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chasing down reluctant customers.
    Leaving the bazaar, we descended a spiral staircase. We then shared a cobbled alley with a Jesuit priest, passing him hurriedly as his velvet robes reeked of rotting mutton. To a blind beggar I handed coins, while giving  a wide berth to a dead Hindu dressed in colorful ceremonial clothes and awaiting a funeral pyre.
    Our feet soon found the vast sandstone ramp exiting the Red Fort. Below the ramp, fat koi swam in the encircling moat. The moat was wider than a street and quite deep. Outside the Red Fort, Agra became even more chaotic. We didn’t have to walk far to the river, but still needed to navigate our way through congested passageways brimming with every race, and as many shades of flesh as coins in a merchant’s purse. In the faces before me, the endless combinations of eyes, noses, mouths and colors, I beheld the history of invasion and conquest in our lands—Greek, Aryan, Hun, Afghan, Mongol, Persian and Turk.
    As many animals as people frequented the cluttered streets of Agra. Because cows are sacred to Hindus, these creatures wandered freely in the city. Hung with copper bells, they stood or slept in the most inconvenient of places. Scavenging rats and crows also darted about the streets. Servants shooed these pests away from their lords, who often held peacocks, monkeys and cheetahs on leashes.
    Within Agra’s alleys greater varieties of clothing were also visible. Depending on their stations, men wore loincloths or armor or tunics. Lords displayed the brightest of colors and the softest of fabrics; farmers and laborers often went shirtless. Though women rarely interacted with men publicly, groups of ladies gathered about stalls and vendors. As with the men, the poorer a woman was, the less her sari or robe shimmered.
    Steep levees held the Yamuna River, and we descended one as we might the side of an Egyptian pyramid I’d read about. Herds of cattle and beached boats—their bows decorated with carved heads of snakes, elephants, tigers and monkeys—crowded the shoreline. A slip of land, however, remained unencumbered, where placid water was filled with women beating clothes against rocks. Hordes of children surrounded the women, some helping with the wash, others playing in the water. Most of the children were younger than we, for our peers labored in the fields, or baked bread in the Red Fort.
    Ladli, still wearing her sari, was the first to stride into a pool at the water’s edge. Her body was no longer that of a girl, and I looked enviously at her jostling breasts. Embarrassed by the flatness of my own chest, I stepped, fully clad, into the river. I followed Ladli until the water rose to my ribs.
    Suddenly sharp claws bit into my leg and I screamed, certain a crocodile had attacked me. My shrieks had barely diminished when Dara broke through the surface. He grinned, innocently asking, “What troubles you, sister? Did you step on something?”
    Though I could receive a scolding for playing with him, I dove forward, surprising him with my quickness. He had his mouth open when we went under, locked together like two serpents. I held him tightly, and we rolled in ankle-deep mud until he finally broke from my grasp. My eyes widened in time to see him spit out a mouthful of brown water. Now I laughed. Ladli swam over to us and held my hand, giving me a devious look. Dara’s gaze, I noticed, lingered on my friend.
    “I think my brother’s taken with you, Ladli,” I said sweetly. “You’ll have to rescue him next time.”
    Dara, rarely at a loss for words, looked aghast. “I… ”
    Our laughter seemed to echo off the riverbanks. Dara threw a handful of mud at us, which spattered against our backs. He then dove into the water and swam back to shore.
    “He’ll be a fine emperor,” Ladli said, switching to Hindi. “Much like your father.”
    “You always please his eye, Ladli.”
    It was my friend’s turn to be speechless, a rare moment indeed, as her tongue was