The Kindness of Enemies

1. SCOTLAND, DECEMBER 2010

There is something about waking up in a room that one has not seen by daylight. It comes sharply into its own, mocking first impressions. This one was untidy, a work-in-progress and I guessed that I was the first to use it. It looked almost like a store room; several boxes were stacked on top of each other, an exercise bike was facing the wall, a large painting lay face down on the floor. A faint sound of machinery came from downstairs, a steady thud. I tugged open the curtains. The sun reflected on the snow and hurt my eyes. The path and garden were even more packed than yesterday, in confident clumps several feet high. My Civic was completely covered, which meant that it had snowed again during the night. It made me wonder whether I would be able to leave anytime soon. Far to my right the hills were a sweep of white and then below, the river was clean and flowing rapidly. A movement close by caught my eyes; powdery flakes drifting from a black and white tree. A strip of white on the black branch. My eyesight blurred and I moved away before an aura fully developed. I could not cope with a full-blown migraine now, not when I was away from my flat.

I had thought that if I discovered what made me anxious, I would be able to find a cure. But all I could do was learn to control it. The symptoms started when I was young. At a fancy-dress party, I kicked and screamed at a child with the head of a wolf and the body of a seven-year-old-boy. I knew that the wolf’s head was fake. I myself was wearing a Red Indian wig with two thick braids pleasantly heavy on my chest. I was not even unduly frightened of wolves. Whether stalking the three little pigs or behind bars at the zoo, they were thrilling and worthy of respect but they did not make me ill. It was the disproportion of the wolf’s head to the child’s body, the shock of the half-human, half-beast, the lack of fusion between the two. There was no merging. It was a clobbering together, abnormal and clumsy, the head of one species and the body of the other. Later, a picture of a centaur in a library book and I vomited over the pages. Then as a teenager, a scene in a horror film of a dog with a man’s head made me faint. The video was the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers — the product of an innocent time when aliens from space were more threatening than Muslims from al-Qaeda.

The explanation became clearer as I grew older. I was seeing in these awkward composites my own liminal self. The two sides of me that were slammed together against their will, that refused to mix. I was a failed hybrid, made up of unalloyed selves. My Russian mother who regretted marrying my Sudanese father. My African father who came to hate his white wife. My atheist mother who blotted out my Muslim heritage. My Arab father who gave me up to Europe without a fight. I was the freak. I had been told so and I had been taught so and I had chewed on this verdict to the extent that, no matter what, I could never purge myself of it entirely. My intellect could rebel and I was well-read on the historical roots and taboos against miscegenation (the word itself hardly ever used now), but revulsion and self-loathing still slithered through my body in minute doses. The disease was in me despite the counselling and knowing better. Natasha Hussein would always be with me. I could glimpse her in the black-white contrast of a winter branch that was covered on one side with snow.

The machine noise and the thudding turned out, on investigation, to be Malak on a treadmill. I stood and watched her. She was wearing a black training suit and there was an olive bandana around her hair. She jogged for two minutes, then walked for one with the machine up on an incline. I had never visited a gym and so the procedure was intriguing. We talked about the snow, how it was even worse than yesterday, how the television had reported that a few had died, some were in hospital and commuters stuck in their cars for hours. I told Malak that I had called work but it was hard to get anyone at the department to pick up the phone. I had tried again with no luck to get a taxi to come and pick me up. Malak told me I was welcome to stay and sounded like she meant it. I had thought of walking to the nearest village but I didn’t really want to leave. Besides, I argued with myself, I had my laptop with me and could get quite a bit of work done here. It was an opportunity to see what Malak had among her family’s belongings that could shed more light on Shamil.

Over breakfast Oz asked me about my old name. Natasha Hussein explained my frizzy hair and the flat disc of my face, my skin that was darker than one parent’s and lighter than the other. ‘My mother is … was Georgian,’ I told Oz, ‘and my father is Sudanese.’

‘Is that where you were born?’

‘Yes, Khartoum. After the divorce my mother married a Scottish man and we came to Britain. They actually got married in Tbilisi — that’s where we went, Mum and I, after leaving Khartoum. We stayed in Georgia a few months. In between. It was boring until Tony came. He adopted me and gave me his name. We lived in London for a few years then moved to Aberdeen.’ It was an effort formulating this summary, explaining myself. I preferred the distant past, centuries that were over and done with, ghosts that posed no direct threat. History could be milked for this cause or that. We observed it always with hindsight, projecting onto it our modern convictions and anxieties. When I was doing my Highers, the subject became my passion, a world that kept me awake at night; that claimed me, without conditions, as a citizen. I could lose myself in it and forget to visit my mother. I could memorise the dates of battles and the details of treaties so that I could blot out my father, so that I could be without a childhood self. The taunt ‘swot’ was the only one that never bothered me.

Oz passed me the peanut butter. He put more bread in the toaster. ‘Do you have family in Khartoum?’

‘My father is still there. He remarried and has a son. My father,’ I expanded, knowing Oz would be interested, ‘is Muslim in name only, unless he’s lately changed. He didn’t care about religion. He was a member of the Communist party and they gave him a scholarship to Russia where he met my mother and faith was not an issue for them. So I wasn’t brought up Muslim even though we lived in a Muslim country. But I was aware of Islam around me. You can’t miss it in Sudan. My grandmother prayed. When she came to stay with us, I would taunt her and push her as she prayed just because I knew she wouldn’t leave her prayers and punish me. She used to swipe at me, though, while she was praying.’ I mimicked my skinny grandmother flailing her arms.

