Storia do Mogor 158: I FAIL IN MARRYING THE DAUGHTER OF DINDAR KHAN.

158

So great was the name that I had of being fortunate with the cases that I undertook, that they came from many places distant from Lahor to call me in to visit patients. This was of great profit to me, even to the extent that many wanted me in marriage. If I had been of little wisdom, I should have had no want of marriage proposals of exceptional quality among the Mahomedans. But, thanks to God, although I left my home a mere youth, there remained ever graven on my memory the good teaching of my parents.
But I cannot resist telling of one case that happened to me with a well-connected widow woman, the daughter of Dindar Khan, Pathan. On one occasion I had treated one of her sisters at Qasur, twenty leagues from Lahor. This lady was present, and took such a fancy to me that she wanted to marry me. She herself spoke to me about it, and told me she would make her own arrangements for flight. At first I paid no heed to these things; still, seeing the woman so determined, and she being rich, well proportioned, and intelligent, I began to entertain the idea of carrying her off to Europe as she desired.
The agreement was that she should give sufficient money to buy a big ship, on which would be placed the bulk of her wealth. Then she would pretend that she had vowed a pilgrimage to Mekka, would obtain permission for this, and leave home. When she was on her voyage and had left the port of Surat, I with my ship was to fall upon the vessel going to Mekka, and carry her off with me to Europe. The agreement was in process of execution, but she was not sufficiently prudent. She roused suspicions of her affection for me by forwarding message upon message by an old woman in her service. But the special cause for the non-execution of the agreement was a Portuguese called Joao Rodrigues de Abreu. After having done him many favours, and proved him sufficiently faithful, I confided our plans to him, intending to take him along with me. But he did not act in correspondence to my friendship, for he went off and told Misri Khan, who was a suitor for marriage [167] with the same woman.
Discovering thus the agreement we had made, and the friendship of the said widow, which she had declared by sending me messages with valuable presents, Misri Khan, through fear of Fida,e Khan and other nobles who were very fond of me, was content not to do me any harm, or send men to murder me, but only wrote me a letter in which he said that he knew quite well why Jani Bibi, the widow's maidservant, came so often to my house; but he saw quite well that what I was doing would in the end cost me my life. I pretended I did not understand the letter, and replied that Jani Bibi came and went as if she were my mother. If it displeased him that she came to my house, he had only to tell her not to go again. By this means I found out we were already discovered. When Jani Bibi came, I asked her to inform her mistress that it was no longer safe to come, and she must conceal everything, otherwise she would cause my death.
On finding that her project could not succeed, the widow married Misri Khan, but only lived for eight days after her marriage. If I had been like many Europeans in the Mogul country and Hindustan, I should have accepted the money that she wanted to give me for buying the ship, then taken flight for Europe, disregarding the marriage and all my promises. I did not act thus, not for fear of discovery, but because I had always professed to be an honest man, and thus I did not allow myself to fall into this temptation. The only thing that weighed upon me was that, through the treachery of that Portuguese, the lady continued to be a Mahomedan when she desired to become a Christian.