The Kindness of Enemies

1. SCOTLAND, DECEMBER 2010

‘Can I have a word with you, Natasha?’ Iain put his head through the door. It meant he wanted me to come to his office. ‘Any time within the next hour,’ he added. He drummed his fingers against the doorknob. As always, his clothes hung on him as if they were a size too large. His hair, too, always seemed big for his face, a throwback to the 1980s. The formality of his request surprised me. A dull ache started behind my eyes. I was still shaken by what had happened this morning.

After leaving Malak, I drove through slush, streets that were busier than usual now that the snow was melting. The need-to-catch-up mood reached me through the edgy shoppers impatient to cross the road and the announcement on the radio that Debenhams would stay open till ten. The Christmas songs were familiar and reassuring. I found that I had an effortless memory for past Number One hits. Given a year, I could guess either the song or the artist, sometimes even both. When it was time for the news I found myself gripping the steering wheel. But there was no mention of dawn raids or of Oz.

Today I had my own catching up to do. I had missed one full day of work and most of the morning. Next week, exams started and there were plenty of emails from my superiors to wade through first, answer or file before I turned to the students’. Without my laptop, I would have to get through them at the desktop in my office. Even my personal emails. I tried not to think of the files on my laptop that I had not backed up.

There was an email from the Classic Car Club saying that tonight’s Christmas dinner was cancelled because of the weather. Lucky for me that I wasn’t in charge this year. These kinds of decisions were not easy to make. Last year I was events secretary and that party was a success. It was disappointing that this one was cancelled. I had been looking forward to it, a chance to show off my 196 °Czechoslovakian-built Skoda after all the work I’d had done to it. I was much less hands-on than the others, who tended to do all the work themselves and devoted more time to their car. It cost a fortune at the garage but I would not begrudge my heroic Felicia, which made it to the West at the height of the Cold War.

When I sat in the armchair in Iain’s room, he said, ‘It’s not good news about Gaynor Stead. They’ve decided to uphold her complaint.’

Gaynor had been my student last year. I had judged her to be the stupidest person to have ever stepped into university. It baffled me that she survived until third year after repeating both of the previous ones. Too often I had watched quirky and brilliant students crash and burn. Instead it was the doleful and dogged Gaynor who was the survivor of the species. She never missed a class — perhaps that was her secret. Or because she knew her rights and felt entitled to a degree as if she were a client and the university a service. She had failed my class, but that was not the issue — her work was poor without question. Instead she claimed that I had sat on top of her desk and broken one of her fingers! It was a seminar and there were only about ten students, the desks arranged in a rectangle. While answering a question, she stumbled over the pronunciation of a Russian name and clammed up, refusing to speak any further. Instead of asking her to spell the name or leaning over to look at her notes or just moving on to someone else, I perched on top of her desk and picked up her notebook. She was clearly irritated by my proximity, swinging her hair back sharply and muttering something under her breath. But there was no cry of pain, nothing about a bruised or injured finger. And I was sure, as much as I could ever be sure, that I did not sit on her finger or even her pen.

‘Iain, this is ridiculous. She never left the room. Would anyone with a broken finger continue to take a class as if nothing had happened?’

‘She has a letter from her doctor.’

‘On that same date?’

He spoke slowly. ‘The school is going to look into all that. It’s going to take time. In the New Year there’ll be another meeting and they’ll decide then whether to go ahead with any action.’

There was a picture of his wife and two children on his desk. His wife was wearing a purple jumper; the little boys, only a few years apart, resembled her in that they both had red hair. The photo, taken in front of their new house, seemed recent because of the snow. I too would like to leave my flat and move to a house. I could sit in the garden with my laptop. This was not likely on the pay scale I was on now and the expense of keeping two cars. I would have to be a professor, like Iain. In time I could become one; there was nothing wrong with my abilities. ‘This isn’t the first time Gaynor has complained about a member of staff. How come this time she’s being taken seriously?’ My voice sounded sharp to my ears.

‘She’s complained twice before,’ he said. ‘Different lecturers.’

‘So I’m her third time lucky!’

‘I can understand your frustration.’

‘What do you think will be the outcome of the meeting?’ I might have to fight and the prospect of battle was in itself repulsive.

‘It depends,’ he said. ‘Often these things just fizzle out.’ He was giving me his full attention. ‘Are you a member of the union?’

‘No.’ It was not the answer he wanted. Suddenly I wished I was sharing this with Malak and Oz. Malak would laugh and Oz, who probably knew Gaynor, would say something mean about her.

‘Iain, I didn’t break her finger. I’m sure of it.’

‘I believe you and I’m sorry that you have to go through this. It might never come to a hearing though. I know the stress of waiting will be hard but don’t let this get to you. That last publication has put you in a strong position.’

At the mention of my paper on Shamil, I brightened up. Every seven years the university submitted its best work for the Research Assessment Exercise. My paper, ‘Royal Support for Jihad — Victorian Britain and the Russian Insurgents’, was my third to be published and I had another one ‘Jihad as Resistance’ pending publication in a journal that had previously included Iain’s work. They had asked for amendments and I was planning to work on the revisions over the holidays.

Iain went on, ‘I’ve heard good things about your talk last Monday. You’re doing well. I can tell you that for this cycle, you’re one of our few people with a strong hand.’

Despite the news about Gaynor and what had happened this morning, Iain’s last words gave me a sense of safety. ‘You’re one of the few with a strong hand’ played in the background of the afternoon. I could hear it even while I was teaching. It wrapped itself around me when I stood in the kitchen making coffee and chatting with Fiona Ingram. Fiona was the closest friend I had in the department, though her demanding husband and even more tiresome children barely left her room to socialise. We often had coffees together in the staff room or in our offices, like true workaholics. Whenever one of us was having a particularly difficult day, the other would mention the one or two lecturer friends in our separate circles who still couldn’t find a full-time job in academia. This morning Fiona was fretting that some students might not make it to the exams because of the snow-blocked roads. I wondered to myself whether Oz would be released on time.

Fiona had the same concern for all her students that I felt only for Oz. She was one of those well-meaning lecturers who could never get to grips with the irony that students were not why we were here. As a result her research was not up to scratch and now Iain would load her with more teaching hours. She did not mention my latest publication but I could tell that she knew about it. Envy gleamed through her mascara. It gave me more satisfaction than anything she could have said. It even cushioned the clunk of finding an email from Oz, which he had sent last night from his personal, not university, email address. His username was SwordOfShamil and the subject was ‘Weapons used for Jihad’.

Natasha, here’s what I’ve been working on. Thanks for agreeing to look at it. I listed my sources. Most of them were from the library but I downloaded the al-Qaeda training manual from the US Justice Department website and I didn’t even have to pay for it!

