‘Your father’s in hospital. He’s got kidney failure.’
When I was doing my PhD and out of work, I had asked my father for money but he never sent any. When my mother was ill, I wrote him several letters but never got a reply. When she died, he didn’t bother to offer his condolences – and that for a Sudanese could not be a casual omission. He had another wife now, he had a son. They were his real family, while my mother and I were the old mistake he wanted to forget. The blood rushed to my head. ‘Well, I won’t donate him my kidney if that’s why he called you.’
Tony sighed. The elderly closing ranks against the younger generation. He would want me to be reasonable; he would expect me to take appropriate action. ‘There is a possibility they would fly him to Jordan for a transplant but it might be too late.’
‘How did you find out? Did he call you himself?’
‘No. It was Grusha Babiker who did.’
Grusha used to be my mother’s best friend in Khartoum and they had stayed in touch. She too was a Russian married to a Sudanese. Her son, Yasha (real name Yassir) was my first boyfriend. They crowded around me now, these names and faces from the past – my reproachful father, Grusha who succeeded where my mother failed and Yasha who probably didn’t use his nickname any more. He became a successful lawyer, I had heard; he became more Sudanese as the years passed. Perhaps we half and halfs should always make a choice, one nationality instead of the other, one language instead of the other. We should nourish one identity and starve the other so that it would atrophy and drop off. Then we could relax and become like everyone else, we could snuggle up to the majority and fit in.
Tony said, ‘Natasha, you need to speak to Grusha. She will tell you more about your father. He really isn’t well at all. I gave her your number. She said she would call you.’
But I did not have my phone so I would not get that call. Dear Aunt Grusha. You were my role model all those years ago. Physics lecturer at Khartoum University, the only woman in the faculty. You dressed like Thatcher and went to war against the Sudanese dust so that your house could be impeccable. I missed the only cake she knew how to bake, her signature honey sponge on every birthday table and event in which she was asked to bring a dish. I missed her Arabic with its Russian accent, her deep gold hair, her son who held me when I cried about my parents’ divorce.
Tony started to talk about next month’s Southern Sudanese referendum. He was always even more up-to-date than I was. Predictably he slipped into talking about his time there. He was another Tony then, suntanned and exuberant, not the unremarkable pensioner pottering in his garden or walking in Duthie Park. I remembered him in a Hawaiian shirt, open at the neck, hairy chest and a silver medallion, drink in hand, dancing with an Ethiopian beauty (the last girlfriend he had before my mother). He was on top of his game was how he described it. There were expatriates who hated Sudan for the obvious reasons – the heat, the incompetence, the shortages, the boredom; and for other reasons – the political uncertainty, the racism against the Southern Sudanese and the way grudges were held for the pettiest of reasons. There were also those who understood and loved it or more likely the other way round, loved it first and then understood it. For it was too proud a place to explain itself without that first admission of love. Tony unravelled the Khartoum code. ‘It’s all about mixing with people,’ was how he put it. Initially arriving as an engineer with a multinational company, he stayed on past his term and ventured on his own. There were rumours that he was in the arms trade, that he was a spy, that he was a smuggler. Whichever was true, he made good money out of it and it was his house with its own swimming pool, his latest Mercedes, his frequent trips abroad that first attracted my mother.
I ate the stodgy lasagne I had ordered and drank enough to shed a few sentimental tears over Yasha. It had been twenty years since I last saw him. I wanted to dream of sitting on his lap like I used to. How we would both be dusty because a sandstorm was blowing, how our pores would be open, our skin damp, my scalp wet, the back of his shirt in patches and we wouldn’t feel there was anything wrong with that. It was as if we bypassed the stage of making a good impression; there was never a need for pretence between us, never a need to seduce. There were no edges between us, no sparks, we flowed, we fused, so that one day glancing at our reflection in the mirror we looked like Siamese twins joined at the waist. I even hesitated to draw away from him then, thinking irrationally that my skin would tear. But the moment passed and time proved that we had taken each other for granted and that I, at least, was unable to replace him. He was too diffident to assume that he was the love of my life. And I was short-sighted – I thought there would be other more exciting alternatives. I thought I deserved better than the obvious family friend.
