The Architect's Apprentice (48 page)

‘I’m an artist,’ Jahan said and, fearing he might ask him to paint his portrait as proof, he added, ‘I draw landscapes.’

‘Funny trade you’ve got. You get paid for that?’

‘If I find a generous patron –’

‘Fancy that!’ the man remarked dourly. ‘Some of us break our backs. You live a dainty life. Nay, you can’t come. You’ll bring us bad luck.’

‘I bring good luck, I can assure you,’ Jahan said. ‘To prove my trustworthiness, allow me to offer this.’

Taking out his pouch, he emptied it on the table. The Captain’s eyes glinted; he reached out for a coin and bit its edge. ‘Fine, get a move on. Stay in the hold. You may eat with the men. Make sure I don’t see you around.’

Jahan gave a tight nod. ‘I promise you won’t.’

They were not raising anchor for another day. Jahan spent this time waiting below in an airless cabin. Only when they set sail did he muster the courage to go upstairs. The city glimmered in the distance – the bazaars, the coffee-houses and the graveyards with cypress trees and upright stones with
turbehs
. The place where he had learned to love and learned never to trust love. He saw the minarets of the Suleimaniye and the Shehzade mosques, the father and the son. He saw the dome of the Hagia Sophia, a glint on the horizon. And he saw Mihrimah’s Mosque, as secretive as the woman it was named after.

Putting his right hand on his heart, Jahan saluted them, acknowledging the sweat and the prayers and the hopes that had gone into building them. He hailed not only the people but also the stone, the wood, the marble and the glass, the way his master had taught him. The seagulls followed them for a while, shrieking their goodbyes. When the gusts blew more strongly, they returned to the city. Strangely, their leave-taking felt as gloomy as his own.

The curse … How could she call it such when it was a gift, Jahan thought at the beginning. Gradually he would recognize how life had outwitted him. What he had taken to be a gift he would learn, later on, was a scourge; what he had received as a bane he would come to see as a blessing. But back then, following
dada
’s advice, he was thinking, who among all the artists and architects in the world would not wish to live a hundred years or more, never fearing that time would come to an end in the midst of a new work, which could, for all one knew, turn out to be the best he had ever done. Without fear of death, Jahan was spared fear of failure. Exempt from such apprehension, Jahan could design more, design better, perhaps even surpass his master. Determined, excited, he travelled to one port after another. He went to Rome, France, England and Salamanca, where he expected to find Sancha, but there was no trace of her.

That he worked hard and asked for little money, together with his knowledge, kept him in demand. Although he was no member of any guild and could not be employed, he was able to ply his trade indirectly, sketching for other architects, always underpaid. It troubled him slightly that the spell, though it gave him strength and additional years, had not made him look a day younger. While he showed no sign either of debility or of senility, he visibly carried his age. People, sensing something unusual, something dark, asked him how old he was. When Jahan said he was ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight … they stared at him wide-eyed. A glint of suspicion flickered in their eyes, as they wondered whether he had made a pact with the devil – albeit only once had he heard anyone voice this aloud. Whichever way he travelled, south or north, it was the same: human beings sharing a lack of trust, if not a lack of sympathy, for anyone who lived beyond the allotted number of years.

That was when Jahan began to think maybe the witch was right.
Maybe his master had made a pledge with her. Sinan had lived longer than every major craftsman in the empire. He had raised more buildings than any mortal could ever have dreamed of raising. At some point, he must have smelled like Hesna Khatun’s herbs, though, no matter how hard Jahan racked his brains, he could not recall this. Then, having tired of everything, he must have asked for it to be brought to an end. Shortly before his death, he must have visited the witch. For the last time. If so, there must have been a way to break the spell, and by leaving Istanbul Jahan had lost this chance.

Years passed by. Almost a hundred, he took a ship to Portugal, from where, he had heard, one could sail to the New World. One sunny afternoon, on the front deck, he noticed a man – willowy and slender. His heart leaped. It was Balaban, sitting between a coiled rope and a cleat. Unthinking, he lunged forward, chuckling, until he noticed, too late, that it wasn’t him.

‘I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.’

‘A friend, I hope,’ the stranger said. ‘Come, sit, enjoy the sun while it lasts.’

He rambled on about his troubles, his voice rising and falling. He claimed to have had too many sins from which to flee. He was going back to his family a wiser man. Tired of talking, he asked, ‘What is your skill?’

‘I build. I am an architect.’

‘You should go to Agra, then. Shah Jahan, your namesake, is building a palace in memory of his wife.’

Although he shrugged, Jahan was intrigued. ‘What happened to her?’

‘She died in childbirth,’ the stranger said sadly. ‘He was quite devoted to her.’

‘It’s not exactly my route.’

‘Change your route,’ he said. Just like that.

In the year 1632 Jahan arrived in Hindustan, in order to see what the plans for this palace, which everyone was raving about, were actually like.

Some cities you go to because you want to; some cities you go to because
they
want you to. The moment he set foot there, Jahan had the feeling that Agra had been pulling him, leading him all along. On the way there he had heard so much about the Shah and the city he wished to glorify that when he reached Agra it was almost as if he were returning to a place where he had been before. He wandered around, inhaling the smells, which were bountiful and pungent, the sunlight stroking his skin, the faintest ache on his scar.

Jahan went to see the construction on the bank of the Yamuna. There, with the help of a traveller who spoke a bit of Turkish, he was introduced to one of the draughtsmen. After hearing his credentials and seeing the seal of Sinan, the labourer took Jahan to their overseer. A strapping man with a protruding nose, bushy eyebrows and a bashful smile, Jahan instantly liked him. His name was Mir Abdul Karim.

