The Year of Rice and Salt

Bahram stepped before them. Thereis no compulsion in religion",' he recited hotly. Toyou your religion, to me my religion." That's what the Quran tells us!'

The visitors stared at him coldly.

'Are you not Muslim?' one said.

'I certainly am! You would know it if you knew the Sher Dor mosque! I've never seen you there – where do you pray on Friday?'

'Tilla Karia Mosque,' the qadi said, angry now.

This was interesting, as the Tilla Karia Madressa was the centre for the Shiite study group, which was opposed to Nadir.

"'Al kufou millatun wahida",' one of them said; a counter quote, as theologians called it. Unbelief is one religion.

'Only digaraz can make complaint to the law,' Bahram snapped back. Digaraz were those who spoke without grudge or malice, disinterested Muslims. 'You don't qualify.'

'Neither do you, young man.'

'You come here! Who sent you? You challenge the law of the aman, who gives you the right? Get out of here! You have no idea what this man does for Samarqand! You attack Sayyed Abdul himself here, you attack Islam itself! Get out!'

The qadis did not move, but something in their gazes had grown more guarded. Their leader said, 'Next spring we will talk again,' with a glance at Iwang's aman. With a wave of his hand that was just like the Khan's, he led the others out and down the narrow passage of the bazaar.

For a long while the two friends stood silently in the shop, awkward with each other.

Finally Iwang sighed. 'Did not Mohammed set laws concerning the way men should be treated in Dar al Islam?'

'God set them. Mohammed only transmitted them.'

'All free men equal before the law. Women, children, slaves and unbelievers less under the law.'

'Equal beings, but they all have their particular rights, protected by law.'

'But not as many rights as those of Muslim free men.'

'They are not as strong, so their rights are not so burdensome. They are all people to be protected by Muslim free men, upholding God's laws.'

Iwang pursed his lips. Finally he said, 'God is the force moving in everything. The shapes things take when they move.'

'God is love moving through all,' Bahram agreed. 'The sufis say this.'

Iwang nodded. 'God is a mathematician. A very great and subtle mathematician. As our bodies are to the crude furnaces and stills of your compound, so God's mathematics is to our mathematics.'

'So you agree there is a god? I thought Buddha denied there was any god.'

'I don't know. I suppose some Buddhists might say not. Being springs out of the Void. I don't know, myself. If there is only the Void enveloping all we see, where did the mathematics come from? it seems to me it could be the result of something thinking.'

Bahram was surprised to bear Iwang say this. And he could not be quite sure how sincere Iwang was, given what had just happened with the qadis from Tilla Karia. Although it made sense, in that it was obviously impossible that such an intricate and glorious thing as the world could have come to pass without some very great and loving god to make it.

'You should come to the sufi fellowship, and listen to what my teacher there says,' Bahram finally said, smiling at the thought of the big Tibetan in their group. Although their teacher would probably like it.

Bahram returned to the compound by way of the western caravanserai, where the Hindu traders were camped in their smell of incense and milktea. Bahram completed the other business he had there, buying scents and bags of calcinated minerals for Khalid, and then when he saw Dol, an acquaintance from Ladakh, he joined him and sat with him and drank tea for a while, then rakshi, looking over the trader's pallets of spices and small bronze figurines. Bahram gestured at the detailed little statues. 'Are these your gods?'

Dol looked at him, surprised and amused. 'Some are gods, yes. This is Shiva – this Kali, the destroyer – this Ganesh.'

'An elephant god?'

'This is how we picture him. They have other forms.'

'But an elephant?'

'Have you ever seen an elephant?'

'No.'

'They're impressive.'

'I know they're big.'

'It's more than that.'

Bahram sipped his tea. 'I think Iwang might convert to Islam.'

'Trouble with his aman?'

Dol laughed at Bahram's expression, urged him to drink from the jar of rakshi.

Bahram obliged him, then persisted. 'Do you think it's possible to change religions?'

'Many people have.'

'Could you? Could you say, There is only one god?' Gesturing at the figurines.

Dol smiled. 'They are all aspects of Brahman, you know. Behind all, the great God Brahman, all one in him.'

'So Iwang could be like that too. He might already believe in the one great god, the God of Gods.'

'He could. God manifests in different ways to different people.'

Bahram sighed.

Bad Air