The Kindness of Enemies

1. SCOTLAND, DECEMBER 2010

Allah was inscribed on the blade in gold. Malak read the Arabic aloud to me. She looked more substantial than my first impression; an ancient orator, a mystic in shawls that rustled. The sword felt heavy in my hand; iron-steel, its smooth hilt of animal horn. I had not imagined it would be beautiful. But there was artistry in the vegetal decorations and Ottoman skill from the blade’s smooth curve down to its deadly tip. A cartouche I could not make out. I put my thumb on the crossbar — long ago Imam Shamil’s hand had gripped this. Malak said the sword had been in her family for generations. ‘If I ever become penniless, I will show it to the Antiques Roadshow,’ she laughed, and offered me tea. It was still snowing outside, the roads were likely to become blocked, but I wanted to stay longer, I wanted to know more. I put the sword back into its scabbard. With care, almost with respect, she mounted it on the wall again.

I followed her to the kitchen. It felt unusual to walk in my socks through a stranger’s house. Malak had asked me to take off my boots at the door and she herself was wearing light leather slip-ons. The house suited her with its rugs of burgundy and browns, cushions for what must be a seating area on the floor and more Islamic calligraphy on the walls. One tapestry took up the whole side of the sitting room, its large rugged words stitched in green. It looked like a banner carried by a charging horseman. Whatever these letters symbolised was the reason men left the comforts of their homes for the collision of the battlefield. Or was that too idealised an interpretation? My childhood memory of the Arabic alphabet had become hazy and the letters were not easy to distinguish. Malak might read the words out to me. Remarkable that a successful actor would choose to move to such an isolated farmhouse. Even the nearest town, Brechin, was miles away. And this home did not look like a bolthole, an excuse to visit her student son now and again. It looked settled, lived in. Malak Raja had turned her back on London, carried her furniture and family heirlooms north. ‘I brought the scimitar by train,’ she said, scooping tea leaves. ‘I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it past security at Heathrow.’

I took my notebook out and laid it open on the kitchen table. I thought she would be used to media interviews. But I had looked her up on Google and, surprisingly, there were none. Only a list of her roles and a brief description: Born in Baghdad of Persian and Russian ancestry … has a diverse range of accents … trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Her roles were too minor to merit interviews. Perhaps the female equivalent of Yul Brynner or Ben Kingsley was doomed not to fare as well. Malak Raja had been one of Macbeth’s witches on stage; she was an auntie in Bombay Barista, a mother in the BBC’s new Conan the Barbarian. Recently she had played the wife of a beleaguered Iranian ambassador in Spooks and the voice of a viper in a Disney cartoon. Later when we became friends she told me that being a viper was lucrative.

Now at her kitchen table, instead of listening to my questions, she asked me about myself. The tea smelled of cinnamon and threatened a memory. She knew only what her son had told her. ‘And you know what boys are like,’ she twisted her bangles. ‘They never tell their mothers everything.’ She called him Ossie. His friends and teachers called him Oz. We were all eager to avoid his true name, Osama.

I too had an unfortunate name; my surname. One that I nagged my mother and stepfather to change. It was good that I did that; had I waited for marriage, I would have waited in vain. ‘Imagine,’ I said, ‘arriving in London in the summer of 1990, fourteen years old, just as Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Imagine an unfamiliar school, a teacher saying to the class, “We have a new student from Sudan. Her name is Natasha Hussein.”’ From the safe distance of the future, I joined my classmates in laughing out loud.

Malak grunted with sympathy. ‘Oh they must have had a field day with you!’ Behind her, through the window, the snow was falling, grey and continuous like static on a television screen.

I felt a slight drop of fatigue. I had been tense these past few days preparing for yesterday’s talk. The previous night I had hardly slept, post-presentation euphoria and that unexpected new thread. I had started with ‘Thank you for coming out in this freezing weather.’ For a Monday at 8 p.m., it was a good turnout, boosted by the History Society’s new introduction of refreshments. There was also a decent showing from the Muslim Society, drawn no doubt by the title, ‘Jihad as Resistance — Russian Imperial Expansion and Insurrection in the Caucasus’. When they realised that my focus was Imam Shamil’s leadership from 1830 to 1859 rather than the present, they seemed a little restless. Sensitive to their attention span, I finished ten minutes earlier than planned. The Q&A session started with predictable questions from my colleagues that reflected their own research interests. Then a young girl in hijab asked, ‘Are you a Muslim?’ It was easy to dismiss the query as irrelevant, even silly. I laughed and that made her face flush with embarrassment. She was sitting next to Oz and I got the impression that they had come together. He was one of my brightest students, the one who asked the good questions in class, the one I found myself preparing my lectures for, pointing out an extra reference to, making that little bit more of an effort. Like turning back to the mirror to dab on another bit of make-up before an important meeting.

Oz disappointed me at the Q&A session by not saying anything. Perhaps I even turned to him when the laughter died, expecting at least a response. But he just looked past me, out of the window, at the first flakes of snow. After the talk, as I was putting my laptop away, he came up to me and said that his mother’s descendants were from the Caucasus and that she could tell me more. ‘Call her,’ he said, his hands in the back of his jeans, his trouser legs tucked into big white trainers. ‘She can tell you more, personal stuff too.’ He took out his mobile phone. ‘Here’s her number, she won’t mind at all. Come over and see our sword. A real one that was used for jihad, I’m not kidding!’

When I called Malak the following morning and she said, ‘Come now if you like,’ I jumped in the car and drove all the way with my windscreen wipers flapping away at the falling snow. I was on a high when I held the sword, knowing that it was a privilege, hoping for a breakthrough. No, I was not here to talk about myself. She had lured me this far like a fortune teller. I was usually restrained, keeping back the shards and useless memories. I had worked too hard to fit in. To be here and now. That’s how I wanted to appear — topical, relevant, and despite my research interest, inhabiting the present. And now the mention of my father’s name stalled me, I teetered on the brink of the usual revulsion. If I had been Dr Hussein, the girl wouldn’t have asked me if I were Muslim. And yet still I would have had to explain the non-Muslim Natasha. Better like this, not even Muslim by name.

Many Muslims in Britain wished that no one knew they were Muslim. They would change their names if they could and dissolve into the mainstream, for it was not enough for them to openly condemn 9/11 and 7/7, not enough to walk against the wall, to raise a glass of champagne, to eat in the light of Ramadan and never step into a mosque or say the shahada or touch the Qur’an. All this was not enough, though most people were too polite to say it. All these actions somehow fell short of the complete irrevocable dissolution that was required. Yet children pick up vibes, they know more than they can express, they feel and understand before learning the words for a particular emotion or idea. Many of the young Muslims I taught throughout the years couldn’t wait to bury their dark, badly dressed immigrant parents who never understood what was happening around them or even took an interest, who walked down high streets as if they were still in a village, who obsessed about halal meat and arranged marriages and were so impractical, so arrogant as to imagine that their children would stay loyal. Instead their children grew up as chameleons, not only shifting their colours at will, but able to focus on two opposing goals at the same time. They grew up reptiles plotting to silence their parents’ voices, to muffle their poor accents, their miseries, their shuffling feet, their lives of toil and bafflement, their dated ideas of the British Empire, their gratitude because they remembered all too clearly the deadends they had left behind.

