THE HIDDEN ONE
(The heroine of this story was a Princess of the great Mogul dynasty of Emperors in India. She was granddaughter of Shah-Jahan and the lovely lady of the Taj Mahal, and daughter of the Emperor Aurungzib whose fanaticism was the ruin of the dynasty. The Princess’s title was Zeb-un-Nissa—Glory of Women. She was beautiful and was and is a famous poet in India, writing under the pen-name of Makhfi—the Hidden One. Her love adventures were such as I relate, though I have taken the liberty of transferring the fate of one lover to another.
For her poems, which I quote, I use the charming translations by J. Duncan Westbrook, who has written a brief memoir of this fascinating Princess. She was a mystic of the Sufi order and her verses “The Hunter of the Soul,” which I give, strangely anticipate Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven”, in their imagery. The poems not specified as hers are a part of my story.)
The office of hakim (physician) to the Mogul Emperors being hereditary in my family from the days of Babar the conquering Emperor, I was appointed physician to the Padshah known as Shah-Jahan, and when his Majesty became a Resident in Paradise (may his tomb be sanctified!) my office was continued by his Majesty Aurungzib, the Shahinshah, and rooms were bestowed on me in his palace, and by his abundant favour the health of the Begams (queens) in the seclusion of his mahal was placed in the hands of this suppliant and I came and went freely in my duties and was enlightened by the rays of his magnanimity. And my name is Abul Qasim.
But of all that garden of flowers, the Begams and Princesses, there was one whom my soul loved as a father loves his child, for she resembled that loveliest of all sweet ladies, her father’s mother, she who lies buried by Jumna River in the divine white beauty of the Taj Mahal. (May it be sanctified to her rest!) In my Princess’s sisters, it is true I have seen a flash now and again of that lost beauty, but in her it abode steadfast as a moon that knows no change and at her birth she received the name of Arjemand after that beloved lady, whose death clouded the universe so that its chronogram gives the one word “Grief.” But the child also received the title of Zeb-un-Nissa—Glory of Women, and such this resplendent Princess most truly was.
And surely the prayer for resemblance was granted by the bounty of Allah, for she grew into womanhood dark, delicious as a damask rose, enfolding the hidden heart of its perfume in velvet leaves, a soft luxuriant beauty that stole upon the heart like a blossom-bearing breeze and conquered it insensibly. Of her might it be said:
“For the mole upon thy cheek would I give the cities of Samarkand and Bokhara,” and a poet of Persia, catching a glimpse of her as she walked in her garden, cried aloud in an ecstasy of verse:
“O golden zone that circles the Universe of Beauty,
It were little to give the earth itself for what thou circlest.”
Yet, this surprising loveliness was the least of her perfections.