Anna finally fell asleep a little before dawn and woke up to a foreign chant. It was some of the men praying. A part of her had hoped that she would wake up in her bedroom in Tsinondali and all of this would have been the longest of nightmares. Her body was stiff as she followed Madame Drancy deeper behind a clump of trees. This was their toilet and surprisingly the men were decent enough to stay at a distance. Perhaps they judged them too weak to escape or else they knew she would never run off and leave Alexander.
He was faring better than her and did not complain. He ate the food they put before him and drank a mug of tea. ‘I have to eat for Lydia’s sake,’ thought Anna. No food and drink meant no milk. It was as simple as that. She forced herself to eat. Her stomach felt full even though it wasn’t; her mouth was dry. One of the highlanders shambled close and pointed at Lydia, making gestures as if he wanted to carry her when they next rode off. His plebeian face was in smiles and he spoke in a dialect Anna couldn’t understand. She held Lydia close and waved him away, shaking her head. He persisted, trying to ingratiate himself by bowing and begging. Exasperated and eager to get rid of him, she took off her pearl earrings and tossed them to him. The bribe worked. He put them in his pocket and turned away.
When it was time to mount again, Anna retched out her breakfast. It splattered on her dress. She used to be clean and sweet-smelling. And Lydia too, used to be clean and sweet-smelling. Now her wispy hair was matted against her scalp, there was congealed milk behind her ears and in the folds of her neck. As expected, her lower half had risen in a red rash that extended even to the folds around her knees. She needed a bath, talcum powder, a change of clothes. But where would these come from?
Although their progress was slow, the higher they climbed, the more Anna’s heart sank. They were venturing further and further towards Shamil’s territory. This was the border that David was meant to be protecting, this was the line where the river forts were stationed. Around them was nothing but the forests and the mountains, familiar to these men; their natural habitat.
She dozed against her will and woke with a shock to find that her arms had gone slack and Lydia was wedged loosely between her and the rider, the trail of her nappy dangling over the saddle. The baby was wide awake, gazing up with large wet eyes at the green swirl of the trees, the sun filtering through.
They reached a clearing, a stretch of flat ground and suddenly there was a whizzing sound that made Anna turn her head. Were they being followed? The loudest cry from the Lezgin as his horse wheeled and broke into a gallop. ‘It’s an ambush. Go, go, go.’
Anna felt her whole body sway backwards, her arms instinctively jutting out for balance. ‘Stop,’ she screamed, ‘I’m not holding her properly.’
Lydia was loose in her arms, a lopsided bundle, as bullets zinged past them, as the highlanders dispersed, yelping and working their horses up to a frenzy. One of the riders was shot. He groaned and fell to the ground.
‘Hold your hostage close!’ the Lezgin shouted to his men. The horses of their pursuers could be heard now. They were gaining on them. A bullet hit a horse and it skidded and crashed down, flinging its rider.
‘Stop,’ she screamed. ‘Please stop.’
‘Hold tight to my belt, Princess.’
‘My baby is slipping from me. Stop now, I beg you.’
‘Soon, soon we will stop.’
I am holding her, aren’t I? She is here and we are being rescued. The Lezgin suddenly reeled his horse to the right and dashed into the forest. The movement guaranteed their escape but Anna swayed and nearly tipped over. He reached behind to steady her but only succeeded in knocking her elbow. Lydia slipped from her arm. ‘My baby!’ she screamed. She screamed and the sound pressed close, her nerves vibrating. The bundle fragile on soil and leaves. Her wrong empty hands. It was as if her own insides squished and bled. Her own spine cracked and the thud was thunder in her inner ear.
IV
Further Than the Outpost
1. SCOTLAND, DECEMBER 2010
‘Can I have a word with you, Natasha?’ Iain put his head through the door. It meant he wanted me to come to his office. ‘Any time within the next hour,’ he added. He drummed his fingers against the doorknob. As always, his clothes hung on him as if they were a size too large. His hair, too, always seemed big for his face, a throwback to the 1980s. The formality of his request surprised me. A dull ache started behind my eyes. I was still shaken by what had happened this morning.
After leaving Malak, I drove through slush, streets that were busier than usual now that the snow was melting. The need-to-catch-up mood reached me through the edgy shoppers impatient to cross the road and the announcement on the radio that Debenhams would stay open till ten. The Christmas songs were familiar and reassuring. I found that I had an effortless memory for past Number One hits. Given a year, I could guess either the song or the artist, sometimes even both. When it was time for the news I found myself gripping the steering wheel. But there was no mention of dawn raids or of Oz.
Today I had my own catching up to do. I had missed one full day of work and most of the morning. Next week, exams started and there were plenty of emails from my superiors to wade through first, answer or file before I turned to the students’. Without my laptop, I would have to get through them at the desktop in my office. Even my personal emails. I tried not to think of the files on my laptop that I had not backed up.