I was actually one of the lucky ones. I was one of the ones who saw the signs early on in the tricksy ways of schoolchildren, in the way my mother, snow-white as she was, was disliked for being Russian. I saw the writing on the wall and I was not too proud to take a short-cut to the exit.

Oz brought in a flurry of snow with him. He stood stamping his wellies, taking off his scarf and gloves. Melting snow gleamed on his hair and I could tell that his lips were numb. The news of the snowstorm was not reassuring. ‘Some of the trains are cancelled; I had to change twice. Here, Malak, I got you the vitamins you asked for.’ He used her first name as if he was indulging her. He seemed more grown-up in her presence. Perhaps his role was to be the steady responsible son so that she could be the ditzy artistic parent. Yet I had seen in him too the inclination for theatre. Oz liked to make his classmates laugh at his impersonations of politicians. He once had me laughing out loud when he used a clothes hanger and did Abu Hamza, the hook-handed cleric. Shaking the snow off his coat, he hung it behind the door. ‘When I got out of the station the bus wasn’t there and all the taxis were taken. The roads are pretty bad. I walked because it was quicker than hanging around waiting for the bus.’

‘Poor Ossie,’ drawled Malak without much sympathy. This was a sharper side of her, a glimpse of the mother who had handed him calmly to babysitters, tucked him into boarding school during a messy divorce, gazed past him as if he never existed while she was practising for a new role. I guessed he was not a child who was encouraged to complain, a child who learnt to search for comfort away from her.

He turned to me. ‘Did you see the sword? It belonged to Imam Shamil.’

‘We can’t be a hundred per cent sure.’ Malak ran her finger through her hair. ‘It could have belonged to someone else.’

‘You haven’t told her yet, have you?’ He was excited or just flushed from his walk in the cold. He drew out a chair but didn’t sit down. He looked straight into my eyes and later, I would remember that focused look, the youthful energy in the voice. ‘Imam Shamil is my … is our,’ a quick glance at his mother to include her, ‘great, great, great — not exactly sure how many greats I should say — grandfather! We are descended through his son, Ghazi.’

My delight was muted by my mobile which, now on silent, buzzed again. It was Tony, who since my mother’s death has been plaguing me with his sadness. Every other evening tears and long-winded confessions of guilt — he had not looked after her enough, he had not urged her to see a specialist soon enough. It was earlier than usual for him; on most days he only started to unravel after six. I rejected his call. I would not act as his grief counsellor today.

I said to Malak, ‘Did you know that Queen Victoria supported Imam Shamil? His picture was on the front page of the London Times with a call for the English to be,’ I made quotation marks with my fingers, ‘ “the generous defenders of liberty against the brutal forces of the Russian Empire.”’

Malak made a face at her son. ‘Queen Victoria championed a jihad.’

Oz sat down. ‘Don’t be naive, Malak. If Russia took over the Caucasus, it would have threatened India. Besides, the word “jihad” then didn’t have the same connotation it has now.’

‘Ever since 9/11, jihad has become synonymous with terrorism,’ she said. ‘I blame the Wahabis and Salafists for this. Jihad is an internal and spiritual struggle.’

‘But this is not entirely true. If someone hits us, we need to hit back.’

‘It’s better to forgive.’

‘No it’s not. Limiting jihad to an internal struggle has become a bandwagon for every pacifist Muslim to climb on. You Sufis …’ he wagged his finger at his mother.

‘Am I a Sufi? Do you see me as such? Then you are doing me a great honour.’

‘You’re a wannabe, Malak. Besides, what choice do you have? Actresses aren’t exactly welcome in mosques.’ He gave a little laugh but I could tell that he was having a dig at his mother.

‘I couldn’t care less what conservative Muslims think of me, but a wannabe Sufi? Really!’ she looked at me and rolled her eyes. I smiled.

‘Yes, of course, with your chants and spiritual retreats,’ he continued. ‘Plus you’re interrupting. I was saying that you Sufis play down your historical role in jihad. Most fighters against European Imperialism were Sufis. And Imam Shamil is a prime example. He was the head of a Sufi order.’

This was not new to me. But this stress on Sufism was not an angle I had previously considered to be important. I needed to reconsider. Shamil’s Sufism might well be what I needed to refine my research direction.

Malak replied, ‘Every fight Shamil fought was on the defence. He was protecting his villages against Russian attack. And surrender to the Russians would have meant the end of their traditional way of life, the end of Islam in Dagestan. The Russians were so brutal they often didn’t take prisoners of war. By comparison Shamil’s generals were scholarly and disciplined. This type of jihad is different from the horrible crimes of al-Qaeda.’

‘I agree, but still it was guerrilla warfare …’ reiterated her son.

‘No it wasn’t.’

He grinned. ‘Malak, you think guerrilla warfare is what you see in the movies! Shamil understood that he couldn’t pitch a direct battle against the tsar’s large and well-equipped army so he lured sections of them up the mountains. He tricked them into dividing and then launched attacks at them.’

‘Well, that is a clever thing to do.’

‘That cleverness is guerrilla tactics.’

But Malak wasn’t going to be shaken. ‘Listen Oz, the door of jihad is closed. Jihad needs an imam and there is no imam now. Jihad is for upholding the values of Allah; it’s not for scoring political points, it’s not for land, it’s not for rights, it’s not for autonomy.’

‘It’s for getting us power over our enemies. Jihad is not something we should be ashamed of.’

‘What we are ashamed of is what is done in its name. Not every Muslim war is a jihad. Not suicide bombers or attacking civilians.’

I said, ‘The mufti of Bosnia said that Muslims shouldn’t use the word “jihad” and Christians shouldn’t use the word “crusade”.’

‘See,’ said Malak with a sharp look at her son.

‘Well, I shall use it,’ Oz glared back at her. He sounded bitter. ‘If Shamil were here today he wouldn’t have sat back and let Muslim countries be invaded. He wouldn’t have given up on Palestine and he wouldn’t have accepted the two-faced wimps we have as leaders.’

His voice was unnecessarily loud. The slight tension that followed made me conscious of the time. ‘I really should be going. If the snow is going to get worse, then I might make it if I leave now.’ I stood up, but not without reluctance.

And it was perhaps because of this desire to stay that I succumbed to the following sequence of events. Their drive was thick with snow and I was unable to get my car to the main road. Phone calls to local cab companies elicited the same response — they were unwilling to venture that far out into the countryside on a night like this. Around nine in the evening, I accepted Malak’s repeated invitation to stay the night. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

I ended up staying with them not one but two nights. Two days of the brightest sunshine and a record-breaking amount of snow. The university was closed and lectures cancelled; the schools and airports were also closed. It was unprecedented and for me, welcome. Briefly my normal life was suspended and I inhabited days that were elongated and crystallised; an unplanned break, a suspension of all that was routine and orderly. It would not be accurate to say that I fell in love. But I was captivated by the combination of Oz, Malak and their isolated sandstone house. I did not feel that I could outgrow them, that our conversations would go stale or that I would tire of their company. Perhaps it was because I started to search for traces of Shamil in them. Or it could have been the awareness that we were under siege, randomly brought together, an unexpected gift of freshness, more hospitality than I had bargained for when I drove out here, certainly more hours in the proximity of Shamil’s sword and Arabic calligraphy.

