The Kindness of Enemies

1. KHARTOUM, DECEMBER 2010

Grusha and Yasha were waiting for me at the airport. I saw them as soon as I rolled my suitcase outside the arrivals hall. Among the crowd they were the only white middle-aged woman and light-skinned son. Besides, they were watching me, searching my face, waiting for the click of recognition, ready to smile. Earlier, when the plane had started its descent, I had been able to make out in the fading light the Nile looping through the desert. By the time we got off the plane, though, it was pitch-dark and I was struck by the inadequacy of the lighting. Even inside the terminal, I was reminded of the flattering candlelight found in romantic restaurants. The exterior of the airport was also dimly lit. Grusha and Yasha did not look at all like I remembered them, so much so that I hesitated in greeting them. The Aunty Grusha in my head dressed like Thatcher. The one in front of me now looked like Hilary Clinton. I thought trousers were outlawed in Sudan? And Yasha, if this was Yasha and he must be, was trapped within layers and mounds of fat. They covered him like a suit of armour. My first boyfriend, nimble and lanky, had become obese.

He took my suitcase and Grusha took my arm. We made our way to their car, a four-wheel-drive that was surprisingly parked only a few steps away, right outside the arrivals gate. I watched Yasha squeeze into the front seat. Beads of sweat on his forehead, his belly pushed against the steering wheel. I looked away. Grusha had aged of course, a slackness in her chin and the way she heaved herself into the car next to Yasha. From the back seat I asked, ‘How is Papa?’

They both had their backs turned; I could not see the expression on their faces. Yasha started the engine. ‘Not good,’ Grusha said at last. I did not want to know more. Not yet. It would come and already the effect was sinking in. I looked out of the window. More traffic than I remembered, a whole row of fast-food chains. Novel to be in a city that didn’t have a Starbucks.

Grusha’s house was how I remembered it to be. It was neat because Aunty Grusha always kept a mercilessly clean house. We sat in the living room. She said that my father had died the previous night. Mid-morning today he was buried.

I didn’t recognise this feeling of disappointment. The sheepishness of arriving too late. ‘I needn’t have come then.’

Yasha looked down at his hands. His bulk spread over the sofa, immense girth, each thigh as wide as a human being. He would not be able to travel in Economy. I remembered him in swimming trunks, the ripped muscles of his stomach, his thin neck. Now even his face was flattened, his features as if pushed through a slab of dough. It was sadly fascinating. That defeat could manifest itself in such a way brought tears to my eyes.

Grusha put her arm around me. ‘At first we didn’t know what to do — to catch you before you set out or to tell you in the middle of your travels. Then we decided it would be better if you heard the news from us in person rather than on the telephone.’

Yasha started to speak about my father’s last hours but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying. I stared at his mouth, the route to his fatness; I heard his voice and it was not the voice of a young man but someone who was confident, experienced, almost jaded. Perhaps I would only rarely see him during my visit. He was a busy man and probably did not spend a lot of time with his mother even though they lived in the same house.

‘Your father was proud of you,’ Grusha said. ‘When you got your PhD, we never heard the end of it.’

It was hard to believe this but she would not lie. We sat in silence. I cried quietly, almost soundlessly. I had wanted to see him again. It was true. I had wanted to argue with him and listen to him rant. He had made me angry on the telephone but when the anger died I was left with the thrill of his honesty. ‘I just could not stand the sight of you.’ That was exactly what I remembered during the divorce, his hurt that made him repulsive and also frightening, his eyes that looked straight through me as if I didn’t exist, all the days and weeks when he didn’t speak to me, when he couldn’t speak to me, not even hello or good morning or do this or do that. My mother had betrayed him and I was her daughter and he had not been able to rise above that.

I started to feel hot. I peeled off my cardigan, pulled away the scarf looped around my neck. My newly bought dowdy skirt reached my ankles. It irritated me. If Grusha was wearing trousers, then why couldn’t I too, and why had that journalist, last year, been fined for wearing them? Or was Grusha exempt because she was Russian? This was one of the irksome things about being an outsider — one never knew the extent to which the rules could be bent. I wanted to initiate this conversation but it was not the right time.

Yasha said, ‘Tomorrow I could take you to the cemetery … if you like.’ My expression made him falter. To see that freshly dug grave, the still-moist earth piled over it. The idea did not appeal to me at all.

‘Tomorrow we will go to your father’s house so that you can pay your condolences,’ Grusha said firmly. ‘You must meet your brother. He is twelve, I think. Or eleven.’

I had a half-brother who I never thought about, didn’t know what he looked like. ‘What is his name?’

‘Mekki.’

‘Mekki. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to a child.’

