The Years of Rice and Salt (33 page)

Jewels in the Sky

Nadir asked for more and more of Khalid's time, and Khalid grew very
restive. One time he went to Divanbegi with a proposal to build a complete system of drains underneath both Bokhara and Samarqand, to move the water of the scores of stagnant pools that dotted both cities, especially Bokhara. This would keep the water from becoming foul, and decrease the number of mosquitoes and the incidence of disease, including the plague, which the Hindu caravans reported to be devastating parts of Sind. Khalid suggested sequestering all travelers outside the city whenever they heard such news, and causing delays in caravans that came from affected areas, to be sure of cleanliness. A purification delay, analogous to the spiritual purifications of Ramadan.

But Nadir ignored all these ideas. An underground system of pipes, though common in Persia from before the invasions of the Mongols, was too expensive now to contemplate. Khalid was being asked for military aid, not physic. Nadir did not believe he knew anything about physic.

So Khalid returned
to his compound and put the whole place to work on the khan's artillery, making every aspect of the cannons a matter for demonstrations, but without trying to learn anything of primary causes, as he called them, except occasionally in motion. He worked on metal strength with Iwang, and made use of Iwang's mathematics to do cannonflight studies, and tried a number of methods to cause the cannonballs to spiral reliably in flight.

All this was done with reluctance and ill-humor; and only in the afternoon, after a nap and a meal of yogurt, or late in the evening, after smoking from one of his narghiles, did he recover his equanimity, and pursue his studies with soap bubbles and prisms, air pumps and mercury scales. “If you can measure the weight of air you should be able to measure heat, up to temperatures far beyond what we can distinguish with our blisters and ouches.”

Nadir sent his men by on a monthly basis to receive the latest news of Khalid's studies, and from time to time dropped by himself unannounced, throwing the compound into a flurry, like an anthill hit by water. Khalid was polite at all times, but complained to Bahram bitterly about the monthly request for news, particularly since they had very little. “I thought I escaped the moon curse when Fedwa went through menopause,” he groused.

Ironically, these unwelcome visits were also losing him allies in the madressas, as he was thought to be favored by the treasurer, and he could not risk telling them the real situation. So there were cold looks, and slights in the bazaar and the mosque; also, many examples of grasping obsequiousness. It made him irritable, indeed sometimes he rose to a veritable fury of irritability. “A little power and you see how awful people are.”

To keep him from plunging back into black melancholy, Bahram scoured the caravanserai for things that might please him, visiting the Hindus and the Armenians in particular, also the Chinese, and coming back with books, compasses, clocks, and a curious nested astrolabe, which purported to show that the six planets occupied orbits that filled polygons that were progressively simpler by one side, so that Mercury circled inside a decagon, Venus a nonagon just large enough to hold the decagon, Earth an octagon outside the nonagon, and so on up to Saturn, circling in a big square. This object astonished Khalid, and caused night-long discussions with Iwang and Zahhar about the disposition of the planets around the sun.

This new interest in astronomy quickly superseded all others in Khalid, and grew to a passion after Iwang brought by a curious device he had made in his shop, a long silver tube, hollow except for glass lenses placed in both ends. Looking through the tube, things appeared closer than they really were, with their detail more fine.

“How can that work?” Khalid demanded when he looked through it. The look of suprise on his face was that of the puppets in the bazaar, pure and hilarious. It made Bahram happy to see it.

“Like the prism?” Iwang suggested uncertainly.

Khalid shook his head. “Not that you can see things as bigger, or closer, but that you can see so much more detail! How can that be?”

“The detail must always be there in the light,” Iwang said. “And the eye only powerful enough to discern part of it. I admit I am surprised, but consider, most people's eyes weaken as they age, especially for things close by. I know mine have. I made my first set of lenses to use as spectacles, you know, one for each eye, in a frame. But while I was assembling one I looked through the two lenses lined up together.” He grinned, miming the action. “I was really very anxious to confirm that you two saw the same things I saw, to tell the truth. I couldn't quite believe my own eyes.”

Khalid was looking through the thing again.

So now they looked at things. Distant ridges, birds in flight, approaching caravans. Nadir was shown the glass, and its military uses were immediately obvious to him. He took one they had made for him, encrusted with garnets, to the khan, and word came back that the khan was pleased. That did not ease the presence of the khanate in Khalid's compound, of course; on the contrary, Nadir mentioned casually that they were looking forward to the next remarkable development out of Khalid's shop, as the Chinese were said to be in a turmoil. Who knew where that kind of thing might end.

“It will never end,” Khalid said bitterly when Nadir had gone. “It's like a noose that tightens with our every move.”

“Feed him your discoveries in little pieces,” Iwang suggested. “It will seem like there are more of them.”