Oz laughed. ‘That’s so mean.’ He sounded like a schoolboy.

‘During Ramadan,’ I said, now that I was on a roll with memories, ‘none of us used to fast, not even my father, but instead of eating lunch at the usual time before siesta we would eat around sunset. My father insisted on it. He liked the special drinks and foods of Ramadan. You’ve never lived in a Muslim country, have you? Culture and religion are so entwined that sometimes people can’t tell the difference. At sunset, the special Ramadan cannon would go off. It was a relic of Turco-Egyptian rule. I would hear that one bang as I was playing in the street. The other children were fasting and we would each go to our own homes. Sometimes I fasted like them just so as not to be different, but it annoyed my mother.’ Those were the years when I had hope of fitting in. Then awkwardness became my home.

‘Do you think if you stayed with us here, you would change?’ He stirred more sugar into his coffee, splashed a drop of milk on the table.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If, just to say, the snow lasted for days and days. If you couldn’t leave, would you come closer to faith, just by being with the two of us?’

I knew that I should resent his suggestion. Its echoes of compulsion and submission. ‘No matter how long the snow lasts, it will melt and I will leave. Then I will go back to my own life and this will be a memory. Do you find yourself easily changing? Do you match the company you keep?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess I do or at least did. I would like to be braver. I would like, just as an example, to be assertive enough not to mind my name or not to care what others think about my mother’s job.’

‘What’s wrong with her job?’

He sat up straight and didn’t reply. I could hear Malak in the next room close. At last he said, ‘It is not others that are the problem. Their thoughts become my thoughts.’

‘You’re young,’ I said and that was not the right thing to say. He felt somewhat rebuked.

Malak came into the kitchen, her face shining with sweat. She refilled her water bottle from the tap. ‘Ossie, show Natasha the flag that was sent to Shamil from England,’ she said as she walked out again.

In the living room, he moved a tartan rug from the top of a trunk and knelt down to open it. I sat next to him on the floor and it had been years since I had done that. My knees creaked and I shifted my heaviness on the carpet. He showed me portraits of Shamil; sketches and paintings made by Russian journalists and artists who accompanied the troops. They were orientalist in ethos: one of him standing alone in prayer while behind him his men were on horseback, swords drawn, ready to charge. In others, he was a hawk-like figure, with brooding dark eyes. In a family album, someone had collected fragments of the comments written in the West about Shamil. Oz read them out loud and when Malak joined us, she supplied the appropriate accent and I was soon laughing.

A French accent for Alexander Dumas: ‘Shamil, the Titan, who struggles from his lair against the tsar.’

The MP in the House of Commons lauding Shamil’s stand as a check to tsarist designs in India: ‘… a really splendid type who stood up to tyrants … and deeply religious even if he did have several wives …’ The Caucasus blocked the route to Delhi and Shamil was their man.

‘Look,’ Malak said and took out a scrap of material preserved in a sealed glass case. Three scarlet stars stitched on a dull beige background that must have been white at the time. ‘This was part of a banner that was sent to Shamil as a token of support. Imagine a group of English ladies, a sewing circle, stitching away in a parlour. Wasn’t it good of them, Natasha?’

Oz shook his head. He was right to be sceptical. These tokens were not enough to save Shamil. All the newspaper articles that extolled Phoenix rising from the ashes of Akhulgo, all the calls in Parliament for an independent Dagestan, all the collections for the ‘poor, brave Caucasians’, the talk of training from Indian army officials on modern artillery methods, at the end only provided him with moral support.

‘These three stars on the flag,’ I said, ‘probably represent Georgia, Circassia and Dagestan even though Georgia had ceded to Russia.’

Oz showed me sheets of music enfolded in a romantic colourful cover of warriors with their swords and Arabian steeds. The title was The Shamil Schottische and Malak gave us a demonstration of the dance, a slower polka that really needed a partner, she said, but Oz would not oblige.

It was part of the magic of the day, to watch her dance and laugh, to listen to Oz teasing her. She was light on her feet, saying ‘The composer was English and to use Shamil’s name to market the tune must mean that he captured people’s imagination at the time.’ The sun shone on the sweep of her black hair, her jade earrings. The sight filled me with a sense of privilege, a gratitude I had not felt for a long time. Here we were, the three of us, fascinated by a common past — faithful to it, even. I at least to the history, they to an ancestor they were proud of. It was only in a specific period of Shamil’s career that he won British favour — the years after Akhulgo, the politics surrounding the Crimean War, up until Princess Anna Elinichna entered into the picture. It was precisely because of a Georgian princess that the British representative said, ‘Shamil is a fanatic and a barbarian with whom it would be difficult for us … to entertain any credible or satisfactory relations.’

2. GEORGIA, JUNE 1854

In order to nurse the baby while sitting on her favourite armchair, Princess Anna had gone through considerable effort. Neither David nor her sisters could understand her insistence on taking this particular armchair from Tiflis all the way down to the Tsinondali estate. The chair had to be hoisted on top of an oxen-cart with the ikons and the silver samovar, covered in old sheets to protect them from the dust of the road. Even though the Chavchavadzes spent every summer in the country, this year the move had been spiked with doubts. The military governor had refused to sanction it, citing the increasing raids of the highlanders. However, Anna had insisted. It was too hot to stay in town and there was much that needed doing at Tsinondali; to give it up one summer would amount to neglect. Besides, it was only in the countryside that she felt at ease, able to wear her national costume and speak in her mother tongue, garden and supervise the estate. Luckily David had supported her. He was to be nearby throughout the summer commanding the local militia, a line of forts along the river that protected the lowlands from any invasion by the Caucasus highlanders. On a good day he could reach them by dinner, and at the slightest inkling of danger he would be the first to know. Still, though, their summer move raised frowns. There was gossip that Anna was headstrong and manipulative of her husband. Relatives hinted that they would not visit as often as they usually did and her sisters teased her about the armchair, which she would have to abandon in case of a hasty return to town.

