Abdulla already knew these facts, but he was waiting to see what conclusion Fitrat would draw from them. The former professor continued:
‘These were the times when the lying sheikhs of Fergana were plotting. One of them returned from the Haj claiming to have brought a hair of the prophet with him; he displayed this false relic first in Namagan and then, when his fame had spread, all over Fergana: he seduced a thousand simple-minded men into becoming his followers; another sheikh began dancing about on stilts. There was no shortage of imbeciles willing to take orders from them. A third trickster sheikh started a new heresy: he got his followers to make flags of coloured rags and painted sticks and walk the streets, shaking them in a religious trance.’
Now this was something Abdulla hadn’t heard about. Fitrat interpreted superstition and sectarian beliefs from his own atheistic point of view, which was bound to distort them; still, these incidents might well warrant inclusion in Abdulla’s novel. He could picture it now: mutes following the blind, cripples following the deaf.
‘Fergana was rotten to the core; Madali called a council of the chief clerics. But, afraid of provoking disturbances if they attempted to combat heresy by force, they washed their hands of the present situation, saying: “It’s preferable to take measures at another time and in another place.”
‘Madali then called a council of his army commanders. Some declared the need to prepare for war; others were more ambivalent, “Is it worth putting our trust in the words of spies and messengers? Bukhara is a long way from Kokand.”
‘Among these was a group of commanders who had conspired with Mahmud-xon and were still in secret correspondence with him. Mahmud-xon was soon informed of the outcome of the council, and he in turn passed the news on to Emir Nasrullo.’
‘What does Hakim’s Selected History have to say on the subject?’ Abdulla asked, happy to play the part of a devoted student.
‘Much the same, although for the war, and the fate of Oyxon and Madali fate in particular, it gives a somewhat broader account. But none of that casts any light on the cause of the war.’
Abdulla hesitated. ‘No,’ he said.’ Perhaps not.’
Emir Nasrullo had gathered his troops and gone to attack Kokand, taking all his counsellors and high officials with him, leaving only a couple of minor viziers behind in the fortress: if there was ever the time for Conolly to make his escape, it was now. But what could one do in this situation? He could not abandon Stoddart; he was the reason he’d come here, after all. And now the old man seemed on his death-bed. When would the Emir return from Kokand? As far as Conolly could tell, Kokand’s forces were disorganised, there was no discipline, their armaments were old. They weren’t fit for a prolonged battle. But could the outcome of any war ever be certain? Fergana’s people would meet the Bukharans in battle even if they had only pickaxes and sickles.
As he had done countless times already, Conolly chewed over his encounters with Nasrullo. When talking to Stoddart, the Emir’s cheek would twitch with barely-suppressed annoyance, but with Conolly he was all smiles.
What mistake had Conolly made to lose the Emir’s favour? This question was a constant torment to him; if only he could find the answer, he felt he might regain Nasrullo’s sympathy and be taken back into his confidence.
One thing he had noticed was odd: every time he had mentioned the name of Madali’s wife Oyxon in the Emir’s presence, Nasrullo would shudder as if with distaste, then shift about as if bored, then straighten up as if coming to a decision. Each time, he would switch the conversation to another subject, to the unification of Turkestan, for example, stressing all the ways in which Turkestan could not simply be considered another Afghanistan.
Was Oyxon the real reason for Conolly’s imprisonment? Could Nasrullo want this Helen for his harem? If so, why hadn’t he got on his horse ten or twelve years ago, and competed for this trophy as though she were the prize in his beloved bozkashi? Or was it Conolly himself who had provided him with the perfect pretext?
