In the City of Gold and Silver (11 page)

“They gave you the land though!” objects Hazrat Mahal.

The peasant woman begins to cry:

“Ah, the heavens have truly punished us! I had told my husband we should not take the land that belonged to our master. He beat me, berating me for being an ignorant, stupid woman, shouting that the Angrez were offering us an opportunity to be owners, to do as we liked with the whole harvest and to become rich. Like all the other farmers, he followed the village council's decision: after numerous discussions, they had decided to accept the occupier's offer. We never saw our rajah again. Thank goodness, I think I would have died of shame.”

“Then what happened next?”

“First, in order to buy seeds, pay for the water and rent the cart to transport the sugar cane, we were forced to borrow from the village moneylender at an interest rate of 15 percent a month. The harvest was not very good, but the worst part was that the new taxes, evaluated by the Angrez, were much higher than the previous year! That took up half our profit. After we had repaid our loan, we had nothing left to live on. The village council asked the government for an extension until the next harvest, six months later. Their immediate response was: ‘Either you pay up or we will seize your land.' We thought it was an empty threat as in the state of Awadh, never, as far back as any peasant can remember, has anyone seen land being confiscated to pay off a debt! Neither the king
 
nor any of the taluqdars would have imagined confiscating our means of livelihood on the pretext that we owed them money. At worst, we were asked to send our children to help with different jobs!”

Using the corner of her dupatta to wipe the tears away, Nouran then continues in a broken voice:

“When the buyers, the rich merchants and the moneylenders from nearby villages actually turned up, we realised the Angrez government was not joking. A delegation of elders hurriedly set off for the capital to plead the villagers' cause. On the way there, they met other deputations from surrounding villages who were facing exactly the same problem. When they arrived in Lucknow, try as they might to explain the fate of the tens of thousands of families that were being condemned to die from hunger, it was all in vain. The authorities refused to listen. It seems that in their country this is the way things are done: someone who is in debt has his possessions seized and is thrown into prison . . . ”

“That makes no sense at all,” comments Imaman. “How can a man who is locked up pay his debts? These Angrez really do have strange customs.”

“Strange? Criminal, you mean!” exclaims Nouran, red with indignation. “If not for you, my benefactors, my children and I would have died of hunger, like the tens of thousands of peasants who, driven from their land, are dying now.”

Then turning to Hazrat Mahal she continues:

“Huzoor, is our king going to return? I beg you, tell him his people are waiting for him, they need him!”

Moved, Hazrat Mahal holds the woman in her arms.

“I will tell him, I promise, but as you know the British are detaining him in Calcutta . . . ”

“Not for much longer!” interrupts Amman. “The people have had enough! All one hears everywhere is talk about driving them out. They have to leave India this year, so the prophecy says.”

“What prophecy?”

“The prophecy of Plassey of course! It predicts that the Angrez will be forced to leave India a hundred years after the Company's troops overcame the king of Bengal's troops at the Battle of Plassey. This victory that marked the beginning of their domination was won on June 23rd, 1757. It is now January 1857 . . . ”

Hazrat Mahal nods her head. As a good Muslim, she believes neither in the prophecies nor in the miracles that the common people are so fond of. She is careful, however, not to share her doubts with Nouran, who only has this hope to keep her going.

“Everyone here has problems,” Imaman sighs deeply. “The peasants and the big
 
landowners, as do the shopkeepers and craftsmen. Now there are no clients left, the hundreds of luxury businesses and workshops that made all these marvels have had to close. The other day, going down the street I noticed some craftsmen begging. They were men who had been my suppliers. I pretended not to see them so as not to humiliate them, and I sent my servant to give them a few rupees as alms. It broke my heart though. What is going to become of us all, if even the little people who created our town's wealth no longer have any work and are dying from hunger?”

“Is no one distributing wheat and soup as before in times of famine?” asks Hazrat Mahal, amazed.