But to go back to the first morning and my breakfast with Oz. Malak was busy with an exercise routine that turned out to be long and elaborate — an hour on the treadmill, forty minutes weight-training and a further hour split between Pilates and yoga. She also, Oz told me, had protein shakes for breakfast. He said this with a mix of wonder and disapproval. It struck me that this was what I would miss out on if I never had children — not only the baby stage, the pushchair, the school runs — but a young adult assessing me, poking me with their own personal rubric. We sat in the kitchen with stacks of toast and tea. There was honey to put on the toast; it came in a fancy jar with a London label. I had to search the cupboards high and low for a teabag that was not spiced, not decaffeinated and not organic. Oz spread peanut butter on his toast. Last night he had lent me some clothes because Malak was petite and nothing she wore could have fitted me. So now we were wearing the same GAP sweatshirts, mine grey and his green; and almost identical chequered pyjama trousers. It still felt odd to walk around in socks but it was a rule of the house. They did not want shoes indoors.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I was going to drop out of uni.’

I was taken aback. ‘But your grades are good.’

‘It’s nothing to do with grades. Besides, I only bother to show up for your classes.’

‘Well I’m flattered, but what’s the problem? Aren’t you happy with your choice of subjects? There’s more flexibility nowadays in the kind of degree you can take. Have a chat with your tutor.’ I should have known better than to start doling out suggestions. He seemed slightly more withdrawn, as if his gush of confidence was stilted by my presumptions.

‘I’m reading all the time but the thing is I’m not reading the books I’m supposed to read.’

Inwardly I groaned. Another ‘independent studies’ candidate ahead of his time. ‘Well, if you get through your first degree, and it shouldn’t be a problem if you set your mind to it, then you can register for a PhD and read and research the topic of your choice.’

‘I’m already doing that.’

‘What are you working on?’ I gulped my tea. It was already cooling down.

‘I’m researching the types of weapons used in jihad. My thesis is that they reflect the technology of their time and are often the same as those used by the enemy.’

I chewed on my toast. ‘Well, that makes sense.’

‘But it violates some of the Sharia’s rules, rules which have been conveniently forgotten. Such as not using fire because it is only Allah’s prerogative to burn sinners in Hell. No human being should use fire on another human being.’

I saw charging horsemen wielding swords. They galloped towards enemy lines of cannons. One by one they were shot and they slid off their horses.

‘Would you look at what I’ve already written and give me feedback?’ he was saying.

‘Sure. Email it to me.’ I started telling Oz of a Russian film I had seen. It depicted Shamil’s battles and the camera was angled behind the cannons facing the charging highlanders.

‘Like cowboys and Indians,’ said Oz and made me laugh.

But he was not so off point. The comparison had been made before by sympathetic historians. The Caucasus represented as Russia’s wild west, Shamil the noble savage, as magnificent and inscrutable as a Native American chief.

Not shy of sounding abrupt Oz asked, ‘Why are you so interested in Shamil?’

‘From a purely secular perspective, he was one of the most successful rebels of the colonial age.’

‘Why do you have to say “from a purely secular perspective”?’

I paused, momentarily caught out. I put down my piece of toast.

‘Do you assume that I am religious and so you want to distance yourself from me?’

I did not want to distance myself from him. I shook my head.

‘You’re different from the other lecturers,’ he went on. ‘A Muslim talks to them and they put on that wide-eyed tolerant look, quick little nods and inside they’re congratulating themselves thinking, “Look at me, I’m truly broad-minded, listening to all this shit and not batting an eyelid.” Whereas you’re the opposite. You pretend that you’re sarcastic but deep down you have respect. Am I right?’

He was like his mother, wanting me to talk about myself, but I was not ready to answer his question. I concentrated on chewing toast and finishing my tea. Then to break the silence I said, ‘Here is something about me that is odd. I dream of historical figures. I’ve dreamt of Stalin and Rasputin.’

He smiled. ‘It’s because you were reading about them.’

‘But I’ve never ever dreamt of Shamil.’

‘Not everyone can dream of Imam Shamil,’ he said a little coolly.

‘Why not? Is he a prophet?’

‘No, but people like him don’t just pop up in anyone’s dreams. Only in those who’ve achieved a certain spiritual level.’

He made it sound like a video game. I decided to humour him. ‘Has Shamil ever visited you in a dream?’

He looked at me as if to test whether I was teasing him or not. I kept a straight face.

‘No,’ Oz said. ‘I have often, though, wished that I lived in his time.’

‘To fight with him?’ This was one of the leading questions. Without meaning to, I found myself asking him one of the questions the trainers suggested we put to our students. I hadn’t intended to test if Oz was ‘vulnerable to radicalisation’, but the question presented itself now, appropriate and easy.

He said, ‘What I like best about his days is the certainty. Everything was clear cut. Shamil and his people were the goodies; the Russians were the baddies. The Caucasus belonged to the Muslims, the tsar’s army were the invaders.’

So, according to the guidelines, how should his response be classified? Did he tick this particular box or not? According to the guidelines, a student who was ‘vulnerable to radicalisation’ would have symptoms of regression, a hankering for an idealised past, a misguided belief in authenticity.

In the afternoon, Malak and I went for a walk leaving Oz shovelling snow in front of the house. The shining sun was no threat to the packed snow. We sank into it with our boots and messed up its neatness, beating down a path all the way to the main road. Paths, grass and asphalt were all one and the same. I breathed in the freshest air and put my gloved hands in my pockets. My mobile phone rang and it was my stepfather again. I ignored him. Nothing must break what felt like a spell. I vowed that tomorrow morning I would wake up at dawn to milk every minute of it. Here in this setting, with these two people, sleep was a waste of time.

‘Do you ever go back to Chechnya?’ I asked Malak.

She shook her head. ‘But I have cousins there and we keep in touch. During the war I was always worrying and calling them. I tried to help them as much as I could; I still send them money.’

The name of Shamil hovered over the recent Chechen rebel wars. The militant leader Shamil Basayev was responsible for the terrorist attacks on the North Ossetia school and the Moscow theatre hostages.

As if to dispel the negative images from her mind Malak said, ‘One of the most popular films in Chechnya in the 1990s was Braveheart. Hundreds of pirated videos were sold.’

Probably young Chechen men saw themselves as the William Wallaces of the Caucasus. I smiled and we spoke a little bit about the film. It was interesting to hear her opinions, an insider’s view of the film industry that I was not familiar with.