—
For some reason, Abdulla was growing reluctant to share this period of history with anyone else. As Fitrat carryied on with his exposition, Abdulla felt a pang of jealousy; he recalled Nodira. Hadn’t he once dismissed her as a jealous wife? True, at one time she had been just that, then when power passed into her hands, she resorted to underhand cunning… but the result of that cunning was to free her from her former jealousy and to draw her into new griefs and troubles, of which Madali was always the greatest cause. No sooner had Emir Umar passed away, and his son, the fifteen-year-old simpleton, had taken the throne, Nodira became de facto ruler of the Kokand Khanate: she only had to raise an eyebrow for heads to roll. Her one petty act, more suited to a jealous wife than to a powerful, liberal ruler, had been to encourage her son in his pursuit of Oyxon, but that had backfired. Even though he beat Oyxon and tormented her, she had only to raise one of heavy curved eyebrows and the young Emir was putty in her hands.
True, thanks to Uvaysiy’s diplomacy and to Oyxon herself, Nodira eventually established a kind of truce with the woman who had once been her rival wife, and was now her daughter-in-law: they had taken each other’s measure. But then another misfortune befell Nodira. Her two sons could not stand each other! Two heads won’t fit in one cooking-pot, as they say. So her favourite, Mahmud, went into exile, first to Qarshi and then to Shahrisabz, where he married a girl of dubious heritage and ended up in misery, without a title. A mother’s heart is not a melon to be divided in two and handed out, ‘This half for you, that half for you’.
An evening separated from my beloved leaves me unable to suffer any more,
Have mercy on me, there is no way I can suffer more.
—
‘The Iranian Abdusamad played a large part in these scandals and quarrels,’ said Fitrat. ‘Nasrullo began his attack on Kokand by laying siege to the fortress of Yom. When the Emir had encircled the fortress, he summoned Abdusamad and granted him royal favour: “Today is yours. Today, apply all the knowledge you have acquired from the English! Prepare the cannon and guns: let the fortress have a hail of gunfire.”
‘Abdusamad the Artilleryman bowed and placed the guns on a hill; for three nights and three days the fortress was under a hail of gunfire. The men in the fortress held out heroically: they immediately extinguished the places that caught fire, they rushed about. But on the fourth day, the cannonballs hit their own stores of gunpowder. An unimaginable fire broke out, impossible to extinguish. The fire spread to other buildings: half of the fortress and its inhabitants were burned alive. The fire made the night as bright as day. The fortress gates were opened and the Bukharan army rushed in; its governor was caught and bound hand and foot; Nasrullo had him beheaded on the spot.’
‘Professor, this Abdusamad was a real scoundrel!’ Muborak chimed in. ‘Joseph Wolff wrote a lot about him. Just listen to this: after nine years in Bukhara he had amassed a vast fortune, about sixty thousand gold pieces: enough for him to build himself a palace outside the city walls. He got the money through extortion and embezzlement, but he was sly; somehow, he always managed to contrive it so that somebody else’s head got the chop. He seemed to have a knack for ingratiating himself with rulers, impressing them with the knowledge and sophistication he’d gained from his travels – he was forever boasting to Nasrullo about how well he understood the way the Europeans’ minds worked, having had so much contact with them at Dost Mohamed’s court in Kabul. So of course, when Joseph Wolff turned up, Abdusamad greased a few palms to arrange a private audience.
‘“The Bukharans doubt me, and say I’m on the side of the English; the English suspect me of seeking to undermine their intentions here. But I’m merely an intermediary – all I want is that the two countries should be at peace. I’ve done all in my power to get Stoddart and Conolly released. I even promised the Emir a thousand gold pieces from my own savings, but he insists that they’re spies, and that the penalty
for spying is death. Such a barbarous people! And Nasrullo is the worst of them. Did you know he murdered all his brothers, so there would be no challenger for the throne? If he didn’t need my services, he’d have had me executed too, as a sympathiser. I’ve been sticking my neck out, you know. For two years he hasn’t paid me my salary.
‘“The English government is known for its generosity: for twenty thousand gold pieces, I am ready to strike a blow for your cause. The gunpowder stocks are under my control – I can invite Nasrullo to a circumcision feast, then blow him up.”
