The Year of Rice and Salt

They landed at a tiny harbour near old Trebizond, and Ismail was included in a group that rode south and east through Iran, over range after range of dry hills and snowy mountains, into India. Everywhere there were short dark skinned troops wearing white, on horseback, with many wheeled cannon prominently placed in every town and at every crossroads. All the towns looked undamaged, busy, prosperous. They changed horses at big fortified changing stations run by the army, and slept at these places as well. Many stations were placed under hills where bonfires burned through the night; blocking the light from these fires transmitted messages over great distances, all over the new empire. The Kerala was in Delhi, he would be back in Travancore in a few weeks; the abbess Bhakta was in Benares, but due back in Travancore in days. It was conveyed to Ismail that she was looking forward to meeting him.

Ismail, meanwhile, was finding out just how big the world was. And yet it was not infinite. Ten days of steady riding brought them across the Indus. On the green west coast of India, another surprise: they boarded iron carts like their iron ships, with iron wheels, and rode them on causeways that held two parallel iron rails, over which the carts rolled as smoothly as if they were flying, right through the old cities so long ruled by the Mughals. The causeway of the iron rails crossed the broken edge of the Deccan, south into a region of endless groves of coconut palms, and they rolled by the power of steam as fast as the wind, to Travancore, on the southwesternmost shore of India.

Many people had moved to this city following the recent imperial successes. After rolling slowly through a zone of orchards and fields filled with crops Ismail did not recognize, they came to the edges of the city. The outskirts were crowded with new buildings, encampments, lumber yards, holding facilities: indeed for many leagues in all directions it seemed nothing but construction sites.

Meanwhile the inner core of the city was also being transformed. Their train of linked iron carts stopped in a big yard of paired rails, and they walked out of a gate into the city centre. A white marble palace, very small by the standards of the Sublime Porte, had been erected there in the middle of a park which must have replaced much of the old city centre. The harbour this park overlooked was filled with all manner of ships. To the south could be seen a shipyard building new vessels; a mole was being extended out into the shallow green seas, and the enclosed water, in the shelter of a long low island, was as crowded with ships as the inner harbour, with many small boats sailing or being rowed between them. Compared to the dusty torpor of Konstantiniyye's harbours, it was a tumultuous scene.

Ismail was taken on horseback through the bustling city and down the coast farther, to a grove of palm trees behind a broad yellow beach. Here walls surrounded an extensive Buddhist monastery, and new buildings could be seen a long way through the grove. A pier extended out from the seaside buildings, and several fire powered ships were docked there. This was apparently the home of the famous hospital of Travancore.

Inside the monastery grounds it was windless and calm. Ismail was led to a dining room and given a meal, then invited to wash off the grime of his travel. The baths were tiled, the water either warm or cool, depending on which pool he preferred, and the last ones were under the sky.

Beyond the baths stood a small pavilion on a green lawn, surrounded by flowers. Ismail donned a clean brown robe he was offered, and padded barefoot across the cut grass to the pavilion, where an old woman was in conversation with a number of others.

She stopped when she saw them, and Ismail's guide introduced him.

'Ah. A great pleasure,' the woman said in Persian. 'I am Bhakta, the abbess here, and your humble correspondent.' She stood and bowed to Ismail, hands together. Her fingers were twisted, her walk stiff; it looked to Ismail like arthritis. 'Welcome to our home. Let me pour you some tea, or coffee if you prefer.'

'Tea will be fine,' Ismail said.

'Bodhisattva,' a messenger said to the abbess, 'we will be visited by the Kerala on the next new moon.'

'A great honour,' the abbess said. 'The moon will be in close conjunction with the morning star. Will we have time to complete the mandalas?'

'They think so.'

'Very good.'

The abbess continued to sip her tea.

'He called you bodhisattva?' Ismail ventured.

The abbess grinned like a girl. 'A sign of affection, with no basis in reality. I am simply a poor nun, given the honour of guiding this hospital for a time, by our Kerala.'

Ismail said, 'When we corresponded, you did not mention this. I thought you were simply a nun, in something like a madressa and hospital.'

'For a long time that was the case.'

'When did you become the abbess?'