Fiction: In 1556, an old man documents his family’s story beginning a hundred years earlier

The bazaar hummed in the low, lazy way that characterised the afternoon. The buyers had gone home to their lunches. The shopkeepers were resting, even if that involved nothing more than sitting back against a bolster and staring, glassy-eyed, onto the lane while chewing paan. The Qutb Minar, silhouetted against the cloudless blue of an autumn sky, stood half a kos away, a black kite circling lazily around it.

Daanish had had a busy morning. As he had feared, there were customers who had gone to Junaid as soon as they had discovered Daanish’s absence. But there were others who had waited for him. Once he had taken his seat, work had gone on nonstop for the next few hours. When the ink had dried on the last page and it had been handed over to its owner, Daanish stood up and stretched, trying to work the tension out of his muscles. His headache, numbed briefly by breakfast and then half-forgotten by work, howled back into existence. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Are you the son of Nasiruddin?” asked a voice.

It was a man, a man whose clothing did not fit his features. That dark complexion, those black eyes and that neatly...

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