Neither Grusha nor Yasha responded and I suddenly felt self-conscious. Maybe these were the sort of comments that reminded Yasha of his late daughter. Afterwards, I glanced around for a photo of her, on top of the piano, on the walls, but there were none. I was conscious of the house around me and how familiar it was. Little had been done to make it look modern but as Grusha explained, there was an added separate flat for Yasha upstairs. ‘It has its own entrance,’ she said. He must have moved in there after he lost his wife and daughter.

When I woke up the following morning, the house was empty. Grusha and Yasha had already gone to work. I set about connecting myself to the internet. Yasha’s upstairs flat, I had been told, had the stronger connection, but it did not feel right to try to gain access to it while he was out. After a few attempts, I found that the speed was not bad and after I checked my emails, I started to write to Malak asking how things were, telling her my news, but I lost the connection before I clicked Send. I waited, hoping it would come back but it didn’t. After a while I gave up and went in search of breakfast.

In the kitchen a maid was washing the dishes. I chatted to her for a while though my mind was on Malak and Oz. The maid was Ethiopian and had been working here for five years. ‘Shall I make you breakfast?’ she asked and looked surprised when I said that I would get it myself.

I sat on the veranda with my mug of tea. After the bitterest Scottish winter, the heat and the light felt defiantly foreign, excessive. The small garden was full of flowers and in it stood a large guava tree. I could hear beyond its walls, the sounds of people walking past, the rumble of traffic. All this had existed while I was away. Khartoum as a city, its people, those who had never known me and those who had forgotten me. My mother and I had simply dropped off the radar. After the scandal we had been talked about less and less until, with time, our absence came to be considered the most natural of outcomes. Childhood psychologists say that the first five years are the most formative. I had spent them all here. My mother and father young and in love, easy-going, hopeful. Our day-to-day life an extension of their Cold War romance, as promising as the prospects of an African engineer with a PhD from a Russian university. My father taking me to the river, getting on a boat, afterwards buying peanuts and candy floss; my mother visiting Grusha, the two of them complaining, in Russian, about the weather. My father, during a power cut, peeing in the garden instead of making his way indoors in the dark. My mother lifting her hair to rub an ice cube on the back of her neck. I would always carry this. All the other layers on top could not obliterate this core.

There was a heaviness in my chest when I thought of them. They hadn’t been good parents and I hadn’t been a good daughter to them. Still, regret was neither attractive nor dignified. My father had sounded pathetic on the phone, wild even. ‘I shouldn’t have let another man support my own flesh and blood,’ he had also said. ‘I made a mistake.’ And what happened when mistakes couldn’t be rectified? Where did one go? To what? To whom? From outside came the sound of a car screeching to a halt, horns and a few shouts. My skin felt more sensitive than usual, my eyes prone to tears; all was vivid and louder. I decided to go out for a walk.

The pavements were narrow and broken and sometimes there was no pavement at all. Toyota pickups zoomed past me. Motorcycles, vans and more four-wheel-drives. Tea ladies sitting in a row. A man stared at me, the whites of his eyes almost yellow. He was squatting in front of a mechanic’s yard doing nothing. Rubbish piled on the side of a street; broken chairs stacked on top of each other. Too much struck me as incongruous. A donkey stood in the middle of a dusty street corner with no purpose or owner in sight — I stopped and, like a tourist, took a picture of it with my phone. But I was not wandering aimlessly; I wanted to find Tony’s old house. I wanted to see the metal railing with the cut-out letters of the alphabet. If it was still there, if the garden wall hadn’t been changed, then I wanted to look at it again. It would be a long walk by my reckoning, but I had nothing else to do and would rather not get on the wrong transport.

The city was larger than I remembered it to be. It stretched out, amorphous and repetitive with the supreme heat of the sun hanging down like a low ceiling. I started to sweat and lost focus. My thighs rubbed against each other; gritty sand entered my sandals and chaffed against my skin. But I did not want to give up and return. I needed to see the alphabet railing, that façade that entered my childhood and changed me. Crossing one street after the other, I was unfit and my memory was playing tricks on me. I should be there by now.

Suddenly I found myself in front of the Russian Embassy. Its flat exterior, large, solid and unwelcoming. It was exactly as it had been when I was young except for the change in the name board. It was as if time hadn’t passed and I was back holding my mother’s hand; she had come to renew our passports. The Russian official looked down at me, not with the open curiosity I usually triggered in Georgia but with a knowing look, a thin sneer, veiled disgust. Then my mother’s sudden impatience, the pressure of her hand on my arm yanking me outside. She carried me all the way to the car even though I was big enough to walk; she kissed me and hugged me and I wasn’t sure what it was that made her feel so sorry for me, but I was happy to be the centre of her attention.

I stopped to ask directions. My rudimentary Arabic made the girl snigger; I tried English and she shrugged. She had no idea what I was talking about. I was the only woman in the street with my head uncovered. An army truck lumbered past full of uniformed soldiers. I turned the corner and there was a pickup truck with a gun aiming at the traffic. It was as if another civil war was about to erupt. My T-shirt was soaked with sweat, my head pounded from the sun, my eyes watered. I acknowledged that I was lost and the most dignified thing to do was to retrace my steps, have a shower and wait for my hosts. I was sure that my feet were covered in blisters.

