about the incident at Iwang’s, when the door of the chemical shed burst open and men crashed out, chased by a shouting Khalid and a dense cloud of yellow smoke. Bahram turned and ran for the house, intending to grab Esmerine and the children, but they were out and running already, and he followed them through the main gate, everyone shrieking and then, as the cloud descended on them, dropping to the ground and crawling away like rats, coughing and hacking and spitting and crying. They rolled down the hill, throats and eyes burning, lungs aching from the caustic stink of the poisonous yellow cloud. Most of them followed Khalid’s lead and plunged their heads into the river, emerging only to puff shallow breaths, and then dunk themselves again. When the cloud had dispersed and he had recovered a little, Khalid began to curse.

  “What was it?” Bahram said, coughing still.

  “A crucible of acid exploded. We were testing it.”

  “For what?”

  Khalid didn’t answer. Slowly the caustic burn of their delicate membranes cooled. The wet and unhappy crew straggled back into the compound. Khalid set some of the men to clean up the shed, and Bahram went with him into his study, where he changed his clothes and washed, then wrote in his big book notes, presumably about the failed demonstration.

  Except it had not been completely a failure, or so Bahram began to gather from Khalid’s muttering.

  “What were you trying to do?”

  Khalid did not answer directly. “It seems certain to me that there are different kinds of air,” he said instead. “Different constituents, perhaps, as in metals. Only all invisible to the eye. We smell the differences, sometimes. And some can kill, as at the bottom of wells. It isn’t an absence of air, in those cases, but a bad kind of air, or part of air. The heaviest no doubt. And different distillations, different burnings . . . you can suppress or stoke a fire . . . Anyway, I thought that sal ammoniac and saltpetre and sulphur mixed, would make a different air. And it did, too, but too much of it, too fast. Like an explosion. And clearly a poison.” He coughed uncomfortably. “It is like the Chinese alchemists’ recipe for wan-jen-ti, which Iwang says means “killer of myriads”... I supposed I could show Nadir this reaction, and propose it as a weapon. You could perhaps kill a whole army with it.”

  They regarded the thought silently.

  “Well,” Bahram said, “it might help him keep his own position more secure with the Khan.”

  He explained what he had witnessed at Iwang’s.

  “And so you think Nadir is in trouble at the court?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think Iwang might convert to Islam?”

  “He seemed to be asking about it.”

  Khalid laughed, then coughed painfully. “That would be odd.”

  “People don’t like to be laughed at.”

  “Somehow I don’t think Iwang would mind.”

  “Did you know that’s the name of his town, Iwang?”

  “No. Is it?”

  “Yes. So he seemed to say.”

  Khalid shrugged.

  “It means we don’t know his real name.”

  Another shrug. “None of us know our real names.”

  Love the Size of the World

  The autumn harvests came and passed, and the caravanserai emptied for the winter, when the passes to the east would close. Bahram’s days were enriched by Iwang’s presence at the sufi ribat, where Iwang sat at the back and listened closely to all that the old master Ali said, very seldom speaking, and then only to as
k the simplest questions, usually the meaning of one word or another. There were lots of Arabic and Persian words in the sufi terminology, and though Iwang’s Sogdi-Turkic was good, the religious language was opaque to him. Eventually the master gave Iwang a lexicon of sufi technical terms, or istilahat, by Ansari, titled ‘One Hundred Fields and Resting Places’, which had an introduction that ended with the sentence, “The real essence of the spiritual states of the sufis is such that expressions are not adequate to describe it: nevertheless, these expressions are fully understood by those who have experienced these states.”

  This, Bahram felt, was the main source of Iwang’s problem: he had not experienced the states being described.

  “Very possibly,” Iwang would agree when Bahram said this to him. “But how am I to reach them?”

  “With love,” Bahram would say. “You must love everything that is, especially people. You will see, it is love that moves everything.”

  Iwang would purse his lips. “With love comes hate,” he would say. “They are two sides of an excess of feeling. Compassion rather than love, that seems to me the best way. There is no bad obverse side to compassion.”

  “Indifference,” Bahram suggested.

  Iwang would nod, thinking things over. But Bahram wondered if he could ever come to the right view. The fount of Bahram’s own love, like a powerful artesian spring in the hills, was his feeling for his wife and children, then for Allah, who had allowed him the privilege of living his life among such beautiful souls — not only the three of them, but Khalid and Fedwa and all their relatives, and the community of the compound, the mosque, the ribat, Sher Dor, and indeed all of Samarqand and the wide world, when he was feeling it. Iwang had no such starting point, being single and childless, as far as Bahram knew, and an infidel to boot. How was he to begin to feel the more generalized and diffuse loves, if the specific ones were not there for him?