In the City of Gold and Silver: The Story of Begum Hazrat Mahal by Kenizé Mourad

Abstract

The cover of the novel, end pages, and section title pages all feature circular designs or galaxies so we can’t forget this figure until it activates in 2025. Holly has psychic visions, hears and sometimes speaks in voices, and eventually publishes a bestseller documenting these episodes. Thus she is primed to do more than age. When transformation arrives, one’s suspension of disbelief or indulgence is severely tested. It’s two-thirds of the way through the novel, and inklings of another reality, on the periphery, suddenly shape into a new central reality. Everything both was and wasn’t what it seemed to be. It must now be explained to Holly (and the reader), a lengthy exposition that has all the excitement of a lecture hall. The subsequent battle of Manichaean forces picks up the action—confusing as it is—before a return to the normal world eighteen years later, now abnormal, with the breakdown of most nation-states. One is engaged, exasperated, reengaged, and sometimes (unexpectedly) moved. Gaps and fissures arise in time, thought, and action. A propulsive style almost effaces the coincidences that may be chance, a butterfly effect or part of a “Script.” One accepts not knowing. The title and the clock icons set at different times in each chapter suggest , at least, that wake-ups and deaths have been set. David Mitchell is one of the best storytellers around. But, as with Cloud Atlas, I rather prefer his stories when I don’t have to conceive of them as part of a unified plot. W. M. Hagen Oklahoma Baptist University Kenizé Mourad. In the City of Gold and Silver: The Story of Begum Hazrat Mahal. Anne Mathai & Marie-Louise Naville, tr. New York. Europa Editions. 2014. isbn 9781609452278 A multinational corporation controls much of Asia, Muslim insurgents are battling occupiers from the West, and the most powerful person in the world is a woman. The year? 1857. Kenizé Mourad’s latest historical novel is set during the Indian Rebellion, a conflict that spelled the end of the East India Company and the beginning of Queen Victoria’s direct rule over India. Leading the revolt in Awadh state was another queen, the brave and beautiful Begum Hazrat Mahal. In the City of Gold and Silver is her story. In Mourad’s telling, Mahal was a rebel well before the uprising began. Within the walls of the palace in Lucknow, she writes plays mocking the British and criticizes her husband the king for his policy of appeasing the acquisitive East India Company. She is an unapologetic freethinker, loathed by the other royal wives. The rebellion breaks out while the king is detained in Calcutta, so Mahal rises to the occasion: she has her son the prince made temporary ruler, and she governs the kingdom as regent. Uniting Hindus, Sunnis, and Shias, Mahal gives the British a run for their money but eventually retreats to Nepal, outgunned by her enemies and betrayed by her friends. Mourad, herself the daughter of an Indian rajah and an Ottoman princess, is well positioned to tell the tale. Her father lived in Lucknow—the city of gold and silver—and she depicts it in the manner of a native: that is to say, lovingly but unsparingly. Among Lucknow’s elite, “extreme sophistication is the rule and the most decadent elegance a virtue.” At the palace garden parties and the all-night readings of Islamic and Hindu poetry, one can taste “the most exquisite quality of life ever known.” But our heroine, Mahal, is an outsider, her courage and conviction “rare qualities indeed in Lucknow’s high society, which would tend to mock such traits.” Lucknowi culture, with its artistic splendor and religious tolerance, would never be the same after British rule. Mourad conveys the pity of it all without pitying anyone ; like her aristocratic characters, she is sensitive to condescending tones, no matter how subtle. Sometimes the story of Mahal reads like a hagiography, and sometimes the reader is taught so much history that Mahal fades into the background. As a result, she never World Literature in Review 114 wlt may / august 2015 becomes as tangible as Selma, for example, the protagonist of...