Free Last Nizam (9781742626109) by John Zubrzycki Page A

land
zat
army ranking
zenana
harem, or women’s quarter

Introduction
    T HE ELEVATOR ROSE SLOWLY and unsteadily to the sixth-floor apartment. The whitewashed tower block was indistinguishable from the hundreds that lined this part of Turkey’s coast like an advancing army. Nothing on the nameplate hinted of the extraordinary man who lived within. In an earlier chapter of the dynasty he belonged to, royal bodyguards carrying damascened swords, belts of gold and tulip-shaped turbans would have lined the steps leading to the Palace of the Four Pavilions. I would have been led around rooms of Oriental splendour, marvelling at the jewel-studded furniture, priceless Persian carpets, Bohemian glass candelabras and Belgian chandeliers, while the ladies of the zenana glanced shyly from behind heavily embroidered silk curtains. Attired in a dandruff-encrusted fez, a rumpled sherwani , bedroom slippers and yellow socks sagging around his ankles, my host was once considered the richest man in the world.
    For years I had read stories of the eccentric ruler of a Muslim state who counted his diamonds by the kilogram, his pearls by the acre and his gold bars by the tonne, yet who was so frugal he would save on laundry bills by bathing in his clothes. I had listened to improbable tales of a darbar in the desert of Australiawhere an Indian prince preferred driving diesel-belching bulldozers than riding in the howdah of an elegantly caparisoned elephant. And I had heard rumours of a recluse living in Turkey who had arrived carrying two suitcases and a load of shattered dreams. I was about to meet the man whose life and times defied any straightforward description.
    Mukarram Jah, the Eighth Nizam of Hyderabad, Regulator of the Realm, the Victor in Battles, descendant of the Viceroys of the Deccan and heir to India’s greatest dynasty since the Mughals, was waiting at his door as I came out of the elevator. My favourite photograph of him had always been of a courtly gentleman with a neatly clipped silver moustache, balding hair, short sleeves and braces, sitting bare footed on the veranda of his outback homestead, taken in the mid-1990s. It was a frail and much thinner man who shook my hand and shuffled me inside. After asking if I minded, he took out a cigarette, lit it with an unsteady hand, and settled down in his favourite sky-blue armchair from where he had an uninterrupted view of the placid waters of the Mediterranean. Although he suffered from diabetes and smoked heavily, Jah insisted he saw no reason why, at 71, he would not outlast his chain-smoking grandfather who had consumed 11 grams of opium a day and made it to 80.
    The two-bedroomed apartment was furnished with glass cases filled with royal seals and amulets, fine crystal vases and bric-a-brac. A curved sword sheathed in black leather and gold was suspended from the wall alongside silk banners embroidered with silver filigree. The study contained an eclectic mix of books on Hyderabad’s history and airport novels by Robert Carter and Alexander Kent. The dining room was given over to formal family portraits. Next to a framed letter from King George VI, making excuses for Britain’s betrayal of its ‘most faithful ally’, hung a photograph of a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Audrey Hepburn but was in fact a cousin from the Turkishside of the family. There was a picture of Jah as a stoutly built soldier, with a full head of hair and a chest full of medals, taken at his commissioning ceremony at Sandhurst; and a small portrait of his first grandchild.
    Dominating the display was a photograph of his father, Azam Jah, whose square-rimmed glasses gave his eyes a rather startled look. Then came his Indian grandfather Osman Ali Khan, the Seventh Nizam, whose impertinent gaze was accentuated by his high-collared sherwani and tufted turban. Next was a sepiacoloured portrait of a man with a long, white beard and monocle – Jah’s Turkish