A few years ago Yasha’s life was hit by tragedy. His wife and five-year-old daughter died in a plane crash, a domestic flight from Port Sudan to Khartoum. Compelled by the understanding that condolences were the most important of Sudanese social obligations, I phoned Aunt Grusha. ‘Yasha is in a world of his own,’ she said, her own voice thick with sorrow. ‘I thought I would stay with him for a few days because he’s still not back at work. He keeps himself locked up in his room; I might as well go back to my own house.’ She insisted though that he would want to speak to me. She knocked on his door and I heard her whisper, ‘Natasha Hussein, calling from Scotland.’ It felt strange to hear my old name, to realise that no matter what, they would only know me as such. It was a long time before Yasha picked up but he was only able to garble, ‘Natasha …? Thanks …’ I could have called him again after a week or a few days. Instead I dropped off his radar.
Tonight I nursed my memories. Random images of his Afro comb, his tennis racket, his Bee Gees cassettes. How when he was seven he came over to play, stayed the whole day and then went back home and complained to Grusha that we hadn’t fed him enough. I remember Grusha indignant and my mother embarrassed. Now the memory made me smile but at the time harsh Russian words were exchanged all round. When Yasha was fifteen he would take his father’s car without permission and we would sneak off for drives. He would have one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on the open window. We would talk our own mix of Russian, Arabic and the English we learnt at school. He was the same species as me – I could sprint through the added contradictions of what I knew and what I had inherited and he would keep up the pace, he would know the terrain; he could do Sudan through Russian eyes and Russia through Khartoum eyes. Tonight I wanted to reach, through sleep, to the comfort of how we used to be. Instead I open a drawer and I am appalled to find a baby, a naked baby I put away in the drawer and forgot about.
The baby is dead, it must be dead. Is it dead? I can’t find out, I can’t lift it out of the drawer. I can’t look at it properly. I must close the drawer. I must close the drawer and move away and pretend that I never opened it in the first place.
I surfaced into tears. When I dipped down again it was Gaynor Stead who barged through my dreams.
Gaynor Stead talking about me to Fiona and saying, ‘Natasha put her fat arse on my desk …’ ‘Interesting,’ was Fiona’s characteristic reply, warm and understanding, eager to help. ‘Black arse … fat arse …’ Gaynor was younger in the dream and Fiona, with her arm around her, was older. ‘They are mother and daughter,’ I realised even though in real life they were not. ‘How could I have missed it before?’ my sleeping mind insisted on the connection. ‘They are really mother and daughter.’ ‘Black arse … fat black arse …’ The words looped and steadied, they became rhythmic. I woke up warm with humiliation, not sure where I was.
I tried to find Malak’s number through Directory Enquiries but she was not listed. I would have liked to speak to her now, not to tell her my dream but to listen to her voice. She would tell me that dreams mattered to Shamil, that they influenced decisions he took and manoeuvres he devised. I rummaged in my bag and found my notebook. In it I had written some of the things Malak had said. ‘Sufism is based on the belie
f that the seeker needs a guide. Even Muhammad, on his miraculous night’s ascent through the seven heavens needed Gabriel as his guide.’
In the margins I had scribbled the word ‘guru’. And so how would it work in modern life? I taught for a living but it was learning that had always been more fulfilling. Malak the actor, Natasha the teacher. Sufism delves into the hidden truth behind the disguise. Perhaps Malak was only an actor in disguise. Perhaps Natasha was acting the part of a teacher. If I ever started to seek the kind of knowledge that couldn’t be found in books, who would I want as a guide? Does the student seek the teacher or the other way round?
2. GEORGIA/DAGESTAN, JULY 1854
Anna stumbled around, repeating the same question to anyone who would stop and listen – Avars, Lezgins, Russian prisoners of war, serfs from the Tsinondali estate who had been captured in separate raids, wounded Armenians and Georgian villagers who, with a shock, recognised her – she would clutch their arm and say, ‘Have you seen my baby?’
