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building, its torches twinkling in the dark and its gates closed like lips guarding secrets.
    ‘Is this the palace?’ Jahan whispered.
    ‘This is it,’ said the man proudly, as if the place belonged to his father. ‘You are now in the abode of the Lord of East and West.’
    Jahan’s face lit up with expectation. Every chamber under its roof must abound with silks and brocades, he thought. Every hall must echo with joyous laughter. The Sultana’s diamonds must be so large that each has a name prettier than that of a concubine.
    They reached the Imperial Gate, under the stern gaze of the guards, who showed no interest in Chota, as though they were used to seeing a white elephant every day. When the party arrived at the Middle Gate, which had conical towers on each side with flaming torches, they got down from the carriage. The wind shifted just then, carrying a putrid smell. It was in that instant that Jahan, on impulse, glanced up towards the shadows in the background. He froze as he caught sight of the gibbets. There were three of them. One short, two tall. Mounted on each was a severed head, silently rotting away; swollen, empurpled, the mouth stuffed with hay. The boy caught analmost imperceptible movement, the insatiable greed of maggots crawling inside human flesh.
    ‘Traitors …’ said the official under his breath and spat with force.
    ‘But what have they done wrong?’ asked Jahan, his voice frail.
    ‘Treachery, as likely as not. Either that or theft, I’d say. They had it coming, for sure. This is what happens to those who play false.’
    Dazed, whey-faced, dwarfed by the columns ahead of him and suddenly bereft of words, Jahan trudged through the massive gate. Though he was gripped by an urgent desire to run away, he could not bring himself to leave the elephant. Like a convict trudging to the gallows, surrendering to a fate he could neither avoid nor accept, he followed the official and entered Sultan Suleiman’s palace.

Allthe boy glimpsed that night, as on the ensuing nights, were massive walls, a mammoth door with iron studs, a courtyard so vast it could have swallowed the world, and more walls. It occurred to him that you could live in a palace all your life but never see much of it.
    They were taken to a barn with an earthen floor, thatched roof and lofty ceiling – Chota’s new home. Inside was a sullen, sinewy fellow of indeterminable age. He had magical fingers that healed animals, though they were of no use when it came to human diseases. His name was Taras the Siberian. Although there were no horses in sight, they could hear them shuffling about and neighing nearby, made nervous by their presence. Since time immemorial horses had disliked elephants, Taras said. It must have been an ill-founded equine fear, he added, since he had never heard of an elephant laying into a horse.
    Taras examined Chota’s mouth, eyes, trunk, excrement. He glared at Jahan, clearly blaming him for the animal’s condition. The boy felt small, ashamed. They had been on the same ship, but Chota was on the brink of collapse while he was healthy as the crescent above.
    Deftly, gingerly, the healer applied some foul-smelling ointment to Chota’s lumps, and wrapped his trunk with burlap full of crushed leaves and a fragrant resin that Jahan later on learned was called myrrh. Not knowing how to help, the boy brought a bucket of fresh water, which he placed next to the piles of shrubs, apples, cabbages and hay – a banquet after the awful grub in the ship. But Chota didn’t even look at them.
    Jealousy gnawed at the boy’s heart. He was torn between wishing, with all his being, for this man to make the elephant better, and dreading that once back on his feet the animal would love the healer more than he loved him. Sultan Suleiman’s gift Chota might be, yet deep down Jahan saw him as his own.
    Laden with such shabby thoughts, he was ushered outside. There, another man welcomed Jahan with a wide smile. An Indian by