The Kindness of Enemies
Page 27
He thumped the table. ‘Leave them alone! If you imagine that Shamil will be left alone, then you are dreaming …’
She heaved herself off his lap. It had been a mistake to speak to him. She could have been outdoors by now in her coat and muff.
David’s voice rose, following her as she left the room. ‘We might have suffered in the Crimea but the Caucasus is still of vital importance. Shamil will be captured. His own men are beginning to tire of this war. Believe me, he can’t last long.’
Outdoors, she walked slowly, careful not to slip on any unexpected ice patches. The garden lay before her, bare and attractive. Near the greenhouse, she could look up and see the mountains. They were there now, Chuanat and her baby; Bahou and Ameena. She missed them, she could not help it; there was an appetite inside her for them. She wanted them to know that she was going to be confined soon and that Alexander still chanted ‘la ilaha illa Allah’.
The snow on the peaks was the colour of cream. When will blood cease to flow in the mountains … After all these years, would Shamil finally be defeated? She had dreamt again of him last night. She often did. Most of the dreams had neither a setting nor a plot. They were just dreams of his presence. And in his presence was a force, a fullness that was sufficient, an end in itself. Sometimes in the dreams, she did actually see his face. But more often than not there was only his silhouette.
5. THE CAUCASUS, MARCH 1857–JULY 1858
A rumour was going around that the Russians had given Jamaleldin a slow-acting poison. They had given it to him before his release and only now were its effects showing. He was losing weight rapidly and was always coughing. Too weak to go out riding, he spent most of his time lying down.
Jamaleldin knew better. He knew the first time he coughed and a glob of blood fell on the snow, melting it a little, seeping into a lighter red. It had been the first clear day of spring and he had gone out riding with Ghazi. They carried their falcons on their wrists. He felt the weakness overcome him, a dizziness as if he had not eaten, even though he had. He stopped over the plains and let Ghazi ride on without him. I do not want to hunt, he realised. Frost all around him but he felt hot. He veered his horse towards the north and stared down the slopes, out towards Georgia. His other life was there, all the things he knew and missed. But he felt too tired to yearn, the bird heavy on his arm. He slipped down from the saddle and was seized by a violent fit of coughing. The falcon grew restless, it fluttered its wings. His chest was tight; all this mountain air around him and it was a struggle to inhale even a little of it. Perspiration broke throughout his body. He saw the blood on the snow.
‘Father, this is not a poison working through me. It is a disease called tuberculosis. I have come across it in the Russian army. There is no cure for it. Because it is contagious. I need to leave Dargo. I have to be alone. It takes a year or so to run its course …’ He did not add, ‘… it usually ends in a painful death.’ He would break down if he did and a man of the Caucasus must not be seen to cry.
Shamil arranged for him to move to Soul-Kadi, an aoul hidden behind the massive peaks that made up the Gates of Andi. He gave him a young Georgian prisoner-of-war to nurse him and five armed guards. Shamil was always fearful that Jamaleldin would be recaptured by the Russians; he would not take any chances.
In Soul-Kadi, Jamaleldin found the solitude not only bearable but welcome. The villagers made no demands on him. They left roses at his door, baskets of food. The house he was in was small and bare but it had a roof and when he had the energy, he climbed up and dozed in the fresh air. At night he slept on a cot rather than on the floor – a Russian habit, and when he was weak, that cot was carried up to the roof. On his back he would watch the clouds moving, trailed by the winds.
His father put aside his pride and sent down to the military fort in Khasavyurt for medicine. The medicine came but did not help. It surprised Jamaleldin that his father still had hope. Love clouded his vision. Or else he was simply a powerful man who did not easily give up.
In the middle of winter, Ghazi came to visit. He hung up his gun and slipped down to sit cross-legged on the floor. He sat far away from the cot because Jamaleldin insisted. Ghazi’s good health lit up the room with a rude glow. His strength was like a force of nature contained indoors. Jamaleldin kept roses in the room to overpower the smell of illness. Ghazi brought in other smells, of sweat, horses and clothes damp from rain.
