Beneath a Marble Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

however, preferred to please Mother himself. And while most lords surrounded themselves with young concubines, Father chose to be alone with Mother. He was kind to his other wives but seldom visited them. Even at such a young age, I was keenly aware of the rare quality of my parents’ love for each other, and often wondered if it was a blessing that I was destined ever to experience. It seemed impossible that I’d ever know such bliss, impossible that I might become worthy enough to merit a man like my father.
    Weary, I closed my eyes. I leaned against Father, found the rise and fall of his chest comforting. He stroked my brow until the crickets’ songs were loud and unbroken. Then he eased me onto a rug at his feet, placing a cushion beneath my head. When he kissed my forehead, I sighed and feigned sleep.
    “Allah has blessed us with children,” Father whispered. “So much pleasure in the making, so much joy in watching them blossom.”
    I’d heard of this pleasure before and fought my inclination to dream. Silence lingered, followed by the sound of a kiss. I opened my eyes a fraction and saw that their faces had separated but were only a finger’s width apart. 
    “How is it,” Father asked, “that my love for you does not lessen? My body stiffens with the years, my hands ache with the monsoon. Yet now, as I see you before me, I am struck only by joy.”
    “You married well,” Mother replied mischievously. “If you hadn’t found me, you’d be much older today. And I might still be selling beads to nobles, to greedy men only intent on pleasing their mistresses. To men who think with the wrong organ.”
    Father chuckled, his rumblings comforting to me. “The fools jest that I envy them, that I long for the women they hoard,” he said, sipping his wine. “Do you think they could even fathom how I’d give up my empire for you, how without you by my side I’d be like a falcon with no wings?”
    “You should have been a poet,” she replied, smiling playfully, for Father delighted in words. “We’d starve, most assuredly.”
    “But, Arjumand, most poets write of pain, of misery, of want. I could only give verse to love, which most readers find a tedious subject. How could I write of hate, when I harbor none? Or of jealousy? Or of sorrow? No, it’s better that the poets and philosophers debate these creations. They are not of my world.”
    “Nor mine.”
    “Then let them write, my love, while we live.”
    In the ensuing silence my heart beat strongly. And when they kissed again, I opened my eyes wider.

Chapter 2
    First Betrayal

    T hough Father may not have fully understood hatred or jealousy, one of his sons did. Yet it wasn’t until four months later, slightly before the spring solstice, that I became fully aware of feelings Aurangzeb harbored, and of his capacity for treachery. Earlier, I had sensed his hostility mounting toward all of us: Aurangzeb wore his discontent as blatantly as the sword he’d started to carry. One day Dara would be the victim of his wrath, then I the next. We rarely deserved his scorn, but his outbursts came without warning.
    I wasn’t sure how to measure his moodiness, and once I told Dara that Aurangzeb reminded me of a bee. For how often had I been stung for no particular reason? Perhaps these troublesome insects believed me to be threatening, but I much preferred to watch them suckle nectar than incur their ire. Aurangzeb, in many respects, had a similar disposition. He drifted in his own world most days, but when he felt slighted whoever was near might get stung.
    I experienced my first real wound on a warm afternoon.
    My brothers and I had been studying intently in the harem. Mother surveyed Father’s notes from a recent court session, while Nizam’s hands fluttered rhymically against a rosewood and deerskin tabla. The other women present gossiped quietly, drank wine, or plucked fruits from silver platters. Green and scarlet finches sang from gilded cages. The