The chair was upholstered in a material that was gentle on the skin and easy to wipe clean in case of spills. Its design of lilacs and roses was pleasing and it was comfortable enough to sleep in on those difficult nights when Lydia was colicky and refused to settle. Anna would hold her as the baby sucked on and off, swallowing lazily because she was not really hungry, dozing into the kind of sleep that was so light that Anna knew if she even tried to move her to her cot, she would shriek into full consciousness. ‘You are spoiling her, Your Highness,’ the new governess had said. If Anna had been less confident she would have minded. But she had been a fine mother to Alexander and there was no reason to doubt her abilities with Lydia. ‘You French have your ways and we have ours,’ she answered Madame Drancy, not so much as to put her in her place, but to nip in the bud any undue harsh discipline.

Drancy had had no previous experience with children. She arrived in Georgia with the intention of opening a bookshop. French novels were much in demand, especially as the Crimean War had stopped many from travelling. But the war itself made her project fail. She was unable to import any books, the French Consulate closed and, reluctant to return to Paris as a failure, she had little option but to seek employment as a governess. French tutors and English nannies were in high demand. Anna, though, was relieved that she had been able to talk David out of the need for a nanny as well as a wet nurse. She would not give up this close contact with her children. A governess was enough for their small family and Drancy was hardy and adaptable. In Tiflis, when their move to the countryside had been debated, a staff officer presented Madame Drancy with a dagger and recommended that she learnt to use it before venturing out to danger. To her credit, Drancy had airily remarked that the dagger would make a useful letter-opener. And ever since they’d arrived at Tsinondali, she had not stopped admiring the gardens and the fruit trees, the vineyards and the jasmines.

From her armchair, with Lydia swallowing rich, early-morning milk, Anna gazed down at the big courtyard, the garden where David had played as a child and where Alexander now picked a pear from the tree and walked, eating it. She could see the whole estate spread out before her. Greenery on one side and the dark mountains on the other, the ravine that marked the limit of her afternoon walk. There she would lean forward to look at the running stream, a small tributary of the Alazani, the water washing the rocks, pushing away at the mountain sides. As a child David had learnt to swim in this river and years later on their honeymoon (yet another reason that Anna was fond of Tsinondali) they had spent many laughing hours in the water. Easy days when it was just the two of them, enamoured and young, before the responsibilities of children and households.

At Tsinondali they were seven miles from the nearest town and the house was self-supporting. They raised their own cattle and made their own bread and wine. There was much to supervise including the staff of head cook, under-cooks, grooms, dairy maids, farm-hands, gardeners, carpenters and scullions. Yet all this was preferable to the social rounds of St Petersburg, the predictability of court gossip, the formality of being ‘at home’ on Thursdays or Mondays. She was, it seemed, the only Georgian princess who had not enjoyed being a lady-in-waiting to the tsarina. Anna was often homesick and had no patience with the games and side-stepping needed to catch the eye of an eligible bachelor. She wanted to marry a Georgian prince and did not understand the need to go all the way to Petersburg to find him. Now gazing into baby Lydia’s eyes, she knew that she would rather be here than anywhere else. ‘Wake up, don’t doze again. I’ll change you and take you out in the sunshine.’ This was the best feed of the day when her breasts were full and she could revel in this natural, maternal generosity, this abundance that was making her daughter content and languorous, this nourishment that would make her tiny limbs strong. When she changed Lydia’s nappy, Anna bent down and took deep breaths of the yoghurt smell that came from a baby who had not yet tasted solid food. It was as exhilarating as a perfume, a sweetness that locked them together, that sealed them as mother and child.

In the evening, after Anna had made the sign of the cross over Alexander and kissed him goodnight, she stayed up playing the piano, but Madame Drancy was restless. The governess kept getting up to walk to the window and peer out from behind the curtains. It made Anna lose her concentration. She stumbled twice on the same note and gave up. ‘What can you see out there?’

‘There is a light; it might be a Chechen campfire.’ Drancy’s fair hair was held firmly away from her face and she dressed in sombre colours as if she was always conscious of being a widow.

Anna moved over to the window. The moon was covered by clouds but she could see a cluster of orange flames up on the mountains. ‘They are on the other side of the river.’

‘They can cross it.’

‘Cross the Alazani!’ Anna pulled the curtains closer together and walked back to the piano seat. ‘It’s the deepest of rivers. Besides, with all the rain we’ve been having, it’s swollen.’

Madame Drancy followed her. ‘There is talk that Shamil and his men are descending from the mountains to take Georgia.’

Anna tidied her music sheets. ‘It’s just servants’ gossip. You mustn’t pay attention to it.’ She looked up at the clock. It seemed a little slow; it needed winding. ‘I must remember tomorrow to send for the clockmaker.’

But Madame Drancy was not to be distracted. ‘They say Shamil is a monster who eats Russian flesh.’

Anna laughed. ‘An educated woman like you believing such nonsense!’