“That used to be funded by the king or the taluqdars then. Today, the wealthy are these money-lending shopkeepers who get rich by ruining others. They have no pity for anyone.”

All of them are silent, lost in their gloomy thoughts. Suddenly, Hazrat Mahal remembers the real reason for her visit.

“And Mumtaz? What has become of her?”

“Mumtaz? She only remained here for a few months after you left,” explains Amman. “She was a good girl but did not have the necessary qualities to develop into a great courtesan. Nonetheless, we have always ensured our girls are well placed, even if they do not attain high positions. We never abandon them. We never allow them to be reduced to prostitution, although this has often been a problem, it is something we are proud of!”

“So . . . where is she?”

“We married her off to a small local taluqdar. As she was from the countryside, we thought she would be in her element there. But the last news we received, three years ago now, was that she had left.”

“Left? To go where?” asks Hazrat Mahal, alarmed.

“She had no children, so her mother-in-law treated her as her ‘whipping boy' and relegated her to the level of a servant. She is said to have run away and managed, it seems, to return to Lucknow. I even thought she had gone to ask you for help.”

Help . . . Poor Mumtaz, she was too shy and too proud to go begging to someone who had forgotten her for so many years . . .

“How can we find her?”

“I have had people search for her all over the Chowk in the second-rate houses. No one has seen her. At least, that is what I was told.”

Hazrat Mahal shivers.

She may be dead and it is all my fault . . . I had promised to help her, I forgot her . . .

Lost in her thoughts on the way home, the young woman does not reply to Mammoo, who tries his best to distract her. She remembers the long evenings spent exchanging secrets with Mumtaz and imagining the future, she hears her friend's clear laughter again and sees her honey-coloured eyes. With all her might, Hazrat Mahal begs Allah to help her find her.

A drum roll draws her out of her thoughts. Through the curtains she can make out a long procession, preceded by musicians wearing red turbans. At the centre, mounted on an elephant, a thin man with long hair and a black beard is sitting perfectly upright in his howdah. She barely has time to notice his aquiline nose and his piercing eyes under bushy eyebrows before
 
instinctively drawing back with a gasp. Despite the curtains concealing her, she has a very distinct impression that the man looked straight at her.

“Mammoo, do you know who this man is?”

“Of course, everyone here knows him. He is Ahmadullah Shah, the maulvi from Faizabad. Nobody really knows where he comes from. There are all sorts of stories about him: some say he is from Madras and related to the former sovereign Tipu Sultan; others, that he belongs to a good family from across the river Indus, and it is said that he has visited England. In any case, he is rumoured to possess supernatural powers and he has thousands of disciples. A fierce enemy of the British, he exhorts Hindus and Muslims to
jihad
in order to drive them out of the country.”

“And the British do nothing to prevent him?”

“Oh, a new ‘prophet' appears almost every day, inciting the people to rebel. Most of them are arrested and executed. Just last week, a Hindu fakir arrived to spend a few days here and is supposed to have met with the sepoys, but by the time the police began to make enquiries about him, he had already left for the north. In Ahmadullah Shah's case, the government hesitates. The crowds revere him as a holy man, and the British fear his arrest will stir up too much controversy. But how much longer can they tolerate his impassioned speeches?”

What
power in his eyes
. . .

Hazrat Mahal is deeply shaken, she has an intuition she will see this man again and that their destinies will be intertwined . . .

W
hen Mammoo comes to see his mistress this morning he is all excited:
 
the latest “Dum Dum” rumour is the talk of the town!

Word has spread that new cartridges sealed with pig fat, prohibited to Muslims, and cow fat, taken from the Hindus' sacred animal, are stored in the Dum Dum ammunition depot near Calcutta. Now, as the soldiers have to bite the cartridges open, using them would be sacrilegious for any sepoy
—
the Hindus would be reduced to the status of untouchables, while the Muslims would be defiled.