‘Your master was a great man,’ he said in a voice strengthened from explaining things to people, inferiors and superiors alike.

He pored over the few designs Jahan had brought along, inspecting them with meticulous care. Placing a cup of honeyed milk and a set of quill pens on the table, Mir Abdul Karim showed him several drawings of the construction project, asking his opinion of each, which Jahan gave in earnest. The overseer said nothing, though a mirthful glitter in his eyes suggested his satisfaction at the answers. Next Karim asked Jahan to draw a floor plan based on the measurements he provided there and then. When Jahan had finished, the overseer seemed content. Taking a quiet breath, he remarked, ‘You cannot go anywhere before you meet the Grand Vizier.’

In this way, after another round of introductions, Jahan found himself summoned by the Shah. Seated high on his Peacock Throne,
his heavy-lidded eyes gleaming with loss and pride, his beard and moustache white with grief, and his attire devoid of jewellery and ornaments, he reminded Jahan, in more than one way, of Sultan Suleiman. The Shah sorrowed over the death of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal – the Paragon of the Palace – the woman who had borne him fourteen children in eighteen years. Her body had been buried on the banks of the River Tapti. Now they were bringing her to Agra to be reburied for eternity.

He had loved her more than any woman and at the expense of his other wives. They said such was his devotion to, and confidence in, her that she would read all his
firmans
and, should she approve, put the regal seal on them. She was not only his consort, but also his companion, confidante and counsellor. In her absence he was inconsolable. He still visited her private apartments at nights, as though chasing her fragrance – or apparition – and when confronted with the emptiness of the chambers, he burst into tears.

A younger Jahan would have been nervous to meet the bereaved Shah whose name he shared. His face would burn, his palms would feel clammy and his voice would quiver for fear of saying something wrong. Not any longer. Having neither secrets nor expectations, he could stop railing at himself and be simply an observer, calm and unruffled – and free. Wherever this new temperament had come from, he wished, belatedly, he had attained it before, while standing in front of every Sultan, Sultana and Vizier who had appeared in his life. The placid humour of his master that he once so disparaged he now held dear.

The Shah inquired about Sinan’s works, of which, surprisingly, he was well aware. Each question Jahan answered briefly but candidly. Unlike the ruler’s ancestor, Babur – whose mother tongue was the same as Jahan’s – the Shah spoke no Turkish. They communicated with the help of a dragoman, who translated from Persian to Turkish, Turkish to Persian; words in common were captured and held, like butterflies caught in a net between them.

The meeting having reached an end, Jahan was being ushered out,
walking backwards, when the Shah said, ‘You never married, I heard. Why is that?’

Jahan stopped, his eyes cast down. Silence thicker than honey covered the hall. It was as though the entire court was waiting to hear what he had to say.

‘I had pledged my heart to someone, your Highness –’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing,’ Jahan said. Those who grew up with stories of love that inevitably ended in rapture, revelry, chivalry or calamity could not fathom why for many people love amounted to naught, eventually. ‘She was beyond my reach and did not love me. It was not meant to be.’

‘There’re plenty of women,’ the Shah said.

Jahan would have liked to say the same thing to him. Why did he still mourn his wife? What he could not put into words, the Shah understood. A thin smile etched on his lips as he said, ‘Maybe not.’

The next afternoon, Jahan received a letter from the palace nominating him as one of the two Chief Royal Architects for the Illuminated Tomb – the
rauza-i-munavvara
. He would be paid generously in rupees and ashrafis, and every six months rewarded accordingly. But it was one line, in particular, that stayed with him:
I hereby ask you, Jahan Khan Rumi, the builder of memories, the descendant of the respectable Master Sinan, who was second to none, and was followed worldwide, to contribute to the raising of this most glorious tomb, which will invoke the admiration of generations after generations, until the Day of Judgement, when no stone will stand upon another under the vault of heaven
.

Jahan accepted, despite himself. He joined the team of builders and, even though he was in a foreign land where he knew not a single soul and had no past to recall should the present prove too gruelling, he felt strangely at home.

The project was massive. Expensive. Fraught with difficulties. Thousands of labourers, masons, stone-cutters, quarries, bricklayers, tile-setters and carpenters were toiling at full tilt. It was possible to hear a babel of languages moving from one place to another. There
were sculptors from Bukhara, quarrymen from Isfahan, carvers from Tabriz, calligraphers from Kashmir, painters from Samarkand, decorators from Florence and jewellers from Venice. It was almost as if the Shah, in his determination to see the building completed as quickly as possible, had called on every craftsman on earth who might be of use to him. Implacable, stubborn, he held sway over everyone to the point just short of drawing the designs himself. That he had some knowledge in the craft made life harder for his architects. Jahan had never met a monarch so involved in a construction. Every two days the Shah would hold a conference with them, asking questions, stating opinions and coming up with new impossible demands, as crowned heads often tended to do.

Shah Jahan was a man who pledged his wrath in steel, his love in diamonds and his grief in white marble. Under his auspices Jahan wrote to a number of masons in Istanbul, inviting them over. He was delighted when Isa, his favourite student, agreed to come. He felt compassion and admiration for him and for all that he could achieve with his talents and his youth. He wondered if Master Sinan had regarded them with similar feelings. If so, it was a pity that Jahan had not understood.

There were elephants on the site. Restlessly, they carried the heaviest marbles and planks. Sometimes in the afternoons, under the setting sun, Jahan would watch them wallow in puddles, a thrill of affection running through him. He could not help but think if human beings could only live more like animals, without a thought to the past or the future, and without rounds of lies and deceit, this world would be a more peaceful place, and perhaps a happier one.