‘But how else can one explain the uncanny way he escaped death and capture! Time and again. It must be that he has made a pact with the devil.’

‘I doubt it very much, Madame Drancy.’ Anna’s voice was deliberately calm. It would not be right to lose patience.

Madame Drancy clutched her hands together. ‘He’s a savage with insatiable needs.’

Anna sighed and started to offer more reassurances. The Chechen campfire, if it was really that, was definitely across the river. There was no need to panic and yet, she told herself, the anxiety would always be there, a risk she had taken when she insisted on coming here for the summer. The military were concentrating their efforts in the Crimea. It would be a strategic moment for Shamil to attack and yet many believed that he was in too poor a shape to do so.

‘More and more of his men are defecting, Madame Drancy,’ she said. ‘It is true that after the defeat of Akhulgo he did, against all expectations, gather strength and numbers. But that was fifteen years ago and unless the Turks or English bolster him now, he is not in a position to attack Georgia. And they are putting all their resources in the Crimea.’

Madame Drancy settled back in her chair and even picked up her novel again. She looked her best when she read, the way she held up La Dame aux Camélias, the curve of her neck, the slight tension in her shoulders. Anna continued to play but the conversation had affected her. For the sake of prudence, she would, first thing tomorrow morning, send a message to David.

A day later, he joined them for dinner. It became almost festive because of his presence but in order not to frighten Alexander they avoided talk of the mountain campfires until they were alone. Their bedroom had nets around the four-poster bed. There were three large chests of drawers, a mantelpiece that had belonged to David’s mother, and Anna’s armchair near the window. She pushed it so that it would not be in David’s way as he looked out of the window. Anna said, ‘One of the maids walked out on me this morning. She refused to say why but I think she was frightened.’

David looked out of the window. ‘Two campfires tonight.’

She moved and stood next to him. ‘You are sure they are on the other side of the river?’

‘Definitely.’ He turned away from the window and went to sit on the bed. ‘Shamil cannot take on Georgia. Marauding bands up and down the river, that’s all he’s capable of. A skirmish here, a run-in there, just enough to keep us on our feet and persuade us that we’re a little bit more than a token force.’ David sounded resentful. He would rather have been sent to the Crimea. The David Anna had first married used to be more good-natured, more inclined to enjoy life. There was an added seriousness in him now, new ambitions.

‘It is such a comfort to me that you are near.’ She crawled on to the bed, bunching up her nightdress so that it wouldn’t entangle her. Her dark hair fell from the chignon she had pinned up for dinner.

‘Don’t worry. If I was worried, I would tell you to leave.’

She hugged him. ‘Thank you for understanding that I need to be here.’

He did not return her embrace and instead lit a cigar. ‘In truth I don’t understand. It is a mystery to me.’

She sensed that they were stepping into the murky area of their marriage. That cove which nurtured differences, rather than peace. Further in and they would reach the point where everything she could say was of little use; everything he could say was hurtful.

Yet she had to speak, ‘Because this estate is the most beautiful place in the world. Because it’s been in your family for years. It’s our children’s heritage. It’s what we are.’

‘Then don’t complain. I’ve tried for years to loosen your attachment to it and convince you to move to Petersburg. You’ve chosen the edge of civilisation so you must accept its hazards.’

She drew away from him. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘It means a country lady should learn to look after herself.’

‘I will. I will look after myself and our home and our future.’

He looked at her as if he was sorry for her. Then with a gesture of impatience he picked up an ashtray. ‘My future and my children’s future is Russia.’

‘Why are you differentiating yourself from me? We are the same — we’re Georgians, not Russians.’

He shook his head. ‘Your own grandfather, a wise king and a man of peace, ceded Georgia to Russia. He spared us bloodshed. Look at these Chechens, hard-headed as the mountains that bred them, fighting years on end, and every day I lose one lad after the other. Every day my clerk writes a letter to the family of a Seregin or a Panov, telling them that their son has been killed defending tsar, fatherland and the Orthodox faith. Why all this waste, why does Shamil continue when common sense says that we will win, when common sense says that they are resisting all that would be good for them?’

‘What good?’ She was sullen now, the arguments narrowing around her.

‘What good?’ he snorted. ‘Peace for one, prosperity too. Modern roads, sanitation, education, enlightened thinking. Everything that is uncouth and reprehensible to be replaced by what is civilised and rational. No one in his right mind, given a choice, would choose primitiveness over advancement. You can’t live in the past, Anna, you can’t be like them.’

Tears came into her eyes and as if in sympathy her breasts, though not full, started to leak. Lydia’s milk. She would like to feed her now, to douse the baby’s thirst and her own anger. Instead it was her nightdress that was becoming wet. Not every Georgian was glad to submit to Russia. But David deliberately shunned those objecting members of the family who had had their lands confiscated and were held in Moscow against the threat of political intrigue. It irked Anna that her grandmother, the dethroned Queen Maria, was commanded at times to attend court for certain functions, then ridiculed for her clothes and tanned skin. Why did these humiliations not touch David too? In Petersburg society, hangers-on went around describing themselves as ‘Georgian princesses’ as if the phrase had no protection or use. In Anna’s case, the title was a right — she was granddaughter of George XII, the last king. David would accuse her of being proud if she mentioned this. In turn she would defend herself by saying that she wanted simplicity and closeness to the peasants, that she worked hard and did not indulge herself in luxuries. Then they would argue even more.