‘Why are you alone?’ he blustered. ‘Where’s that Georgian prisoner Father gave you?’
‘I exchanged him.’
‘For how many men?’
‘None.’
‘What?’
‘I got things instead.’
‘What?’ Ghazi leant forward. The light from the fire flickered on his face.
‘Things I need.’
‘Medicine, you mean?’
‘Sort of. What’s your news?’
‘It’s not going well,’ Ghazi said, picking up a yellow rose and raising it to his nose. He meant the war, the battles, the resistance. ‘As long as Russia was losing in the Crimea, the men had hope. Now it’s all gone, especially after the cholera outbreak. Hidalti said —’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Chief of artillery. There is so little ammunition now. He said, we need to make every bullet work. So we’re getting the men to drive an iron nail through each bullet.’
‘Is this practical?’
‘Not really. All of lower Chechnya is in their hands now. We need to get it back. And there are bad feelings among the tribes, too much rivalry and bickering. Some of them betrayed us and submitted. Then the Russians betrayed them too. They moved the tribes that surrendered to Manych.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Far north. And it’s a dump. Father himself couldn’t have come up with a more severe punishment. The other day a Chechen delegation came to him asking to negotiate for peace. He said to them, ‘Do you want to go to Manych as well?’
Jamaleldin smiled, ‘I’m sure they had no case after that.’
‘Of course. Who in their right mind is going to give up their land without a fight?’
It disappointed Jamaleldin to admit it but it was true. ‘The Russians don’t want peace any more. There was a time when they did. But Father refused all talk of peace. Who has the courage now to talk to him about surrender? I tell you, my illness is a blessing.’
Ghazi smiled. ‘You have become a true Sufi. Thanking Allah for your misfortune. All these lessons Father arranged for you must have paid off.’
To laugh would aggravate a fresh bout of coughing. Jamaleldin bit his smiling lips. It was a pleasure just to look at Ghazi, to watch his face. It did not really matter what news he brought with him. ‘I have a gift for you,’ Jamaleldin said.
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Look on the shelf over there. Bring it down.’
Ghazi stood up. ‘What on earth is this?’
‘A music box. You turn it and listen.’
Ghazi sat down and started to turn the handle. He looked like an overgrown child.
‘Gently, man,’ Jamaleldin said.
The music box was painted in gaudy colours. On it was a picture of the Lake of Lucerne with swans afloat on the shining water. The first notes of ‘The Gondolier’s Song’ filled the room. Ghazi’s mouth fell open. When he could speak he said, ‘This is beautiful, brother.’
Jamaleldin watched the muscles on his brother’s hand as he turned the handle. In exchange for the Georgian prisoner, he had also got books, paintings and an atlas. It would be better if his father never heard about this. He would not understand.
Ghazi listened intently as ‘The Gondolier’s Song’ gave way to ‘The Skater’s Waltz’. He tilted his head in appreciation. This was the Ghazi Muhammad feared by every Russian serving in the Caucasus. And here he sat enraptured by a toy, simple. His enemies would jeer if they saw him now, they whose pleasures were sophisticated, whose tastes were more refined. Jamaleldin felt a rush of love for him.
Ghazi stayed with him a couple of days. He could not be spared for long. Jamaleldin spoke about Russia, about girls skating on ice, about the steeplechase and the railways. Good, kind people, neither devils nor monsters. Ghazi took it all in, fascinated and wanting to learn. No matter what, Jamaleldin would always be his older brother. The one who knew more.
By spring Jamaleldin was emaciated. Shamil sent a messenger to Khasavyurt begging for the army doctor. It was agreed that three naibs would be held hostage in the doctor’s absence. Two other highlanders half-dragged, half-carried the unfortunate doctor up the steepest and most terrifying of terrains. By the time he reached Jamaleldin, five days later, he was trembling from fatigue and nauseous from vertigo. Jamaleldin was too ill to apologise. Instead he was happy to see the doctor. At last someone he could speak Russian to, ask for news of friends, go over memories.