We came across another farmhouse; a neighbour shovelling snow. Malak stopped to chat. She sounded comfortable as she swapped updates about the weather and introduced me as a house guest. I gathered that she had only met this particular neighbour once before. She was still relatively new in the area. It made me wonder at her motives for leaving London. It was a brave step to take, to live in such isolation, to start anew. Though I appreciated the peace and fresh air, this lifestyle was not for me. I needed the anonymity of the city. Here I was conscious of being African in the Scottish countryside, of the need to justify my presence.

To avoid small talk with the neighbour I stepped back and took out my mobile to answer Tony’s calls. He probably needed reassurance that I would drive up with him to Fraserburgh for Christmas with Naomi. She was his daughter from his first marriage. It was an annual tradition to fill the car with presents and spend Christmas with her and her husband. They were a generous and good-natured couple, but this year for the first time, we would be visiting without my mum. The telephone rang in the house but it was the Polish cleaner, Kornelia, who picked up. I asked her to pass on a message explaining my predicament. That was how I made it sound, an inconvenience; a tiresome pause in my usual, busy life. Sometimes a lie makes more sense than the truth. Often the truth is irrelevant.

The sun started to set, still bright through the trees. We walked back to the house and stopped when we saw what Oz was doing. He had built five snowmen so crudely that they were almost columns. None of them were taller than him. He was holding the sword in his hand, the same one I had held yesterday and imagined to be Shamil’s. His coat was open, his scarf covered his mouth and his woollen cap was low over his eyebrows. His feet were deep in the snow and with the sword he was swinging away at the snowmen. One after the other — hacking, thrusting, lopping off their unformed heads. There was no passion in his expression, only concentration, as if he was practising, as if he was trying out new tricks.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Malak walked towards him. ‘It’s hundreds of years old, you’ll ruin it.’

I had not seen her angry before. She moved to snatch it away from him so abruptly that for a minute I was afraid she was going to get hurt. He turned to her and because only his eyes were visible, the smile in them had a mesmerising, distant quality. He hid the sword behind his back and with the other hand pulled down the scarf so as to say, ‘Malak, don’t fuss. A little bit of snow won’t hurt it.’

It disappointed me that he would lack such appreciation. I thought he would value Shamil’s sword, cherish and respect it.

‘What would the neighbours think seeing you so violent?’ Malak sounded exasperated now. If he were still a child, she would have snatched the forbidden game from him, hauled him yelling and kicking back into the house.

‘They’ll think I’m a jihadist.’ His voice was deliberately loud, deliberately provocative. Then he changed his tone so that it was theatrical, bordering on comic. ‘They’ll think we’ve set up a jihadist training camp out in the countryside, aye, that’s what they’ll ken.’ He added the accent, a thread for her to catch on.

She softened and cuffed him on the shoulder. The three of us walked towards the house laughing. We stood at the door in the blue cold dusk, stamping our feet to get rid of the snow. But the next day when the men made their way to the house, it didn’t seem funny after all. They rang the bell, they came in and they asked not for Oz and not for Ossie. They said the other name.

2. AKHULGO, THE CAUCASUS, 1839

Eight-year-old Jamaleldin, clambering with his friends, followed by his toddling brother, could see a cloud approaching. Then he was in a white mist, the highest snowy summits invisible, the neighbouring peaks and gullies fading to a blur of reddish browns and greens. He crouched down, waiting for clarity, for the sight of the Russian battalions stationed far below. The word Akhulgo meant ‘a meeting place in time of danger’ and now the Russians had laid it under siege. It was a natural fortress, high on one of the peaks of the Caucasus, six hundred feet above the river Andi-Koisu. The river looped around its base on three sides; only horses trained for such a twisted, vertical ascent could reach Shamil’s aoul. This made Jamaleldin feel safe. The Russians’ horses were not trained; if they ever came up here they would have to come on foot.

He turned and held his brother in his arms, leaving the older boys to collect more stones. Ghazi was still plump but he could talk fluently. ‘Don’t take me back to mother. I am old enough to fight too.’

Jamaleldin laughed. ‘A murid would have to carry you on his shoulder if you want to even toss a pebble.’

‘I’m not afraid.’ Ghazi wrenched himself free and scampered away.

Jamaleldin admired his daring. He himself was an able rider and a fair marksman. He could use a dagger and had ridden with his father in several raids but he was cautious by nature, reliant on practice rather than aggression. Watching Ghazi leap away from him, he could sense that his sturdy younger brother was of a different nature, living up to his Arabic name of ‘Conqueror’.

Jamaleldin had been named after his father’s teacher, Sheikh Jamal el-Din al Husayni, the gentle Sufi scholar who preferred books to war. Everyone knew that Sheikh Jamal el-Din was special because he was a friend of Allah. Whenever he prayed for something, it happened. Shamil’s strength came through him. That was how he had become Imam of Dagestan and was now leading the tribes of the Caucasus to fight the armies of the Russian tsar.

When Jamaleldin thought of his father, the feeling of pride made his chest big. Every cell in his body strained for his father’s approval. It was as if Shamil’s love was his nourishment and Shamil’s admonishments his understanding of Hell. It was incredible to Jamaleldin that some men disobeyed his father. The wars against the Russians went on and on and some of the tribal chiefs were weakening; they were trading with the Russians, paying taxes and even spying on Shamil himself. Jamaleldin wanted to trust everyone around him. Sometimes, though, he would notice a villager with shifty eyes, an elder with a haughty look and he would wonder if they were the hypocrites. If they were the traitors who had sold their souls to the White Tsar.

‘The world is a carcass and the one who goes after it is a dog.’ This was what Sheikh Jamal el-Din taught, and his young namesake repeated it to himself though he was not quite sure what it meant. Long ago, Shamil swore an allegiance to Sheikh Jamal el-Din and became his follower. For years he lived the austere life of a student, learning the Qur’an and how to bow his will, through his spiritual teacher, to the will of Allah. Today after the dawn prayer, the men of Akhulgo and sleepy Jamaleldin too, renewed their oath of allegiance to Imam Shamil. But Shamil himself would remain obedient to Sheikh Jamal el-Din. When father and son had last visited him in his aoul, Jamaleldin had seen his towering father — who could make grown men tremble at the sound of his voice — bow down and kiss the feet of his teacher.

Jamaleldin continued to fill his basket with stones for the coming battle. He could hear the murids chanting, churning in themselves the spirit to fight: ‘Under the infidel’s supremacy, we would be covered in shame.’ ‘Brother, how can you serve Allah, if you are serving the Russians?’ Then the prayers rising up: ‘Preserve us from regression. Bring us the longed-for end.’ Preserve us from regression. Jamaleldin looked up to see his father’s younger wife Djawarat, carrying his sleeping half-brother on her back and stuffing her pockets with rocks. He liked Djawarat because her face reminded him of a rabbit and because she often gave him tasty fried grain sprinkled with salt. ‘Do you think the Russians will be able to come up here?’ he asked her.

She looked down at the ground. ‘If only it was winter and the mountains covered in snow. If only, like long, long ago, they fought with swords and not gunfire.’

But it was June and the Russians had more artillery than they did. Jamaleldin regretted his question.