My email address, now added to the list of SwordOfShamil’s contacts, was bombarded with a stream of spam: Take the quiz: Muslims dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. True or False? Muslims killed 20 million Aborigines in Australia? True or False? Muslims started the First World War? The Second World War? Muslims killed 100 million Native Americans? True or False? Sick of the hypocrisy of the West? Angry that right now in Iraq and Afghanistan they’re killing your brothers and sisters? Then why aren’t you doing anything to stop it …

My flat was on the top floor and climbing up the stairs I realised how tired I was, in need of a bath, my own cooking, my own toiletries and clothes. The last two days were still bright in my mind. I wanted to go over them, to hear the conversations again. I wondered if I would be able to do so without Oz’s arrest burning out the details, rendering our time together as random and obsolete. I reached my landing at the very top floor and froze. It was as if my door was not my door. It was half-open and inside was chaos. A hole in the roof so that I was staring straight up into the dark attic, foot marks on the carpet, my television and DVD player gone, my iPod, even the microwave and the electric blanket. It was a robbery and they had broken in through the roof.

I banged on the door of my neighbour across the hall, but no one was in. I forced myself to walk through the damage, to fight back the tears. It made me queasy that someone had fingered my things, been through my possessions. It made me feel soiled. I called the police and, twice now in the same day, I was in their company, not the same armed officers but still their bulky presence, the hiss of their personal radios, the dark uniforms. How did the robbers get in the attic? How do you think they got on the roof to begin with? How come the neighbours didn’t notice? I wanted these answers but they were asking the questions. I started to feel nervous, the truth forcing itself out of my mouth as if it were made up on the spot. Too quickly, too easily; gently, politely they pushed me back into the old roles. On cue, my skin flared in their presence, it became more prominent than what I was saying; and I was now an impostor asking for attention, a troublesome guest taking up space. They had better things to do and worthier citizens to protect.

I rattled off my mobile number, knowing they would not be able to contact me through it, but unable to explain. Why tell them if they didn’t ask, that my phone was bagged and sealed in the possession of the counter-terrorism unit? I needed to focus. Situations like these required an extra effort, an assertiveness I usually brandished with acquired practice. But the day was catching up with me; I stammered and couldn’t meet their eyes. My mother’s accent crept into my voice, her fear of authority, her tendency to regard questions as interrogations. Growing up in the Soviet Union, state repression was as natural to her as the mountains; it was in every brush with bureaucracy, it was in the factories and offices and even the stairway of my grandparents’ block of flats. She would grip my shoulders as we stood in front of Tbilisi’s passport officials. She would lower her voice when she criticised anything or repeated gossip. My mother told me that a mental hospital could serve as a prison — one of her classmates, a dissident, had been punished with the vague diagnosis of ‘sluggish schizophrenia’. She explained to me that a career could come to an end if you held the wrong political views — early retirement, extended sick leaves and transfers to obscure posts were codes for falling out of favour. Looking around now at the mess of my belongings, my privacy exposed, I remembered my mother. Much more paranoid than me, she would have dealt with this better. ‘You are too trusting of authority,’ she used to say to me. But all my colleagues were trusting; my teachers and bosses were decent and fair. I missed my mother, she was my first home and now, until the roof was fixed, until the gas and water pipes were checked, I would be homeless.

‘You’re better off staying over with some friends,’ was the police verdict, a notebook being shut. ‘Call your insurers.’

The friend, from my PhD days, who would most likely offer me sympathy and help was over two hours away in Dumfries. It was the worst time of day to call Fiona. She would be putting the children to bed, exhausted from washing up after the evening meal. I packed a bag and checked into a hotel. I ordered room service but I was too hungry to wait. Instead I raided the mini bar, my body more responsive than usual after all those non-alcoholic evenings with Malak and Oz. The bottles felt small in my hand as if I were a giant, handling doll-sized utensils. The nuts were stale and the crisps not in my favourite flavour. From the next room I heard the sounds of television. I should put mine on too and catch the news. Instead what was obvious but felt like a brainwave had me moving to the telephone. I could get hold of Tony’s number through Directory Enquiries. He picked up immediately and the old-man tiredness in his voice lifted when he realised it was me.

‘How come you haven’t been answering your mobile?’

‘Long story.’ I told him instead about the robbery and that diverted him.

‘Drugs related,’ he said. ‘This time of year, everyone is short of cash. Where are you going to stay until your roof gets fixed? You can’t stay all that time in a hotel. I suppose you can come here part of the time.’ His voice trailed off as if he wasn’t sure if this was an invitation he wanted to issue.

To commute from Aberdeen every day would be hectic. But perhaps I could do it for part of the week. I swallowed and asked, ‘What’s the news from Sudan that you needed to tell me?’

‘Your father’s in hospital. He’s got kidney failure.’

When I was doing my PhD and out of work, I had asked my father for money but he never sent any. When my mother was ill, I wrote him several letters but never got a reply. When she died, he didn’t bother to offer his condolences — and that for a Sudanese could not be a casual omission. He had another wife now, he had a son. They were his real family, while my mother and I were the old mistake he wanted to forget. The blood rushed to my head. ‘Well, I won’t donate him my kidney if that’s why he called you.’

Tony sighed. The elderly closing ranks against the younger generation. He would want me to be reasonable; he would expect me to take appropriate action. ‘There is a possibility they would fly him to Jordan for a transplant but it might be too late.’

‘How did you find out? Did he call you himself?’

‘No. It was Grusha Babiker who did.’

Grusha used to be my mother’s best friend in Khartoum and they had stayed in touch. She too was a Russian married to a Sudanese. Her son, Yasha (real name Yassir) was my first boyfriend. They crowded around me now, these names and faces from the past — my reproachful father, Grusha who succeeded where my mother failed and Yasha who probably didn’t use his nickname any more. He became a successful lawyer, I had heard; he became more Sudanese as the years passed. Perhaps we half and halfs should always make a choice, one nationality instead of the other, one language instead of the other. We should nourish one identity and starve the other so that it would atrophy and drop off. Then we could relax and become like everyone else, we could snuggle up to the majority and fit in.

Tony said, ‘Natasha, you need to speak to Grusha. She will tell you more about your father. He really isn’t well at all. I gave her your number. She said she would call you.’

But I did not have my phone so I would not get that call. Dear Aunt Grusha. You were my role model all those years ago. Physics lecturer at Khartoum University, the only woman in the faculty. You dressed like Thatcher and went to war against the Sudanese dust so that your house could be impeccable. I missed the only cake she knew how to bake, her signature honey sponge on every birthday table and event in which she was asked to bring a dish. I missed her Arabic with its Russian accent, her deep gold hair, her son who held me when I cried about my parents’ divorce.