Khalid followed this advice, which gave him a little more time, and they worked on all manner of things that it seemed would help the khan's troops in battle. Khalid indulged his interest in primary causes mostly at night, when they trained the new spyglass on the stars, and later that month on the moon, which proved to be a very rocky, mountainous, desolate world, ringed by innumerable craters, as if fired upon by the cannon of some superemperor. Then on one memorable night they looked through the spyglass at Jupiter, and Khalid said, “By God it's a world too, clearly. Banded by latitude—and look, those three stars near it, they're brighter than stars. Could they be moons of Jupiter's?”

They could. They moved fast, around Jupiter, and the ones closer to Jupiter moved faster, just like the planets around the sun. Soon Khalid and Iwang had seen a fourth one, and mapped all four orbits, so that they could prepare new viewers to comprehend the sight, by looking at the diagrams first. They made it all into a book, another gift to the khan—a gift with no military use, but they named the moons after the khan's four oldest wives, and he liked that, it was clear. He was reported to have said, “Jewels in the sky! For me!”

Who Is the Stranger

There were factions in town who did not like them. When Bahram walked
through the Registan, and saw the eyes watching him, the conversations begun or ended by his passage, he saw that he was part of a coterie or a faction, no matter how innocuous his behavior had been. He was related to Khalid, who was allied with Iwang and Zahhar, and together they formed part of Nadir Divanbegi's power. They were therefore Nadir's allies, even if he had forced them to it like wet pulp in a paper press; even if they hated him. Many other people in Samarqand hated Nadir, no doubt even more than Khalid did, as Khalid was under his protection, while these other people were his enemies: relatives of his dead or imprisoned or exiled foes, perhaps, or the losers of many earlier palace struggles. The khan had other advisors—courtiers, generals, relatives at court—all jealous of their own share of his regard, and envious of Nadir's great influence. Bahram had heard rumors from time to time of palace intrigues against Nadir, but he remained unaware of the details. The fact that their involuntary association with Nadir could cause them trouble elsewhere struck him as grossly unfair; the association itself was already trouble enough.

One day this sense of hidden enemies became more material: Bahram was visiting Iwang, and two qadis Bahram had never seen before appeared in the door of the Tibetan's shop, backed by two of the khan's soldiers, and a small gaggle of ulema from the Tilla Kari Madressa, demanding that Iwang produce his tax receipts.

“I am not a dhimmi,” Iwang said with his customary calm.

The dhimmi, or people of the pact, were those nonbelievers who were born and lived their lives in the khanate, who had to pay a special tax. Islam was the religion of justice, and all Muslims were equal before God and the law; but of the lesser ones, women, slaves and the dhimmi, the dhimmi were the ones who could change their status by a simple decision to convert to true belief. Indeed there had been times in the past when it had been “the book or the sword” for all pagans, and only people of the book—Jews, Zoroastrians, Christians, and Sabians—had been allowed to keep their faith, if they insisted on it. Nowadays pagans of all sort were allowed to keep their various religions, as long as they were registered with the qadis, and paid the annual dhimma tax.

This was clear, and ordinary. Ever since the Shiite Safavids had come to the throne in Iran, however, the legal position of dhimmi had worsened—markedly in Iran, where the Shiite mullahs were so concerned with purity, but also in the khanates to the east, at least sometimes. It was a matter for discretion, really. As Iwang had once remarked, the uncertainty itself was a part of the tax.

“You are not a dhimmi?” one of the qadis said, surprised.

“No, I come from Tibet. I am mustamin.”

The mustamin were foreign visitors, permitted to live in Muslim lands for specified periods of time.

“Do you have an aman?”

“Yes.”

This was the safe-conduct pass issued to mustamin, renewed by the Khanaka on an annual basis. Now Iwang brought a sheet of parchment out of his back room, and showed it to the qadis. There were a number of wax seals at the bottom of the document, and the qadis inspected these closely.

“He's been here eight years!” one of them complained. “That's longer than allowed by the law.”

Iwang shrugged impassively. “Renewal was granted this spring.”

A heavy silence ruled as the men checked the document's seals again.

“A mustamin cannot own property,” someone noted.

“Do you own this shop?” the chief qadi asked, surprised again.

“No,” Iwang said. “Naturally not. Rental only.”

“Monthly?”

“Lease by year. After my aman is renewed.”

“Where are you from?”

“Tibet.”

“You have a house there?”

“Yes. In Iwang.”

“A family?”

“Brothers and sisters. No wives or children.”

“So who's in your house?”

“Sister.”

“When are you going back?”

A short pause. “I don't know.”

“You mean you have no plans to return to Tibet.”

“No, I plan to return. But—business has been good. Sister sends raw silver, I make it into things. This is Samarqand.”

“And so business will always be good! Why would you ever leave? You should be dhimmi, you are a permanent resident here, a nonbelieving subject of the khan.”