Late afternoon, before sunset, Grusha and I walked into my father’s house. When I had lived here, there was nothing around it but dust and a few scattered villas. Now the whole area was built up, the gardens mature, the newish streets already eaten away by potholes. In my memory the work on the house was still incomplete, it was without adequate flooring, without paint on the walls. Now it was completely unrecognisable. From the outside it looked brand new, ostentatious even. Floor-to-ceiling windows tinted blue, a modern façade and a tiled, spacious porch.

In the shade, a young boy was lounging in a large garden chair, an electronic tablet in his hand. To my surprise, he stood up when he saw us and held out his hand. True, he did all this with reluctance and apathy but still it was an impressive show of politeness. I liked him immediately. ‘This is Mekki,’ Grusha said and the pleasure I felt was thick and visceral. I looked at his forehead that was like mine, his eyes that were not, his skin that was darker. But I knew, instinctively, before he even spoke that his mind was like my mind and that we were both, mentally, introspectively, like our father.

‘I am your sister, Natasha,’ I said, in English because if this was one of the happiest sentences I ever said in my life, I wanted to say it in a language I was comfortable in.

His eyes widened and he was no longer bored, no longer wanting to get back to his game. He said, ‘My sister Natasha.’ His accent was heavy and his smile was one to treasure. This was love at first sight and I wanted to hug him.

He put his tablet on the chair and asked, ‘Do you live in Russia?’

‘No, in Scotland.’

‘Scotland,’ he repeated.

It didn’t seem to matter what he said or what I said. Just this connection was enough. ‘You must come and visit me,’ I said. ‘You would have a great time. I promise you.’

He listened to me describe the sights he would see, the snow, the castles, ski slopes and football matches. Suddenly I was desperately selling the idea of a visit. He listened, his eyes shining and dimming, a few nods, a few smiles. I kept on speaking until Grusha said, ‘Let us go inside to pay respects to Safia and then you two can talk later.’

Indoors the furniture was grotesque, huge and gilded. The house seemed to be full of women. Apparently the men’s period of condolence had come to an end and now my stepmother was only receiving women visitors. She was younger than I thought she would be. Mid-forties perhaps, striking-looking, even though she was wearing a plain white tobe. Her complexion was rough but here were the slanting attractive eyes Mekki had inherited. ‘I’ve never really got on with her,’ Grusha had said on the way. ‘But she is a very capable woman.’

I greeted my stepmother, still hazy from meeting Mekki, already wanting to be with him again. When Grusha introduced me, Safia launched into a monologue, soft at first but then her voice rose. I could not understand what she was saying. The Arabic words bounced off me. I strained to distinguish them from one another, to pin them down to a meaning. I understood the phrase, ‘her mother’ and concluded that, perhaps, she was not talking to me directly but performing for her friends. They were taken aback, I could tell. She was sounding more and more hostile. A few elderly ladies started to intervene. She ignored them. One of them led me and Grusha out to another, adjoining room. ‘Safia is upset,’ she explained. ‘She doesn’t know what she is saying.’

Grusha and I sat in that other, smaller room. There was a large television set and a pair of men’s glasses. My father’s. There were shelves of books, some in Russian. Who would read them now? There was a walking stick leaning against the door; it was made from warm, high-quality wood. Grusha looked distressed and I assumed it was because she understood everything Safia had said. I wanted to ask her, but my father’s room overwhelmed me. Newspapers folded up, a box of cigars, a bottle of cologne. A large print of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Zulu Girl was hanging on the wall. I remembered gazing at this print when I was young. I was a fan of Madonna then and the Zulu Girl did not fit into my idea of beauty. Perhaps if I had stayed I would have matured more fully. Perhaps my father could have taught me a thing or two. The room had a bed in one corner with no cover, just a pillow and a sheet. He must have stretched there and watched television.

I stood up to look at the bookshelf more closely. Here was the very same paperback of Love Story I remembered my mother reading, with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw on the cover. Here was a box with my Bambi puzzle. We had left these things behind knowing we were going to find better replacements. How had he felt, all alone, seeing what reminded him of us? I picked up a copy of Hadji Murat — he had read it. I would have liked to talk to him about it, especially to discuss Tolstoy’s depiction of Shamil. I flipped the pages and found that my father had underlined certain lines and words. Perhaps he read it at a time when he was trying to improve his Russian. I turned to see Safia standing at the door. Another torrent of words but this time the gestures were clear enough: ‘Get out of my house.’

In the car Grusha repeated, in Russian, the gist of Safia’s outburst. This and what she explained about my father’s material circumstances at the time of his death clarified the picture.