Tony started to talk about next month’s Southern Sudanese referendum. He was always even more up-to-date than I was. Predictably he slipped into talking about his time there. He was another Tony then, suntanned and exuberant, not the unremarkable pensioner pottering in his garden or walking in Duthie Park. I remembered him in a Hawaiian shirt, open at the neck, hairy chest and a silver medallion, drink in hand, dancing with an Ethiopian beauty (the last girlfriend he had before my mother). He was on top of his game was how he described it. There were expatriates who hated Sudan for the obvious reasons — the heat, the incompetence, the shortages, the boredom; and for other reasons — the political uncertainty, the racism against the Southern Sudanese and the way grudges were held for the pettiest of reasons. There were also those who understood and loved it or more likely the other way round, loved it first and then understood it. For it was too proud a place to explain itself without that first admission of love. Tony unravelled the Khartoum code. ‘It’s all about mixing with people,’ was how he put it. Initially arriving as an engineer with a multinational company, he stayed on past his term and ventured on his own. There were rumours that he was in the arms trade, that he was a spy, that he was a smuggler. Whichever was true, he made good money out of it and it was his house with its own swimming pool, his latest Mercedes, his frequent trips abroad that first attracted my mother.

I ate the stodgy lasagne I had ordered and drank enough to shed a few sentimental tears over Yasha. It had been twenty years since I last saw him. I wanted to dream of sitting on his lap like I used to. How we would both be dusty because a sandstorm was blowing, how our pores would be open, our skin damp, my scalp wet, the back of his shirt in patches and we wouldn’t feel there was anything wrong with that. It was as if we bypassed the stage of making a good impression; there was never a need for pretence between us, never a need to seduce. There were no edges between us, no sparks, we flowed, we fused, so that one day glancing at our reflection in the mirror we looked like Siamese twins joined at the waist. I even hesitated to draw away from him then, thinking irrationally that my skin would tear. But the moment passed and time proved that we had taken each other for granted and that I, at least, was unable to replace him. He was too diffident to assume that he was the love of my life. And I was short-sighted — I thought there would be other more exciting alternatives. I thought I deserved better than the obvious family friend.

A few years ago Yasha’s life was hit by tragedy. His wife and five-year-old daughter died in a plane crash, a domestic flight from Port Sudan to Khartoum. Compelled by the understanding that condolences were the most important of Sudanese social obligations, I phoned Aunt Grusha. ‘Yasha is in a world of his own,’ she said, her own voice thick with sorrow. ‘I thought I would stay with him for a few days because he’s still not back at work. He keeps himself locked up in his room; I might as well go back to my own house.’ She insisted though that he would want to speak to me. She knocked on his door and I heard her whisper, ‘Natasha Hussein, calling from Scotland.’ It felt strange to hear my old name, to realise that no matter what, they would only know me as such. It was a long time before Yasha picked up but he was only able to garble, ‘Natasha …? Thanks …’ I could have called him again after a week or a few days. Instead I dropped off his radar.

Tonight I nursed my memories. Random images of his Afro comb, his tennis racket, his Bee Gees cassettes. How when he was seven he came over to play, stayed the whole day and then went back home and complained to Grusha that we hadn’t fed him enough. I remember Grusha indignant and my mother embarrassed. Now the memory made me smile but at the time harsh Russian words were exchanged all round. When Yasha was fifteen he would take his father’s car without permission and we would sneak off for drives. He would have one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on the open window. We would talk our own mix of Russian, Arabic and the English we learnt at school. He was the same species as me — I could sprint through the added contradictions of what I knew and what I had inherited and he would keep up the pace, he would know the terrain; he could do Sudan through Russian eyes and Russia through Khartoum eyes. Tonight I wanted to reach, through sleep, to the comfort of how we used to be. Instead I open a drawer and I am appalled to find a baby, a naked baby I put away in the drawer and forgot about.

The baby is dead, it must be dead. Is it dead? I can’t find out, I can’t lift it out of the drawer. I can’t look at it properly. I must close the drawer. I must close the drawer and move away and pretend that I never opened it in the first place.

I surfaced into tears. When I dipped down again it was Gaynor Stead who barged through my dreams.

Gaynor Stead talking about me to Fiona and saying, ‘Natasha put her fat arse on my desk …’ ‘Interesting,’ was Fiona’s characteristic reply, warm and understanding, eager to help. ‘Black arse … fat arse …’ Gaynor was younger in the dream and Fiona, with her arm around her, was older. ‘They are mother and daughter,’ I realised even though in real life they were not. ‘How could I have missed it before?’ my sleeping mind insisted on the connection. ‘They are really mother and daughter.’ ‘Black arse … fat black arse …’ The words looped and steadied, they became rhythmic. I woke up warm with humiliation, not sure where I was.

I tried to find Malak’s number through Directory Enquiries but she was not listed. I would have liked to speak to her now, not to tell her my dream but to listen to her voice. She would tell me that dreams mattered to Shamil, that they influenced decisions he took and manoeuvres he devised. I rummaged in my bag and found my notebook. In it I had written some of the things Malak had said. ‘Sufism is based on the belief that the seeker needs a guide. Even Muhammad, on his miraculous night’s ascent through the seven heavens needed Gabriel as his guide.’

In the margins I had scribbled the word ‘guru’. And so how would it work in modern life? I taught for a living but it was learning that had always been more fulfilling. Malak the actor, Natasha the teacher. Sufism delves into the hidden truth behind the disguise. Perhaps Malak was only an actor in disguise. Perhaps Natasha was acting the part of a teacher. If I ever started to seek the kind of knowledge that couldn’t be found in books, who would I want as a guide? Does the student seek the teacher or the other way round?

2. GEORGIA/DAGESTAN, JULY 1854

Anna stumbled around, repeating the same question to anyone who would stop and listen — Avars, Lezgins, Russian prisoners of war, serfs from the Tsinondali estate who had been captured in separate raids, wounded Armenians and Georgian villagers who, with a shock, recognised her — she would clutch their arm and say, ‘Have you seen my baby?’

The hostages were in Polahi now, a Russian outpost that had been captured by Shamil. His troops were stationed around the watchtower and the surrounding areas. The attack on Tsinondali had been part of a series of raids into the Alazani Valley. Now some of the men brandished severed heads as trophies; they herded cattle, slaves and horses up the mountains.

‘Have you seen my baby?’ Anna’s words did not need to be translated, they were understood, but no one wanted to answer her or even meet her eyes. Madame Drancy straggled after the princess. Sometimes she succeeded in leading her back to where they were camped. Sometimes she crouched helplessly, watching Anna, on hands and knees, sifting through rocks and brambles looking for the impossible. ‘Be strong for Alexander. Look at him. See how distraught he is to see you like this.’

Anna turned dutifully towards her son. She understood the logic of Drancy’s argument but she could do nothing about it. A storm was inside her and she could not subdue it. If she could be sure, if she could hold Lydia again, if she could kiss her cool cheeks, if she could put her finger on that mouth that couldn’t swallow, that couldn’t cry, that no longer needed her, that no longer knew her, then maybe she could settle down. Hope was the devil, hope wrestled with her and wouldn’t let her rest. ‘Someone saw her fall and picked her up. Someone found her, someone saved my daughter.’ How could she not believe this? Why should she not believe it? No one dared, not even Madame Drancy, to contradict her or to say that they had seen the horses ride over a bundle that should never have been on the floor of a forest.

