The Kindness of Enemies

1. SCOTLAND, FEBRUARY — MAY 2011

The news that Oz had dropped out was passed around the department with relief as if we were well rid of him. One of our best students. After yet another dismissive shrug, I hid myself in the Ladies’ and cried with anger, ashamed that, even now, I could not stand up for him. I could not say that when he was in my class and I marked essays, I would leave his to the end, just so that I could look forward to it, just so that I could tolerate better the awfulness and apathy of some of the others’. His would be always rewarding, worth the effort I had put into my lectures and worth the facilities in place.

I’m making the right decision, he recently wrote. I can’t go back there now. I don’t want to. Malak isn’t too happy with me moving to Cardiff but at least it’s not South Africa.

The Non-Academic Complaints Panel, with Gaynor Stead accusing me of breaking her finger, was held immediately after the Easter break. During the run-up to it, I was consumed by stress and lack of sleep. In the end Gaynor could not prove that I broke her finger but the Complaints Panel acknowledged that perching on her desk might have been construed as a violation of personal space. I was admonished to be more careful in the future but without the university declaring that a terrible wrong had been done to the student. Not a triumphant outcome, my confidence was shattered, but I was relieved that it was all over and that I still had a job I could call my own. I developed a stutter and a tremor in my cheek that persisted for a long time afterwards. I supposed my colleagues would have supported me more if the anti-terrorist squad hadn’t searched my office after Oz’s arrest. Even though this was never mentioned during the hearing, understandably the two things compounded with my being away for such a long time and caused a coolness between myself and my workmates. Natasha Wilson denoted a person who was smeared by suspicion, tainted by crime. I might as well have stayed Natasha Hussein! Even though my laptop and mobile phone were returned to me, even though no formal charges were ever levelled at me, still, it now took conscious effort to walk with my head held high. My voice became softer, my opinions muted, my actions tentative. I thought before I spoke, became wary of my students and, often, bowed my head down.

I kept in touch with Mekki and with Grusha and Yasha more regularly. When I told them that I missed them, I meant it, aware now of that parallel life I could have led if my parents’ marriage hadn’t ended. I valued the sense of belonging they gave me, the certainty that I was not an isolated member of a species but simply one who had wandered far from the flock and still managed to survive, for better or for worse, in a different habitat. Chatting with them, we would skip from Russian to English to Arabic and I relaxed without the need to prove, explain or distinguish myself. Nor squeeze to fit in, nor watch out of the corner of my eye the threats that my very existence could provoke in the wrong place in the wrong time among the wrong crowd.

A last-minute Call for Papers for an international conference on Suicide, Conflict and Peace Research galvanised me into preparing a submission. I wanted to compare Shamil’s defeat and surrender, how he made peace with his enemies, with modern-day Islamic terrorism that promoted suicide bombings instead of accepting in Shamil’s words, ‘that martyrdom is Allah’s prerogative to bestow’. How did this historical change in the very definition of jihad come about?

The Easter break passed in a daze, the days getting longer but the cold still teasing; generous hours of light but the temperature refusing to rise. It was, though, a relatively warm Sunday in May when the telephone rang and it was Malak talking to me as if we had only just seen each other the week before. I could tell from her voice that she was outdoors, somewhere windy.

‘I’m not far from you,’ she said. ‘At Dunnottar Castle. Are you free to come over? I know it’s short notice. But you came to my mind, just now, and I thought why not call and see. Just in case.’

And I was driving again, this time with a few drops of rain on my front window. Clouds that started to clear as I neared my destination. I sensed a welcome purity in my motivation, an energy that made the drive effortless, the distance bridgeable. She had always given me a sense of communion with Shamil, oriented me towards the unexpected, and guided me to what could never be written down in history.

I bought a ticket and was told that they would be closing in an hour’s time. I hurried down the long path, the castle ahead of me protruding into the water, the sound of the seagulls all around. A number of people walked in the opposite direction, having finished their visit. I was the only one heading to the ruins. It made me feel as if I was running late, that my situation was touch and go, I would either make it in time or not.

The path was narrow and the dark rocky land dipped down straight. The cold wind messed up my hair but I felt warm from the exercise. The grass around me was high and dry, yellow and pale green. When I reached the headland I could see, below, the beach covered in pebbles. Then it was time to climb up until the sea surrounded me on three sides, until looking down at the craggy shoreline with the undulating froth made me feel slightly nauseous. Here — I reached my hand out — were the stone walls on the cliff, thicker and higher now that I was close. Large holes from which guns once stuck out. I passed through the entrance, up slippery ancient stairs, my mind automatically retrieving that Mary, Queen of Scots visited here and that on a similar day in 1652, this was the one remaining place in Scotland in which a small garrison loyal to Charles II resisted Cromwell’s army. But I was here to see Malak and she was somewhere inside, waiting for me.