My father struck lucky in the last years of his life. He worked with a Chinese petroleum company during the oil boom (likely to come to an end if the South, where most of the oil was, decided to secede in next month’s referendum) and he made quick, good money. With it, he revamped the house that I remembered as being half-built with dirt-cheap materials. It used to be in the middle of nowhere, and was now, as I had witnessed, in a popular desirable suburb. Given that my father had passed away, this perfectly decent estate would be divided, as Yasha later explained, according to Sharia law, in descending order of proportions between Mekki, myself and Safia.

I looked back at the scene that took place in the afternoon, furnishing it with what I now knew. Safia the bereaved widow is sitting in her nice house surrounded by relations and friends. In walks her husband’s daughter, having just bonded outdoors with her half-brother. After twenty years of absence, after discarding her father’s name, after moving further and further away from any semblance of Sudanese identity, this Natasha Wilson has a greater share of the roof that is over Safia’s head. It is this that infuriates her. It is this that causes her outburst. ‘Now you are coming back?’ she says to me in Arabic. ‘After it’s too late. Where were you when he was ill? Where were you all these years? You disowned your father. Just like that. You don’t want his name any more. What does it say in your passport? It doesn’t say Natasha Hussein any more. But why should we expect any better of you? Your mother was a slut and you’re no better. Don’t think we don’t hear the rumours about you. Don’t think we are simple-minded and gullible. You certainly aren’t getting a welcome, not from me.’

If I had understood Safia when she said all this to me, I would have felt more hurt. Instead her Arabic words swept over me only as harsh and as irritating as sand. Hearing them translated by Grusha, they remained somewhat at a distance. My only concern was how all this would affect seeing my brother, Mekki, again. My brother. The words had a clarity to them, an awesomeness that stood out in contrast to everything else.

2. GEORGIA, MARCH 1855

For her very first dinner in freedom, David made sure that the garrison’s kitchen cooked Anna’s favourite food. It was, though, the napkins and candles that held her attention, the sensation of sitting on a chair at a dining table; all the mundane things she used to take for granted, were now to be singled out and either appreciated or silently ridiculed. Earlier they had gone to the fortress church to give thanks. It was a relief to do so, her whole body ached; the service was a medley of sounds and sights that were soothing and undemanding. Only when it was time to receive the small triangular holy bread did she start to feel moved by her surroundings. Next to her was David, a stranger who cared about her, who hovered close watching her every movement, her every response. She shied away from his masculinity, from his intent to claim her, and clung instead to Alexander. He was real enough, familiar enough. They would always share this bond. Everyone was saying he was young enough to forget all that had happened but she did not want him to forget Dargo. If he forgot the strangeness of it, who else could she talk to?

Madame Drancy wept and was extravagant in extolling her thanks to the whole of the Russian army. The governess spoke volumes to the officers who asked questions, who wanted intelligence. She elaborated on the position of Dargo, on details of the aoul, on Shamil’s house. Anna, next to her, corroborated the information, jogged her memory, mentioned the map she had drawn. There was no alternative. Inside her shadows could shift over layers of secrets, the mind’s eye could glance sideways and glimpse other possibilities, as different and as similar as a foreign language, but it was now clear on whose side she belonged, whose loyalty she was committed to. Let Madame Drancy speak; no power could stop her. Describe the specific peaks they had seen from the roof, how many sentries manned each portal, describe the twists and turns they encountered on the way down. Let these good soldiers jot down their notes and do their work. Years later when Dargo was bombed and flattened to the ground, Anna would remember these conversations, the information passed from her and Madame Drancy to the enemies of Shamil.

‘What happened to Alexander’s hair?’ David asked. They were alone now for the first time, watching their son fall asleep. Tomorrow they would start their travels, make their way home to Tiflis. This bedroom was temporary; it was the same one David had shared with Jamaleldin.

With the lightest touch David stroked Alexander’s spiky hair. It rose up from his scalp, rougher than it had ever been. Alexander stirred but did not open his eyes.

‘They shaved it,’ Anna said slowly. The spread of food at dinner had disgusted her. She could only eat very little and now had indigestion. After eight months of abstinence, the smell of wine had gone straight to her head and after two sips she had given up. ‘It’s their custom this time of year — to make the children bald. Apparently it’s the only guaranteed way to protect them from lice and other infestation.’

‘Oh you must have suffered!’ He drew her to him. Their bodies fitted awkwardly. With the best of intentions, they embraced.

‘You suffered too,’ she said. He looked older than she remembered him to be, less confident. They had not spoken about Lydia yet. If they did, they would both weep. But she was there between them like a faint colour or a scent.

Even though the room was sparsely furnished, to Anna it seemed cluttered. Her sense of dimension, of bearings, had all been altered. David was larger than she remembered him to be, his uniform bulky — boots, spurs, gloves without elegance. She could not remember if he had always been that pushy and nervous; if his voice had always been this loud.