She looked at him now, holding his cigar in one hand, the mother-of-pearl ashtray in the other, and saw what she had not wanted to acknowledge. This was not the bridegroom she had exchanged vows with in church, the husband who brought her to Tsinondali, the lover who swam with her in the river. It was not only that he was older, the lustre lost from his hair, the boyish look in his eyes replaced with the keen desire to advance. His beard was gone; his clothes, his concerns, his watch with the double chain and seal, his manner of speaking, were more Russian than she could ever be.

3. PETERSBURG, JUNE 1854

Jamaleldin, granted an audience with the tsar, waited in the reception room on the upper floor of the Winter Palace. His uniform was that of a young officer in the Imperial Escort. He had even volunteered to fight in the Caucasus and was awaiting the tsar’s consent. All this would pave the way to his marriage to Daria Semyonovich. It would subdue her parents’ doubts, manifested in the cool reception he often received from Daria’s mother, the veiled comments about his slanting eyes. To fight the highlanders would seal his loyalty; it would, he believed, dispel the memory that he was Shamil’s flesh and blood. Let everyone know him only as the tsar’s godson. Let them remember his outstanding performance in his military examinations, his accomplishments that included astronomy, painting, a fluency in English and French, and not least his horsemanship. When he was with Daria they spoke of their love and not his past, they dreamt of the future, and unlike other girls he had known, she did not pry with questions about his family or where he was born. Daria was content to listen to him praising her eyes and her lips, her little hands and the curls that fell naturally on her wide, smooth forehead. She lapped up his devotion with a serenity that was part of her nature; a silence that hinted at either emptiness or pliancy.

It might be a long wait. The minister of war was inside, briefing the tsar, and Jamaleldin did not know how long it had been since their meeting began. He could ask the duty officer, a newly appointed aide-de-camp, whom he had never met before, but he preferred not to. The sound of murmured voices and the scratch of the officer’s pen, while inside fates were being decided. Troops deployed, peasants made to run the gauntlet, promotions and demotions. The atmosphere was solemn and strangely foggy. Jamaleldin stared at the portrait of Emperor Alexander I, his reddish sideburns and an enigmatic smile on his lips. May Allah have mercy on his soul. The phrase, learnt in Arabic as a child, bobbed up unbidden. It was a natural, internal reflex. The sort of response he must not say out loud. He worried, sometimes, that these words would slip out of him on their own accord. It was for this reason that he never allowed himself to get drunk. There were limits to how much he could reveal, restraints that he imposed on himself in order to continue to succeed.

During his long journey away from Akhulgo, he had expected his father to rescue him. Spending the night at a military garrison near Moscow, he boasted of this and they took away his kinjal. He lashed out at his minders, biting, kicking and screaming. They locked him up and punished him with hunger and a darkness in which evil spirits thickened and floated because there was no lamplight to drive them off. Surely Shamil would not allow this injustice to continue. Surely he would save him. Jamaleldin waited, strained for the sounds of horses, prepared himself for a raid in which he would be carried off back to safety.

This episode of harsh discipline turned out to be a solitary one, condemned by the tsar, and never repeated. When Jamaleldin finally reached Petersburg, it was decided that military quarters were no longer suitable and that a family would foster him. A town house for him to live in, children who grudgingly shared their toys and clothes, parents who were not his parents. Better the kind nanny with the kerchief tied around her wide face. She reminded him of the peasants of the lowlands; she knew how to talk to him — not in the Avar language, but words didn’t matter — he understood the tone of her voice, the clucks and music in her sentences. She held him on her lap and sang him lullabies as if he were still a baby, as if he were a newborn. He was exhausted. Exhausted from the assault of newness; of space, sounds and smells betraying him, food not being food and speech not being speech. All this strangeness demanded his attention, all these new people in his life drew him out, pushed or goaded or cajoled him. His mother had told him not to cry, he was an Avar, he mustn’t cry. All that Jamaleldin had to do, he told himself, was wait, watch out and wait, be alert, be ready.

An invisible leash kept him tethered to his enemies, kept him cowed and conscious of his weakness in comparison to their strength, of his smallness and what he quickly realised was his ignorance. He must learn, they kept telling him, not only the Russians but the Caucasian chiefs who had allied themselves with the tsar and were now brought to meet him, those Asiatic princes who looked like him but had betrayed his father. You must learn to speak Russian, they all said. You must learn these modern ways so that one day, when peace comes, you will go back to your people and help them.

During the day, he became too busy to watch out for his father’s rescue. Night became his time to wander free. He could lie very still and strain his ears for the soft leather steps of a highlander, anticipate a midnight raid. Which of his father’s men would come for him? He went through them, exercising his memory: Zachariah who was the bravest, Abdullah who was more reliable, Imran who could speak Russian and come in disguise. Or it could be Younis, who used to visit him in the Russian general’s tent in Akhulgo, following an arrangement made by his father. Younis taught him more of the Qur’an and made sure that he was keeping up with his prayers. This, perhaps, was why Younis’s face and voice remained longer in Jamaleldin’s memory. For slowly, as week followed week, he forgot to expect the relief expedition, although there still lingered a faint hope for it to surprise him, to take him unaware; as if he had just been momentarily distracted and everything would go back to how it had been before.

Later, when he was eleven and sent to the Cadet Corps, he toyed with plans of escape. The urge to flee would only come when he was reprimanded by a teacher or set upon by a bully. Humiliated, he would plot to steal a horse, wrap food in a rag and set off back to the Caucasus. But he was an able student, an amiable schoolmate and soon puberty brought with it a self-absorption that calmed him down. What felt like an alien challenging prison became a home with known boundaries, tightly filled with much to keep him exercised and amused.

