Delhi (26 page)

‘Noor Bai, how old are you? Have you known a man before?’ we asked her.

She pretended to be shocked. ‘How could anyone dare to offer Your Majesty something soiled by another? I was raised for your pleasure. No other man has touched, or ever will touch my body after it has been honoured by Your Majesty.’

She was a child in years but adept in the art of seductive speech. We asked her to draw close to us. We ran our hands over her face and body; firm and smooth as polished walnut without a trace of hair on her limbs, armpits or privates. She had rubbed her body with aromatic oil and exuded the fragrance of jasmine. It occured to us that our hosts had some design in sending so young and wanton a girl to our bedchamber.

Fifty summers spent in hardship and strife reduces a man’s appetite for women. But we were determined to prove to our hosts that the men of Persia are as potent in the harem as they are powerful on the field of battle. We had a snow-white sheet spread over our couch. We ordered Noor Bai to minister to us till our passions were fully roused. She had been well-groomed.

The look of childish curiosity on her face changed to alarm when she saw what we were to present to her. We were gentle with her. She cried in pain and the bedsheet received ample testimony of her virginity and our manliness.

When we had finished, we loaded her naked body with gold ornaments studded with precious stones. We told her she was the most comely woman we had taken to couch. She wiped away her tears and smiled. But when we expressed our wish to take her into our harem, she began to cry again: ‘If Your Majesty stays in Delhi, your slave will serve you till her last breath, but if Your Majesty takes me away from Delhi, she will take poison and kill herself,’ she said very stubbornly.

We had heard that the people of Delhi loved their city as bees love flowers. But we could not believe that the child of a courtesan would prefer to live in a Delhi brothel rather than in our palace in Iran!

However, we did not wish to converse with the girl nor make her unhappy. We told her to be in attendance on us during our sojourn in her city. Perhaps she would change her mind. Or we, ours.

The next day being Friday we ordered the
khutba
to be read in our name in all the mosques of the city. This would make it as clear as the sun that we had come to Delhi only to restore order in the country of Islam.

In the afternoon we sent for Saadath Khan. He came accompanied by his sons and a cavalcade of retainers. Because he, along with Asaf Jah Nizam-ul-Mulk, had addressed the letters of invitation to us to come to Hindustan and told us of the enormous wealth collected in the vaults of the Red Fort, he presumed a degree of familiarity with us. He also wanted to impress his entourage with his own importance. We felt that we should strip him of his delusions. We said nothing about his behaviour on the night before but reminded him that we had come to Delhi on the assurance that if we saved the empire from the Maratha infidels, they would meet the expenses of the expedition. We told him that his behaviour since our arrival in Delhi gave us the impression that he did not mean to honour his undertaking.

Hazrat Ali Murtaza has rightly said that: ‘Often a word pierces like a sword and the tongue can have a sharper point than the lance.’ So it was with the tongue of anger that we spoke words of admonition. ‘Saadath Khan, the army of the defenders of Islam has not been compensated for its sacrifice,’ we said bluntly. ‘Not one cowrie shell of the four crores promised has so far been given. If an earnest of this sum is not paid by tomorrow sundown, we will make our displeasure known.’

This remonstrance failed to impress its seal on the wax of Saadath’s brain. ‘What is money to the conquerer of the world!’ he said jauntily as he turned to his entourage for approval. ‘What is money!’ he repeated. ‘We will lay down our lives for the Great Nadir!’

His followers applauded his audacity. Our temper rose. ‘Come here, Saadath Khan!’ we commanded. The silly grin disappeared from his face: his knees shook as he approached us. As he bowed to us we grabbed him by his left ear and pulled him up. ‘We do not like this kind of clever talk! We do not like men who break their word!’

Saadath’s face first turned red, then yellow. He began to stutter. We boxed his ear and slapped him on his face. As he reeled back we gave him a kick in his belly. ‘Get out of our presence!’ we roared. ‘If we do not get what is due to our army by tomorrow we will have you flogged in front of the
kotwali
in Chandni Chowk.’

Saadath Khan had to be carried away from our presence. The chastisement proved too much for him. That very night he plunged a dagger in his heart and ended his miserable existence.

The people of Delhi are both ungrateful and cowardly. Instead of thanking us for the trouble we had taken by coming hundreds of miles over mountains through ravines and desert waste to save them from the infidels, they had the audacity to insinuate that it was not the love of Islam but the love of gold that had brought us to their country.