‘You know,’ he said. ‘I had almost forgotten about Madame Drancy until I saw her today. I thought to myself “Who on earth is this sitting next to Anna?”’

She smiled. ‘This is cruel of you. The poor woman was dragged into all this. And she was stoical. Incredibly polite, too, in the most tense of circumstances.’

‘She will have to go back to France now.’ He paused as if he wanted to say more. To mention their new straitened circumstances, perhaps. He was in debt and they could hardly afford a governess if they wanted to regain Tsinondali.

‘I am sure that she would be eager to go home to her family.’

‘Not until after we go to Petersburg, though.’

‘Why?’

‘To thank the emperor in person.’

‘Really, David?’

He put his hands on her shoulder. ‘It’s necessary.’

‘I’m so tired.’

His hand cupped her elbow. ‘There is no rush. We can wait for the summer. When you have regained your strength. Look at you! Wasted away.’ Anger crept into his voice.

She closed her eyes. They were unpalatable to her now — anger and revenge. They were too simple.

‘You were so calm during the exchange,’ he whispered. ‘One would think you were not happy to see me.’

She started to warm to him. ‘I was. Of course I was.’

Alexander sighed in his sleep and rolled over. She covered him and moved towards her husband feeling tight and needy, aloof and yet grateful, tainted and not sure what she was guilty of.

‘David,’ she said.

He looked up at her surprised, hesitant.

‘I am a princess in my own right.’

It took time for him to absorb what she was saying, to understand it in his own way. Then he knelt in front of her and kissed her hand.

3. THE CAUCASUS, MARCH 1855–APRIL 1856

The first days had a magical, honeyed quality. Turning to find Ghazi next to him, getting accustomed once more to his voice. Such reassurance in the touch of his brother. And there was more — his younger brother Muhammad-Sheffi, a stranger who turned out to be mischievous, lovable, elusive. His sisters, artlessly beautiful, coming up to him, their eyes shining with trust and welcome. His grandmother, blubbering, caressing him, and he did remember her, her voice, her laugh, and her tilt of the head so like his late mother’s. With her, he could sense Fatima close, in this flesh and blood that was surrounding him, claiming him. And there was more. His father saying, ‘Let me hold you. I cannot have enough of you.’ Shots fired to celebrate his arrival and that of the returned prisoners. Cousins, friends. ‘I remember you when you were young,’ they laughed. ‘You look exactly like Ghazi but paler,’ they said and slapped him on the back. The sound of his name tossed about. His little crippled half-sister climbing on his lap. All this uninhibited love falling on him, voluminous and weighty.

He began to unfurl. Slowly. It was peculiar after all these years of hovering in the background to be thrust forward like this, to matter. To be the top man’s son, the celebrated warrior’s brother, to be gazed at and listened to. He began to speak and move. He began to talk about what he knew and what they didn’t.

Railway Trains.

Telegraphic Communications.

Paved Roads.

Sanitation.

Ships as Big as Villages.

Telescopes.

‘And how,’ they asked, ‘can this help us defeat them? Speak to us about what is useful. Teach us what would benefit us.’

This stalled him. Their logic was not his logic. He was saying peace and they were saying the resistance will win. He was saying Russia and they were saying jihad. When Jamaleldin spoke of the modern wonders within reach, Ghazi was in thrall, but their father did not approve. ‘We don’t need any of these things here. Come, I want to refresh your mind with our ways.’

Shamil took him to the mosque. It was as if time had not moved. To pray again with his father, the Arabic recitations, the movements. But he had become stiff and his heart had crusted. In all his years in Russia, no pressure was put on him to convert to Christianity. He had kept his faith but not practised it. Kept his faith in the sense that Orthodox Russian Christianity neither tempted nor threatened him. Islam in his mind stood the bolder of the two, more refined and complex, encompassing and vital. Its dynamism was rooted in him, his soul’s connection to Shamil. Sins were like dirt; they could be washed off. More serious was the core submission, the foundations of belief. But spiritually, he had atrophied. There was no doubt about it. Without the nourishment of practice, Jamaleldin’s faith had become insubstantial. After the prayers, his father turned and looked searchingly into his face for the first time. Shamil saw the weaknesses his son was inflicted with. He did not say a single word but the disappointment in his eyes struck Jamaleldin. He walked out of the mosque reeling.

Then the ikon. Jamaleldin walked into the room he was sharing with Ghazi to find Zeidat rummaging through his belongings. The intrusion made him halt at the door, unsure of how to react. Zeidat had been the family member least pleased to see him back; he had yet to figure out a way of dealing with her. Pretending to be shocked but unable to hide her glee, she picked up, from among his belongings, an ikon. What is this doing in your possession? He replied that it was a gift from a friend. An ikon, a gift from the enemy, a Christian friend. She sniffed and stomped out of the room, evidence in hand. An hour later, all his belongings were confiscated. His books, his atlas, his globe — all that he had carefully packed, knowing he would not find it in Dargo, was lost to him. He seethed but it was prudent not to make a fuss. Now that his loyalty was in doubt, he must dodge further suspicion and fit in. Keep the company of wolves and you must learn how to howl. This was what the Russian proverb said.