The hostages were in Polahi now, a Russian outpost that had been captured by Shamil. His troops were stationed around the watchtower and the surrounding areas. The attack on Tsinondali had been part of a series of raids into the Alazani Valley. Now some of the men brandished severed heads as trophies; they herded cattle, slaves and horses up the mountains.
‘Have you seen my baby?’ Anna’s words did not need to be translated, they were understood, but no one wanted to answer her or even meet her eyes. Madame Drancy straggled after the princess. Sometimes she succeeded in leading her back to where they were camped. Sometimes she crouched helplessly, watching Anna, on hands and knees, sifting through rocks and brambles looking for the impossible. ‘Be strong for Alexander. Look at him. See how distraught he is to see you like this.’
Anna turned dutifully towards her son. She understood the logic of Drancy’s argument but she could do nothing about it. A storm was inside her and she could not subdue it. If she could be sure, if she could hold Lydia again, if she could kiss her cool cheeks, if she could put her finger on that mouth that couldn’t swallow, that couldn’t cry, that no longer needed her, that no longer knew her, then maybe she could settle down. Hope was the devil, hope wrestled with her and wouldn’t let her rest. ‘Someone saw her fall and picked her up. Someone found her, someone saved my daughter.’ How could she not believe this? Why should she not believe it? No one dared, not even Madame Drancy, to contradict her or to say that they had seen the horses ride over a bundle that should never have been on the floor of a forest.
‘Come and lie down, Your Highness. Come and have a rest.’
When she lay down, the tears started. ‘I had her by the leg. But I couldn’t keep holding her,’ she mumbled over and over again. She dozed but jerked awake. ‘She is too small … too small for all this …’
Alexander snuggled close to her, his head pushing her stomach. His tears were those of fear rather than grief. So much was happening around him that he could scarcely remember his baby sister.
The next morning Anna’s breasts were hard as rocks. She needed the baby to relieve the discomfort but now she was on her own. Expressing the milk gave her a few lucid moments, a recess from grief. She knew from her experience of farming that if a cow was left unmilked it would eventually dry off. But the process had to be gradual otherwise the milk would curdle, there could be an abscess with fever setting in. She lay down on her side and let the milk seep into the burka she had been given to use as bedding. One of her breasts already had less milk than the other; it would dry up first. When Lydia came back to her, what would she feed on?
‘Madame Drancy, why have we stopped?’
‘The men seem to be expecting someone of high rank to come and see us. It might even be Shamil himself, as they say he has come down from the mountains to inspect his troops. I am terrified of him. He sounds like a monster by all accounts.’ The governess sounded more curious, though, than anxious.
Anna, still lying down, told herself, ‘In this audience I will not be a prisoner. I will be what I really am, a princess of Georgia.’ But it was as if she could still hear herself weeping, it was as if her heart still beat the words Lydia, Lydia.
‘Heathens,’ Madame Drancy was saying. ‘All these men revere Shamil as if he is God’s representative on earth. Just the mention of his name and they’re mumbling salutations and chanting.’
Despite the language barrier, Madame Drancy was communicating with the men. This was done in a mixture of sign language and the little Russian that some of the men spoke. The ordeal seemed to have awakened in her an anthropological interest, an intellectual ability to detach herself and make observations. She had even taken to wearing the burka, stretching inside it as if she were under the bedsheets. It soothed Anna to listen to her voice.
‘Do you know what one of their laws is, Your Highness? No woman is allowed to remain a widow for longer than five months. I might end up in a harem!’
‘Oh you are fanciful.’
‘But I wonder though. We seem valuable to them. Didn’t you notice, yesterday when we entered that village and we were surrounded by crowds, our captors shouted, ‘For Shamil Imam’ and then everyone stepped back?’
Anna couldn’t remember passing a village. Two days or more were a blur, as smoky and as eerie as a nightmare. She turned to wake Alexander up with a kiss, to reassure him that his mother was still with him.