And he was special, after all — he was the tsar’s ward, he had a place in court. A palace he had only encountered in the descriptions of Paradise. Gliding staircase, glittering chandeliers, beautiful women, their breasts cradling jewels, dressed in rustling silks, who caressed his hair and cooed in their own language. The military parades, the steeplechases, the labyrinthine, teeming streets, of the city; magicians and clowns, a trip to the theatre, sledges, and girls peering at him over their sable muffs. Slowly, the present, the here and now, asserted itself and shoved all else to the back of his mind. Jamaleldin began to enjoy the fact that he was an intriguing figure at court, that others were drawn to his difference. Soft-spoken and even-handed in his dealings, he got along well with young men his age. He possessed, too, the keen ability to ferret out the best in others. It suited his patrons/captors to think that he had forgotten his past and it suited him to maintain this impression.

But his memories of Akhulgo were vivid and when alone with his thoughts he could smile at his brother Ghazi, he could smell his father’s beard and breathe the cloudy air of the highest peaks. The images he recalled were tied to the past. He could not speculate on how Ghazi looked now as an adult or how much Shamil’s new home in Dargo resembled Akhulgo. Jamaleldin was not interested in his family’s present, a present he could not access. Nor would he bite the hand that fed him. His captors’ values must be his values, their rules obeyed, their aspirations supported. This was why he offered to serve in the Caucasus. He would be a link between the two sides, he would carry peace and modernity to the highlands. Greater Russia’s goal, the subjugation of the mountain tribes, had become, for him, an abstract attainment. He did not have the tools to question it or doubt it. It was too much a part of the larger scheme of life.

The Emperor Nicholas was seated behind his writing table, dressed in a black frock coat. The long pale face Jamaleldin had grown to resent and revere, to fear and to serve, the familiar moustache curled at the ends, the fresh scent of eau de cologne and sense of physical wellbeing. The tsar’s hair was combed forward to one side in an attempt to hide his bald patch.

A voice in Jamaleldin’s head said in the Avar language, ‘Praise be to Allah. Observe how a mighty king with endless riches and power over people’s lives is helpless before the ravages of Time.’ The humorous tone was familiar. It was an elderly man’s voice Jamaleldin was hearing and not for the first time; a man with a turban and a long white beard who was not necessarily addressing Jamaleldin specifically. He was addressing a whole group; he exerted no pressure on Jamaleldin to listen nor needed a reply. Sometimes Jamaleldin absorbed every word, often he pushed the voice away; but he was unable to silence it. These observations, sometimes exhortations, he knew, were ghosts of his previous life. They disturbed him because, unlike the phrases he had learnt as a child, these observations were fresh and relevant to the moment. Perhaps it was the voice of his father’s teacher Jamal el-Din, the Sufi sheikh he had been named after. Perhaps he had been endowed with the gift of communicating with souls across time and space. But that was far-fetched. Rationally, the composer of these phrases must be Jamaleldin himself and yet why would he have such strange, unbecoming thoughts? He must never speak of them. They were like a squirrel hidden in the breast pocket of his jacket, threatening to wriggle out, not particularly to escape but to cause the greatest of social embarrassments.

Nicholas gestured for Jamaleldin to sit down. He looked fatigued and Jamaleldin wondered if this was perhaps not the best of days to approach him. Nicholas pushed aside the papers he had been working on and said, ‘I am sending you tomorrow to Warsaw. You will be with the Vladimirski Lancers.’

The disappointment caused Jamaleldin to lose his natural reserve. ‘But Your Majesty, I had hoped to serve you in the Caucasus.’

‘You will, but not now. It is not the right time.’ Nicholas folded his plump hands together. ‘I do not doubt your loyalty but I have other plans for you. When we subdue the Caucasus you will play your part. It will not be long now. We destroyed their supplies and laid waste to the forests. Our strategy has worked! And we will continue to harass them. We will tighten the cordon around them and only then, Jamaleldin, will I send you there.’

‘I hear and obey.’ It was the right thing to say, the only choice.

Nicholas’s curled moustache twitched. ‘You will rule Dagestan and Chechnya on my behalf. No one will be able to win the tribes’ loyalty and trust more than Shamil’s son.’

At the mention of his father, Jamaleldin felt as if he was forced to put on his best woollen coat in the height of summer. Shamil was not for him now; he was a legendary name, a lost love, as close and as far as an organ inside Jamaleldin’s own body, deadly to reach. He believed in Shamil’s eventual downfall; this belief came from the palace walls around him, from the roads he walked on, the artillery he handled, the teachers who taught him, the existence of cities such as Petersburg and Moscow, of the opera and the skating ring, the horse races and a pair of binoculars, a dance at the ball, the railway lines. Shamil’s defeat was in the trajectory of Jamaleldin’s life. Yet he flinched whenever Shamil was portrayed as an ogre. And he felt proud when he heard tales of his heroic resistance. Jamaleldin’s heart would contract and all the Arabic words, all the Avar phrases, would frolic above a whisper and it would require extra effort to control himself, to maintain his usual non-committal expression. He was too intelligent to indulge in undue insistence or exaggerated displays of his loyalty; these would only attract more attention. Instead, he trod softly, careful to hit the right notes. Unlike the Central Asian princes who wore their native dress when they came to court, Jamaleldin did not even wear a cherkesska. Every conscious thing he did reflected his conversion to the Empire.