There was an email from the Classic Car Club saying that tonight’s Christmas dinner was cancelled because of the weather. Lucky for me that I wasn’t in charge this year. These kinds of decisions were not easy to make. Last year I was events secretary and that party was a success. It was disappointing that this one was cancelled. I had been looking forward to it, a chance to show off my 1960 Czechoslovakian-built Skoda after all the work I’d had done to it. I was much less hands-on than the others, who tended to do all the work themselves and devoted more time to their car. It cost a fortune at the garage but I would not begrudge my heroic Felicia, which made it to the West at the height of the Cold War.
When I sat in the armchair in Iain’s room, he said, ‘It’s not good news about Gaynor Stead. They’ve decided to uphold her complaint.’
Gaynor had been my student last year. I had judged her to be the stupidest person to have ever stepped into university. It baffled me that she survived until third year after repeating both of the previous ones. Too often I had watched quirky and brilliant students crash and burn. Instead it was the doleful and dogged Gaynor who was the survivor of the species. She never missed a class – perhaps that was her secret. Or because she knew her rights and felt entitled to a degree as if she were a client and the university a service. She had failed my class, but that was not the issue – her work was poor without question. Instead she claimed that I had sat on top of her desk and broken one of her fingers! It was a seminar and there were only about ten students, the desks arranged in a rectangle. While answering a question, she stumbled over the pronunciation of a Russian name and clammed up, refusing to speak any further. Instead of asking her to spell the name or leaning over to look at her notes or just moving on to someone else, I perched on top of her desk and picked up her notebook. She was clearly irritated by my proximity, swinging her hair back sharply and muttering something under her breath. But there was no cry of pain, nothing about a bruised or injured finger. And I was sure, as much as I could ever be sure, that I did not sit on her finger or even her pen.
‘Iain, this is ridiculous. She never left the room. Would anyone with a broken finger continue to take a class as if nothing had happened?’
‘She has a letter from her doctor.’
‘On that same date?’
He spoke slowly. ‘The school is going to look into all that. It’s going to take time. In the New Year there’ll be another meeting and they’ll decide then whether to go ahead with any action.’
There was a picture of his wife and two children on his desk. His wife was wearing a purple jumper; the li
ttle boys, only a few years apart, resembled her in that they both had red hair. The photo, taken in front of their new house, seemed recent because of the snow. I too would like to leave my flat and move to a house. I could sit in the garden with my laptop. This was not likely on the pay scale I was on now and the expense of keeping two cars. I would have to be a professor, like Iain. In time I could become one; there was nothing wrong with my abilities. ‘This isn’t the first time Gaynor has complained about a member of staff. How come this time she’s being taken seriously?’ My voice sounded sharp to my ears.
‘She’s complained twice before,’ he said. ‘Different lecturers.’
‘So I’m her third time lucky!’
‘I can understand your frustration.’
‘What do you think will be the outcome of the meeting?’ I might have to fight and the prospect of battle was in itself repulsive.
‘It depends,’ he said. ‘Often these things just fizzle out.’ He was giving me his full attention. ‘Are you a member of the union?’
‘No.’ It was not the answer he wanted. Suddenly I wished I was sharing this with Malak and Oz. Malak would laugh and Oz, who probably knew Gaynor, would say something mean about her.
‘Iain, I didn’t break her finger. I’m sure of it.’
‘I believe you and I’m sorry that you have to go through this. It might never come to a hearing though. I know the stress of waiting will be hard but don’t let this get to you. That last publication has put you in a strong position.’
At the mention of my paper on Shamil, I brightened up. Every seven years the university submitted its best work for the Research Assessment Exercise. My paper, ‘Royal Support for Jihad – Victorian Britain and the Russian Insurgents’, was my third to be published and I had another one ‘Jihad as Resistance’ pending publication in a journal that had previously included Iain’s work. They had asked for amendments and I was planning to work on the revisions over the holidays.
Iain went on, ‘I’ve heard good things about your talk last Monday. You’re doing well. I can tell you that for this cycle, you’re one of our few people with a strong hand.’
Despite the news about Gaynor and what had happened this morning, Iain’s last words gave me a sense of safety. ‘You’re one of the few with a strong hand’ played in the background of the afternoon. I could hear it even while I was teaching. It wrapped itself around me when I stood in the kitchen making coffee and chatting with Fiona Ingram. Fiona was the closest friend I had in the department, though her demanding husband and even more tiresome children barely left her room to socialise. We often had coffees together in the staff room or in our offices, like true workaholics. Whenever one of us was having a particularly difficult day, the other would mention the one or two lecturer friends in our separate circles who still couldn’t find a full-time job in academia. This morning Fiona was fretting that some students might not make it to the exams because of the snow-blocked roads. I wondered to myself whether Oz would be released on time.
Fiona had the same concern for all her students that I felt only for Oz. She was one of those well-meaning lecturers who could never get to grips with the irony that students were not why we were here. As a result her research was not up to scratch and now Iain would load her with more teaching hours. She did not mention my latest publication but I could tell that she knew about it. Envy gleamed through her mascara. It gave me more satisfaction than anything she could have said. It even cushioned the clunk of finding an email from Oz, which he had sent last night from his personal, not university, email address. His username was SwordOfShamil and the subject was ‘Weapons used for Jihad’.
