‘And he told Your Majesty of his dream of the flood. And the Hindus lighting Holi fires. And the three girls who began talking as soon as they were born. Your slave should also be given a gold mohur for predicting the end of the Nazarene and the restoration of the Mughal dynasty,’ Zeenat said.

How quickly news travelled round the palace! As if the walls had ears and the breeze tongues ! Zeenat noticed the surprise in our eyes. ‘Your Majesty, I have my own way of finding out what is written in the book of kismet,’ she said, tapping her forehead. ‘This is what the great Hafiz has forecast.’ She opened a divan of Hafiz to a page she had marked with a silk tassel and read:

In green heaven’s fields I saw the sickle of the new moon

Remembered by sowing and by harvest,

And said: O Kismet, you sleep and the sun blossoms

The reply: Do not be as hopeless as the past.

She repeated the last line: ‘Do not be as hopeless as the past.’ It pleased us to see her happy and we kissed her cheeks. She blushed. ‘What, in broad daylight! Has Your Majesty no shame?’

‘You speak of shame? Shame is my renown,’ we replied quoting Hafiz.

During the first two days following the uprising we really felt as if we were Emperor of Hindustan and the firangi had taken his caravan out of our domains. But by the third day the veil of illusion that had clouded our vision was lifted. Our son Mirza Mughal had usurped all the functions of a ruler. People went to him for orders. Even our personal servants like the eunuch Basant Ali Khan paid court to the prince.

Prince Mirza Mughal incited the rabble of the city against the Europeans we had taken into protective custody. We argued with him and warned him against lending an ear to ‘men’ like Basant Ali Khan. But it was to no avail. Three days later—we believe it was Saturday the 16th of May—they dragged the prisoners out of the dungeon and slit the throats of thirty-nine of them including women and children as if they were sheep being sacrificed on Bakr-Id. The royal fountain in front of our palace was full of the blood and corpses of these innocent people. We sought refuge in our harem. Zeenat Mahal buried her head in our lap and wept like a child. We could not silence the shrieks of the victims from assailing our ears. And at night the howling of jackals on the riverbank sounded like women wailing at a funeral.

When we reprimanded Mirza Mughal and that impudent, emasculated Basant Ali Khan, they had the audacity to ask us whether we were on the side of the jihadis or the infidels. They insinuated that Begum Zeenat Mahal’s father and our physician, Ahsanullah Khan, were in the pay of the firangi.