“‘The English government would never have a hand in such a bloody conspiracy,” Joseph Wolff rebuffed him. “Kings are God’s shadows on earth.”
‘Abdusamad changed the subject. “There are Russian slaves here, about twenty of them. I can sell them to you. All twenty for a thousand gold pieces. A bargain, wouldn’t you say?’
At that time the campaign against slavery was at its peak; there was no question of the English refusing money for this purpose, so Joseph Wolff agreed to Abdusamad’s suggestion, even though it disgusted him to do business with such an unscrupulous man, who seemed obsessed with extorting money. Joseph Wolff, you know, was a principled man!’
None of Abdulla’s previous books had featured battle scenes, except for a couple of passing allusions in Past Days. It had never seemed quite right to describe events that he had not personally experienced. A man who’d never been to war writing about a battle was like a woman who’d never had children describing childbirth. But if he didn’t talk about the war between Kokand and Bukhara, his novel would not be complete.
He had been travelling in the Fergana valley to research this new novel when he came across a very elderly man who claimed to have witnessed the war first-hand. He would have had to have been over one hundred years old; which was perfectly possible judging by the way his bones were almost poking through his papery skin.
‘Do you remember Madali-xon being killed, sir?’ Abdulla had asked.
‘Yes, I remember. He was killed by Nasrullo-xon.’
‘And where were you at the time?’ The old man frowned and replied rather slowly: ‘In Khojent.’
‘You didn’t see Nasrullo’s troops, did you? What route did he take to get to Kokand?’
‘Through Khojent, of course… It was spring. The Emir’s troops came through in small groups. After two or three days, the news came that Madali-xon had been killed…’
‘You didn’t happen to see Emir Nasrullo, did you?’
The old man opened his dull eyes wide and waved his withered hand: ‘How could I? I wasn’t at Khojent when he was…’
All you could get from conversations like that was one or two anecdotes. Abdulla then reread the war scenes in Shah Babur’s memoirs. He learned something from Shah Babur’s elegant style. Compared with other writers, Babur’s history was always specific, always written as if by one who had witnessed the events with his own eyes. His work might be one-sided, but it was always sincere, concrete and vivid.
After listening to what Muborak, Kosoniy, and Fitrat had told him, Abdulla had come to a conclusion: he would describe the war through the eyes of the duplicitous Abdusamad. This man of the world had spent a lifetime surviving wars and battles, like an unsinkable fishing-line float. War was a profitable vocation for him; one or another ruler would hire him to train up a battalion as you might hire a fighting cockerel.
It would mean introducing a whole new narrative strand – could his novel really take it? On the other hand, was there really any workable alternative?
If he looked at everything through Emir Nasrullo’s eyes, the account would be one-sided. Bringing in Nodira and Oyxon, he could show the tragedy of war through its collateral damage; he wouldn’t be able to show the battles themselves through their eyes, though. No, it had to be Abdusamad.
Abdulla began sketching out the battle scenes. After what happened in Yom fortress, he would have to give an account of how Mahmud betrayed Nasrullo by switching to Madali’s side. This affair happened in several stages. First of all, Mahmud took O’ratepa at the head of Nasrullo’s vanguard, which Nasrullo then gave him for his own. At the same time, the Emir of Bukhara sent an envoy to instil fear in Madali: ‘We won O’ratepa with ease. Give us the Khojent, Qurama and Tashkent provinces, too, and the Kipchak steppes in their entirety: if you don’t, beware!’
Madali had lost his best commanders at O’ratepa: he was quivering with fear. ‘All right, I’ll give Khojent to Nasrullo, with property and taxes in tribute,’ he said, sending an envoy with the keys to Khojent castle.
Nasrullo sent Madali back this message: ‘If Madali comes out to greet us, I shall give him back his property. If he doesn’t, he had better look after himself.’