It was not Imam Shamil who came to inspect them but a young man with bright eyes and a roughness to his skin that contrasted with his easy smile. He bowed to Anna. ‘My name is Ghazi Muhammad. I am Imam Shamil’s son and the viceroy of Gagatli and the governor of Karata.’ He spoke Russian poorly and with a heavy accent. Her full concentration was needed to understand every word.
Ghazi went on, ‘These incursions into Georgia are aimed at inducing the population to join our resistance. On behalf of my father, I welcome you as our guests.’
‘Guests! Is this the treatment of guests?’
He said lightly, ‘Clothes will be provided for you to replace your torn ones. And warm food too. I will immediately order this.’
‘This is not enough. Not after what we’ve gone through. I lost my daughter because of you.’ She must not let her voice break, she must not show weakness in front of him.
He looked more sombre now. ‘Your Highness, what happened to the little princess was not at all our intention. Indeed, your lives are precious to us.’
The words ‘little princess’ made her breasts leak. She would not risk speaking now.
‘It was Russian bullets that were fired at you, not ours.’ His voice turned cool with this defence.
She hardened against him. ‘They did not know that we were your captives.’
‘Perhaps so. If it will comfort you, I will immediately order a party to search for your missing child.’
Hope would keep the wound open for longer. Her voice rose. ‘I have done nothing to deserve this. What wrong have I and my children ever done to you?’
Ghazi folded his hands on his belt. ‘Believe me, I am saddened at how much you have suffered. My father is going to be very angry. I blame all this on the brutality of the Lezgins. They are uncouth soldiers of the line. But we were unable to spare my father’s elite force.’
Momentarily he looked young and unguarded. It gave her a surge of strength. ‘You will pay for what you have done to us. Do you think His Majesty the tsar will sit back and do nothing? Do you think my husband, Prince David, will not try to rescue us?’
Ghazi shifted and stood up straighter. ‘You are distraught, Your Highness and understandably in pain. I promise I will do everything I can for your wellbeing. My suggestion is that you rest and once you’re suitably dressed, I will take you to meet my father, the Imam of Chechnya and Dagestan. He has summoned you.’
‘What does he want?’
Ghazi smiled. ‘To speak to you, of course.’
‘I will not go to him.’
The young man raised his eyebrows. �
��He is Imam Shamil.’
With all her strength, she held herself straight. ‘And I am a princess of Georgia. I will not be summoned by him.’
Ghazi bowed and withdrew. She had won a very small victory.
They were given millet bread and dried apricots. It was good to see Alexander eating. He had been dreaming of cake with sugar on top. Anna still dreamt of Lydia, that she had been found, that she was safe, after all, lying on the armchair among the lilac flowers. In the morning she watched Alexander wander off and join the men. Madame Drancy, sensing her disquiet said, ‘They’re only showing him their horses.’
‘Still. I don’t trust them.’ When Alexander was a baby he had looked exactly like Lydia, the same colour hair, the same long lashes.
Madame Drancy was still speaking. ‘We’re going to be given face veils when we meet with Imam Shamil.’ The new clothes they had been given were nothing but ill-assorted rags. Loose Turkish trousers and a sack full of left-foot shoes. Madame Drancy, who had been stripped to her corset, was grateful to have them. Anna, though, refused to change.
She looked around her as if for the first time. The condition of the other prisoners was worse. They had been made to march on foot and many were ill with dysentery and typhoid. No patience or special treatment was given to them. Insolence was dealt with by a scimitar thrust or a shove off a mountain ledge. Women were snatched as handmaidens and children set to work as slaves. The friendliness Shamil’s men showed to Alexander, the relative respect she and Madame Drancy received was denied to the others. Innocent Georgian villagers and serfs who had nothing to do with the war between Russia and the Caucasus. Their crime in the eyes of the Muslims was that they had succumbed to Russia and were now her ally. Georgia had not resisted as it should. Anna bit her lips. Weren’t these the same words she had said to David? The thoughts that could not be voiced in public, the resentment that must stay hidden. We are Georgians, not Russians. But for the sake of peace her grandfather had ceded the throne and here she was, caught up in the war against Russia.
The Kindness of Enemies Page 11