We were informed that the natives had created a tumult at the Royal Mosque when the Imam was declaiming the
khutba
in our name. Our officers brought reports that our Qazilbash bodyguards had been spat upon in the streets; women had thrown refuse on their heads as they passed below their houses. Grocers and butchers were demanding higher prices from our Iranian soldiers than from their own people. The citizens of Delhi did not appreciate that it was for their safety that we had kept the bulk of our army outside the city. Seeing that there were only a few hundred Iranians in the walled enclosure of Shahjahanabad, the citizens had the effrontery to raise their cowardly eyebrows at us. Thus did they invite the angel of death to visit their city.

On Saturday, 10 March 1739, the sun entered Aries. It was also the holy day of Id-uz-Zuha, commemorating Hazrat Ibrahim’s offering of his son, Yusuf, to Allah.Our bodyguards took a few stray bulls and heifers loitering in the streets to offer as sacrifice. The Hindus, who regard all bovine species of animals sacred, were incensed. They refused to sell rice to our men. We ordered our soldiers to buy instead of rice, flour from Muslim dealers. It was then that the perfidy of the Muslims of Delhi was brought to our notice; they trebled the price of wheat flour. Once more we controlled our temper. Had not Hazart Ali Murtaza said: ‘Anger is a species of madness!’ We fixed the price of wheat at ten seers to the silver rupee and ordered grain depots to be thrown open.

In the afternoon we received reports that our men who had gone to buy provisions at a grain market called Paharganj, a musket shot to the west of Ajmeri Gate, had been assaulted. It was not our habit to lend ear to rumour. We sent a party of seven of our bodyguards to verify the facts. Only three of the seven were able to return; these three bore evidence of violence on their persons. They told us that the leaders of the rabble were two Pathans, Niaz Khan and Sheh Sawar Khan.

These thugs had surrounded a party of our musketeers and burnt them alive. We were told that a large number of our soldiers had been killed and an armed mob led by the villain Niaz Khan was heading towards the Red Fort to try and lay their impious hands upon our person. We went up on the ramparts above Lahori Gate which commanded a view of Urdu Bazaar and Chandni Chowk. We heard sounds of gunfire. We saw a sea of spears, swords and matchlocks flooding Chandni Chowk and the bazaars right up to the Jamia Masjid surging towards the fort.

Our bodyguards posted in the Urdu Bazaar were valiantly holding their own against this ocean of madness. We sent instructions that they should evacuate Urdu Bazaar and retreat to the sandbank between the river and the eastern wall of the fort. We had a cannon mounted on the Lahori and Delhi Gates which faced west and south and ordered grape to be fired into the rabble. We sent word to the commanders of our troops at Shalimar to send reinforcements immediately and be prepared to march into the city the next morning.

The night was made hideous with the howling of the mob and the roar of cannons. Our peace of mind was further disturbed by the fact that Mohammed Shah made no attempt to apologize for the conduct of his subjects. We received a report that it was being openly said in the bazaars that we had been poisoned by Noor Bai and were on our deathbed. When the Mughal’s Chamberlain came to call on us we could read in his visage that he had come to see for himself whether mischief had been done to our person. Our mind was made up. We did not allow memories of the earlier evening to sweeten the bitterness that now flooded our soul. We hastened to our bedchamber. We sent for the decanter of wine which had been sent to us earlier and ordered Noor Bai to be brought to our presence.

Noor Bai came swaying her hips and smiling as saucily as the night before. Her eyes did not betray treachery. But as soon as she saw the anger on our face she took fright. She clasped our feet and asked: ‘Has your slave been guilty of some misdemeanour?’

If she was a liar she must have been the world’s best liar under sixteen years of age. ‘Who gave you this decanter of wine?’ we demanded. She looked innocently puzzled. ‘No one, Your Majesty. It was lying here. I thought it was Your Majesty’s favourite wine from Shiraz. Has it upset Your Majesty?’ We picked up the decanter, filled a goblet and held it out for her. ‘Drink!’ we commanded.

A look of fear came in her eyes. She took the goblet from our hands. ‘I have never touched wine to my lips.’

‘Drink! Or we’ll force it down your throat.’