“It is a worker at the cartridge factory who inadvertently revealed the secret,” recounts Mammoo, “all because a Brahmin sepoy denied him a drink from his water jug. This challenged the factory employee to retort sarcastically: ‘There's no need to be so high-handed, all of you will soon have lost your caste anyway, as the English have put impure fat into the new cartridges!'”

“What new cartridges?” enquires Hazrat Mahal, who can just about distinguish a rifle from a revolver.

“The ones for the Lee-Enfield rifles that the army is soon planning to switch to. They are more accurate than the old Brown Besses, and above all, they have a range of eight hundred metres, instead of two hundred. But the sepoys will never agree if the cartridges really are sealed with impure fat! The news has spread throughout the garrisons and everyone is worried, especially the high-caste Brahmin and Rajput Hindus, who make up the overwhelming majority of the Bengal Army. They have long suspected the English of wanting to convert them.”

“Ridiculous! Just a few missionaries are not going to make a difference . . . ”

“Don't be mistaken, Huzoor, the number of missionaries is constantly on the increase and, in addition, some of the officers do not hesitate to proselytize and seek conversions.”

Hazrat Mahal shakes her head sceptically:

“This cartridge story is strange. The British are generally too clever to offend their troops' religious feelings.”

Yet the population no longer trusts them. People have barely recovered from the shock of the circular a certain Mr. Edmond recently sent to the Company officials, recommending that since India is under Christian rule, all the Indians should be converted to the “true faith.” As the letter was posted in Calcutta, it is rumoured to have come from the governor's office. The latter categorically denied this. He did not convince anybody.

A few days later, a new rumour had surfaced, confirming another of the “foreigners' diabolical plans”: it claimed that powdered pig and cow bones had been added to the flour distributed to the soldiers. The sepoys, beside themselves with anger, had dumped entire consignments of flour into the river.

“Despite their officers' protests, who swore this was just slander, the men are overexcited,” Mammoo reports. “There are allegations that mysterious envoys have arrived in Lucknow, and that every night secret meetings are being held in the barracks.”

Secret meetings? A conspiracy against the occupier . . . Finally!

“This very evening, you will attend one of these gatherings,” the young woman instructs the eunuch, “and you will faithfully report back to me on everything that is said there. But take care not to be recognised!”

 

* * *

 

Tonight, a crescent moon sheds a weak light over the base camp while silent shadows creep stealthily along the barracks' walls. One by one, they join the group of soldiers squatting around a fire, sipping cups of tea and smoking a
chillum
45
. In contrast to the usual noisy, cheerful meetings, this evening everyone is quiet, lost in their thoughts.

Suddenly one hears a branch crack and a man raises his head:

“Look! He is here!” he whispers.

A tall figure dressed in a sepoy uniform approaches; his badge indicates that he belongs to the 19th Infantry Regiment stationed in Berhampur, about five hundred miles east of Lucknow. The men greet him, their hands on their hearts, then, fussing over the visitor, they provide him with a blanket to sit on, a good hot drink and a few chapatis, which he accepts gratefully, admitting he has not eaten anything since the previous day.

“I left Berhampur two weeks ago and have already visited half a dozen military bases. I only travel by night, for although the British have no idea of my mission, if I am caught, I will be executed as a deserter.”

He studies his audience carefully:

“Before I go ahead to explain the purpose of my visit, I need you to give me your word that everything said here will remain secret.”

For over two hours, the man evokes the indignation felt by the soldiers and populations throughout the north of the country towards the foreigners, who are acting as if they were the masters here, dethroning kings and ill-treating a population they despise.

“They even treat us sepoys, the spearhead of their army, as their slaves, even though we have conquered vast territories for them. If not for us, they would still be no more than a small trading company! However heroic our actions, however many victories we win, we have no hope of attaining the rank of officer. While a young fellow, fresh from England is immediately promoted to a position of command, just because he is white, for them, we remain the ‘natives' . . . niggers! This is the first time in our history we have been treated as inferiors in our own land!”