‘It is Allah’s will that we fight,’ continued Djawarat. She straightened up and put her hand on his shoulder. He gazed at her big, attractive teeth, her eyebrows that were high and thick. ‘Jamaleldin, when the Merciful honours a slave with His power, then no other creature can ever humiliate him. This is how it is with your father.’

They both knew that Shamil was backed by mystical powers — the kind that could make him tame a jackal or bless a handful of millet so that it would feed five men instead of one. Djawarat sat down on the rocks and put her baby on her lap. ‘Remember when he leapt over a line of soldiers who surrounded him …’

‘They were just about to fire on him …’ The story was in Jamaleldin’s mind as if he had been present.

‘He whirled round and struck two with his sword.’

‘Three,’ Jamaleldin corrected her.

‘The fourth one hit him but he pulled the bayonet blade from his own shoulder …’

‘Jumped over a five-foot wall.’

‘Seven,’ Djawarat corrected him.

‘In one leap.’

Djawarat was smiling. She bent down and gave her baby a kiss. ‘No one is like your father, little one.’

And there was Shamil now, tall and still, as if he had willed himself into this particular place and time. He was dressed for battle in a long cherkesska and a large white turban, the end of which hung down his neck. Two black cartridge pouches crisscrossed his torso and a leather halter held his scimitar. Jamaleldin moved forward to kiss his hand. The familiar warmth emitted from his father, an energy that surfaced in his dark eyes. He lifted Jamaleldin up; it had been a long time since his father had carried him. He was a big boy now, not a baby, not like Ghazi. He heard Djawarat laugh but he was too full to make any sound. His father’s beard, his smell, the groove under his cheek. Jamaleldin felt a slight pressure on his stomach; it was his father’s cartridge pouch digging into his own skin. ‘If only they would leave us in peace,’ his father whispered and then he started to pray, ‘Lord, this is my son and he is under Your protection. Oh Lord, shake up our enemy …’

The attack started almost gently. The Russian soldiers would try to scale the bluffs and slip. They climbed on each other’s shoulders to reach ledges and any rocks that protruded as footholds. Shamil and his murids bided their time and held their fire. When the soldiers came close, they drove them back with rocks and burning logs, javelins and daggers. A soldier only needed to lose his balance once. By nightfall three-hundred and fifty Russians were killed. Akhulgo had stood firm but, after a lull of four days, the Russians changed their tactics. Batteries were manoeuvred into better positions out of reach of the murids’ range. Cannons started to blast the walls of Akhulgo and bury the murids one by one under the rubble.

Day after day Jamaleldin woke up to the stifled sobs of women mourning their men, to the clap of gunfire, to the ugly moans of the wounded. Shamil and his murids fought on, charged with energy, flooded with a strength that seeped too into Jamaleldin. He pitted rocks at the climbing soldiers, large heavy ones he would not normally be capable of raising high. He threw daggers and didn’t miss. He heaved burning pieces of timber and didn’t wince when his palms got scorched. Yet there was no time or occasion to exult; the mere pressure of his father’s hand on his head or his mother, Fatima, saying, ‘Eat now,’ gave way to the sudden submersion of sleep. Days punctuated by prayers taken in turn, a rawness in the chest, a cleaving to everyone who was around him; men, women and children in stress.

Week after week, with less food and more wounded, a jagged airy sensation was felt all around when their outer defences came down and left them exposed. The Russians were looming nearer. But Shamil still resisted with a firmness his enemy had not been prepared for. The tsar’s army had not counted on losing so many officers. Reinforcements were brought in, a forced march of troops from the north. They divided into columns and approached Akhulgo from different directions.

In desperation, women and children joined in an ambush. To fool the Russians that they had more fighters, Djawarat and a group of women dressed like men. Reluctantly their husbands, fathers and brothers shared battle tactics and turbans, lent them swords and sharpened daggers, whispered advice. These were dark times, indeed (but temporary, they reassured themselves), when even the prettiest could not be spared the proximity of the enemy. Yet, these wives and daughters were as eager as any man to pitch themselves at the enemy, to help protect their homes, to win the day. And if they died in battle, they too would become martyrs, granted everlasting life. A ferocity was rising up in them, like mothers in the animal kingdom baring their teeth and hissing to protect their young. Jamaleldin’s mother, Fatima, was pregnant and she stayed behind with the younger children. Djawarat called for Jamaleldin and they lay in wait on a ledge overhanging a precipice. Djawarat crouched next to him, praying softly to herself. If she died, her baby would scream with hunger. Jamaleldin could feel his heart beating; he held a dagger in each sweaty hand. ‘Bend down below their bayonets and aim at their bellies,’ Djawarat said. ‘Wait, wait till they come close, take them by surprise. This is your advantage; they tread unknown territory while you stand on higher ground, your own higher ground, your home.’

He heard them approaching, voices in another language, a thud of boots, the lethal metal clank of their weapons. Bend down below their bayonets. Spring together. The blinding gleam of the sun on a bayonet. Shock in the wide eyes of an enemy. A roar in Jamaleldin’s ears. A gun had gone off and the smoke choked him. Where was the bayonet he must bend under? All his strength and that terrible sound of his dagger ripping flesh. But it was either them or us. Them or Ghazi. The women around him brandished swords; one threw hers aside and, grabbing a soldier’s bayonet, used the weight of her body to pitch him headlong over the cliffs.

The Russian column retreated and Djawarat burst into tears. Dazed and shaking, Jamaleldin stumbled back to his mother talking gibberish. He had wet his pants as if he was little, but she did not scold him. There was not enough time to rest and forget, not enough time to heal properly. Hungry and feverish, the nightmare weeks blurred. His father and his naibs deep in discussion, changing tactics, arranging for the wounded to be smuggled out of Akhulgo, arranging for reinforcements to sneak past the Russians. Already two months — for how long could they hold out? The summer sun was merciless, the well was drying up, there was hardly any food left and no timber to reconstruct. Typhoid swept through the Russian forces while in Akhulgo men, women and children were slowly starving. Death below and with them — carrion birds circled above.

Preserve us from regression, was the desperate prayer. Grant us an honourable death. Then a lull in the fighting. The Russians were willing to open negotiations. At last, at long last, peace was near. But as proof of Shamil’s good intentions, the Russians wanted Jamaleldin as a hostage.

‘No,’ was Shamil’s reply. ‘Not my son.’

Jamaleldin heard his name mentioned in the naibs’ council and sensed the concern in his father’s voice. Soon the whole of Akhulgo bristled with the news. The women held their breath. The children stared at Jamaleldin in a way that made him feel important. Pleas were sent to the Russians to accept another child, a nephew or a cousin, but they would accept only Shamil’s eldest son. Jamaleldin wanted to talk to Djawarat but it was as if she was avoiding him. At home, the naibs came over to argue with Shamil. He refused again and this time angry voices were raised. When the naibs left, Fatima started to cry. His parents talked in whispers until his father got up and left the house.

