Mirza Abdullah took me by the hand and made me recline on his bolster. The others sat facing us. The
hijda
brought a pitcher and poured out some evil-smelling liquid in four silver goblets. When he held out one to me, I shook my head. ‘It is an unpardonable crime to drink during Ramadan,’ I said.
‘
Wah! Wah!’
exploded Mirza Abdullah. ‘Yesterday’s Mus-salmani reads us sermons on Islam. Ayesha
bi
, during
jihad
everything is forgiven.’ He gulped down the stuff in his goblet and repeated, ‘During a
jihad
everything is allowed. Everything; you understand?’ I understood. The men emptied their goblets; the
hijda
refilled them. Mirza Abdullah put a tumbler to my lips and commanded: ‘Drink! Or I’ll force it down your throat.’ I knew what the blackguards meant to do to me. I decided I would be able to take it more easily if I were drunk. I took a sip and then gulped it down. It was spiced brandy; it burnt its way down my gullet into my belly.
‘Shabash,’
they cried in a chorus. ‘Now the
mehfil
can get going.’
My goblet was refilled. The brandy loosened their tongues. One recited a poem of Saadi. Mirza Abdullah replied with lines from some court poets called Zauq and Ghalib. The third fellow quoted lines composed by the old king Bahadur Shah. Then they talked of the glories of Mughal rule and the wickedness of the English. ‘As soon as the Company forces surrender,’ said Mirza Abdullah, ‘we will castrate all the
firangis
and take their women in our harems.’ They laughed loudly at this joke.
Mirza Abdullah put his hand on my knee. He began to stroke and pinch my thighs. He touched my breasts and began to play with my nipples. His friends got up and asked: ‘Have we Your Highness’s permission to retire to the next room?’ Abdullah nodded. They tottered out leaving the two of us reclining on the same bolster.
For some time Mirza Abdullah continued playing with my nipples. His other hand slipped round my waist. He undid the knot in the cord of his pyjama-trousers, took my hand and placed it on his middle. He was in a state of agitation. I picked up the goblet and drained it of its liquid fire. Now I did not care what anyone did to me. I thought it wiser to take the lead myself. I lay back and directed Mirza Abdullah into my person. A drunk man takes an age to come. At long last, when it seemed he was working himself up to a climax, Abdullah hollered out to his friends to see what he was doing. He dug his teeth into my cheeks as he shot his seed. As soon as he got up, his friends stripped me of the little clothing left on me and assaulted me. I was like a piece of white meat fought over by two brown dogs: snarling, biting, clawing, shoving. So it went all through the long, long, sultry night. By the time one had finished, another had worked himself into a frenzy. And there was that
hijda
poking his fingers or tongue or whatever else he had. I was drenched with sweat and almost dead with exhaustion. By morning Abdullah and his friends were drained of all the poisonous semen in their vile bodies. They stumbled out singing and yelling obscenities. Only the
hijda
remained. I lay like a corpse while he tore me up like a dog tears carrion. He went on till the cannon announced the beginning of the day of abstinence. How much had passed between two risings of the sun!
I was woken up by Georgina’s crying; ‘Mummy, mummy, wake up!’ The girls were in a state of shock. They had never before seen me like that—naked and bruised.
The only people who remained true to their salt were my servant Ali Ahmed and his wife. He realized what I had been through. At his own cost Ali Ahmed hired two palanquins and took us to his hovel. Very soon a large crowd collected. I heard voices shouting: ‘Hand over that
firangi
woman.’ Ali Ahmed’s wife went out very boldly and scolded them: T am a Qureish of the tribe of the Prophet. The woman and the children who I shelter in my home are Muslims. You will first have to kill me and my husband before you can touch them. Is there anyone here who wants to have the blood of the Prophet on his hands? Come on, it is the holy month of Ramadan,’ she challenged. The crowd melted away.
I did not want to endanger the lives of these poor folk. I asked Ali Ahmed to take a letter to the king and Queen Zeenat Mahal begging for help. I told them that I was born of a Muslim mother and had along with my two daughters recited the creed of Islam. I signed my name Ayesha Aldwell. I got no reply.
