"Feringhee is a sweeping saga that begins with a man searching his thoughts to remember how he knows the woman who saved his life. Within these memories, we follow the antagonism between Ensign Nathan Asher and the enigmatic Khalid, a man whose reputation is as dark and elusive as he is.

The harsh landscape and brutal traditions of slave trading lend a backdrop to this riveting tale of one man’s journey to prove his loyalty and his belief in doing what is right. But it also sets the scene for those aiding him on his journey, who have their own stories of wanting to rise above the circumstances they were born into and fighting for recognition in a world against them from the beginning.

So-called modern intellect versus knowledge passed down over generations highlights the idea that not all the answers are found in a book and that sometimes being open-minded is the key to the answer. But above all, the gritty story shares the depths of love beyond the barriers of skin colour.

Feringhee delves into the disparities between the colonists and their army, and the rulers of the local lands and their subjects. It exposes the harrowing consequences of betrayal and touches on the ruthlessness shown where money supersedes life. The richness of the descriptions, both of the terrain and the interactions, as well as the authentic dialogue of the time, create a story that fully transports the reader to another era of love, loss, determination, and redemption. Highly recommended," The International Review of Books.

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How Hard is it to die?

Nathan had courted death for the last three years. He had sought her in the jungles, the villages, the palaces of India, then across the steppes of Central Asia and in the slave markets of Bukhara. Death reigned in this world, gathering men, women, children, families, and whole villages onto her lap. Yet, since Nathan desired her, she played coy. At last, taking pity on him, she came in the guise of a veiled woman and asked, Why do you pursue me so ardently?

You have taken those I have loved, he replied. There is nothing for me here.

Not yet, Death told him gently. You are not ready for me. You must prove you deserve me. And acting the shy maiden, she turned away.

But I only desire you, Nathan protested to the vanishing shadow.

When Death came to him again at the pass, a slim veiled figure in the thousand-foot shadows of the mountains, she stated her terms—To be with those you love, you must surrender your heart, body, and soul.

Nothing of me left? He asked, and, hearing no answer, said, "So be it."

Even if he had wanted, his wounds and climbing fever precluded negotiation. Leaving the carcass of the brave horse that carried him until her heart had burst, he stumbled on. Starved of breath, he became a speck between the towering peaks and the deep gorge with the violently rushing river.

Death beckoned him. I am waiting just beyond the turn in the road.

Nathan struggled forward, hoping to reach her. Without remembering how he came there, he found himself at the bottom of the gorge, crawling onto a raft of loosely tied bamboo. He closed his eyes, shutting out the bright blue sky. The raft began to spin rapidly in the snow-fed river.

I am where the river ends, Death whispered.

The sun was cold, and he burned with fever, but that did not matter because soon he would be beyond cold and fever. Buzzards circled overhead. They would go for his eyes first, then his flesh, leaving only his bones. It was comforting that he would be carried bit by bit into the sky. Consciousness flickered like a candle flame that nearly melted all the wax.

Nathan awoke to the sound of chants in a stone room. A man in a long robe observed him with eyes that seemed to have watched the world for centuries.

Where are you? He asked Death.

I sent you my loyal servant, she replied from the space behind his head.

Nathan blinked, and there he stood in place of the monk: Khalid—shrouded in white, black eyes glittering. “You are dust in the wind, Feringhee,” Khalid said, lowering the scarf around his face to reveal his lips, kissing the fingers of one hand, then flinging them outward as if letting go of his life.

Dust in the wind. Dust in the wind. Dust in the wind.

He blinked. Khalid had disappeared, and only the monk remained, staring down at him from a great distance with eyes that had seen centuries. Nathan started to fall into the well of nothingness: a strange fate, but welcomed because this was her embrace. The pain that extended into all his existence began to dissipate. Then, a magnificent golden carriage pulled by four godlike horses lifted his inert body into the sky toward her, Death, his heart’s desire.

Nathan had no idea when death decided to renege on her promise, abandoning him to every pain a human being can feel. He lay on a bed in a tent. It was hot and humid, as only India can be. Insects hummed overhead. He could not move his limbs. The weight of the sky was too heavy. He had no choice but to endure. With wounds deep in his leg and side, by all rights, death should have taken him. Gut wounds were fatal. Why had she broken her promise? Why more suffering? Nathan drifted off. His fever raged. Now, it would be as he wished. Death was just a little tardy, that was all. When Nathan came to again, sweaty and every nerve a lit fuse, he began to vaguely formulate an idea as to why Death wasn’t fulfilling her promise. She had a rival.

The rival sat by him, watching vigilantly for the appearance of death, and when death wrenched his stomach or started to boil a cauldron inside his head or sent slivers of ice through his veins, she acted. As simple as a cool cloth on his forehead. Or forcing a bitter broth through his lips. Or, at one frightening moment, pouring a foul brew down his throat that numbed his lips, unwrapping a bandaged leg, and cutting off a strip of putrid flesh with a scalpel in her small hand. He would have preferred death a hundred times over the pain of that moment. He tried to tell her, but his tongue had forgotten how to form words.

Death’s rival slept on a cot behind a screen near his bed. She seemed familiar, but for the life of him, he couldn’t place her. He should have been able to because one just doesn’t forget such an unusual woman: small, dark-skinned like Indians of lower caste, with dark gold eyes that were large, almost feline, and a small mouth. Sometimes, she wore a sari. Sometimes, she attended him in European clothes, which must have been tailored for her because few European women were so diminutive. That didn’t make sense. It was also puzzling that she seemed to have complete liberty to act as his physician. He heard her outside the tent asking the guards to bring clean bedding, clear broth, or a shaving razor. How could any young woman, especially a low-caste Indian woman by the look of her, gain such a position?