But it was not enough. Nicholas sat back in his chair and lowered his voice, kind and firm. ‘As for the other personal matter you petitioned me on, there can be no union between you and the Princess Daria Semyonovich. You are incompatible in status and background.’

Jamaleldin flushed. It was as if Daria herself had scrunched his love like a handkerchief and thrown it in his face. He now wanted this audience to be over. He wanted to grab his dashed hopes and run away.

Nicholas chuckled. ‘So Russian women are to your taste … eh? Well, go ahead, have as many as you like, why not? But marriage, no. You must marry from your own kind. A tribal chief’s daughter, perhaps. Or an emir’s. This would further increase your acceptance among the highlanders. Think of the future,’ he concluded with a flourish. ‘You will be my mouthpiece in the Caucasus. You will bring enlightenment to your own people. For this I have fashioned you.’

4. DARGO, THE CAUCASUS, JUNE 1854

In his teacher’s home, Shamil could put the war behind him, give up the burden of command and learn again. He reached out and took over the cleaning of Sheikh Jamal el-Din’s shoes. The elderly man’s long white beard rested on his chest, his bright penetrating eyes were sources of light. Outside in the night air an owl hooted.

‘The great Shamil is cleaning my shoes!’ There was a warm jocular tone to his voice, one that listeners never forgot.

The two of them sat cross-legged on square cushions, a rug spread out in front of them on the earthen floor. The door of the house was open to let in the summer breeze and every once in a while it creaked on its hinges nudging shadows across the room. Shamil’s rifle and sword were hanging on a nail dug into the plastered wall. In any other house, they would have been next to the master of the house’s weapons but here there was only the washbasin and pitcher used for wudu.

‘In your presence, I am not great. I am the young boy who came to you in Yaraghl with neither knowledge in my head nor much strength in my body.’ These were sharp memories as all memories of awakenings are, that time when the swirl of unnamed desires settles into the focus of purpose. Shamil had been a moody child with a sense of loneliness so acute that it resembled arrogance. The cheerful pastimes of others his age left him baffled and disdainful. When one day the neighbourhood boys ambushed him and left him bleeding from a dagger wound, he had been too proud to seek help. Instead he had staggered to a cave in the mountainside and fastened his torn skin with the mandibles of ants, applied crushed herbs and rested until his wound healed. But instead of returning home once he recovered, he set out to seek physical and spiritual strength. He found it in the mystic teachings of the Sufi sheikhs of the Naqshbandi Tariqa.

‘I recall,’ Jamal el-Din said, ‘that you had fight in your soul. You were disciplined, too. When it was time for books, you were studious and patient. When it was time for athletics, you were energetic and sturdy.’

Shamil smiled. ‘I used to repeat the prayer you taught me. ‘Lord, make me grateful and make me patient. Make me small in my own eyes and great in the eyes of the people.’

‘And today the Ottoman sultan has nominated you as the Viceroy of Georgia.’

Shamil laughed, ‘You have heard already. No news escapes you! Advise me. Shall I accept?’

‘It is only a fine title. The sultan is offering you what he doesn’t possess.’

‘He is anticipating victory.’ Shamil’s voice quickened. ‘If the Ottomans and their allies, Britain and France, launch an attack on Tiflis, I can attack from the east and cut off the Crimean peninsula from the rest of Russia.’

‘If they attack Tiflis …’ His teacher’s voice trailed off and then he started again. ‘Has Queen Victoria replied to your letter?’ Jamal el-Din had written the letter himself for his calligraphy was outstanding, and despite his age, his eyesight was strong. The letter would reach her through the British general-consul in Baghdad, who advocated supplying the mountain tribes with ammunition against the Russians, and was fluent in Arabic. Our resistance is stubborn, Shamil had dictated, but we are obliged, in winter, to send our wives and children far away, to seek safety in the forests where they have nothing, no food, no refuge against the severe cold. Yet we are resigned. It is Allah’s will. He ordained that we should suffer to defend our land. But England must know of this … We beseech you, we urge you, O Queen to bring us aid.

‘No, I have not received a reply.’ Shamil sounded more subdued.

‘Lord Palmerston was working on our side. His opposition to Russia is deep but he is no longer foreign secretary. As home secretary, his influence is reduced.’

‘I fear that the right time has passed,’ said Shamil. ‘That all of Britain’s efforts have sunk into the Crimea.’

Sheikh Jamal el-Din was quiet. He patted his hand on his knees and his head sank deeper into his chest. At first the prayers he was saying were inaudible, but Shamil caught the recitation of the beautiful names of Allah.

When Jamal el-Din finally spoke, he said, ‘I am filled with foreboding about this war in the Crimea. There will be much bloodshed and misery.’

This was a point of disagreement between them; Jamal el-Din the more peaceful of the two, the more eager to reconcile, negotiate and forgive.

Shamil repeated what he always said in these situations. ‘Wars are never won with kindness. If men respected compassion I would have been the first to grant it. But even our own warriors are only in awe of power.’ Nothing was more damaging than the weak Muslims who defected to Russia, who gladly or by force marched with the tsar’s troops. Or they became spies, hypocritically claiming they were on Shamil’s side and then reporting his secrets to the enemy. Or else they deliberately misled him so that he would walk into an ambush or launch an attack based on misinformation. He must always be on his guard, he must take nothing at face value. He must distrust.

‘The world is a carcass and the one who goes after it is a dog,’ Jamal el-Din murmured as if to himself.

