The Years of Rice and Salt (13 page)

“Of course.”

In the weeks following, Bistami did indeed find himself sitting in judgment in disputes brought before him by some of the emperor's slave assistants. Two men claimed the same land; Bistami asked where their fathers had lived, and their fathers' fathers, and determined that one's family had lived in the region longer than the other's. In ways like this he made his judgments.

More new clothes came from the tailors; a new house and complete retinue of servants and slaves were provided; he was given a trunk of gold and silver coins numbering one hundred thousand. And for all this he merely had to consult the Quran and recall the hadith he had learned (really very few, and even fewer relevant), and render judgments that were usually obvious to all. When they were not obvious, he made them as best he could and retired to the mosque and prayed uneasily, then attended the emperor and the evening meal. He went on his own at dawn every day to the tomb of Chishti, and so saw the emperor again in the same informal circumstances as their first meeting, perhaps once or twice a month—enough to keep the very busy emperor aware of his existence. He always had prepared the story he would relate to Akbar that day, when asked what he had been doing; each story was chosen for what it might teach the emperor, about himself, or Bistami, or the empire or the world. Surely a decent and thoughtful lesson was the least he could do for the incredible bounty that Akbar had bestowed on him.

One morning he told him the story from Sura Eighteen, about the men who lived in a city that had forsaken God, and God took them apart to a cave, and made them to sleep as it were a single night, to them; and when they went out they found that three hundred and nine years had passed. “Thus with your work, mighty Akbar, you shoot us into the future.”

Another morning he told him the story of El-Khadir, the reputed vizier of Dhoulkarnain, who was said to have drunk of the fountain of life, by virtue of which he still lives, and will live till the day of judgment; and who appeared, clad in green robes, to Muslims in distress, to help them. “Thus your work here, great Akbar, will continue deathless through the years to help Muslims in distress.”

The emperor appeared to appreciate these cool dewy conversations. He invited Bistami to join him on several hunts, and Bistami and his retinue occupied a big white tent, and spent the hot days riding horses as they crashed through the jungle after the howling dogs or beaters; or, more to Bistami's taste, sat on the howdah of an elephant, and watched the great falcons leave Akbar's wrist and soar high above, thence to dive in terrific stoops onto hare or fowl. Akbar fixed his attention on you in just the same way the falcons did.

Akbar loved his falcons, in fact, as kin, and always spent the days of the hunt in excellent spirits. He would call Bistami to his side to speak a blessing over the great birds, who looked off to the horizon, unimpressed. Then they were cast into the air, and flapped hard as they made their way quickly up to their hunting height, splaying wide their big wing feathers. When they were settled in their gyres overhead, a few doves were released. These birds flew as fast as they could for cover in trees or bush, but they were not usually fast enough to escape the attack of the hawks. Their broken bodies were returned by the great raptors to the feet of the emperor's retainers, and then the falcons flew back to Akbar's wrist, where they were greeted with a stare as fixed as their own, and bits of raw mutton.

It was just such a happy day that was interrupted by bad news from the south. A messenger arrived saying that Adham Khan's campaign against the Sultan of Malwa, Baz Bahadur, had succeeded, but that the khan's army had gone on to slaughter all of the captured men, women, and children of the town of Malwa, including many Muslim theologians, and even some sayyids, that is to say, direct descendants of the Prophet.

Akbar's fair complexion turned red all over his neck and face, leaving only the mole on the left side of his face untouched, like a white raisin embedded in his skin. “No more,” he declared to his falcon, and then he began to give orders, the bird thrown to its falconer and the hunt forgotten. “He thinks I am still underage.”

He rode off hard, leaving all his retinue behind except for Pir Muhammad Khan, his most trusted general. Bistami heard later that Akbar had personally relieved Adham Khan of his command.

Bistami had the Chishti tomb to himself for a month. Then he found the emperor there one morning, with a dark look. Adham Khan had been replaced as vakil, the chief minister, by Zein. “It will enrage him but it must be done,” Akbar said. “We will have to put him under house arrest.”

Bistami nodded and continued to sweep the cool dry floor of the inner chamber. The idea of Adham Khan under permanent guard, usually a prelude to execution, was disturbing to contemplate. He had a lot of friends in Agra. He might be so bold as to try to rebel. As the emperor must very well know.