Another surprise occurred when Nathan found his voice and asked her directly, “Why didn’t you allow me to die? The world holds nothing for me.”

“How do you know what the world holds? You have a beating heart and people who care about you,” she had replied. Her speech was an odd combination of a Scottish burr and the singsong musicality of an Indian accent. “I do not think you are nothing.”

“What’s your name?” Nathan asked, hoping that would jog his memory of who she was.

“I am called Perla.” She busied herself by taking off the bandage from his leg wound. He would have stopped her if the sky wasn’t still placing great weight on his arms and upper body.

“Why are you taking care of me, Perla?” Nathan asked.

“Taking care of you is a payment for a favor,” she replied, satisfied that the garish wound showed no gangrene. She put on a new bandage over a stinky poultice and said, “Good, I don’t need Ravi to help me saw off your leg.”

Nathan wasn’t sure he heard right about amputating his leg. Women did not do the work of a surgeon anywhere, anytime. He followed up the first question, “But we have never met.”

“You are mistaken, Mr. Asher.” She put her small hand on his forehead. She nodded, again satisfied.

“I do not know you, so how can you know me?” he insisted.

“What about you do I not know?” She looked him up and down.

“Where do I come from, for example?” he asked.

“You came from the village called New York.”

“How did I come to be here in India?”

“You made a mistake and helped men who were your people’s enemies. You left because you felt shame, and your people no longer wanted you,” Perla replied, covering him with a sheet.

Nathan was flabbergasted. He had never mentioned to anyone in India what happened in the Battle of Bladensburg at the age of twelve. “Who told you that?”

“That does not matter.”

“It matters who tells people my secrets.”

Perla smiled. She was enjoying his confusion. “Why should I not know? I know a lot about you.”

“Like what?” He asked, afraid of the answer.

“You have too many scars for a man so young,” she said in the unmistakable voice of a parent lecturing a child. “You fight too much.”

“Why are they letting you pretend to be a physician?” Nathan was angry now.

“Are you dead?” Perla asked.

“I’m not so sure because you don’t make sense in the world I come from.”

“Why do you say ‘pretend’ to be a doctor when I save your life?”

“I didn’t ask you to save my life.”

“You were too confused to know up from down. Your body asked me. I did what it asked.”

“In other words, you refuse to tell me who you are even though you have power over whether I live or die.” Where had he seen her before? He rummaged in the dim recesses of his mind in search of her identity. The few guards he questioned merely said she was Perla, as if that were the answer. Perla was Perla. She tended to the sick, and that was all there was to be known about her.

“I not left your side for three weeks, Ensign Asher, because you keep trying to die. That must stop. When you decide to live, you will discover who I am.”

Again, this Perla simply did not make sense. Her only distractions other than caring for him and other sick soldiers were playing with two pet mongooses and occasional conversations in a language that wasn’t Hindi with two young men who appeared several times a day in the tent with baskets of herbs or food and usually told her a story that made her laugh. Against his will, Nathan began slowly reviewing the past three years to figure out where Perla fit and why she knew secrets he had never told anyone in India.

“I am too tired to engage in these guessing games,” he said when his mind drew a blank after a few hours of thinking.

“Yes, you sleep, Mr. Asher.” She smoothed his hair. “So, when you wake up, you will remember me.”

He did not recognize Perla on waking up, perhaps because he had never taken a good look at the girl to start with. He did feel better, although he was as weak as a kitten. He later had three visitors whom he did recognize. First was Mrs. Geraldine White, the wife of Colonel White, a lady of middling years with a fine face and easygoing manner except where he was concerned. Perla said people cared for him. The colonel’s wife might be one of them. Yet, she sent him on a mission where he was more likely to die than survive. What were her words before he left? I have moved heaven and earth for those children. It’s up to you now, Ensign Asher, to do the same. Alive or dead, find them. God bless. I depend on you not to fail. 

Her husband, Colonel White, had assured him, Understand, Ensign Asher, this enterprise is in the nature of a personal favor. You are under no obligation. The grave danger and the near impossibility that Ungar’s daughters are alive are reasons to refuse.

Nathan had anticipated that dying would relieve him of the chore of informing Mrs. White of his failure. He braced himself for her disappointment. That was not what happened. Mrs. White politely inquired how he was feeling and then apologized in a voice that showed genuine remorse for risking his life. She positively refused to explain his attendant, saying that was a personal matter between him and her. The probable existence of an army regulation against strangling a colonel’s wife or his lack of strength kept him from wringing the truth out of her. Colonel White himself visited. He said he couldn’t answer why Perla was attending him, except the girl had moved heaven and earth for the privilege.

“‘Tis apparent you failed in your expedition.” The colonel then added: “I place no blame on you—a fool’s errand, to be sure. Mrs. White and I are grateful you made it back. When you recover, I want a complete report to pass on to the East India Company and the South Anglia Missionary Society. My wife has already written to Mrs. Ungar, informing her of the disappointing result of your expedition.”

The third visitor was the army physician and surgeon, Doctor Griswold. He did answer the question about Perla’s identity, spitting between every other word. “I never gave much credence to the black arts until I met her. As I stand before you with God as my witness, she’s a witch.”

Nathan was certain he had met the witch before, but where and when?