‘Come and lie down, Your Highness. Come and have a rest.’

When she lay down, the tears started. ‘I had her by the leg. But I couldn’t keep holding her,’ she mumbled over and over again. She dozed but jerked awake. ‘She is too small … too small for all this …’

Alexander snuggled close to her, his head pushing her stomach. His tears were those of fear rather than grief. So much was happening around him that he could scarcely remember his baby sister.

The next morning Anna’s breasts were hard as rocks. She needed the baby to relieve the discomfort but now she was on her own. Expressing the milk gave her a few lucid moments, a recess from grief. She knew from her experience of farming that if a cow was left unmilked it would eventually dry off. But the process had to be gradual otherwise the milk would curdle, there could be an abscess with fever setting in. She lay down on her side and let the milk seep into the burka she had been given to use as bedding. One of her breasts already had less milk than the other; it would dry up first. When Lydia came back to her, what would she feed on?

‘Madame Drancy, why have we stopped?’

‘The men seem to be expecting someone of high rank to come and see us. It might even be Shamil himself, as they say he has come down from the mountains to inspect his troops. I am terrified of him. He sounds like a monster by all accounts.’ The governess sounded more curious, though, than anxious.

Anna, still lying down, told herself, ‘In this audience I will not be a prisoner. I will be what I really am, a princess of Georgia.’ But it was as if she could still hear herself weeping, it was as if her heart still beat the words Lydia, Lydia.

‘Heathens,’ Madame Drancy was saying. ‘All these men revere Shamil as if he is God’s representative on earth. Just the mention of his name and they’re mumbling salutations and chanting.’

Despite the language barrier, Madame Drancy was communicating with the men. This was done in a mixture of sign language and the little Russian that some of the men spoke. The ordeal seemed to have awakened in her an anthropological interest, an intellectual ability to detach herself and make observations. She had even taken to wearing the burka, stretching inside it as if she were under the bedsheets. It soothed Anna to listen to her voice.

‘Do you know what one of their laws is, Your Highness? No woman is allowed to remain a widow for longer than five months. I might end up in a harem!’

‘Oh you are fanciful.’

‘But I wonder though. We seem valuable to them. Didn’t you notice, yesterday when we entered that village and we were surrounded by crowds, our captors shouted, ‘For Shamil Imam’ and then everyone stepped back?’

Anna couldn’t remember passing a village. Two days or more were a blur, as smoky and as eerie as a nightmare. She turned to wake Alexander up with a kiss, to reassure him that his mother was still with him.

It was not Imam Shamil who came to inspect them but a young man with bright eyes and a roughness to his skin that contrasted with his easy smile. He bowed to Anna. ‘My name is Ghazi Muhammad. I am Imam Shamil’s son and the viceroy of Gagatli and the governor of Karata.’ He spoke Russian poorly and with a heavy accent. Her full concentration was needed to understand every word.

Ghazi went on, ‘These incursions into Georgia are aimed at inducing the population to join our resistance. On behalf of my father, I welcome you as our guests.’

‘Guests! Is this the treatment of guests?’

He said lightly, ‘Clothes will be provided for you to replace your torn ones. And warm food too. I will immediately order this.’

‘This is not enough. Not after what we’ve gone through. I lost my daughter because of you.’ She must not let her voice break, she must not show weakness in front of him.

He looked more sombre now. ‘Your Highness, what happened to the little princess was not at all our intention. Indeed, your lives are precious to us.’

The words ‘little princess’ made her breasts leak. She would not risk speaking now.

‘It was Russian bullets that were fired at you, not ours.’ His voice turned cool with this defence.

She hardened against him. ‘They did not know that we were your captives.’

‘Perhaps so. If it will comfort you, I will immediately order a party to search for your missing child.’

Hope would keep the wound open for longer. Her voice rose. ‘I have done nothing to deserve this. What wrong have I and my children ever done to you?’

Ghazi folded his hands on his belt. ‘Believe me, I am saddened at how much you have suffered. My father is going to be very angry. I blame all this on the brutality of the Lezgins. They are uncouth soldiers of the line. But we were unable to spare my father’s elite force.’

Momentarily he looked young and unguarded. It gave her a surge of strength. ‘You will pay for what you have done to us. Do you think His Majesty the tsar will sit back and do nothing? Do you think my husband, Prince David, will not try to rescue us?’

Ghazi shifted and stood up straighter. ‘You are distraught, Your Highness and understandably in pain. I promise I will do everything I can for your wellbeing. My suggestion is that you rest and once you’re suitably dressed, I will take you to meet my father, the Imam of Chechnya and Dagestan. He has summoned you.’

‘What does he want?’

Ghazi smiled. ‘To speak to you, of course.’

‘I will not go to him.’

The young man raised his eyebrows. ‘He is Imam Shamil.’

With all her strength, she held herself straight. ‘And I am a princess of Georgia. I will not be summoned by him.’

Ghazi bowed and withdrew. She had won a very small victory.

They were given millet bread and dried apricots. It was good to see Alexander eating. He had been dreaming of cake with sugar on top. Anna still dreamt of Lydia, that she had been found, that she was safe, after all, lying on the armchair among the lilac flowers. In the morning she watched Alexander wander off and join the men. Madame Drancy, sensing her disquiet said, ‘They’re only showing him their horses.’

‘Still. I don’t trust them.’ When Alexander was a baby he had looked exactly like Lydia, the same colour hair, the same long lashes.

Madame Drancy was still speaking. ‘We’re going to be given face veils when we meet with Imam Shamil.’ The new clothes they had been given were nothing but ill-assorted rags. Loose Turkish trousers and a sack full of left-foot shoes. Madame Drancy, who had been stripped to her corset, was grateful to have them. Anna, though, refused to change.

She looked around her as if for the first time. The condition of the other prisoners was worse. They had been made to march on foot and many were ill with dysentery and typhoid. No patience or special treatment was given to them. Insolence was dealt with by a scimitar thrust or a shove off a mountain ledge. Women were snatched as handmaidens and children set to work as slaves. The friendliness Shamil’s men showed to Alexander, the relative respect she and Madame Drancy received was denied to the others. Innocent Georgian villagers and serfs who had nothing to do with the war between Russia and the Caucasus. Their crime in the eyes of the Muslims was that they had succumbed to Russia and were now her ally. Georgia had not resisted as it should. Anna bit her lips. Weren’t these the same words she had said to David? The thoughts that could not be voiced in public, the resentment that must stay hidden. We are Georgians, not Russians. But for the sake of peace her grandfather had ceded the throne and here she was, caught up in the war against Russia.

