Equal of the Sun Read Online Free PDF

through tall windows. The men sat upright on cushions, their wooden desks over their laps, or wrote on top of chests made of inlaid wood that contained their supplies. The room was as quiet as a grave. The reed pens the men used hardly made a sound. The scribes who wrote letters for the Shah worked side by side with court historians who documented every breath of importance in the realm.
    I made the acquaintance of the head of the guild, a venerable old master named Rasheed Khan, who wore a black turban, a long white beard, and had wise eyes that looked red and tired from toomuch close work. He was known for the clarity and beauty of his handwriting, and had trained many of the men who now worked for him.
    My new employer has a scholarly bent, I told Rasheed. Once in a while, I might need to look at the court histories, perhaps even one currently being written about Tahmasb Shah’s long reign. Would that be a problem? Oh no, I was assured, any business required by the favorite daughter of the Shah would be treated with the utmost respect. All I would need was a note of permission written by Pari. Manuscripts could even be borrowed if she so wished, so long as they were not currently being worked on.
    Praise be to God! The princess’s name worked like a magic spell.

    In the middle of the night, there was an urgent tugging at my bedclothes, as if a jinni of ill fortune were disrupting my dreams. He was small, with large dark eyes and a crooked smile, and he would not let go. He tugged and tugged, and I batted his hand away, trying to lose myself in the blackness. But the tugging grew more insistent until I opened my eyes and, in the moonlight, perceived Massoud Ali, the nine-year-old errand boy Pari had placed in my service. His face was unwashed, and he hadn’t wrapped his head in the tiny turban that he was usually so proud to wear.
    “Wake up! Wake up, by God above!”
    I sat upright, tensed for attack. Balamani, who was a heavy sleeper, turned over on his bedroll in the small bedchamber we shared.
    “What is it?”
    Massoud Ali leaned close to my ear and whispered, as if it were too terrible a thing to say out loud, “Alas, the light of the universe has been extinguished. The Shah is dead.”
    There was fear in his dark eyes.
    “Balamani!” I called. He mumbled that I was the son of a dog and rolled over.
    “Wake him gently,” I told Massoud Ali.
    I threw off the bedclothes, slammed my arms into a robe, and shoved my hair inside my turban.
    Tahmasb Shah, who had ruled for more than fifty years, dead? He who had survived several poisoning attempts and a grave illness that lasted nearly two years? It was as if Canopus had been extinguished, leaving all of us mariners struggling to navigate in darkness.
    Only a few weeks before, the Shah had granted me the boon of serving his favorite daughter. “Do not forget, no other child is dearer to my eyes,” he had said, stabbing his finger at the air to emphasize his point. “You must swear to sacrifice your very life for hers if need be. Do you swear it?”
    I rushed into the gardens near my quarters, which bloomed without shame in the early dawn. Birds sang in the cedar trees, and the purple and white petunias were in full flower. A wave of vertigo assailed me; everything at the palace would now change—the ministers, women, eunuchs, and slaves the new shah favored. What would happen to Pari? Would she retain her role as a favorite? And what would become of me? Who would survive?
    I found Pari in a dim room illuminated by flickering oil lamps. Her eyes were red with weeping, and her face looked drawn and old. Two of her ladies, Maryam and Azar, attended to her, holding her hands and dabbing at the tears on her cheeks with a silk handkerchief.
    “ Salaam aleikum, esteemed lieutenant of my existence,” I said. “My heart sheds tears of blood over your loss. If I could take away the poison of your pain, I would consume it with as much joy as if it were halva.”
    The