The food in Dargo was ghastly, as was the ventilation and the sanitation. Riding out with Ghazi, who was indefatigable. Dragging himself out of bed for the dawn prayers. Five times a day accompanying his father to the mosque. Jamaleldin fell ill within a few weeks. Then summer rolled in, bringing with it Ramadan. Long days of thirst and hunger, short nights with even longer prayers. In all his years in Russia he had never fasted, never known which Islamic month was which. He was out of practice; fainting from dehydration, vomiting in the evenings immediately after breaking his fast. Zeidat remarked, tartly, that he was just like Princess Anna, completely unsuited to their way of life. The others had noticed the resemblance too and did not contradict her.

Shamil, recognising the challenge at hand, prescribed a rigorous regime of integration. Lessons to relearn the Avar language. Lessons in the Qur’an and Islamic practice. A tour of all of Shamil’s territories, accompanied by Ghazi. Jamaleldin fumbled his way through all this with neither enthusiasm nor aptitude. He preferred to spend time with Chuanat, the most fluent Russian speaker in the household. She would tell him about Anna, who was often in her thoughts. And he would speak to her freely of Russia without her interrupting him or judging. He also found comfort in his grandmother’s room, lying down with his head on her lap as she sang to him childhood songs, patches of which he remembered. But Bahou could neither speak a word of Russian nor understand his tentative Avar. Their communication was limited and, in time, frustrating.

It was his father whom he yearned to talk to. For this purpose, Jamaleldin was learning his lost language. Learning it enough to be able to urge him towards one thing — peace. But it was not easy to find Shamil on his own. He was constantly flanked by his naibs, his secretary, his translators. They all watched Jamaleldin and shamelessly eavesdropped on every word he said.

‘Father, the Russians want peace. They are willing to talk. They are willing to come to an agreement.’

‘My men are a suspicious lot.’ Shamil’s voice was gruff. ‘They will think the Russians released you especially for this.’

‘But they didn’t. You know they didn’t.’

‘I do not have a favourable opinion of their integrity.’

Jamaleldin pushed on, ‘They wish to establish regular commercial relations between our domain and Khasavyurt.’ He was proud of himself for remembering to say ‘our’ rather than ‘your’ domain.

‘This should not fool you. It is pacification by peaceful means.’

‘But Father, a new tsar rules now. Change is bound to happen.’

‘The sultan is my caliph. I have every hope that he and his allies will triumph over our enemy. This is not the time to negotiate. I would rather mount a large-scale attack but the backing I need from the Ottomans and the British has yet to come.’

Jamaleldin’s voice rose. ‘What if there is no triumph over Russia? What if there is defeat?’ No one could get away with such questions except the imam’s son.

Shamil closed his eyes as if the questions bored him. ‘Then it is Allah’s will and I would submit to it.’

Shamil appointed Jamaleldin as superintendent of administration and judicial proceeding. This freed him from any military duties. However the daily exposure to criminals and the harsh punishments meted out to them dismayed Jamaleldin. Shamil also suggested marriage as a cure for restlessness. Jamaleldin asked for more time in order to settle and build a house. He was eager to move away from Dargo. As much as he enjoyed the company of his sisters and his grandmother, as much as his conversations with Chuanat were fulfilling, it was a relief to escape the scrutiny of Zeidat. She was forever finding fault with him, broadcasting his blunders and, in general, eroding his confidence in himself. More seriously, she threatened to bring an end to his correspondence with any of his old friends and acquaintances. It became customary for his letters to be scrutinised before they were sent; he was advised to keep them short.

He set out designing a new house for himself. This gave him fresh impetus. He enjoyed drawing up the plans, a skill he had acquired in the army. But as soon as the first walls were built, an angry crowd gathered. The structure looked alien, the design, they complained, was in the shape of a cross. It was not in the shape of a cross, Jamaleldin insisted. But it proved impossible to reason with an increasingly hostile crowd. Once the accusation of the cross was spoken, it immediately took root. To appease the mob, Shamil immediately ordered the structure to be dismantled. Jamaleldin watched them tear the whole thing down in a frenzy of self-righteousness and superstition. Public humiliation trampled his spirit.