‘Men of bad character punish their own souls.’ The leather shoe in Shamil’s hands was becoming darker in colour because of the varnish. Sometimes he was not sure who was the scourge of his life, the Russians or those who betrayed him?

As if reading his mind, Jamal el-Din said, ‘To get what you love, you must first be patient with what you hate.’

Shamil shifted his position so that his back was closer to the wall. ‘You speak the truth.’

‘Was it gunshots that I heard earlier in the afternoon?’ Jamal el-Din turned to look at him.

‘Five prisoners of war attempted to escape by smuggling a letter in a loaf of bread. They gave the loaf to a Jewish peddler and he was carrying it as part of his provisions for the journey. I will not tolerate treachery.’

‘A loaf of bread,’ Jamal el-Din repeated.

His tone made Shamil uneasy. When a prisoner faced his death sentence without flinching, Shamil spared him and gave him his due praise. But those who wept and fought were deprived of his mercy. Was he truly just? There was a hole in the heel where the leather was eroded. He searched the room for the necessary needle and began to mend it.

‘Come with me to Mecca,’ said Jamal el-Din. ‘Let us visit the house of Allah together.’

The words, the prospect had an instant effect on Shamil. He felt light and carefree. ‘Oh what a pleasure that would be, to put down my sword and take off my turban. To become a simple pilgrim dressed in rags chanting, “To you my Lord I come”.’

‘To you my Lord I come,’ Jamal el-Din repeated. ‘So what is holding you back?’

‘My son Jamaleldin …’ The words were heavy on his tongue, his fingers slackened. He felt it on his skin, that tingle of humiliation always associated with this particular defeat, this constant, eroding loss. ‘I wonder sometimes how I am able to sleep at night, to eat, to make my wives smile while my son is worse than dead.’

Jamal el-Din stiffened as he always did when he heard what he disliked.

Shamil continued, ‘I fear that not only is he a hostage but that the infidels have corrupted his soul and taken away his religion.’

‘Malicious gossip.’

‘It has been fifteen years. Fifteen years without my care or guidance. A strong adult might withstand such a trial but he was just a child.’ The sense of injustice was always fresh, never faded or stale. ‘Now on a night like this, I think what is he doing? How can the son of Imam Shamil be unclean and not pray five times a day? Even our language, he must have forgotten it by now.’

Jamal el-Din closed his eyes. ‘There is no strength or might except with Allah.’

Instead of repeating after him, Shamil said, ‘I will get him back. I will return him to Islam.’ For how long has he been saying this and every plan was thwarted, every hope turned to nothing? He had promised Fatima that he would bring her eldest child back to her but he had failed. Nine years ago, as she lay dying, she wept and called for her son and though she did not name him, everyone knew it was not Ghazi or little Muhammad-Sheffi that she wanted.

Shamil was on the battlefield. He had lured the Russians across the mountains, up to ten miles from his stronghold in Dargo. He had been patient, tiring them out as they made their way down the steep descent with their heavy baggage trains and lengthy lines. He had cut off segments of them by blocking the mountain paths with tree trunks and while they figured a way to overcome these barriers or broke into confusion, he sent his horsemen in a full attack or fired at them with hidden sharp-shooters. Disorder broke out as one Russian column after another fell back, low morale set in as the dead piled up and the chants of the Orthodox funeral services merged into one another. Shamil and his men were attacking them from every side and they could now barely resist or fight back. With ammunition and food supplies running low, they remained under siege for several days.

It was then that the news reached him of Fatima’s death. At first Shamil continued as he was, sending one of his men to see to the funeral. He was needed here where his own troops too were worn out and so hungry that they had taken to grilling the corpses of Russian horses. But his naibs urged him to return home and promised that they would, on their own, be able to defeat the besieged enemy. However, no sooner had news of his departure reached the Russian camp than the celebrations started. They banged drums and played their pipes. The following morning they had even more to celebrate. The relief force they had given up hope on finally arrived from the town of Gurzal. But it ended up being a costly, indecisive battle that left both sides entrenched in bitterness. And Shamil was left without Fatima, his link to Jamaleldin, she who kept alive the hope that he would return. Now Shamil was solitary in his memories, for very few liked to speak of his missing son.

He finished cleaning the shoes and broached the subject he had especially come to talk about, ‘Sheikh Jamal el-Din, I seek your permission to appoint my son, Ghazi, as my successor.’

His teacher turned to look at him with questioning eyes as if waiting to hear more.

‘It is unseemly to praise one’s own offspring but the lad has demonstrated courage, horsemanship and skill.’

‘I know,’ Jamal el-Din nodded. ‘Ghazi does not act arrogantly and he has insight and compassion. But you must gather the scholars and the naibs. Let them consider the matter and deliberate among themselves. Do not impose your choice upon them.’ He raised his palms up in prayer. ‘Lord, give Ghazi the strength to promote Your religion, to guard his community and to act with caution and justice.’

The joy and pride Shamil should have felt was weighed down by the implications of this step. He was admitting his loss in public. Not specifically that Jamaleldin would never come back, but that even if he were to return, he would not be fit to take his father’s place.

As if sensing that it was Jamaleldin and not Ghazi who was in Shamil’s thoughts, the elderly man asked, ‘What came of that hostage that you were going to exchange him with?’

‘He was not valuable enough. I ended up exchanging him for some of our men. But I will not give up.’ He needed someone more valuable. This was the plan he had been working on. And today he had sent out scouts.