Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [50]
Some of these residences housed the survivors of another age. Begum Zia, Selma’s grandmother, lived among her bougainvilleas and her neem and tamarind trees in Shamla Hills. She never failed to show visitors the silver-framed portrait of the first gift she had received from her husband: a sixteen-year-old Abyssinian slave in Turkish trousers with a waistcoat embroidered with gold.
Briley had the good fortune to be a guest at several receptions held by his young friend’s unusual grandmother. There he met all the town’s uppercrust, people like Dr. Zahir ul-Islam who had just successfully performed Bhopal’s first sex-change operation, or the little man they called “the Pasha,” the town’s gossip. Wearing a wine-colored fez, and a suit of silver brocade, with his eyes made up with kohl, the Pasha spoke English with an Oxford accent. He had lived in England for twenty years but left because he said he felt too Indian there. He found living in India difficult, because he felt too English. Only in Bhopal did he feel at home.
Another regular at Begum Zia’s soirées was an eccentric old man dressed in rags, known as Enamia. Under his real name, Sahibzada Sikander Mohammed Khan Taj, this obscure, impecunious cousin of the begum had married a Spanish princess. He, too, had spent twenty years in London where he worked in a sausage factory before being dismissed for “unhygienic behavior.” No one had ever tried to find out what lay behind the peculiar charge, but the begum and her friends doted upon old Enamia. A great connoisseur of the city, nothing gave him more pleasure than showing foreign visitors around it in his old Jeep with its defunct shock absorbers. He knew the history of every street, monument and house. Enamia was Bhopal’s memory.
The begum’s dinners also brought together passing artists, politicians, writers and poets. Another regular was of course Eduardo Muñoz, to whom Bhopal owed the arrival of Carbide. The food at these dinners was reputed to be the best in Bhopal. For young Briley every invitation was a gastronomic experience. It was there that, for the first time in his life, he tasted partridge cooked in coriander and sweets made out of curdled milk in a syrup of cinnamon and ginger.
It had become a tradition: the weddings of the begum’s grandchildren, nephews and nieces were always held at her home under an immense shamiana, a large tent for festivities and ceremonies, erected in the courtyard. They were the occasion for three days of uninterrupted celebrations. The drawing rooms, courtyards and corridors of the palace were littered with divans on which guests reclined to drink and listen to ghazals and other poetic forms. Despite being a Muslim, Selma had been schooled in Hindu dance, and at these family parties she could often be persuaded to perform. Adorning her ankles and wrists with strings of bells, she would appear on the dais and give passionate performances of kathak, a southern Indian dance accompanied by the complex rhythms of tabla and sarod players. During these moments, the scent of patchouli and musk floating beneath the shamiana would become so intoxicating that the American thought he would never again be able to tolerate the smell of phosgene or MIC.
Not all the expatriates from South Charleston in the City of the Begums were lucky enough to have a love affair with a princess. But the attractions of Bhopal were numerous, starting with the uninterrupted succession of religious festivals, celebrations and ceremonies. There was the bujaria, the noisy, colorful procession of thousands of eunuchs that wound through the old town; and the great Hindu festival in honor of the goddess Durga, whose richly decorated statues were immersed in the lake in the presence of tens of thousands of faithful. Then there was the Sikh celebration of the birth of Guru Nanak, the founder of their religion, with firecrackers that woke up the whole city. And there was the Jain festival in honor of their prophet Mahavira and the return of the pilgrimage season. Autumn brought Eid and