And there was no reprieve. His father had banned music throughout his territories; anyone caught fermenting grapes or drinking wine was flogged. This was to harden the men for fighting. Entertainment, Shamil believed, would make them soft. Jamaleldin felt this particular deprivation keenly. It was strange not to listen to Chopin, not to visit the theatre or dance in a ball; not even to play billiards or dominos or cards. The day had too many hours; its tone was sombre. ‘You need a wife,’ everyone said — women being the only pleasure available and encouraged. Ghazi was already married and Jamaleldin was older. The daughter of one of his father’s closest naibs was nominated. Jamaleldin shuddered at the possibility that she would turn out to be like Zeidat, mocking his accent, pining for a real man, a warrior, who went out to kill Russians.

‘Oh yes, we’ll see you married off soon,’ he heard them say. Their talk bewildered him; it was an effort to figure out whether they were serious or cynical, whether they were speaking about the near or distant future. He found that he often preferred his own company and started to turn towards nature for relaxation. He spent considerable time looking at the mountains. On his own he could carry out the sort of conversations he could not have with anyone else. On the merits of Mozart over Schulhoff. On the French translation of ‘wide-sleeved linen blouse’. On which of his father’s horses could, theoretically, win the Krasnoye Selo steeplechase.

Through the summer and winter, he kept talking to his father about peace. Most of the latter, he spent ill with a fever. ‘Your first winter in the mountains,’ his grandmother said. ‘You will get used to it.’ It was only in April that he started to feel slightly better and able to spend more time outdoors. The fresh spring air reminded him of when he had first arrived the year before. Ironically, those first days had been the happiest. Now he was even more tentative, physically weak.

Today he felt a great need to see Shamil and late at night he waited for him outside the mosque. How did his father manage to survive on so little sleep? Long after Isha prayers, when the men dispersed Shamil would stay up with Sheikh Jamal el-Din for more zikr, more Qur’an recitation.

A full moon was burning on the horizon. Jamaleldin followed, with his eyes, the silver and grey shadows on the snow-capped peaks. They stirred in him a feeling of awe. Better still, the night took him out of himself, opened him up to tranquillity. A hand on his shoulder and there was his father next to him reciting, ‘Surely in the creation of the Heavens and the Earth, and the alteration of night and day, and the ship that runs in the sea with profit to mankind; and the water Allah sends down from heaven, thereby reviving the earth after it is dead, and His scattering abroad in it animals of all kind; and the ordinance of the winds, and the clouds compelled between heaven and earth — surely these are signs for a people who comprehend.’

Jamaleldin listened to Shamil explaining the verse and as he spoke, the images came closer and together they weaved their way through the words and out again. So that it was as if Jamaleldin sensed the power of creation; he saw the cargo perched on ships that miraculously stayed afloat. There was no sharper contrast than that between night and day, those long summer evenings and dark winter days. Where would they all be — humans and animals — without the rain? And if you stood still you would feel the change in the wind and know that clouds didn’t have free will. They were running their appointed courses, they were subservient and duty-bound; slaves trailed by the winds.

Father and son walked around the aoul. Everyone asleep and for them alone were the stars and the forests audibly breathing. Jamaleldin would have been happy for time to stand still, so that he could be sprayed with this sense of blessing. His father approved of his introspection, of his stillness and desire to spend time outdoors. Jamaleldin would never ride out to war with him. His fate lay elsewhere and he was relieved that his father understood.

If only his father would understand the need for peace. ‘Isn’t the situation different now?’ Jamaleldin asked. ‘Now that the treaty has been signed in Paris?’

Shamil nodded. ‘Sultan Abdelmajid has made peace with the Russians.’

‘Would he not want you to do the same?’

‘If he suggests it to me, I shall have no right to reject it.’

This was the best answer he had ever had. Jamaleldin felt a sense of hope. Shamil stopped walking and turned as if he had heard something. A dervish was walking towards them. Jamaleldin had seen him before in the mosque, swaying in ecstasy to the rhythms of the zikr. There were traces of handsomeness on his face but any wellbeing had been eroded by the all-consuming passion that broke off his tie to ordinary life. He neither went to war nor worked nor socialised in a normal way. People gave him plates of food and, once in a while, tossed him an unneeded garment. His clothes were torn, his hair dishevelled. Lurching towards Shamil, the dervish was inadequately protected against the cold, muttering to himself, absorbed in his other-worldly drunkenness. He did not seem to be aware that it was the middle of the night and he did not greet Shamil and Jamaleldin. But he must have known Shamil for he vibrated towards him, circled him a few times in a shambolic loop before veering suddenly into the dark.

‘He’s mad, isn’t he?’ Jamaleldin asked.

Shamil did not answer with a yes or a no. He said, ‘His inward eye was opened and what he saw was too much for him to carry. It is best to be inwardly intoxicated and outwardly sober.’

‘Are you, Father, inwardly intoxicated?’

Shamil smiled but he did not answer this question either. They said their goodnights and parted.

4. GEORGIA, OCTOBER 1856

David helped her into the carriage. She was heavier than she had been in previous pregnancies even though there were still months to go before the birth. ‘I should stop accepting dinner invitations,’ she said when he settled next to her.

