The Year of Rice and Salt

Including Medina and Mecca, which grew in population rapidly as the haj approached, and shepherds poured into town with their flocks, tradesmen with their wares – clothing, travelling equipment to replace things broken or lost, religious scripts, mementos of the haj, and so on. In the final month of preparation the early pilgrims began to arrive, long strings of camels carrying dusty, happy travellers, their faces alight with the feeling Bistami remembered from the year before, a year which seemed to have gone so fast and yet his own haj at the same time seemed as if it were on the far side of a great abyss in his mind. He could not call up in himself the feeling that he saw on their faces. He was no pilgrim this time, but a resident, and he found himself feeling some of the residents' resentment, that his peaceful village, like a big madressa really, was swelling to a ridiculous engorgement, as if a great family of enthusiastic relatives had descended on them all at once. Not a happy way of thinking of it, and Bistami set himself guiltily to a full round of prayers, fasting, and aid of the influx, especially those exhausted or sick: leading them to khittas and finas and caravanserai and hostelries, throwing himself into a routine to make himself feel he was more in the spirit of the haj. But daily exposure to the ecstatic faces of the pilgrims reminded him how far he was from that. Their faces were alight with God. He saw how clearly faces revealed the soul, they were like windows into a deeper world.

So he hoped that his pleasure at greeting the pilgrims from Akbar's court was obvious on his face. But Akbar himself had not come, nor any of his immediate family, and no one in the group looked at all happy to be there, or to see Bistami. The news from home was ominous. Akbar had become critical of his ulema. He received Hindu rajas, and listened sympathetically to their concerns. He had even begun openly to worship the sun, prostrating himself four times a day before a sacred fire, abstaining from meat, alcohol and sexual intercourse. These were Hindu practices, and indeed on every Sunday he was initiating twelve of his amirs in his service. The neophytes placed their heads directly on Akbar's feet during this ceremony, an extreme form of prostration known as sijdah, a form of submission to another human being that was blasphemous to Muslims. And he had not been willing to fund much of a pilgrimage; indeed, he had had to be convinced to send any at all. He had sent Shaikh Abdul Nabi and Malauna Abdulla as a way of exiling them, just as he had Bistami the year before. In short, he appeared to be falling away from the faith. Akbar, falling away from Islam!

And, Abdul Nabi told Bistami bluntly, many at the court blamed him, Bistami, for this change in Akbar. It was a matter of convenience only, Abdul Nabi assured him. 'Blaming someone who is far away is safest for all, you see. But now they have it that you were sent to Mecca with the idea of reforming you. You were babbling about the light, the light, and you were sent away, and now Akbar is worshipping the sun like a Zoroastrian or some pagan from the ancient times.'

'So I can't return,' Bistami said.

Abdul Nabi shook his head. 'Not only that, but I judge that it isn't even safe for you to stay here. If you do, the ulema may accuse you of heresy, and come and take you back for judgment. Or even judge you here.'

'You're saying I should leave here?'

Abdul Nabi nodded, slowly and deeply. 'Surely there are more interesting places for you than Mecca. A qadi like you can find good work to do, anywhere the ruler is a Muslim. Nothing will happen during the haj, of course. But when it's over.

Bistami nodded and thanked the shaikh for his honesty.

He realized that he wanted to leave anyway. He didn't want to stay in Mecca. He wanted to go back to Akbar, and the timeless hours in Chishti's tomb, and live in that space for ever; but if that was not possible, he would have to begin his tariqat again, and wander in search of his real life. He recalled what had happened to Shams when the disciples of Rumi got tired of Rumi's infatuation with his friend. Shams had disappeared, never to be seen again, some said tied to rocks and thrown in a river. If people in Fatepur Sikri thought that Akbar had found his Shams in Bistami – which struck Bistami as backwards – but they had spent a lot of time together, more than seemed explicable; and no one else knew what had gone on between them in those meetings, how much it had been a matter of Akbar teaching the teacher. It is always the teacher who must learn the most, Bistami thought, or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.