The Georgian prisoners raised their voices up to lament their fate. They started to sing of home and pain, of orphaned children and of how low their princess had fallen. It brought tears to Anna’s eyes. The flower of Kakheit has fallen into the Lezgins’ hands. Pray for our princess … She wished she could have protected them, she wished she could have spared them all this. Her helplessness frustrated her. But not all of the Georgian prisoners regarded her with goodwill. An elderly peasant woman was livid that the princess had been given a horse-cloth to lie on. She railed out loud against the injustice, decrying the privileges of royalty. When she attempted to seize the horse-cloth by force, Anna let her have it.

She had heard of the tower of Pohali, after which the fort was named, but it was the first time she had seen it. The top storey had been demolished by Shamil’s artillery. Behind it the mountains rose, arrogant. If she narrowed her eyes against the sun and looked up, she could see clumps of snow on the peaks. Ahead of them was a journey of more than three weeks. If David was ever going to rescue them, he would have come by now. The further they travelled up the mountains, the more difficult it would be for him to reach them. And when they arrived in Shamil’s stronghold at Dargo-Veddin, it would be too late.

Fresh horses, new captors and it was time to climb again, up steep zigzagged paths, through bushes that tore at her clothes, around ugly rocky aouls where strangers lined up to stare. In some of these villages, they would find kindness and hospitality. They would be welcomed into the most peculiar of designs: a hill inside a courtyard, which had to be climbed in order to reach the upper floor. Rooms without windows and only a door to a large balcony. The grudging shelter of stables, spending a night next to asses and oxen. And that was preferable to the hostile aouls, where the villagers crowded to throw stones at them. Her back ached, her toe was still sore. Now lice in her hair. She scratched until there was blood under her nails. They must dismount because the horses could not manage these dangerous paths. Wading in deep mud one day, crawling on hands and knees over a ravine. Surprising avalanches of snow, gifts from the summits, that were not expected to melt until the middle of July. She began to hate these rocky barren mountains; they were endless and cruel. She screamed, she could not help it, as she was led to mount a horse that had a severed hand dangling from the saddle. The hand was Georgian, she knew, because of the wedding band. ‘Assassins,’ she yelled at them and they laughed. Men with faces blackened by gunpowder. ‘To prevent sunburn,’ Madame Drancy explained to her in a moment of clarity.

Anna noticed a small swelling in her breast. Despite expressing every day, the milk had clotted and now her skin burned. Feverish, she started to ask again, ‘Have you seen my baby?’ But she asked in a feeble voice as if she was not expecting a reply, as if the words were a lament rather than a question. At long last there came news from the search party Ghazi had sent out. Servants from the estate had picked up Lydia’s body. She was buried in the neighbouring church of St George, one of the few buildings that had escaped the burning and looting.

The truth was a blow even though a part of her had expected it; a part of her had longed to be free from the daily tussle with hope. She wept continuously without any sound. Tears flowed freely until she could scarcely see ahead of her. Stumbling in a mix of sweat from the fever and pain from the news. Dragged tottering across a tree bridge, she lost her footing and had to be carried the rest of the day. Alexander needed her; she must be stronger than this. There he was, eating handfuls of snow, chewing on rhododendron leaves. His hair was riddled with vermin but he did not seem to care.

‘I wonder if my mother knows that we’ve been kidnapped,’ Madame Drancy was saying as she put a wet rag on Anna’s forehead to bring down the fever. ‘I have never let a week pass without writing to her.’ Anna hung on to every word. Conversation and prayers were the route to normality. ‘The news must have reached France by now. We’ve been climbing this mountain for nearly a month.’

They had set up camp at night and when Anna woke up, weak and clammy but no longer burning, she found herself in an area of absurd beauty. Waterfalls and ferns, vineyards and herds of healthy cattle. Madame Drancy and Alexander picked nosegays and azaleas, bunches of perfume and silky texture for Anna to bury her face in. When she washed her hair, when she finally changed into the clean loose trousers that they had been given, she felt more refreshed. It was as if every drop of liquid had drained from her body in tears and milk; she was now as dry and as light as a piece of cotton.

‘Why have we stopped?’ she asked Madame Drancy.

‘They are waiting for confirmation that Imam Shamil has reached Dargo-Veddin. It would be wrong according to their customs for us to arrive there first.’

They could see the aoul now above them, the rock fortress embedded in the mountain, so much a part of it that it was almost invisible. Why did Shamil leave this green area and huddle inside an ugly gated stronghold? But she did not want to think of the future, of the entry into this prison and whether they would come out again. For two strange days, she let go of the past and the future. She pushed away death and surrendered to her five senses. The colour green, the sound of a waterfall, Alexander sitting by her side. Nothing made sense except existence, feeling the grass beneath her bare feet, the sun on her hair, the taste of water through her parched lips.

But too soon it was time to climb again. The dreaded burkas, new black silk to cover their faces and soon enough the gates of Dargo closed behind them. A world made of stone, houses like caves, hardly any two at the same level. The villagers crowded to look at them and to welcome home their fighters. Imam Shamil had ordered that they be housed in his own home, among the women of his family. They were to be, like Ghazi had promised, guests in the harem.

A tall woman in veils and Turkish trousers led them to their quarters. Anna entered a long dark low-ceilinged room that did not have a single item of furniture. A felt rug was spread on the ground and piles of bedding were folded up on shelves that ran around the walls. There was one small window, with shutters instead of glass. This was a prison even though it opened out into a gallery that, she found out later, adjoined the rooms of the other women. Their rooms were just as bare, their windows just as small. Anna could hear a raven outside and the sudden call to prayer from the mosque.

Their hostess lifted up her black veil. Her movements were graceful and economical. Her lips did not stretch into a welcoming smile but there was a glow in her heavy-lidded eyes, an almost masculine strength in her prominent nose. ‘My name is Zeidat,’ she said in careful Russian. ‘I am Imam Shamil’s first wife and head of the household.’

Behind her, two other women stood at the doorway. Their faces were lit up with curiosity as they almost tumbled into the room, giggling and flouncy in wide white and blue trousers, rainbow veils and ankle bracelets. ‘You are very welcome, Your Highness,’ said the older, plump one, bobbing down in a clumsy curtsey. She held out a box of sweets. ‘All the way from Tollet, really. Please have some.’ Her name was Chuanat and she was the most beautiful of the three.

Ameena was the youngest. She had excessive kohl around her eyes. When she took Anna’s arm, her grip was light but clingy. ‘It is so nice to have company — you must tell me all about Russian life. We can become friends.’ Her use of Russian was fluent, confident.

Zeidat gave her a cold stare. ‘Since when do we make friends with infidels, Ameena!’ She spoke Russian deliberately, with a quick sideways look at Anna.

‘They are Imam Shamil’s guests and he is furious at the way they’ve been treated. We have to make amends, or have you forgotten his orders?’

‘I never forget his orders.’ Zeidat turned to scrutinise Anna. ‘But I think that no matter how well we treat the princess, it will not be good enough. It will not be at the standard Her Highness is accustomed to. I did say to him, “Husband, pampered Russian royalty can hardly be expected to accept the austere conditions we’re accustomed to.”’