Indeed, two days later, when Bistami was standing at the edge of Akbar's afternoon group at the palace, he was frightened but not surprised to see Adham Khan appear and stomp to the top of the stairs, armed, bloody, shouting that he had killed Zein not an hour before, in the man's own audience chamber, for usurping what was rightfully his.

Hearing this Akbar went red-faced again, and struck the khan hard on the side of the head with his drinking cup. He grabbed the man by the front of his jacket, and pulled him across the room. The slightest resistance from Adham would have been instant death from the emperor's guards, who stood at each side of them, swords at the ready; and so he allowed himself to be dragged out to the balcony, where Akbar flung him over the railing into space. Then Akbar, redder than ever, raced down the stairs, ran to the half-conscious khan, seized him by the hair and dragged him bodily up the stairs, armored though he was, over the carpet and out to the balcony, where he heaved him over the rail again. Adham Khan hit the patio below with a loose heavy thud.

Indeed he had been killed. The emperor retired into his private quarters in the palace.

The next morning Bistami swept the shrine of Chishti with a tightness all through his body.

Akbar appeared, and Bistami's heart hammered in his chest. Akbar seemed calm, though distracted. The tomb was a place to give himself some serenity. But the vigorous brushing he gave the floor that Bistami had already cleaned belied the calm of his speech. He's the emperor, Bistami thought suddenly, he can do what he wants.

But then again, as a Muslim emperor, he was subservient to God, and the sharia. All-powerful and yet all-submissive, all at once. No wonder he seemed thoughtful to the point of distraction, sweeping the shrine in the early morning. It was hard to imagine him mad with anger, like a bull elephant in musth, throwing a man bodily to his death. There was within him a deep well of rage.

Rebellion of ostensibly Muslim subjects struck deepest into this well. A new rebellion in the Punjab was reported, an army sent to put it down. The innocents of the region were spared, and even those who had fought for the rebellion. But its leaders, some forty of them, were brought to Agra and placed in a circle of war elephants that had long blades like giant swords attached to their tusks. The elephants were unleashed on the traitors, who screamed as they were mowed down and trampled underfoot, their bodies then tossed high in the air by the blood-maddened elephants. Bistami had not realized that elephants could be driven to such blood lust. Akbar stood high on a throne howdah perched on the biggest elephant of all, an elephant that stood still before the spectacle, the two of them observing the carnage.

Some days later, when the emperor came to the tomb at dawn, it felt strange to sweep the shadowed courtyard of the tomb with him. Bistami swept assiduously, trying not to meet Akbar's gaze.

Finally he had to acknowledge the sovereign's presence. Akbar was already staring at him.

“You seem troubled,” Akbar said.

“No, mighty Akbar—not at all.”

“You don't approve of the execution of traitors to Islam?”

“Not at all, yes, of course I do.”

Akbar stared at him in the same way one of his falcons would have.

“But didn't Ibn Khaldun say that the caliph has to submit to Allah in the same way as the humblest slave? Didn't he say that the caliph has a duty to obey Muslim law? And doesn't Muslim law forbid torture of prisoners? Isn't that Khaldun's point?”

“Khaldun was just a historian,” Bistami said.

Akbar laughed. “And what about the hadith that has it from Abu Taiba by way of Murra ibn Hamdan by way of Sufyan al-Thawri, who had it related to him by Ali ibn Abi Talaib, that the Messenger of God, may God bless his name forever, said, ‘You shall not torture slaves?' What about the lines of the Quran that command the ruler to imitate Allah and to show compassion and mercy to prisoners? Did I not break the spirit of these commandments, O wise Sufi pilgrim?”

Bistami studied the flagstones of the courtyard. “Perhaps so, great Akbar. Only you know.”

Akbar regarded him. “Leave the tomb of Chishti,” he said.

Bistami hurried out the gate.

The next time Bistami saw Akbar was at the palace, where he had been commanded to appear; as it turned out, to explain why, as the emperor put it icily, “your friends in Gujarat are rebelling against me?”

Bistami said uneasily, “I left Ahmadabad precisely because there was so much strife. The mirzas were always having trouble. King Muzaffar Shah the Third was no longer in control. You know all this. This is why you took Gujarat under your protection.”

Akbar nodded, seeming to remember that campaign. “But now Husain Mirza has come back out of the Deccan, and many of the nobles of Gujarat have joined him in rebellion. If word spreads that I can be defied so easily, who knows what will follow?”