Iwang shrugged, gestured at the document. That was something Nadir had brought to the khanate, it occurred to Bahram, something from deep in the heart of Islam: the law was the law. Dhimmi and mustamin were both protected by contract, each in their way.

“He is not even one of the people of the book,” one of the qadis said indignantly.

“We have many books in Tibet,” Iwang said calmly, as if he had misunderstood.

The qadis were offended. “What is your religion?”

“I am Buddhist.”

“So you don't believe in Allah, you don't pray to Allah.”

Iwang did not reply.

“Buddhists are polytheists,” one of them said. “Like the pagans Muhammad converted in Arabia.”

Bahram stepped before them. “ ‘There is no compulsion in religion,' ” he recited hotly. “ ‘To you your religion, to me my religion.' That's what the Quran tells us!”

The visitors stared at him coldly.

“Are you not Muslim?” one said.

“I certainly am! You would know it if you knew the Sher Dor mosque! I've never seen you there—where do you pray on Friday?”

“Tilla Kari Mosque,” the qadi said, angry now.

This was interesting, as the Tilla Kari Madressa was the center for the Shiite study group, which was opposed to Nadir.

“ ‘Al-kufou millatun wahida,' ” one of them said; a counterquote, as theologians called it. Unbelief is one religion.

“Only digaraz can make complaint to the law,” Bahram snapped back. Digaraz were those who spoke without grudge or malice, disinterested Muslims. “You don't qualify.”

“Neither do you, young man.”

“You come here! Who sent you? You challenge the law of the aman, who gives you the right? Get out of here! You have no idea what this man does for Samarqand! You attack Sayyed Abdul himself here, you attack Islam itself! Get out!”

The qadis did not move, but something in their gazes had grown more guarded. Their leader said, “Next spring we will talk again,” with a glance at Iwang's aman. With a wave of his hand that was just like the khan's, he led the others out and down the narrow passage of the bazaar.

For a long while
the two friends stood silently in the shop, awkward with each other.

Finally Iwang sighed. “Did not Muhammad set laws concerning the way men should be treated in Dar al-Islam?”

“God set them. Muhammad only transmitted them.”

“All free men equal before the law. Women, children, slaves, and unbelievers less under the law.”

“Equal beings, but they all have their particular rights, protected by law.”

“But not as many rights as those of Muslim free men.”

“They are not as strong, so their rights are not so burdensome. They are all people to be protected by Muslim free men, upholding God's laws.”

Iwang pursed his lips. Finally he said, “God is the force moving in everything. The shapes things take when they move.”

“God is love moving through all,” Bahram agreed. “The Sufis say this.”

Iwang nodded. “God is a mathematician. A very great and subtle mathematician. As our bodies are to the crude furnaces and stills of your compound, so God's mathematics is to our mathematics.”

“So you agree there is a God? I thought Buddha denied there was any God.”

“I don't know. I suppose some Buddhists might say not. Being springs out of the Void. I don't know, myself. If there is only the Void enveloping all we see, where did the mathematics come from? It seems to me it could be the result of something thinking.”

Bahram was surprised to hear Iwang say this. And he could not be quite sure how sincere Iwang was, given what had just happened with the qadis from Tilla Kari. Although it made sense, in that it was obviously impossible that such an intricate and glorious thing as the world could have come to pass without some very great and loving God to make it.

“You should come to the Sufi fellowship, and listen to what my teacher there says,” Bahram finally said, smiling at the thought of the big Tibetan in their group. Although their teacher would probably like it.

Bahram returned
to the compound by way of the western caravanserai, where the Hindu traders were camped in their smell of incense and milktea. Bahram completed the other business he had there, buying scents and bags of calcinated minerals for Khalid, and then when he saw Dol, an acquaintance from Ladakh, he joined him and sat with him and drank tea for a while, then rakshi, looking over the trader's pallets of spices and small bronze figurines. Bahram gestured at the detailed little statues. “Are these your gods?”

Dol looked at him, surprised and amused. “Some are gods, yes. This is Shiva—this Kali, the destroyer—this Ganesh.”

“An elephant god?”

“This is how we picture him. They have other forms.”

“But an elephant?”

“Have you ever seen an elephant?”

“No.”

“They're impressive.”

“I know they're big.”

“It's more than that.”

Bahram sipped his tea. “I think Iwang might convert to Islam.”

“Trouble with his aman?”

Dol laughed at Bahram's expression, urged him to drink from the jar of rakshi.

Bahram obliged him, then persisted. “Do you think it's possible to change religions?”

“Many people have.”

“Could you? Could you say, There is only one God?” Gesturing at the figurines.

Dol smiled. “They are all aspects of Brahman, you know. Behind all, the great God Brahman, all one in him.”

“So Iwang could be like that too. He might already believe in the one great God, the God of Gods.”

“He could. God manifests in different ways to different people.”

Bahram sighed.