There was nothing the doctor could do for him. A few preparations to ease the pain. But the talking was enough; this drawing towards him of his other, Russian life. Days and years that mattered, that could not be erased. His accomplishments, his friendships, the good times, even the disappointments – how the emperor refused to give him permission to marry Daria Semyonovich or to engage in active service in the Crimea. He shared all this with the doctor, indulging in the memories. Listening to the doctor as he narrated the latest military gossip, who lost money to whom and who was called to fight a duel. Bright brief life as he had known it.
After the doctor left, the summer weather enabled Jamaleldin to lie again on the roof. He watched the wind orchestrate the clouds. He saw the sun melt the last avalanches of snow. He turned to look at the local yellow roses he had come to need, delicate petals, proud thorns. When he dozed, it was as if their tenderness and scent fused into him.
Then even to be carried up to the roof became too exhausting. When Shamil visited him, he did not, like Ghazi, stay in the corner of the room. Instead he held Jamaleldin in his arms and prayed for him. The prayers dulled the terror that often flared up as vicious as the disease itself. The prayers lulled Jamaleldin to spaces where the pain subsided and sleep was within reach. His father’s hand lay on his chest; it felt heavy and reassuring, a memory of childhood, of other blessings. Shamil propped him up and made him spit, rubbed his back, gave him honey to drink. Jamaleldin saw the sadness in his eyes, the crush. Only three years since his return. Only three years together. Jamaleldin wanted to live, wanted to feel healthy again but death was pulling him away against his will, against his father’s will.
Jamaleldin fell into a deep sleep and woke up in the middle of the night to see his father standing up in prayer. He recognised the recitation learnt long ago in Akhulgo. For truly with every hardship comes ease. Truly with every hardship comes ease. He thought he had forgotten these meanings but he hadn’t. They were buried under the new things he had learnt – French and the poems of Lermontov, how to draw a map, how to buy a railway ticket – but the foundation had remained: there is no god but Allah, Muhammad is His beloved. There are no limits to His Mercy, there is no will except His will. There were colours in the room now and his father growing taller so that his head touched the roof. Sheikh Jamal el-Din was also in the room, sitting on the floor and on his chest was an eye, an open unblinking eye that was looking straight at Jamaleldin. I must be dreaming, the fever gone to my head. Such a great constriction that it was hard to breathe. He heard the chants of the Orthodox funeral services. Were they burying a Russian? They must be. A dear, good friend who had walked by his side and helped him up when he stumbled. Who made him laugh and taught him something useful, something he couldn’t now recall because he was dizzy from the room’s breaking brightness. How strange that the eye on Sheikh Jamal el-Din’s chest was the only light in the room! His father was large, very large, but his voice was soft and Jamaleldin felt the room swell up with angels.
IX
High Torn Banners
1. KHARTOUM, JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2011
I stayed in Khartoum much longer than planned. Throughout the New Year and the run-up to the referendum, which resulted in South Sudan gaining its independence. Safia had hired a lawyer and taken me to court to prove that I was no longer a Muslim and as such deserved to be cut off from my father’s inheritance. My first instinct on hearing this was to brush it off and assume that I would be well out of the country before proceedings started. It did not strike me as important enough to postpone my return. When I casually mentioned it to Yasha, though, his reaction made me reconsider.
‘Why are you laughing?’ he said. ‘This is serious.’
We were in his flat. I was spending more and more time there so that I could access the internet. Evening after evening we sat opposite one another; I with my laptop and he spread out on a recliner, with his. Sometimes we worked and sometimes we watched films or I wrote emails to Malak. His flat had modern furniture compared to his mother’s downstairs. It was more comfortable too. He had no qualms about using the air-conditioner even when opening the window and putting on the ceiling fan would have been tolerable, if a little balmy. Soon I discovered that after eating the healthy dinner Grusha cooked, he would order takeaways and keep eating late into the night. He drank Pepsi instead of water. No wonder.