I did not find her as easily as I thought I would. I walked on the cobbled floor, passed through the semi-ruined keep and the drawing room, which was in better shape. Out in the quadrangle the sun shone on the moss-covered walls that rose up in incomplete storeys, upstairs rooms without ceilings. The grass was even here, a lawn, a sense of enclosure, hardly any wind and a stillness as if the seagulls were politely staying away. In front of the chapel Malak sat dressed in what could only be described as a kaftan, wearing a turban on her head. The other visitors must have thought she was in medieval costume; if she popped up in the background of one of their photos, they could claim they had spotted a ghost.

She was sitting on the grass on what I recognised to be one of the small Persian carpets from her house. She was reading a large hard-backed book which, when I came close, I recognised as the Qur’an. I stood watching her for a while, amused by her clothes and sense of the theatrical. What part did she think she was playing? Not that I suspected her of insincerity, but there had always been an attractive self-consciousness about her as if she were trying to please an invisible figure, an unseen audience who mattered only to her.

I joined her on the carpet, listened to her reciting. Not a single word was comprehensible to me. This must be how animals feel when they hear humans talk, this must be how infants experience language long before they are ready to learn it. When she finished the page she was on, she marked it with a brown ribbon and put it in the canvas bag she had at her side. ‘I am halfway through,’ she said. ‘The Qur’an is divided into thirty sections and, over a fortnight, I have read fifteen. Every day I go somewhere different to pray and read a section. I’ve travelled up and down the country.’

I smiled. ‘You’re on tour then for a full month.’

She laughed. ‘It’s probably the most fulfilling one I’ve ever done.’

‘How do you decide where to go?’

‘Well, that is the fun part. I’ve been to spiritual places like Stonehenge, places where I have always sensed a powerful presence. This is one of them, can you feel it?’

I did not know how to answer her. If I said ‘No’ it would seem ungracious. If I said ‘Yes’ I might be lying. So I said, ‘Centuries ago, people in this very spot worshipped as you were worshipping just now. They believed like you believe.’ And centuries ago, as Covenanter history teaches, they also waged wars, resisted and rebelled around issues of faith.

She said, ‘Yesterday I prayed further north. In the middle of a suburb which was so artificial and depressing that I almost couldn’t bear to be there. But I stuck it out, telling myself that I would be the first one there ever to say the word “Allah”.’

‘Who heard you?’

‘No one. I don’t want anyone to hear me. The trees, the wind, the angels. That’s enough for me. Sometimes, I can’t bear to talk to people, Natasha. Not after what happened to Oz. I can’t be the same again. Sorry for not answering your messages. You are the easiest one to talk to because you understand. But I went through days when I did not want to talk to anyone at all.’

‘Why, Malak? It’s over and done with.’

‘I can’t let go of the disappointment, it’s held inside me like a grudge. I carry it from place to place. It’s not that I love him less. Love doesn’t change, it doesn’t go away. But he was suspected of not behaving with the decency and broad-mindedness I brought him up with.’

‘And he was released without charge. So why are you judging him?’

‘Because I expected better of him, that’s all. He allowed the dark side to distract him even if it didn’t win him over completely.’

I smiled at her dramatic choice of words. The dark side. I smelt the sea and heard the seagulls. ‘Did you get Shamil’s sword back?’

‘Oz got his laptop back. And we both got our phones back. But not the sword.’

‘How come?’

She shook her head. ‘I have no idea. But in a strange way I don’t mind waiting. He surrendered it, didn’t he? He didn’t fight with it and shatter it to pieces. He knew better. He understood that surrender meant humility. He accepted defeat graciously and saw it as Allah’s will. There aren’t many like him now. Wisdom is in short supply.’

‘You never told me,’ I said. ‘How did your family get back the sword after Shamil handed it over to Field-Marshal Bariatinsky?’

‘In 1918 a soldier was captured by the Red Army and it was in his possession. Instead of being placed in a museum it was sold as a trophy and my great-grandfather bought it. But you must tell me about your time in Sudan. It was important, I can tell.’

Yes, it changed me. I might still not have reached home or settled where I belonged, but I was confident that there was a home, there, ahead of me. My homesickness wasn’t cured but it was, I was sure, propelling me in the right direction.

When I finished speaking, Malak said, ‘You must come with me.’ She sounded vague, as if she had not thought it through.

‘Where?’

‘To Orkney. We could have zikr on the beach; I could read another part of the Qur’an.’

Zikr on the beach. I remembered the zikr gathering she took me to in London. It was powerful, heady. It haunted me, afterwards, for days and nights. I hesitated a little before committing myself.

‘It would be good for you,’ she nodded, as if the prospect was becoming more real to her.

Sufism delves into the hidden truth behind the disguise. Malak, the teacher disguised as an actor. Natasha the student, acting the part of a teacher. I had come to her today needing to connect, wanting to spend time in her company. Perhaps it was time to acknowledge that what I was after was spiritual. She was ready to be a guide and I would fight my weaknesses in order to follow.