“Surely Gujarat must be retaken,” Bistami said uncertainly; perhaps, as last time, this was exactly what Akbar did not want to hear. What was expected of Bistami was not clear to him; he was an official of the court, a qadi, but his advice before had all been religious, or legal. Now, with a previous residence of his in revolt, he was apparently on the spot; not where one wanted to be, when Akbar was angry.

“It may already be too late,” Akbar said. “The coast is two months away.”

“Must it be?” Bistami asked. “I have made the trip by myself in ten days. Perhaps if you took only your best hundreds, on female camels, you could surprise the rebels.”

Akbar favored him with his hawk look. He called for Raja Todor Mal, and soon it was arranged as Bistami had suggested. A cavalry of three thousand soldiers, led by Akbar, with Bistami ordered along, covered the distance between Agra and Ahmadabad in eleven dusty long days, and this cavalry, made strong and bold by the swift march, shattered a gaggle of many thousands of rebels, fifteen thousand by one general's count, most of them killed in the battle.

Bistami spent that day on camelback, following the main charges of the front, trying to stay within sight of Akbar, and when that failed, helping wounded men into the shade. Even without Akbar's great siege guns, the noise of the battle was shocking—most of it created by the screaming of men and camels. Dust blanketing the hot air smelled of blood.

Late in the afternoon, desperately thirsty, Bistami made his way down to the river. Scores of wounded and dying were already there, staining the river red. Even at the upstream edge of the crowd it was impossible to drink a mouthful that did not taste of blood.

Then Raja Todor Mal and a gang of soldiers arrived among them, executing with swords the mirzas and Afghans who had led the rebellion. One of the mirzas caught sight of Bistami and cried out, “Bistami, save me! Save me!”

The next moment he was headless, his body pouring its blood onto the bankside from the open neck. Bistami turned away, Raja Todor Mal staring after him.

Clearly Akbar heard of this later, for all during the leisurely march back to Fatepur Sikri, despite the triumphant nature of the procession, and Akbar's evident high spirits, he did not call Bistami into his presence. This despite the fact that the lightning assault on the rebels had been Bistami's idea. Or perhaps this also was part of it. Raja Todor Mal and his cronies could not be pleased by that.

It looked bad, and nothing in the great victory festival on their return to Fatepur Sikri, only forty-three days after their departure, made Bistami feel any better. On the contrary, he felt more and more apprehensive, as the days passed and Akbar did not come by the tomb of Chishti.

Instead, one morning three guards appeared there. They had been assigned to guard Bistami at the tomb, also back at his own compound. They informed him that he was not allowed to go anywhere else but these two places. He was under house arrest.

This was the usual prelude to the interrogation and execution of traitors. Bistami could see in his guards' eyes that this time was no exception, and that they considered him a dead man. It was hard for him to believe that Akbar had turned on him; he struggled to understand it. Fear grew daily in him. The image of the mirza's headless body, gushing blood, kept recurring to him, and each time it did the blood in his own body would pound through him as if testing the means of escape, eager for release in a bursting red fountain.

He went to the Chishti tomb on one of these frightful mornings, and decided not to leave it. He sent orders for one of his retainers to bring him food every day at sundown, and after eating outside the gate of the tomb, he slept on a mat in the corner of the courtyard. He fasted through the days as if it were Ramadan, and alternated days reciting from the Quran and from Rumi's “Mathnawi,” and other Persian Sufi texts. Some part of him hoped and expected that one of the guards would speak Persian, so that the words of the Mowlana, Rumi the great poet and voice of the Sufis, would be understood as they came pouring out of him.

“Here are the miracle signs you want,” he would say in a loud voice, “that you cry through the night and get up at dawn, asking that in the absence of what you ask for, your day gets dark, your neck thin as a spindle, that what you give away is all you own, that you sacrifice belongings, sleep, health, your head, that you often sit down in a fire like aloes wood, and often go out to meet a blade like a battered helmet. When acts of helplessness become habitual, those are the signs. You run back and forth listening for unusual events, peering into the faces of travelers. Why are you looking at me like a madman? I have lost a friend. Please forgive me. Searching like that does not fail. There will come a rider who holds you close. You faint and gibber. The uninitiated say he's faking. How could they know? Water washes over a beached fish.