Anna struggled to understand their accent when they spoke among themselves: clusters of foreign words, repetitions and hand gestures. She relied on their facial expressions, their ages to gauge their hierarchy. Chuanat stood out, European, the only one fluent in Georgian. With her box of sweets, she was stroking Alexander’s hair and urging him to have more. Several children came into the room now and they absorbed the attention of Alexander and Madame Drancy.

‘It is nice for us to have company,’ Ameena persisted. ‘And such a special guest too.’ Ameena squeezed Anna’s arm and gestured towards an array of cushions laid out against the wall. Was she sixteen or seventeen? Not more than a child, but the eyes were quick and knowing, unstable too.

Zeidat, with one deft, unexpected movement, picked up a louse from Anna’s hair. Anna flinched and stepped back. Indignation melted into embarrassment as Zeidat squeezed the insect between her fingers. ‘You will need to help your new friend clean up,’ she smiled at her young co-wife. ‘Lice are contagious.’

‘This is not good manners,’ Ameena’s voice rose. ‘Zeidat, you know this is not how you are meant to behave!’

Zeidat turned to leave the room. ‘Imam Shamil won’t be in Dargo for long and when he goes away I will know best how to treat this Russian captive.’

Chuanat gestured for Anna to sit down next to her. She had quickly made herself comfortable on the ground with her back against the wall and her legs crossed in front of her. ‘Don’t let Zeidat frighten you. She can be bossy and harsh but there is no evil in her.’

Ameena flung herself on the ground next to them. ‘Oh indeed! You are the angel who refuses to see badness in anyone. Zeidat is a shrew and what makes her more bitter is that she knows Imam Shamil doesn’t love her. He only married her because of her father.’

Chuanat shook her head, ‘You’re such a gossip! You know very well Imam Shamil treats us all equally. Besides, you’re disturbing Princess Anna with details of our personal life.’

Instead all this was a welcome diversion.

‘You must be exhausted after all you have gone through.’ Chuanat’s eyes were misty. ‘I am so sorry for all you have endured. I was a captive once too, long ago and …’ She faltered, lost for words. Instead she loosened her veil and her thick auburn hair fell around her cheeks.

‘You are not Chechen, are you?’ Anna’s voice sounded to her ears as if she were in a drawing room making polite conversation.

‘No, I’m Armenian. Years ago, I was captured in a raid with all my family. They returned but I stayed on.’

‘I’m so sorry for this.’ No, she was certainly not in a drawing room sipping tea. The fear was all too close. A captive that couldn’t escape, was never rescued, never returned. That must be the saddest of fates.

Ameena laughed. ‘Oh, Chuanat does not deserve your pity. She wanted to stay. Her family raised a ransom for her, they went through all the hardship of negotiations and her poor cousin risked his life climbing up these mountains to rescue her. Remember what he said about passing the Russian lines?’ She turned to Chuanat. So much ease between these two.

Chuanat smiled, ‘The Russian sentries crossed themselves and spat on the ground when they saw my cousin riding up the mountains to meet Shamil Imam’s horsemen. They thought they would never see him alive again. Instead he returned with gifts including a fine Arabian mare.’

‘But why didn’t you leave with him? Or were you not allowed?’

Chuanat looked at her as if she was gauging her understanding, as if pondering how much to share. ‘I could have left if I had wanted to. It’s a long story. I will tell it to you another day.’

‘No, it’s not a long story,’ Ameena contradicted her. ‘It is straightforward. Hannah, as she was called then, fell in love.’

‘Ameena!’ Chuanat reproached her. ‘I said I would tell her myself in my own time. Besides, when are you going to learn to practise some discretion? You’re no longer a child.’

‘Don’t try to sound like Zeidat.’ Ameena helped herself to some of the sweets. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

Anna turned to her and said, ‘Well, Ameena, maybe you can tell me about yourself.’

‘Very well,’ she spoke with her mouth full, the sweetness sticking to her teeth. ‘My family are originally from Bavaria. But I was brought up in Imam Shamil’s household.’

‘Spoilt and pampered, if I may say so,’ Chuanat added.

Ameena sounded more thoughtful. ‘He treated me just like one of his children. They were my playmates.’ She turned with a mischievous look towards Anna. ‘Then, as you can see, I matured and turned into a striking beauty.’

Chuanat rolled her eyes and Anna laughed. She had not done so for a long time. It made her feel generous towards the young girl. ‘I agree. I have been admiring you since you came in and took off your veil.’

Ameena narrowed her eyes. ‘But it was my beauty that ended my childhood. Imam Shamil could hardly pretend that he couldn’t notice me and so he took me for his third wife.’

‘Still she was such a baby that she kept crying and saying “I miss my mother”,’ Chuanat said.

Ameena laughed. ‘Shamil Imam brought her here for me. She is always with me now and I am well looked after.’

All this sounded strange to Anna. A part of her recoiled, a part of her noted the frankness. Their friendliness and their difference made her conscious of herself. Who she was and what she looked like. She must rid her hair of the lice. She must look presentable. They believed in her as a princess and they were right to do so, that was who she was.

‘But Anna … Can I call you Anna? You will have to tell us your story too. All your experiences at court.’

‘Yes, please,’ Chuanat added. ‘We know you were lady-in-waiting for the tsarina.’

It was such a long time ago, before she was married. An adventure of bright nights and the grandest buildings, dresses and jewels, Moscow balls and all the thrills of coming out into society. Even though she was homesick for Georgia, even though she knew that she did not belong at court, she had revelled in the music and the dancing. The steps came naturally to her, the fluid movements, her gown lifting, the music passing through her skin, flushed afterwards, pretty and thirsty, reaching for a drink. She tried to remember herself then, what her body felt like before it was touched by David, before her stomach filled out strong and large with babies. But she must not let her mind wander in this particular direction. Only mention the tsarina’s diamonds, officers with sideburns, a morning spent ice-skating.

‘Did you ever see Jamaleldin?’ asked Ameena.

Anna could not see that there could possibly be any connection between an acquaintance of Ameena’s and the Winter Palace.

‘Imam Shamil’s eldest son,’ explained Chuanat. She lowered her voice. ‘He is the tsar’s godson.’

A figure, a name, a face shaped itself in the shadows of Anna’s Petersburg memories. Had she known then that he was Shamil’s son? Perhaps she had and the knowledge had not interested her, had not mattered, except to explain that he was ‘Asiatic’. He was different, but not different enough — eyes that were not like hers, but nothing in his manners, his speech or his conduct that set him apart. He was certainly not a highlander; he was certainly not the enemy. ‘Yes, of course, he is an officer,’ she said. ‘I danced the Mazurka with him once.’

Ameena gasped, her face alight with excitement. ‘Oh this is shocking. Imam Shamil’s son attending parties and dancing with strange women!’

‘What is so strange about me?’

Ameena laughed, ‘There is nothing strange. You are perfect. By strange I meant you’re not related to him. You’re not his wife or his sister.’