I wrote to many
nawabs
. Either they did not reply or sent notes regretting their inability to help. When all the rich and influential deserted us a poor man who owed us nothing came to our help. This was a tailor whose name I had never bothered to ask. He had stitched my daughters’ frocks and got very fond of them. He came one morning with his cousin who was a sepoy. Although this cousin had gone over to the rebels he swore on the
Quran
that he would not let anyone harm us. We spent a day and night with the tailor’s family. At sunset when the Muslims were at prayer we slipped out of the bazaar. The tailor and his sepoy cousin escorted our palanquins to the fort. We were taken over by the guards and produced before the king’s son, Mirza Mughal. I then discovered that Mirza had intercepted the letters I had written to the king and Begum Zeenat Mahal. He ordered the guards to put us in the same underground dungeon as the other Europeans but to treat us as Muslims and not as
badzat
nasara
(low-caste Christians).
On Wednesday, 13 May 1857, the family was re-united. Alec forgave me for what I had been through. He swore: ‘I will split that bloody bastard Mirza Abdullah’s bum in two.’ But the English ladies were cold towards me. The favours that the guards showed towards us because I was a Mussalmani made them angry. They were given coarse
chappaties
, I was served meat-curry. Sometimes the guards would ask me and my children to eat with them.
The heat and the stench in the dungeon was terrible. There was no latrine and we had to relieve ourselves in a dark corner and with our own hands throw the slop out through a hole in the wall. And the insults we had to suffer! Every day crowds came to see us as if we were animals in a zoo and screamed the vilest abuse at us. One day Jawan Bakht came in and addressed me as
bhabi
. ‘Mirza Abdullah is like my own brother,’ he said with a smirk. ‘So you become my
bhabi
, don’t you?’
Then came Saturday, the 16th of May.
I knew something dreadful was going to happen. There were no
chappaties
for breakfast. ‘You’ll get plenty where you are going,’ the sentries said. They reassured me that I need have no fear about myself or my children. A dozen sepoys came into the cell and ordered all the other men, women and children to march out. My girls ran to Alec and clung to his knees. The sepoys tore them away from their father and thrust them towards me. ‘Don’t let them take daddy’ they cried. I pleaded with the sepoys but they took no notice of me. Poor Alec was pushed along with the others. They bolted the door leaving my daughters, I and an old Mussalmani who had been caught helping Europeans in the dungeon.
I heard people shouting. Then a shot. Then children and women screaming. Then it became still. Absolutely still.
I am ashamed to confess that my first thoughts were: ‘Now there is no one left to turn up their noses at me. Only Mirza Abdullah and his pals will talk about me. As soon as this is over, I will get Alec’s pension. I will take my girls to England and start life again with no one making nasty talk about where I came from and who I was!’ Then I cried a lot.
Bahadur Shah Zafar
Later in the afternoon some forty Europeans, men and women (there were possibly some children among them), their hands tied with ropes, were brought in our presence. A huge mob followed; the guards had difficulty in keeping it back. ‘
Dohai!
Dohai!
’ they screamed. ‘They’ve killed our men, we want justice. Hang these foreigners or hand them over to us.’ The people wanted to avenge the lives lost in the explosion of the powder magazine. The white race had done many wrongs to us and our forefathers; but we refused to sanction vengeance on people who had nothing to do with the setting of fire to the powder magazine. We ordered the prisoners to be taken in our protective custody and lodged in an underground cellar of our harem.
The mob became very abusive; some men shouted slogans derogatory to our royal status. We ordered our Chamberlain to terminate the audience. He shouted ‘
Takhlia’
and dropped the red curtain. The tumult continued for some time before saner people were able to persuade the hot-heads to bow to the wishes of their Emperor.
’Khalq Khuda ki,mulk Badshah ka,hukum
Jahan Panah ka
—People belong to God, the country to the King, obey the law of One who gives shelter to the world,’ they shouted as they departed. We ordered that food from the royal kitchen be sent to the European prisoners.
We said our afternoon
maghreb
prayer in Moti Masjid. We noticed that many strangers had lined themselves up behind us. We held our peace because we were in the house of God. But our mind was very disturbed; we were unable to ask Allah for guidance. When we came out of the mosque these people again began to shout slogans demanding the blood of the
firangi
. Some had the audacity to ask us to hand over the prisoners to them. Once again we refused to accede to their demands. We expressed our sympathy to those who had lost relatives in the explosion and advised them to submit to the will of God and bury their dead.