Because he couldn’t sleep, Jamaleldin sat outdoors. The summer sky was clear but there was a bad smell, the stench of war and waste, of fire and his own unwashed body. He knew the custom of hostage-taking during negotiations. Hostages were treated well; they were given clean clothes and food. At the thought of food, his stomach rumbled and there was moisture in his mouth. Pancakes in butter, rolled-out bread with honey. The Russians would give him cheese. But he could not imagine being away from his father, living in a place where Shamil did not command and forbid. Jamaleldin did not want to leave Ghazi, he did not want to leave his mother or Akhulgo or Djawarat.

He dozed, his head lolling on his chest, and found his father sitting beside him, propping him. It was all he wanted, to be in his father’s arms, to be approved of, to be safe.

‘I lost my finest men,’ Shamil said and there was a catch in his voice. ‘When I think of each of them, when I think of his qualities, I know that he cannot be replaced. He was worth ten or more, a hundred even. Now the others are becoming too feeble to fight. I can see it coming. In days, in a week or so they will no longer gather for battle. They might not even show up at their posts.’

Jamaleldin understood but what he understood could wait — there was no need to voice it, no need to put it into words. He wanted these moments to continue. His father talking to him as if he were a man, recalling the brave, strong fighters who were now granted eternal life; men who had once jested with Jamaleldin, who had taught him how to wield a kinjal, who had carried him on their shoulders. Father and son listened to the sounds of the night.

‘Tell me the story of the chicken, Father.’

Shamil smiled in the dark and Jamaleldin felt the warmth coming from him, all the memories of peace. ‘Long ago before you were born, when I was a young lad, our people, sadly, allowed themselves to forget Allah. Instead of the Sharia they followed the adaat. Do you know what the adaat are?’

‘They are our ancient customs and laws. They told people to worship the forest and the trees but they also taught us hospitality and honour.’

‘Yes, the adaat were a mixture of good and bad,’ Shamil continued. ‘A mixture of Allah’s laws and the traditional laws of the tribes. They taught us to be brave warriors but they allowed us to ferment grapes and get drunk. And worse than that the adaat supported blood feuds. Once a man stole a chicken …’

Jamaleldin smiled and drew nearer for here the story was starting.

‘He stole a chicken from his neighbour’s village. In reply the owner of the chicken stole a cow. The first man got angry and said,’ Shamil’s voice rose, ‘“A chicken is a chicken. It is not a cow!” In revenge he stole the man’s horse. When you steal a man’s horse it is as if you are stealing his honour. The horse owner went and killed the thief. Blood was spilled, it was serious now. The families got involved. A vendetta began. Generation after generation carried on this feud. There were raids and fires, there was kidnapping and treachery. Hundreds of men died, all because of …?’

This was the pause that had delighted Jamaleldin when he was little. That part in the story where he would chip in and squeal out loud, ‘A chicken!’

It had been Shamil’s predecessors, Ghazi Muhammad (after whom little Ghazi was named) and Hamza Bek, who had first urged the people of Dagestan to stop the blood feuds and obey the Sharia. To draw strength from Allah’s laws, to tap into His power and push away the Russians. The invaders set aouls ablaze and destroyed crops; they were even destroying the forests in order to build their military roads. And when they captured a village, they defecated in the houses as if to mark their territory. At times they would also foul the wells. But it was not always easy to resist the Russians. Many tribes did not have the strength. They shirked the hardship involved or were lured by the riches of the red and white coins the Russians promised. Some succumbed to the pressure so wholeheartedly that they even joined in the aggression against their fellow highlanders. These traitors would ride with the severed heads of their own people dangling from their saddle bows.

Ghazi Muhammad al-Ghimrawi preached from region to region and from aoul to aoul, ‘What kind of repose could there be in a place where the heart is not at ease and the authority of Allah not accepted? Grab the strong cable of Islam and our enemies will not even find a weak protector!’ Ghazi Muhammad mobilised an army in which Shamil was a young naib. In one battle after another they took back the villages that had fallen to the Russians. But Ghazi Muhammad was martyred and his successor Hamza Bek only ruled for two years.

When Shamil became leader, he did not find support in Gimrah, his birthplace. The villagers insisted on obeying the Russian commander’s order of supplying five donkey-loads of grape vines and fruit. Shamil argued and threatened but he could not convince them. This was Jamaleldin’s earliest memory — his mother and father packing throughout the night. After the dawn prayer, Shamil came out of the mosque and addressed his fellow villagers. ‘I am leaving you because I am unable to uphold the faith among you. After all, the best of Allah’s creation, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, left the best of cities, Makkah, when it was no longer easy for him to maintain his faith there. If Allah wills the faith to be strong in you, then I will return. If not, then what can you offer me, you whose houses have been smeared with the shit of Russian soldiers!’

The family moved to Ashilta and had to move again — always fearful of the Russians and suspicious of the hypocrites who were tired of fighting, who were bitter against the strictness of the Sharia. ‘Would the Russians have advanced so far without collaborators from among us?’ The answer was a painful no. That was why Shamil taught the prayer, ‘Preserve us from regression. Don’t try us, Lord, beyond our means.’ Too often the villagers would listen to Shamil preach his resistance and say ruefully, ‘What is he saying, when we can’t even defend our women against the Russians!’ It was the modern cannon that filled them with dread, the ‘Father of the Guns’, that beast set to devour them. Then when the tide turned, in twists and surprising turns, Shamil would leap from one victory to another and the spirit of resistance would rekindle in men’s chests. They would swell with pride and remember the old days of freedom. They would move to join Shamil and be among his murids. An autonomous Caucasus would shimmer in the horizon, credible again.

The morning after sitting outdoors with his father, Jamaleldin watched his mother, Fatima, sob as she handed him his best clothes. A white tunic and a high lambskin papakhi. He must look his best today even though he was thin and fatigued with dark shadows under his eyes. ‘Take your kinjal with you,’ said Fatima, controlling herself. ‘But never use it against your captors.’ She was eight months pregnant and her face was puffy. ‘You must always act honourably, with courage and patience. Never cry. Never let them see you crying. Remember, you are an Avar. Remember always that you are the son of Shamil, Imam of Dagestan.’

Jamaleldin adjusted the halter around his neck and put his kinjal in place. He was ready to go now, his mother breaking down, his father’s hand on his shoulder. The whole of Akhulgo was gathered and Shamil lifted his palms up in prayer. ‘Lord, You raised up Your prophet Moses, upon him be peace, when he was in the hands of Pharaoh. Here is my son. If I formally hand him over to the infidels, then he is under Your care and protection. You are the best of guardians.’

Ghazi tugged at his brother’s sleeve and said with characteristic bravado, ‘Let me go instead of you.’

‘Don’t be silly. I am more valuable to them.’

There was Djawarat giving him a small handful of fried grain with salt as a goodbye gift. Her sweet smile and her sleepy, docile baby.

There was Akhulgo ugly around him. A woman crouched over a dead relative raised her arm up to flap wildly at carrion birds. Keep off, keep off, she repeated, keening softly. The siege had prevented them from burying the dead. They lay in piles, decomposing and starting to smell, shameful under the morning sun.

