if His Majesty had come to supervise the hanging that afternoon of the
two _zenana _women who had been discovered in a flagrant sexual act in
the Shish Mahal, the mirrored _zenana _baths.
Arangbar studied the hanging room for a moment with glazed eyes, not
remembering that he had sentenced the women that same morning, and then
waved the guards on along the corridor, past the doors that secured
dark cells. These were the cells used to confine women who had broken
_zenana _regulations.
At the end of the corridor was a door wider than the others, and behind
it was a special cell, with a window overlooking the Jamuna. He walked
directly to the door and drank again from his cup as he ordered it
opened. The guards were there at once, keys jangling. The door was
massive and thick, and it creaked heavily on its hinges as they pushed
it slowly inward.
From the gloom came the unmistakable fragrance of musk and sandalwood.
He inhaled it for a moment and it seemed to penetrate his memory,
calling up long forgotten pleasures. Grasping the door for support, he
moved past the bowing guards and into the cell. There, standing by the
small barred window, her face caught in a shaft of afternoon sun, was
Shirin.
Her eyes were carefully darkened with kohl and her mouth red and fresh.
She wore a gossamer scarf decorated with gold thread, and a thin skirt
that betrayed the curve of her thighs against the outline of her
flowered trousers. The musty air of the room was immersed in her
perfume, as though by her very being she would defy the walls of her
prison. She looked just as he had remembered.
She turned and stared at him for a moment, seeming not to believe what
she saw. Then her eyes hardened.
"Shall I _teslim _before my sentence?"
Arangbar said nothing as he examined her wordlessly, sipping slowly
from his almost-empty cup. Now more than ever he realized why she had
once been his favorite. She could bring him to ecstasy, and then recite
Persian poetry to him for hours. She had been exquisite.
"You're as beautiful as ever. Too beautiful. What do you expect me to
do with you?"
"I expect that I will die, Your Majesty. That, I think, is the usual
sentence for the women who disobey you."
"You could have stayed in Surat, where you were sent. Or gone on to Goa
with the husband I gave you. But instead you returned here. Why?"
Arangbar eased himself onto the stone bench beside the door.
"I don't think you would understand, Majesty."
"Did you come because of the Inglish _feringhi?_ I learned yesterday
that you conspired to meet with him. It displeased me very much."
"He was not responsible, Majesty. I met with him because I chose to.
But I came to Agra to be with Samad again." Her voice began to tremble
slightly. "Samad is guilty of nothing, except defiance of the Shi'ite
mullahs. You know that as well as I. If you want to hear me beg for
him, I will."
Arangbar seemed not to notice the tear that stained the kohl beneath
one eye. "It was a death sentence for you to disobey me and come back.
Perhaps you actually want to die."
"Is there nothing you would die for, Majesty?"
Arangbar stared for a moment at the window, its hexagonal grillwork
throwing a pattern across his glazed eyes. He seemed to be searching
for words. "Yes, perhaps I might die for India. Perhaps someday soon I
will. But I would never die for the glory of Islam." His gaze came back
to Shirin. "And certainly not for some half-naked Sufi mullah."
"Samad is not a mullah." By force of will she held any trace of
shrillness from her voice. "He is a Persian poet. One of the greatest
ever. You know that. He defies the Shi'ites because he will not bow to
their dogma."
"The Shi'ites want his head." Arangbar examined his empty cup and
tossed it to the floor, listening as the silver rang hard against the
stone. "It seems a small price for tranquility."
"Whose tranquility? Theirs?" The tears were gone now, her eyes again
defiant.
"Mine. Every day I'm flooded with petitions about this or that heresy.
It wearies and consumes me. Samad ignored the laws of Islam, and he has
followers."
" You ignore the laws of Islam."
Arangbar laughed. "It's true. Between us, I despise the mullahs. You
know I once told them I had decided to become a Christian, because I
enjoyed eating pork and the Prophet denied it to all men. The next day
they brought the Quran and declared although it was true pork was
denied to men, the Prophet said nothing specifically about what a king
could eat. So there was no need for me to become a Christian." He
paused and sobered. "But Samad is not a king. He is a well-known Sufi.
The mullahs claim that if he's dead, the inspiration for heresy will
die with him. They say his death will serve as an example. I hear this
everywhere, even from Her Majesty."
"Her Majesty?" Shirin searched for his eyes as she spoke, but they were
shrouded in shadow. "Does she make laws for you now?"
"She disrupts my tranquility with all her talk about Islam and
Shi'ites. Perhaps it's age. She never used to talk about the Shi'ites.
But now she wants to bring the Islam of Persia to India. She forbade
Sunni mullahs even to attend the wedding. But if it pleases her, what
does it matter? I despise them all."
"But why Samad? Why sentence him to death?"
"Frankly I don't really care about this poet, either way. But he has
not tried to help himself. When I allowed him to confront the mullahs
who accused him, he refused to recite the Kalima, 'There is no God but
Allah.'"
"What did he say?"
"Perhaps just to spite them, he would only recite the first phrase,
'There is no God,' the negation. He refused to recite the rest, the
affirmation. He said he was still searching for truth. That when he
finally saw God he would recite the remainder; that to affirm His
existence without proof would be giving false evidence. I thought the
mullahs would strangle him on the spot." Arangbar laughed to himself as
he watched her turn again to the window. "You have to admit that
qualifies as blasphemy, by any measure. So if the mullahs want him so
badly, why not let them have him?"
"But Samad is a mystic, a pantheist." Shirin returned her eyes to
Arangbar. "For him God is everywhere, not just where the mullahs choose
to put Him. Do you remember those quatrains in his Rubaiyat that say,
_"Here in the garden the sunshine glows,
A Presence moves in all that grows.
He is the lover, the belov'd too.
He is the bramble and the rose.
We know Him when our hearts are moved;
He, our lover and our loved.