Tara Isabel Zambrano
1. THE DISPATCHNur Jahan Bent over Backwards in Time
When a fourteen-year-old girl, in a haphazard way, writes the names of nineteen wives of Jehangir, a Mughal emperor of India in the sixteenth century, on the mud floor of her cottage with a wooden stick. When she claims she’s the reincarnation of Mehr-un-Nisa, Jehangir’s twentieth wife, bewildered, her parents, poor farmers working in the fields of a landlord ask “Chhori, kya bakti hai?” and shake her shoulders. They have never sent her to school, never told her stories because they didn’t know any. When the girl decorates an old chair of her father with ribbons and sparkles from her mother’s wedding dress, places it outside her hut. When she holds a durbar, asks her friends to sit on the dusty ground. When she settles imaginary disputes between girls who call her Nur-Jahan, the light of the world, the name given by Jehangir to Mehr-un-Nisa. When adults, mostly men join in, bringing in their arguments. When listening to them, she closes her eyes, as if in a deep thought, but all she’s imagining are lush gardens and marble floored palaces with extravagant art, a man like Jehangir absorbed in opium and alcohol allowing her queen to reign India. When she opens her eyes and looks at the faces of the farmers seeking direction from her, she feels drawn back in time and the answers come to her. When they leave money as a token of their appreciation. When her pleased parents call out her name, Long Live Nur Jahan, and everyone follows. When they repair the home, buy clothes and jewelry that make her look like a real princess. When she touches her reflection in a gilded frame mirror, wishes it were the sixteenth century. When she wakes up in an old world. When she finds herself alone, crying in a grave next to Jehangir’s.
2. BUREAU INVENTORYWoman figurine (most of my stories are about female desire, and the collection I'm working on now is about motherhood)
Plant
Pen holder
Coffee mug (No drama written on its inside rim)
Books
Phone, sticky notes, glasses
A kilogram of imagination (if you can find it)
3. BIOGRAPHYTara Isabel Zambrano is a writer of color.