‘I am laughing,’ I said. ‘Because Safia’s charge sounds deliciously medieval.’
‘You have to fight this, Natasha.’ He was wearing a white shirt. It flattered him as did the gritty, end-of-the-day look.
I shook my head.
He picked up his phone. ‘Do you want rice pudding or crème caramel?’
This was the start of the post-dinner bingeing that I had recently been pulled into. He would order more food – kebab, pizza or shawerma – but I stuck primly to dessert. Grusha’s cooking was delicious and healthy. The kind of soups I missed: fresh vegetables and tender chicken or lamb. The ingredients were less packaged here, not beaten into submission by supermarket requirements. Often the vegetables were misshapen, twinned and oddly stuck together but their scent was pronounced, their taste more distinct. There was no reason to keep on eating after such a dinner. But this had become Yasha’s habit.
‘Crème caramel,’ I said.
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’ I had to resist the abandonment he was proposing. He put through the order. A large pizza that he would eat all by himself, two kebab sandwiches, pastry for dessert. Sometimes the shops would not deliver and we would have to go there ourselves and pick the food up. I liked these late-night drives, kept secret from Grusha, who would definitely disapprove. Yasha had taken me into his confidence, shared with me his nocturnal guzzling. I never had the heart to lecture him on watching his weight, let alone reducing it. I did worry that he was jeopardising his health but I did not want to embarrass him.
We would drive through poorly lit streets and past the airport. Once we saw a car explode, just like that, orange flames rising up. An excited group gathered. For a long time afterwards, the loud pop of the tyres numbed my ears.
‘Safia can’t go around making such accusations. It’s immoral.’ One of the buttons of his shirt had come undone. ‘And it’s obvious that her motive is greed.’
‘I don’t want anything.’ It was too much drama to be pulled into. But my father’s copy of Hadji Murad – I would like to have that. Surely it meant nothing to Safia; I doubted she could read Russian. ‘My brother deserves it all.’ I had been regularly meeting Mekki. Every time felt special, almost too good to be true.
‘I am opposed to this apostasy law but if it won’t be amended, then the message needs to go out loud and clear that it is virtually impossible to enforce. Safia’s position is weak. You will win and afterwards we can turn around and sue her for slander.’
I noted the ‘we’ in his sentence. It was because he was a lawyer. He wanted to help me in his professional capaci
ty.
Instinctively I switched from Russian to English. ‘So let me get this straight. I am to go to court and prove that I am a Muslim? I haven’t got a leg to stand on. Nothing. I am not even sure if I am. What is this, the inquisition?’
He had been shaking his head as I was talking. Now he said, also in English, ‘That’s exactly it. You shouldn’t have to prove that you’re a Muslim – you are one by birth, by default. You have a right, a human right, to be a bad Muslim, a lapsed Muslim, a secular Muslim, whatever. She though, doesn’t have any right to excommunicate you, especially when she has something to gain out of it. Believe me, we can get this thrown out of court in a matter of minutes.’ He smiled as if this was a case he wanted to sink his teeth into.
‘Yasha, this is going to mess up my plans.’
He waved his hand in dismissal and changed back into Russian. ‘One week. Trust me. Just delay your return by a week.’ He paused and looked at me as if he was noticing something about me for the first time. ‘You’re the only one, apart from my mother, who still calls me Yasha.’
‘It’s because, Yassir,’ I emphasised his real name, ‘I’ve been away for twenty years. I’m stuck in a time warp.’
‘Well get you out of it.’
I was beginning to like his use of ‘we’. I guessed that he had carried it over from Arabic but still there was a grandness about it and a welcome.
The case ended up taking a lot longer than a week. To start with I had to prove that I was my father’s daughter. I had to prove that Natasha Wilson was Natasha Hussein. This required that I obtain my adoption papers from the UK, get them authenticated by the Foreign Office and the Sudanese Embassy in London. To my relief and surprise, Tony, all the way from Aberdeen, was helpful throughout this process. He ‘rose to the occasion’ as Grusha said and facilitated most of this paperwork.