Bewildered, conflicted, Madali did not know what to do. Then a wandering dervish, a former copper-worker, came in from the street to beg an audience with the Emir: ‘Your Majesty, I know how to wipe out the Mangits for good. Nasrullo and the rest of his family will never trouble Kokand again. All you have to do is allow me to take over the government for one day.’ Desperate, clutching at straws, Madali assented. The copper-worker went outside and got the entire population of Kokand to assemble on the main square. ‘I have taken over power!’ he shrieked. ‘The hand that’s been lying idle should be raised!’ He directed the people first at Madali’s courtiers, whose houses were looted, and who were then humiliated by being made to mount donkeys facing the tail. The two prostitutes-turned-procuresses Xush-hol and Oshula had their houses burned down. The mob burst into the harem and Oyxon barely managed to flee, seeking sanctuary in her father’s house, where she wept so many tears her body seemed a salty wasteland.
All this has to be described in detail, Abdulla thought. Might this uprising need its own chapter? In a single day all of Kokand went up in flames, like a field of dry Persian rue catching fire. The most important nobles and religious leaders went out and pleaded with the people: their intervention succeeded in quashing the uprising.
The beleaguered Madali sent nobles and clerics to Emir Nasrullo with gifts and greetings. They returned after having obtained a truce. But Nasrullo gave Khojent and Tashkent to Mahmud and he himself went back to Bukhara.
And at that point Nodira made her appearance, shuttling between Kokand and Khojent, where Mahmud had based himself. No one knew her sons’ personalities better than her; by making various appeals, she was eventually able to get them to agree on a treaty of division: Mahmud got Khojent, Tashkent and Qurama provinces, the Kipchak steppes and G’urmsaroy, while the remaining part of the Kokand khanate stayed with Madali. Thus, the entirety of the former Fergana Khanate fell under the control of these two brothers, Nodira’s sons. When Nasrullo heard that Mahmud had betrayed him by cutting a deal with Madali he was enraged, and in the month of Savr 1257 moved his countless soldiers in the direction of Kokand.
—
Kokand was drowning in uprisings. The day before, a mob had burst into the palace, looting everything. As soon as she found out about the rioting in the city, Uvaysiy rushed to the harem, found Gulsum and told her to dress Oyxon in the oldest, most ragged clothes she could find. Then all three women put baskets on their heads, as if they had been delivering loaves of bread to the palace; with this makeshift disguise, they managed to get through the mob to the Sheikhan quarter, where they sheltered in the house of Oyxon’s father.
Nodira was in Khojent visiting her son Mahmud: that lessened Uvaysiy’s troubles a little.
For clever people among fools it is better to be insane,
It is likewise better to stop at a mountain inn when the mob is mad.
Talk spread like wildfire through the streets and alleys of Kokand: ‘The Emir of Bukhara is coming to capture the city!’ Others said joyfully, ‘Now Madali the Fornicator will be overthrown, and Mahmud will rule instead.’ A hundred people had a thousand ideas; the town was seething with rumours.
What is going to happen now? Oyxon wondered bitterly. If the enraged populace found her, they might say, ‘All the trouble is because of her!’, tie her to the back of a horse and drag her at a gallop over the bare ground. Who would feel any pity for her?
Or would she be saved by Madali, who had brought so much misery upon her head?
If the Emir of Bukhara should capture Kokand, would Conolly be among his troops? Oyxon only had to indulge such a supposition for her heart to feel a piercing pain. This piece of flesh had died some time ago, it seemed to have turned into something hard and sinewy, but it still ached. Could the human heart really be so tough and enduring?
Even if Conolly came to Kokand, what could that change now? Oyxon chased away such aching thoughts and turned back to her pallid father. After G’ozi-xo’ja was dismissed from his post, his health had rapidly deteriorated. According to people at the market, customers were once again being given false weights, cheated and insulted.
Gulsum entered with two bowls of noodle soup, disturbing Oyxon from her thoughts.
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