Cold Turk Chase

Everything to do with the Nizams continues to fascinate the denizens of the pearl city. After all, the family ruled Hyderabad for 224 years till Mir Mahboob Ali Khan relinquished the throne in 1948. The Nizam’s Trust is said to be worth Rs 20,000 crore, that’s besides Jah’s own assets worldwide. Princess Manolya, a former beauty queen from a middle-class Turkish family (she was Miss Turkey in 1975), married Jah in August 1990. The two met in Turkey at a friend’s place in July 1989, and Jah, who had recently lost his second wife, Helen Aisha (an Australian), proposed to Manolya within 48 hours. "When I first met him, I didn’t know he was the Nizam of Hyderabad," Manolya told Outlook in heavily accented English. "We were having tea at a restaurant in Istanbul when he pointed towards the Dolma Bahce Palace and said that was where his mother lived. (The Nizam’s mother was the daughter of Turkey’s last Ottoman sultan.) I thought he was joking. But then he gave me his family history..."

The following year, after a three-month courtship, Manolya, then 36 and Jah, 52, got married at Chiraan Palace, Hyderabad. The union, like other Nizam marriages, was recorded in the Sadr Qazi Shariyat Sana at Shalibanda, Hyderabad. The couple’s daughter Niloufer was born soon after—in 1991, in Perth. Jah and Manolya led a globe-trotting life—they lived in Australia, Switzerland and Turkey, seemingly happy at least for a couple of years. Manolya, a native of Ankara, says the marriage was going well till she developed a back problem and underwent surgery. Her legs were paralysed and Manolya could not walk for a year-and-a-half. She says Jah wasn’t by her side during this critical period. Worse, he shocked her further when he brought home Jamila, a 22-year-old Moroccan, one day in 1994. "How could I accept it? I just moved out while he continued living with Jamila," says Manolya, who had her education in England and France.

The same year, Manolya was out in an Istanbul market buying fruits with daughter Niloufer in her arms when she received a call. It was Jah on the phone, and the message was terse: talaq, talaq, talaq. Manolya, whose first marriage at the age of 23 ended in divorce four years later, soon received a talaq certificate at her doorstep. The content was shocking. It had the qazi stating that both the Nizam and Manolya were present in front of him when the divorce happened. This, when friends of the princess say that both of them were living in Turkey at the time—in short, they say, the talaq was a mockery of Islamic law.

A short while later, the Nizam was embroiled in new marital tangles. A DNA test proved that the child Jamila bore wasn’t his, and the Nizam quickly divorced her. In 1995, he married Orchid, another Turkish girl, but divorced her as well. With five marriages behind him, Jah is not married to anyone today and now lives a rather reclusive life. His Havelock house in West Perth was sold long ago though Jah still retains his Australian citizenship.

Manolya says the Nizam’s last two marriages were also solemnised in Hyderabad but the bone of contention here is neither Jamila nor Orchid. It is the massive settlements made by the Nizam to his first two wives, Princess Esra Birgen (children Azmat and Shakiyar) and Helen Aisha (a son). Jah divorced Esra in 1979. Nine years later, he got legally separated from Helen too, shortly before she died. Manolya says Jah made lavish divorce settlements in both the cases. In fact, when she met Jah in 1989, he was broke. It is rumoured that he paid $30 million each to both wives. After their marriage, claims Manolya, she even loaned him money a couple of times. "Of course, he was still the Nizam but I can tell you that he was not a rich man. He was emotionally and financially bankrupt. He wanted to sell the family silver in fact. But I didn’t want him to sell royal assets for a song," she says.

What Princess Manolya finds particularly galling is that the Nizam’s first wife Esra, who lives in London, holds the power of attorney for the Nizam. Whenever Manolya has asked him for funds, the Nizam refers her to Esra. Manolya says the only payment she has received so far is a cheque for $2,300—and that’s from Esra. She knocked at a family court in 1996 and has been seeking justice for a decade now, but to no avail. As per two agreements drawn up in 1992 and 1994, the Nizam has promised maintenance for Niloufer, and that the Chiraan Palace (now estimated to be worth Rs 300 crore, property and land included) would go to Niloufer after his death.

The Chiraan Palace was built by the Nizam in the 1960s over 400 acres of land. Most of this land is now owned by the forest department and has been converted into the Kasu Brahmananda Reddy Park. The magnificent palace stands in the middle of the park and is not open to the public—not to Manolya either, as she discovered to her shock when she visited it in 2004 with her daughter. "The staff there asked us to leave, and my daughter was in tears. They said we didn’t have prior permission. Tell me, does a child need permission to visit her father’s home? Niloufer has been emotionally scarred after the incident," says Manolya tearfully. "When Niloufer spoke to her father after the incident, he said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to visit the palace? I would have let you go in, but not your mother’. How could he say such things," she fumes.

Manolya says she alone has taken care of bringing up her only daughter Niloufer, now 15; Jah never contributed. "Isn’t it only just that a father takes care of his child?" questions Manolya, now a painter and photographer who is also into social service. "I am not bothered about myself. If you look at Princess Esra, she sports Chanel and Luis Vuitton, drives a Rolls Royce, stays at five-star suites and leads a lavish life. And can you guess where I picked up my salwar from," asks Manolya, pointing at her white ensemble. "From Lifestyle. For Rs 600."

"Let me tell you that I am not waging some sort of a battle against my ex-husband, I am fighting his team of lawyers who are talking about me like they lived in our bedroom when the Nizam and I were married," Manolya continues heatedly. "I am fighting because I’ve been wronged. My friend, Scheherazade Javeri, who also holds my power of attorney, knows how I have struggled." Manolya pats Javeri affectionately and adds, "She doesn’t see me as someone with three arms and three legs but as a mother who is fighting for her daughter’s interests. And Inshallah, we will win."