In the evening we learnt that the
khutba
had been read in our name in the Jamia Masjid. Our courtiers flattered us by extolling the greatness of our royal forefathers and our virtues. Thus did destiny launch our kite in tumultuous clouds without handing us the string with which we could control its movements.
We allowed ourselves to be seated on the silver throne which had been stacked away in the basement for over thirteen years. On this silver chair had sat our ancestors: Taimur and Babar; Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Alamgir Aurangzeb I, Bahadur Shah the First, Jahandar Shah Farrukhsiyar, Mohammed Shah, Alamgir II, Shah Alam and our revered father Akbar Shah the Second. We received homage from our subjects till the cannon boomed to announce the setting of the sun and we terminated the proceedings.
The crowd did not disperse. Many men spread their sheets on the stone and marble floors of our halls of audience to spend the night. Their horses filled their bellies with the flowers of our garden. Only the palaces alongside the river were left to us.
We asked to be left alone with our thoughts. We reclined on our couch in the Diwan-i-Khas and let our eyes rest on the ceiling. We remembered the days when it was encrusted with silver and gold leaf. Now even the plaster had peeled off in many places. We saw the marble columns and the empty sockets which once had been studded with ruby, amethyst, lapis lazuli and cornelian. Our gaze fell on the faded lettering proclaiming the glory of the days of our illustrious ancestor Shah Jahan:
Gar Firclaus bar roo-e-zaminast
;
Hameenasto,
hameenasto, hameenast
—If on earth there be a place of bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this. A deep sigh rose from our breast; our eyes were dimmed with tears.
*
We were thus lost in our thoughts when our attention was drawn by a polite cough. The chief lady-in-waiting bowed and said that her mistress, our Queen Zeenat Mahal, begged the privilege of our company to break the fast.
We dragged our weary feet towards our harem. Eunuchs and female heralds proclaimed our advent as we proceeded from one room to another. This time the very words we had been hearing for twenty-two years since we had been king seemed to have acquired a new meaning: ‘Sirajuddin Khan, Mohammed Abu Zafar Bahadur Shah Ghazi, Shadow of God on Earth, Emperor of Hindustan’ We came to Begum Zeenat Mahal’s apartment. The food was already laid on an embroidered table-cloth. Garlands of jasmine and
maulsari
hung from the chandeliers; cobs of
kewra
stood in vases in the corner. As we entered, maidservants bowed and backed out of the room. We took our seat on the carpet and rested our weary back on a bolster.
Begum Zeenat Mahal made her entrance. She was dressed as she was on the day seventeen years ago when we had brought her as a bride to our harem: in gold brocade with a white spider- web
dupatta
to cover the glossy black of her hooded-cobra curls. In it she wore the emerald-and-pearl clasp we had given her. Her large gazelle eyes sparkled with desire. She glided so gracefully towards us that although there were no bells on her feet our ears heard their musical tinkle. It seemed as if invisible hands had turned the knobs of lamps and made their tapers burn brighter. As Saadi said: ‘A vision appeared in the night and by its appearance the darkness was illumined.’ The tongue of eloquence could not describe her beauty.
‘Has your slave permission to greet the Emperor of Hindustan?’ She bowed low and
salaamed
us three times.
‘Subhan Allah!’
We exclaimed, taking in her beauty through our eyes.
Subhan Allah!
was all we had been able to say when we had first cast our eyes on her. She was then sixteen and we sixty-five. The seventeen summers that had ripened her beauty had also increased our appetite for her. We would rather have laid our head on her fleshy lap and let her run her fingers in our grey hair than eat the delicacies she had prepared for us. She must have read our mind. She asked us if we found the arrangements to our satisfaction. We quoted Saadi: ‘I am hungry and opposite hungry and opposite to a table of food; I am like a lusty youth at the door of a
hamaam
full of females.’ This brought the colour of pomegranates to her cheeks.
We noticed that Zeenat Mahal had prepared our favourite dishes: venison
kababs
with
nauratan
chutney made of nine condiments; roast wings of peacocks and quails;
kulfi
covered with gold leaf and garnished with slices of mango. She helped us wash our hands. She picked the food with her own fingers and placed it in our mouth. We could not recall when last she had shown such tenderness towards us. When the meal was finished she rolled a
betel
-leaf, mixing lime and catechu paste with scented tobacco, and placed it in our mouth.