‘But these are our customs and Jamaleldin is a Russian gentleman.’

Chuanat turned towards her with soft eyes. ‘This is not how Imam Shamil sees it. You will understand when you meet him tomorrow. He will explain everything to you and you can ask as many questions as you like. Today, though, you must rest. How exhausted and hungry you must be!’

She was hungry but the meal provided disgusted her. Goat’s cheese that smelt too strong and bread baked in such a way that it had an outer layer of thick grease covering the crust. She had to pare off the crust in order to reach the crumb. Even the tea tasted odd, smoky and strong. Hunger, or the stale-smelling mattress, was keeping her awake. Madame Drancy had spent a long time saying her prayers and was now fast asleep. Alexander tossed and turned, sometimes whimpering, sometimes thrashing his arms as if he was fighting. It was hot in the room. Anna stood up and opened the shutters but the ventilation was poor. A tree blocked the air and up through its leaves she caught a glimpse of the night sky. The staccato sounds of the mountains pressed in, frogs and insects, a jackal howling for its mate, but instead of posing a threat, the animal sounded distressed. She put both of her arms through the window. It would be possible for the three of them to squeeze through one after the other and then what? She could hear the footsteps of the sentries, back and forth at a leisurely rate. They might have lacked military precision but they were wide awake.

She found herself pacing the room. The treatment she had been given for her head lice, a mixture of butter and brimstone, was starting to melt over her face and neck. The smell was unpleasant but it was worth it if it would rid her of all the irritation and scratching. She found herself measuring the room: length eighteen shoes, width twelve. She pressed her palms against the stone wall. Such thick walls, only a cannon could burst them. The thought of a Russian attack filled her with dread. She did not want to remember their last attempt at rescue, if it was such, its failure and huge cost.

The next morning she met Shamil. He did not consider it polite to come into her room and impose on her privacy so a chair was placed for him in the gallery. Anna saw him through the face veil she and Madame Drancy were instructed to wear. It was as if a film of smoke dimmed her eyesight. Shamil was accompanied by his steward and a Russian defector who was to act as their translator. Shamil’s white turban contrasted with the darkness of his thick eyebrows and beard. He was unarmed, wearing the highlanders’ long cherkesska over leggings, his feet in leather slip-ons that were stretched tight over the arches of his feet. Afterwards Madame Drancy would describe Shamil as a lion with eyes in the shape of scimitars. Anna’s impression was of a tall, slim man hemmed in by his surroundings, forced into an extraordinary stillness, a pooling of shadows and energy, a lull of density and strength.

‘Anna, Princess of Georgia.’ He looked at her when he said her name. The rest of his speech was translated. ‘I have captured you for a specific reason. Usually I employ prisoners to build or repair roads or to work in the quarry but you are valuable.’

Though she knew that he had more to say, she spoke up. ‘I have been dragged here against my will. I lost my daughter.’ She paused but the translator did not translate. So the imam could understand her. He was deliberately choosing not to use her language.

She continued, ‘I have done nothing to deserve this. I ask you to return me to my home. I do not belong here.’

‘My son Jamaleldin was innocent too when the Russians captured him. He was eight years old. You are a mother, you have a young son. Tell me, is it right, is it fair to pull a child away from his parents?’

She hesitated before she replied. It would not be right to criticise the tsar and at the same time use him as a threat against her captives. Her ambivalence towards Russia must never show. She had said to David, ‘I am Georgian, not Russian.’ But here, in this stone world, in this war, with this enemy she was as Russian as she could ever be.

He lowered his voice. ‘Answer my question.’

She was conscious of the brush of silk on her cheekbones and nose. ‘No, it is not right to hurt any child in any way.’

He bowed his head in agreement. ‘For years, I searched among my prisoners for someone of importance. Prince Orbeliani was my captive for six months but he was not weighty enough. I could only exchange him for some of my men. But you, Anna, Princess of Georgia, are distinguished. You are valuable. This is my hope.’

After his words were translated, he seemed to reconsider. ‘Not my hope, my conviction that you would be valuable enough to the tsar. You will be exchanged for my son Jamaleldin.’

Would the tsar exchange his godson for a woman and a child? Maybe, maybe not. Her voice was a pitch higher. ‘If the tsar doesn’t accept? What will happen then?’ It was as if she had asked an embarrassing question. The lips of the translator twitched. One of the guards looked at her, his eyes bold as if he could see through her veil.

Shamil sounded distant when he replied, ‘Our customs and laws will prevail.’

She shifted in her chair. It was wooden and crude. She had not sat in a chair since they had left Tsinondali.

‘I have waited fourteen years,’ Shamil was saying. ‘You are the granddaughter of the King of Georgia. You are a fit person to write to the Russian sultan. Let him return to me my son Jamaleldin from St Petersburg and I will free you on the hour. I am giving you my word and I am a man true to my promise.’

‘The tsar will not give up Jamaleldin easily. He is his protégé and his favourite.’

‘And I am his father. He is my flesh and blood. Wouldn’t you do the same for your son?’

She did not have an answer. Not for him. Lydia’s blood was on his hands.

He said, ‘You will now sit and write a letter to the tsar begging for your release. Tell him Shamil demands his son and tell him my people also demand a ransom. The details of the ransom will follow. Write to your husband too, Prince David, that if my demands are met I will return you pure as the lilies, sheltered from all eyes like the gazelles of the desert.’

She wanted to laugh at his lilies and gazelles. But if she started to laugh, she would cry.

‘There is another matter that you need to know of,’ he continued. ‘I abhor trickery. I can forgive anything except deception.’ His voice rose as if he was giving a sermon. ‘Deceit is an offence against Allah and his servant Shamil. The first time I find you plotting to escape I shall have you killed. To cut off heads is my right as imam.’

If he expected to frighten her, she was unmoved. ‘You need not threaten me. My rank and upbringing forbid me to lie. I have no intention of tricking you.’

‘Then what is this?’ Shamil opened his palm and his steward handed him a letter. ‘I have letters addressed to you which I have had translated. But this letter is neither in Russian, nor Georgian, nor Tartar. What is this script? Are you trying to trick me?’

‘No, I am not. Show it to me.’ She stood up and pushed aside her face veil. The script was clearer now. And without the black silk barrier, Shamil seemed closer, his eyes lighter, all his features more in focus. She reached out for the letter.

He could see her face now and later she would wonder if his expression changed in any way. But he tore the letter in shreds. ‘It is a coded message and you will not be seeing it.’

Her eyes fell on a fragment on the floor. ‘This is not a coded message. This is French, a foreign language. It is written to my son’s governess by her mother in France. How dare you destroy it! Madame Drancy is another of your innocent victims. This letter is addressed to her. It is not yours to dispose of.’

‘Understand my rules, Princess of Georgia.’ He still remained seated but he did not look up at her. ‘You will neither send nor receive anything which my interpreters cannot translate for me.’