Noor Bai dipped a finger in the goblet and put it on her tongue. She puckered her face in distaste. Then she shut her nostrils with the fingers of one hand and with the other tilted the goblet into her mouth. She brought up some of it and was convulsed by a fit of coughing. Her face became a deep red, she held her throat as if she was choking. ‘Your Majesty drinks this poison for pleasure?’ she asked us through her tears.

We were not sure whether this wine was the same as the one that had been left in our bedchamber the night before. But since neither we nor Noor Bai had suffered any ill-effect from taking it, we were assured that it had not been tinctured. We asked Noor Bai to draw closer to us. We cupped her face in our hands and looked into her tear-stained eyes.

‘Noor Bai, if anyone says anything about us to you or asks you to do something to us, you must tell us. You will have our protection and we will load you with as much gold as you weigh.’ She slipped down on the ground and kissed our feet. We placed a necklace of rubies around her neck and dismissed her. We deputed a spy to watch her movements for some days.

On Sunday, we rose earlier than was our practice. We said our
fajar
prayer in Aurangzeb’s Pearl Mosque and had a light repast. The commanders of our garrisons had come into the city and awaited our orders. We told them to take positions in front of Lahori Gate.

As the sun rose, Delhi’s rabble reassembled in the streets. We saw that the breezes of mischief had roused the populace like a stormy wind rouses the seas to turbulence. We thought that our presence would becalm their senses.

When the sun had risen above the walls of the Red Fort we rode with our escorts into Chandni Chowk. What we saw there brought tears to our eyes. Many of our faithful comrades lay dead about the streets. Their bodies had been horribly mutilated. The double-faced wretches, who only two days earlier had welcomed us with flowers and tributes of precious metal and stones, now yelled abuse at us. The flower-sellers of Phool-ki-Mandi, who had showered rose-petals over us, now pelted us with clods of mud and stones. We dismounted at Roshan-ud-Daulah’s mosque and took our seat on the balcony.

Filth and stones were hurled on us from the balconies of neighbouring houses. Then somebody fired a gun. The bullet whizzed past us and hit our fly-whisk-bearer. The poor man fell on us; his blood poured over our tunic; he expired in our arms with a cry of anguish: ‘
Ya Allah!
’

We laid our faithful servant on the floor. Our cup of patience was full to the brim. We drew our sword. ‘As long as this sword is out of the scabbard the life of every citizen of this wretched city is forfeit. Spare no one,’ we ordered.

We saw yet another aspect of the character of the people of Hindustan. They were cunning in the way they had invited us to come to their help. They were double-faced in the way they continued to protest their loyalty to their monarch and to us till they were sure who was going to be victorious. We had seen how timid they were in the field of battle and how abject in the hour of defeat. We had suffered their florid speeches in which they concealed insinuations under a sugar-coating of flattery. We saw how violent they could be when they came in large numbers upon a few unsuspecting soldiers. And now that the angel of death hovered over them they were as supine as a flock of sheep. Our soldiers slew them by the score till their hands were tired.

We left Roshan-ud-Daulah’s mosque to return to the Red Fort. While passing the gateway of Dariba we ordered our men to level every home in that accursed street inhabited by the infidels. Our soldiers slew every man, woman and child in Dariba and then set fire to the bazaar. The only parts of Shahjahanabad we spared were the bazaars around Jamia Masjid and Delhi Gate, because Nawab Sarbuland Khan came and pleaded with us that no one from these localities had joined the rioters.

In the afternoon Mohammed Shah craved permission to present himself. The fire of our anger had by then been dowsed in the river of blood. We allowed him to kiss our feet. He knew the art of stringing words.

‘Not a soul has been spared by your avenging sword,’ he whined. ‘If it be Your Majesty’s wish to carry on the work of destruction further, infuse life into the dead and renew the slaughter.

We had no idea how many had been slaughtered except that for six hours thousands of our brave soldiers had done nothing else but kill. We put our sword back into the scabbard and ordered that our pleasure be announced by beat of the drum.

We did not wish to expose our eyes to the results of the carnage and ordered that the streets be cleansed of blood and corpses. It was a strange coincidence that this day happened to be Holi when infidels celebrate the advent of spring by dowsing each other with red water, the colour of blood! The infidels burnt their dead as was their custom and thus sent them to hell as was their desert. The Muslims buried their slain along the sandbanks of the river. Those that had no one to burn or bury were disposed of by kites, crows, cats, dogs and jackals that abound in this city.