Free In the City of Gold and Silver by Kenizé Mourad, Anne Mathai in collaboration with Marie-Louise Naville

is simple-minded, irresponsible! I wonder who drove him to make such a declaration . . . ”
    â€œThe chief commissioner has already ordered an enquiry and has threatened the prince with exile should it happen again. Sir James has no intention of taking any risks, as he seems to fear a rebellion. The population is up in arms against the foreigners. In the streets they do not acknowledge them, in the bazaar the shopkeepers refuse to extend any further credit 39 and even the porters refuse to carry their packages.”
    At the idea of an English person weighed down with cumbersome packages, panting and sweating, Hazrat Mahal cannot suppress a mocking smile. What a great lesson! How long can it last though? She knows her compatriots are first and foremost realists, and how could she possibly blame the poor for making the compromises she reproaches the rich for? Can one bite the hand that feeds you your daily
chapati
40 ? Great principles rarely withstand hunger . . . As a child, she saw the ravages misery wrought around her, and since then, she has often wondered whether traditional morality has a place in these extreme situations, or even whether it has any meaning at all . . . This morality, flouted daily by the virtuous circle of the wealthy, who cry “thief!” whenever a starving man summons the courage to “steal” something to feed himself with.
    Which of them is the criminal? Who should be judged?
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    As evening falls, the sky gradually turns a pink hue and flocks of starlings initiate their graceful ballet while on the edges of the fountains, nightingales trill, competing with one another. Mammoo has retired. Hazrat Mahal has asked for her writing case to be brought to her. Since the king’s departure, she has received no news from him, but every day she keeps her diary scrupulously up to date for him. How will she send it? She does not know yet, but the eunuch has promised to find a safe way.
    After the excitement of being entrusted with such an important mission, she has begun to doubt: is this journal really the king’s idea or the Queen Mother’s invention to console her for having been abandoned, and to give her existence in the zenana some meaning? It used to be so cheerful here, but since the departure of the man who was its very
raison d’être
, this zenana has been reduced to an absurd monstrosity, a prison where the most beautiful women of the kingdom wilt away. Will Wajid Ali Shah ever return?
    And if he does not return, will I remain here, buried alive? At the age of twenty-five, can my life already be over . . . ?
    Her throat constricted with anxiety, she paces up and down her bedroom. She refuses to lament like all these fools, who are mainly prisoners of their luxurious and indolent habits. Her life has never followed a chalked-out path; she has boundless energy and an ardent desire to live. If the sovereign does not return, she will leave the zenana. How? To go where? She has no idea. She only knows that she will survive, as she has done so far, always managing to extricate herself from the most difficult situations.
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    * * *
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    The new British authorities were expecting the population’s gratitude, but they were quickly disillusioned. Despite their claims that those dissatisfied are in a minority, they have felt it necessary to post spies everywhere and adopt a series of measures to consolidate their power. They must obliterate all memory of the previous regime, the governor general from Calcutta recommends: “Our authority will be contested until the people have forgotten their king.”*
    To this end, everything that evokes the magnificence of the dynasty is to be destroyed, dispersed or confiscated.
    It starts with the superb zoo that Wajid Ali Shah had set up along the banks of the river Gomti, which he loved to visit in his impressive fish-shaped boat. Seven thousand animals are thus auctioned off: hundreds of