The translator gestured for her to return to her chair. But it was too late, she was too angry to sit. ‘I cannot be held responsible for what others send me. As for your staff, they are surely limited in linguistic ability if they cannot tell the difference between French and a secret language!’

In the pause that followed, it occurred to her that she had now provoked his anger, now she had gone too far. He rose and they stood facing each other. She was conscious of his height and his mass, his aura of mountains and war. When he spoke, he spoke in her own language, the interpreter made redundant. ‘You will be given the letters after I have read them. Conduct yourself well, Princess, and you shall have nothing to fear.’

3. WARSAW, SEPTEMBER 1854

Jamaleldin’s face remained hot as he wrote his dispatches, as he walked to the stables and as he patrolled this city that bristled in Russia’s grip. He was stationed in Warsaw, with the Vladimirski Lancers. In the mornings when he faced the mirror to shave, his face felt especially hot, and when he let his mind wander, his hand went slack and the razor cut his chin. Yet, to be honest, he was not completely surprised by the news of the kidnapping. He was like a child who had committed a misdemeanour and after a longer than average reprieve was finally caught. It was bound to happen. His father reaching out to claim him, the method brutal, their names linked and on everyone’s tongue. It was bound to happen, and now this was the chosen hour.

Jamaleldin walked into the officers’ mess and headed towards the dining table. He avoided the group who were bunched avidly over the latest newspaper from home. Thankfully, there were not many of his friends left. Most of his regiment had been despatched to the South Crimean front. Once again, as was the case in the Caucasus, his request for active service was denied and he was now part of this token force that had been left behind to assert Russia’s hold over Poland. Jamaleldin sat facing the opposite direction from the group of officers and ordered a steak from the waiter. He could hear a game of billiards in the adjoining room, the click of the balls against each other, the occasional high cry of success. When his dish came, he whispered bismillah like his mother, Fatima, had taught him years ago. Most of the time he forgot to say it, but these days the past was easily accessible, the Caucasus clearly visualised. In his dreams, his father’s men surrounded him. Imran, Abdullah, Zachariah, Younis. They beckoned and shouted in a language he could no longer understand. His teeth mashed the food as if eating was a duty.

Here was the companionship he wanted to avoid. Two strolled over and joined him. They recounted the previous night’s adventures and how Pavel, another officer, had lost a huge amount of money at the gambling table. He was now bereft not only of his month’s allowance but of his watch, his silver cufflinks and his mare, a beauty they had been admiring all summer. And where was Pavel now? He was still asleep in his cot, not yet recovered from his hangover. ‘Will he remember that he has gambled away Sultana?’ This was said with a laugh. Jamaleldin smiled as he swallowed. Not much of a response was expected from him. Appreciation for this latest gossip, a suggestion to send seltzer water and lime as a remedy to the unfortunate Pavel, or at the most a jovial dash over to Pavel’s quarters to throw cold water on his face and witness his first agonising wakeful moments? Instead as Jamaleldin was cutting another piece of steak, the old solemn words fell out of his mouth, the kind of sentences he had made a career out of holding back. The world is a carcass and the one who goes after it is a dog. This was what Sheikh Jamal el-Din had taught his disciples and this was what Shamil repeated night and day.

‘What language is that?’ Good-natured curiosity, a trusting smile.

Jamaleldin knew he should dismiss the question and change the subject. It was the best way for the slip to be forgotten. But something had changed and he was less in control. Or something had changed and he had less to lose. He said, ‘The Avar language. It means “The world is a carcass and the one who goes after it is a dog.” ’

Bafflement in the eyes of the two officers and the expected drawing back. Jamaleldin’s face was now hot and tipped towards his plate. He could feel them exchange looks and yearned towards them. He yearned towards the steady ground under their feet and their one-dimensional vision. He wanted to be them and he was tired of this wanting. Unease — that feeling of panic before it sharpened and rose, before it ballooned and caught in his throat. A slight nausea as he lifted another piece of steak to his mouth and chewed. He had slipped up because his ears were straining for the tsar’s summons.

‘See you at the ball tonight,’ one of the officers said as they drifted away to give him the wide berth he deserved.

Yes, he would be at the ballroom tonight. He would dive into all that Warsaw could offer, a city more elegant, closer to Western Europe. The railway line ran to Paris and the theatres staged all the latest plays from Germany. Quick, time was running out. His days in Warsaw were numbered. The summons would come soon and he would be in a troika heading back to Petersburg. So he should waltz tonight. Here it was danced in a faster manner; a livelier twirl was the norm. His arms around a girl, spinning her out of control. A girl who didn’t resemble Daria, a girl who was just a waist, her face a blur, her name quickly forgotten. He still had Daria Semyonovich’s letters and he reread them once in a while. But it was as if he was playing the role of the jilted lover — in reality his heart was distracted, his thoughts about her starting to curl bitter. After the tsar had refused them permission to marry, Daria’s mother forbade her daughter to meet Jamaleldin or write to him. And Daria, a good daughter, had acquiesced. Out of clumsiness or misery, Jamaleldin had refused to give her back her letters. There was no dramatic scene of farewell between them; there should have been. Tomorrow he would tear her letters and throw the pieces in the Vistula. And tonight, which might be the last night of freedom, he would indulge himself without pleasure.

There was a mosque in Cracow but he did not visit it. There was a Tartar colony in Vilno but he had learnt early on that success was correlated to the distance he must keep away. He was on his own. His passions, his thoughts were so often held in check because language (which one?) could not come to his aid. And he did not, above all, trust his own loyalties. They trusted him, though; in one magnanimous sweep they were inclusive and tolerant, but that was not from any merit in him. It was because of their own convictions of superiority, their own sweet arrogance.

In Poland’s courts, petitions were heard only in Russian. Interpreters were not provided for the prisoners. Polish youth were conscripted into the Russian army, revolutionary dissent was squashed and every independent institution was systematically weakened. This was why the Poles smiled at the news coming in from the Crimea. They took deep breaths of the wind that was blowing in favour of England, France, Turkey and their allies. There were even rumours of Austrian troops marching into St Petersburg and talk of the tsar’s abdication. In the slums of Moscow and the vodka cellars of St Petersburg they were saying that he had failed the country. It touched Jamaleldin that his patron was weakening. It altered the chemistry of the situation. The tsar was ailing and, from high up in the mountains, Shamil was calling him back.

He pushed his plate away. If he was truly courageous he would join the others bent over the newspaper. Instead he listened to the sound of the billiard balls and he drained his glass of water. How thirsty he had been all this time without knowing it! The news was not only in the Russian papers; Europe’s too were shouting.

Princess of the Blood Royal prisoner of barbaric tribesmen.

Savagery in Russian Territory — French citizen abducted for ransom.

Only the Turkish newspapers put forward a reason: Shamil Imam, Viceroy of Georgia, has made a successful sortie into territories seized by the infidel invaders and is holding a Christian family as hostages against the return of his son Jamaleldin, torn from him by the infidels and brought up in the Christian faith since 1839.