Natasha, here’s what I’ve been working on. Thanks for agreeing to look at it. I listed my sources. Most of them were from the library but I downloaded the al-Qaeda training manual from the US Justice Department website and I didn’t even have to pay for it!
My email address, now added to the list of SwordOfShamil’s contacts, was bombarded with a stream of spam: Take the quiz: Muslims dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. True or False? Muslims killed 20 million Aborigines in Australia? True or False? Muslims started the First World War? The Second World War? Muslims killed 100 million Native Americans? True or False? Sick of the hypocrisy of the West? Angry that right now in Iraq and Afghanistan they’re killing your brothers and sisters? Then why aren’t you doing anything to stop it …
My flat was on the top floor and climbing up the stairs I realised how tired I was, in need of a bath, my own cooking, my own toiletries and clothes. The last two days were still bright in my mind. I wanted to go over them, to hear the conversations again. I wondered if I would be able to do so without Oz’s arrest burning out the details, rendering our time together as random and obsolete. I reached my landing at the very top floor and froze. It was as if my door was not my door. It was half-open and inside was chaos. A hole in the roof so that I was staring straight up into the dark attic, foot marks on the carpet, my television and DVD player gone, my iPod, even the microwave and the electric blanket. It was a robbery and they had broken in through the roof.
I banged on the door of my neighbour across the hall, but no one was in. I forced myself to walk through the damage, to fight back the tears. It made me queasy that someone had fingered my things, been through my possessions. It made me feel soiled. I called the police and, twice now in the same day, I was in their company, not the same armed officers but still their bulky presence, the hiss of their personal radios, the dark uniforms. How did the robbers get in the attic? How do you think they got on the roof to begin with? How come the neighbours didn’t notice? I wanted these answers but they were asking the questions. I started to feel nervous, the truth forcing itself out of my mouth as if it were made up on the spot. Too quickly, too easily; gently, politely they pushed me back into the old roles. On cue, my skin flared in their presence, it became more prominent than what I was saying; and I was now an impostor asking for attention, a troublesome guest taking up space. They had better things to do and worthier citizens to protect.
I rattled off my mobile number, knowing they would not be able to contact me through it, but unable to explain. Why tell them if they didn’t ask, that my phone was bagged and sealed in the possession of the counter-terrorism unit? I needed to focus. Situations like these required an extra effort, an assertiveness I usually brandished with acquired practice. But the day was catching up with me; I stammered and couldn’t meet their eyes. My mother’s accent crept into my voice, her fear of authority, her tendency to regard questions as interrogations. Growing up in the Soviet Union, state repression was as natural to her as the mountains; it was in every brush with bureaucracy, it was in the factories and offices and even the stairway of my grandparents’ block of flats. She would grip my shoulders as we stood in front of Tbilisi’s passport officials. She would lower her voice when she criticised anything or repeated gossip. My mother told me that a mental hospital could serve as a prison – one of her classmates, a dissident, had been punished with the vague diagnosis of ‘sluggish schizophrenia’. She explained to me that a career could come to an end if you held the wrong political views – early retirement, extended sick leaves and transfers to obscure posts were codes for falling out of favour. Looking around now at the mess of my belongings, my privacy exposed, I remembered my mother. Much more paranoid than me, she would have dealt with this better. ‘You are too trusting of authority,’ she used to say to me. But all my colleagues were trusting; my teachers and bosses were decent and fair. I missed my mother, she was my first home and now, until the roof was fixed, until the gas and water pipes were checked, I would be homeless.
‘You’re better off staying over with some friends,’ was the police verdict, a notebook being shut. ‘Call your insurers.’
The friend, from my PhD days, who would most likely offer me sympathy and help was over two hours away in Dumfries. It was the worst time of day to call Fiona. She would be putting the children to bed, exhausted from w
ashing up after the evening meal. I packed a bag and checked into a hotel. I ordered room service but I was too hungry to wait. Instead I raided the mini bar, my body more responsive than usual after all those non-alcoholic evenings with Malak and Oz. The bottles felt small in my hand as if I were a giant, handling doll-sized utensils. The nuts were stale and the crisps not in my favourite flavour. From the next room I heard the sounds of television. I should put mine on too and catch the news. Instead what was obvious but felt like a brainwave had me moving to the telephone. I could get hold of Tony’s number through Directory Enquiries. He picked up immediately and the old-man tiredness in his voice lifted when he realised it was me.
‘How come you haven’t been answering your mobile?’
‘Long story.’ I told him instead about the robbery and that diverted him.
‘Drugs related,’ he said. ‘This time of year, everyone is short of cash. Where are you going to stay until your roof gets fixed? You can’t stay all that time in a hotel. I suppose you can come here part of the time.’ His voice trailed off as if he wasn’t sure if this was an invitation he wanted to issue.
To commute from Aberdeen every day would be hectic. But perhaps I could do it for part of the week. I swallowed and asked, ‘What’s the news from Sudan that you needed to tell me?’
The Kindness of Enemies Page 10