Fatima was still clinging to him and crying; Djawarat was by Fatima’s side, her arms around her.

Three of his father’s naibs escorted him away, carrying their banners. They guided their horses down the tricky slopes and Jamaleldin breathed the air of the lowlands. Akhulgo was above him now, and here, at last, were the Russian lines. The enemy, smiling men who held their arms out to their prized hostage. Tears of anger rose to Jamaleldin’s eyes but he would not break down. The naibs were lowering their banners in a final salute; they would go back and tell his father that Jamaleldin was brave and did not flinch. He walked into enemy territory with his kinjal at his side. They would tell Shamil that the Russians treated his son with respect and did not disarm him.

Forward now into a mass of tents and horses, men whose words made no sense. Their large beardless faces; their own particular smell. They stared at him and some laughed. Laughter was a language Jamaleldin could understand. Some of it was good-natured; he was, after all, a symbol of the ceasefire, a reason to celebrate. Tonight, they would be issued extra rations of vodka and there would be songs around the campfire. But there was another kind of laughter. He was little and they were grown men. He was something and they were something else; men who made faces and pretended to snatch away his kinjal.

‘Watch him. He’s like a trapped animal.’

‘He’ll use his dagger on you given the chance.’

‘Give me that!’

Jamaleldin leapt at the soldier, punching and scratching. Without the kinjal he was a mere prisoner. Without the kinjal he was a disgrace. Jeering, the worst kind of laughter.

‘We’ll tame you, you little savage. We’ll tame you in no time.’

‘Look at these wild eyes!’

‘Enough. Give him back his kinjal, Alexi.’ Always, as Jamaleldin was to learn, there were kind ones embedded among the rest. They would pop out like secrets, ready to make a difference.

Inside a Russian tent, the size of it, a world so much softer than the houses made of rock. The pistols of the soldiers, their boots. To see a cigar for the first time. It smoked and glowed! An object that entered the mouth and was neither food nor a twig for cleaning your teeth. The sun moved in the sky, shadows lengthened and no Russian stood to make the call to prayer. His father would be at the mosque now, Ghazi too. Were they thinking of him? He stared at two lamb cutlets, he sniffed the porter wine. This was not for him. Where was the cheese and the flat bread? Where were the honey and the pancakes? His stomach growled and for the first time in that long clumsy day, he burst into tears.

The negotiations lasted for three days and failed. Jamaleldin should be handed over now, like any other hostage voluntarily turned over and held temporarily during a ceasefire. No ransom was demanded from Shamil, no ransom was expected to be paid. Instead Jamaleldin found himself in a carriage. He had never been in a carriage before. Next to him a Russian staff officer sat with his legs wide open, taking up more space. The wheels rattled and Jamaleldin listened to the hooves of the horses through the forest and on a newly built road. If he tried to escape now, he would be able to find his way back to Akhulgo. But it would be dishonourable to do that; he must wait. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked but the staff officer only smiled and gave him an apple. Jamaleldin was leaving Dagestan. He was no longer a hostage now, he was being kidnapped away from his father’s territory. On to the misty unknown, to the city of the tsar himself, St Petersburg.

3. AKHULGO, THE CAUCASUS, 1839

Shamil fought and when he despaired of winning, he longed for martyrdom. During the negotiations, the thinness of his fighters was visible and there were more damning reports from the Russian spies, the collaborators who circled among Shamil’s forces pretending to be translators and intermediaries for the peace process. It became known that Shamil’s men were weary and restless. The front lines of Akhulgo were destroyed and the corpses piled up. This was too valuable a prize for the Russian generals to pass. They changed their plan. Instead of a surrender on their own terms, they would aim for a bigger prize — a complete collapse of Akhulgo and the humiliating capture of Shamil. This would crush the resistance once and for all. The negotiations were halted and Jamaleldin was sent away. Then the Russians hit with their greatest force.

For a week the highlanders fought back. Every reinforced position was destroyed and yet the murids would stay up all night trying to rebuild. But it was useless now. Too numb to fear the Russians, they feared instead their own spiritual weakness. Defection loomed at them as the ultimate temptation, the dishonourable outcome. With everything slipping away, arms, homes, families and properties, only the spirit was left and that spirit belonged to Allah and was created to be free as the eagles that circled the mountains.

Shamil sat on the cliffs in full view of the Russians. Below were green groves and the foaming river. He prayed out loud for an enemy bullet in the middle of his forehead. The treachery of the Russians devastated him. He had been ready to surrender in return for permission to live in Dagestan and to have Jamaleldin back. Reasonable demands, but the Russian general had deemed them insolent. The Russians wanted to drag Jamaleldin across the country, all the way to the tsar himself. And they were not above mocking the divisions between the highlanders and the way the naibs, even during the negotiations, voiced their individual opinions. The Russians, on the other hand, were one force, an organised, powerful entity united in loyalty to the tsar, obedient to authority.

Shamil accepted their demands of sending away the families for whom Akhulgo was not home but the Russians granted nothing in return. Instead they acted swiftly and cruelly, dispatching Jamaleldin without Shamil’s permission, treating him like a criminal, not a worthy adversary. The Russians were, he said to Fatima, as poisonous as the snakes that crawled in the steppes.

On the last day before the Russians finally took Akhulgo, Shamil made a decision. His family would elude the soldiers and escape on foot by nightfall. As for himself, he would fight to the end. Many years later he would recall that time with pain and wonder. How he dressed for battle and headed to the stables intent on slaughtering his horse so that it would never carry a Russian rider. He stroked its mane and when it turned to him and whinnied, he felt sorry and spared it. He stood in his house and looked at his books. One of them was especially precious to him — Insan al-’Uyun, copied by the scholar Sa’id al-Harakamil. Shamil held it in his hand. Who would read it again? Who would value and appreciate it?

He gathered his remaining followers and issued his harshest orders. ‘Avoid capture at all costs. Escape from the Russians or fight with the last ounce of your strength. If you are wounded, throw yourself in the river.’

In small groups, for they could not all stay together, Shamil’s family groped their way down the cliffs. They clung to the rocks, often treading on each other’s feet, pressing their bodies against the mountainside. It was slow progress, with the river gushing below and the Russians swarming up the cliffs. They would hide in caves and emerge to move again. Arguments on how to proceed, true and false alarms, Fatima holding on to her belly, Ghazi still clutching a kinjal in his hand.

Shamil’s naibs urged him to escape. They knew that as long as he lived, the resistance would continue. They persuaded him to join his family who were hiding down in a ledge and by doing so he missed the Russians’ ultimate entry into Akhulgo. Those that stayed behind, too wasted to escape, hid in caves in order to ambush the Russians. Others pretended to lay down their arms only to turn on their captors at the last minute. Young women, fearing rape, covered their faces with their veils and jumped into the river. In every trench, in every stone hut and cavern, women and children fought desperately with stones and kinjals. One child after the other fell. One mother, insane with sorrow, picked up the dead body of her son as if it were a weapon and heaved it at the soldiers.

