The Year of Rice and Salt

The party began to swirl about the garden again, in patterns determined by the Kerala's slow progress. Ismail was introduced to a quartet of bankers, two Sikh and two Travancori, and he listened to them discuss, in Persian to be polite to him, the complicated situation in India and around the Indian Ocean and the world more generally. Towns and harbours fought over, new towns built in hitherto empty river mouths, loyalties of local populations shifting, Muslim slavers in west Africa, gold in south Africa, gold in Inka, the island west of Africa all these things had been going on for years, but somehow it was different now. Collapse of the old Muslim empires, the mushrooming of new machines, new states, new religions, new continents, and all emanating from here, as if the violent struggle within India was vibrating change outwards in waves all the way around the world, meeting again coming the other way.

Bhakta introduced another man to Ismail, and the two men nodded to each other, bowing slightly. The man's name was Wasco, and he was from the new world, the big island west of Firanja, which the Chinese called Yingzhou. Wasco identified it as Hodenosauneega, 'Meaning territories of the peoples of the Long House,' he said in passable Persian. He represented the Hodenosaunee League, Bhakta explained. He looked like a Siberian or Mongolian, or a Manchu who did not shave his forehead. Tall, hawk nosed, striking to the eye, even there in the intense sunlight of the Kerala himself; he looked as if those isolated islands on the other side of the world might have produced a more healthy and vigorous race. No doubt sent by his people for that very reason.

Bhakta left them, and Ismail said politely, 'I come from Konstantiniyye. Do your people have music like what we heard?'

Wasco thought about it. 'We do sing and dance, but they are done by all together, informally and by chance, if you see what I am driving at. The drumming here was much more fluid and complicated. Thick sound. I found it fascinating. I would like to hear more of it, to see if I heard what I heard.' He waggled a hand in a way Ismail didn't understand – amazement, perhaps, at the drummers' virtuosity.

'They play beautifully,' Ismail said. 'We have drummers too, but these have taken drumming to a higher level.'

'Truly.'

'What about cities, ships, all that? Does your land have a harbour like this one?' Ismail asked.

Wasco's expression of surprise looked just like anyone else's, which, Ismail thought, made perfect sense, as one saw the same look on the faces of babies just birthed. In fact, with his fluent Persian, it was impressive to Ismail how immediately comprehensible he was, despite his exotic home.

'No. Where I come from we do not gather in such numbers. More people live around this bay than in all my country, I think.'

Now Ismail was the surprised one. 'So few as that?'

'Yes. Although there are a lot of people here, I think. But we live in a great forest, extremely thick and dense. The rivers make the best ways. Until you people arrived, we hunted and grew some crops, we made only what we needed, with no metal or ships. The Muslims brought those to our cast coast, and set up forts in a few harbours, in particular at the mouth of the East River, and on Long Island. There were not so many of them, at first, and we learned a lot from them that we put to use for ourselves. But we have been stricken by sicknesses we never knew before, and many have died, at the same time that many more Muslims have come, bringing slaves from Africa to help them. But our land is very big, and the coast itself, where the Muslims cluster, is not very good land. So we trade with them, and even better, with ships from here, when the Travancoris arrived. We were very happy to see these ships, truly, because we were worried about the Firanjis. We still are. They have lots of cannons, and they go where they want, and tell us we do not know Allah, and that we should pray to him, and so on. So we liked to see the coming of other people, in good ships. People who were not Muslim.'

'Did the Travancoris attack the Muslims already there?'

'Not yet. They landed at the mouth of the Mississippi, a big river. It may be they will come to blows eventually. They both are very well armed, and we are not, not yet.' He looked Ismail in the eye and smiled cheerfully. 'I must remember you are Muslim yourself, no doubt.'

Ismail said, 'I do not insist on it for others. Islam allows you to choose.'

'Yes, they said that. But here in Travancore you see it really happening. Sikh, Hindu, Africans, Japanese, you see them all here. The Kerala does not seem to care. Or he likes it.'

'Hindus absorb all that touch them, they say.'