Akhulgo was reduced to what the Russians wanted it to be; the stench of the corpses, the wailing of children, houses and stables turned to rubble. It had cost them half their forces and lost the highlanders hundreds of families. The siege had lasted eighty days, far longer than expected. But it was all worth it to be able to report to the tsar that Akhulgo had fallen and that Shamil had been captured. The soldiers were instructed to turn over every corpse, to search in every nook and cranny, to question all who were alive and could speak. It was inconceivable that he had eluded them, that he had got away to continue to be a thorn in their side. He must be hunted.

The enemy was now above Shamil. When he caught up with the group that included Fatima and Ghazi, they hid for three days in a cavern halfway down the mountain. Djawarat and her baby were missing. One of his uncles had been martyred. His sister was one of the women who had covered their faces with their veils and drowned in the river. Grief seeped through his pores, the claws of death so close that he could almost hear them scratching. He held Ghazi close, desperate for the sweetness the child offered, his youth, his soft cheeks, his innocent voice. The void of the missing baby, a picture of Djawarat the last time he had seen her, frantically sewing something or the other in preparation for the escape. It was warm and claustrophobic in the cavern. Fatima slept most of the time. He dozed next to her and dreamt of Djawarat. She had fallen on the ground and their son was crawling over her. It was not a good dream. But how could he go back and search for her?

Light-headed from lack of food, they groped their way in the moonlight. They crossed a ravine by balancing a tree trunk from one side to the other. He thought Fatima, heavily pregnant, would not be able to make it but she did. He carried Ghazi on his back, his shoes in his mouth. Dawn, and from high up came a volley of shots, the blur of Russian sharp-shooters among the sycamore trees. They were after him. The only solution was to hide again. Ghazi was wounded in the leg. He cried out, ‘Throw me in the river,’ remembering his father’s orders at Akhulgo.

It became a pattern to hide by day and move by night. They paused when they reached the river and, to fool the Russians, they built a raft and filled it with straw-stuffed dummies. They launched the raft at dawn and while the Russians fired at it, Shamil and his group waded upstream.

Making wudu in the river, the truncated prayers of the traveller, and inland through dry brushwood, thirsty again, sucking water from the hoof-prints of mountain deer. Steadily they reached the summits and sandstone of Chechnya, crossing for days the looped river; wading, climbing and clinging to the cliffs. The mountains closed in against them and, looking above, the sky was a jagged strip between two cliffs, but these moss-covered boulders were their refuge too.

Resting one day at noon they were fired at by a group of villagers from Shamil’s birthplace, Ghimra. These young men had defected to the Russians and were hunting Shamil. He recognised their leader and called him by name. Shamil pulled out his sword and raised it high, shouting, ‘One day, soon, I will stab you with it.’ He was bolstered by a vision that one of his men had seen. A great river rushing over Akhulgo drowning everyone except Shamil and a few.

It was not only the Russians they were fleeing from but, as with the Ghimrans, their allies too. Leaders who had defected to the Russians in return for keeping their chiefdoms. They wanted to hand Shamil to the Russians, and knowing the mountains, they were more than qualified to track him down. Shamil spotted two of his adversaries, Ahmed Khan and Hadji Murat, who had raised a party and succeeded in coming close to Shamil’s group. He prayed that Allah Almighty would veil their eyes and weaken their resolve, and they did not fire a single shot.

Fatima pale, her stomach protruding from her skinny body. Ghazi crying from hunger, unsteady even though his injured leg was healing. Shamil picked him up and Ghazi dropped his head on his father’s chin. ‘My neck isn’t strong enough to carry my head,’ he said. Shamil held him all night. He was the only child he had now. Jamaleldin out of reach and Djawarat’s baby dead. The sad news had come from Akhulgo carried by a fighter who caught up with them on horseback. Djawarat had been hit by a bullet in her chest. She lay partially trapped under the rocks while her baby, as in Shamil’s dream, crawled on top of her body. For three days, she called out for water and chewed on the fried bits of grain she had sewn on the borders of her veil.

The next evening bullets whizzed past the group as they walked exposed on the top of a hill. No longer able to hide, Shamil and his companions attacked the Russian picket and sent the soldiers running back to camp. Shamil paid a mountain shepherd to carry the wounded on horseback. He paid for water too. But lagging behind with Fatima, he later discovered that everyone in the group had drunk their fill and forgotten Ghazi. He cursed them and carried Ghazi again through the night.

‘I will die of hunger, Father.’

‘No, look ahead.’ He pointed to the top of the mountain. ‘When we get there we will feed you bread and all sorts of good things. You will feel full.’

They prayed fajr and climbed the last mountain as the sun was rising. A rider headed towards them. He had been searching for them and his saddlebag was full of bread and cheese for Ghazi. ‘At last we are free of the Russians,’ Fatima sighed, but Shamil broke down and wept. ‘I wanted to fight till the end. Where will we seek refuge and settle now? In this world there are only those who hate us.’

True, many villages, fearing reprisals from the Russians and their allies, would not take them in. Yet in others they were made welcome. In Tattakh a bull was slaughtered for the travellers and Fatima gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Muhammad-Sheffi. But they could not settle there. Shamil had to search for a more permanent home, a place where he could, insh’Allah, gather more fighters and rebuild.

At times he felt like a discarded rag, denied not only military success but the blessing of martyrdom. Perhaps he had not done enough and his fate was to fight on, his duty to do more. What did he possess? Where were the men who would fight with him again? In years to come, children like Ghazi would grow up and lead his armies. Women would give birth to new heroes. Now, though, it was a time to heal, an inward time for prayer and seclusion. He was surviving on the love of the Almighty, fuelled by the urge to win back Jamaleldin, shaded by the martyrs of Akhulgo.

It was weeks later, after all the fighting had died down and the Russians abandoned Akhulgo, that Shamil was able to go back in search of Djawarat. He walked around asking one survivor after the other until he came to an elderly man whose rheumy eyes had witnessed. The man’s voice barely rose above a whisper. ‘Your son crawled over his mother’s body until he too perished and was carried away by the water.’ The man pushed himself up to totter on spindly legs and pointed out where Djawarat had fallen. As he came nearer, Shamil recognised her clothes under the rocks and silt deposited by the flooding river. He knelt next to her and lifted up the stones that were crushing her. He cleared away the pebbles. He cleaned the mud away from what he was realising was a miracle. Yes, there was no rigor mortis for the martyr, no putrefaction or decomposition. In this way they are rewarded. Shamil had come across this phenomenon in some of the fallen bodies of his men. But Djawarat was his first woman martyr. It was usually during childbirth that women attained martyrdom. And yet, here was his own wife, on a battlefield. As honoured as the sincerest of warriors. She had not wanted to die; she had wanted to see her baby grow up. He lifted Djawarat and her body was as supple as he remembered it. He wiped her face and her skin felt alive under his fingers. His warm, heavy breath on her hair, ears and eyelashes. She was living, living with Allah, though Shamil knew she was dead. Even her lips, resting evenly on her teeth, were soft with moisture.