‘We have two more next week,’ he said. Since leaving the army, he had been spending more time at home, concentrating on the family finances with the aim of claiming back Tsinondali.

Anna felt the baby moving, a complete rotation of strong bones and muscles that felt heavy and reassuring. He, she would think of him as a he, a brother to Alexander. Last night’s dream still covered her. Shamil putting his hand on her stomach to bless the baby, telling her that his name was Ilia.

‘What do you think of Ilia as a name for the baby?’ she asked David. The wheels of the carriage rattled over a bump on the road. She held her stomach until the discomfort passed.

‘Ilia. Fine. What if it’s a girl?’

‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t believe that it would be a girl.

‘How about Tamar?’

‘Yes. I love the name Tamar.’

When they first returned home to Tiflis, the sight of Lydia’s toys and clothes had startled them. Anna walked into the nursery early the following morning to find David holding Lydia’s christening gown and sobbing. A part of her had almost forgotten that he was Lydia’s father, that he felt her loss too. But it was only once that he gave in to sadness. Most of the time, anger dominated him. He wanted revenge.

When they arrived at their destination, Anna moaned as she stepped out of the carriage. They walked towards the entrance with the wide door and the footman in shining boots. She surrendered to what had now become familiar. The desire for people to see her, to welcome her back, to crow over her. The summer immediately after her release was spent in Petersburg and Moscow. Paying respects and gratitude to the tsar, a ball in their honour, one thanksgiving service after another. More than a year later, and still the topic of the kidnapping was of interest. Every time it died down, something or other would revive it.

Recently, the editor of Kavkas, the leading newspaper in Tiflis, published a book-length account of the incident. He had conscientiously interviewed her for a good number of days and written down everything she said, even providing an illustration of Shamil’s household. He also did well in correcting many errors published in Germany and elsewhere. She had been mistakenly quoted as saying, ‘The highlanders are not human beings, they are wild beasts.’ Neither she nor Madame Drancy, before she returned to Paris, had ever expressed such a sentiment. A Prussian author claimed that ‘Shamil’s people held daggers over the princess’s head to force her to write letters to the tsar.’ This had never taken place either.

The gentleman seated next to her at dinner, a retired general, spoke highly of Madame Drancy’s book. ‘For the first time ever, the world is getting a glimpse of the elusive highlanders and the mysterious Shamil.’

Anna sipped her soup. ‘Madame Drancy was always exact.’

‘The description of the harem is fascinating.’

‘She was always taking notes. I am happy that she succeeded in her goal and managed to publish her book.’

‘What is astonishing is that you give Shamil a far higher character than anyone ever had done. Even his supporters in Britain.’

‘It is all true. No embellishments.’

‘But what did he give you in return?’ Belligerence took over from curiosity, keener than the fascination of the exotic. ‘What did Shamil do to you? Eh? Eight months of captivity. Your property destroyed, you little girl lost for ever.’

She broke down then and there. One minute she was enjoying her soup, the next minute David was helping her out of the room. People’s curiosity made them wearisome and thoughtless. She should, really, not accept any more dinner invitations.

In his study, David sat hunched over the accounts. She had come in to ask him if he would like to join her for a walk. It was a clear day and the air smelt of snow. If they went out now they might enjoy a few hours of sunshine. But just looking at his face, she guessed he was not in a good mood.

‘Do you know what happened to the forty thousand roubles I raised?’

This was a rhetorical question. He would tell her now and start to tremble with rage. She sat on his lap in the hope that her pregnant weight would restrain him. He did not seem to notice. ‘This is how the money was divided. A fifth went to Shamil’s treasury. And the rest was distributed among the men who actually took part in the raid! The ones who looted Tsinondali. The ones who broke through and captured my family and burnt — ’

She put her fingers on his lips. There was no need for him to get agitated. She worried about him when he did. ‘They also have burnt villages and felled trees and crops destroyed. They will use the money to rebuild their villages.’

‘Why don’t they talk peace, then? It is not as if they have not been given ample opportunities. Instead they are as stubborn as mules, as hard-headed as the rocks they live on.’

Anna heard him but she also heard Zeidat. ‘… you Russians roll our men’s heads like melons on the ground … you shit inside our houses to humiliate us …’ She did not want to hear Zeidat’s voice, to remember her taunts or the looted diamond ring flashing on her finger. Anna felt the blood thicken in her veins, her stomach contract around the baby. She took a deep breath in. ‘David, leave them alone.’

He thumped the table. ‘Leave them alone! If you imagine that Shamil will be left alone, then you are dreaming …’

She heaved herself off his lap. It had been a mistake to speak to him. She could have been outdoors by now in her coat and muff.

David’s voice rose, following her as she left the room. ‘We might have suffered in the Crimea but the Caucasus is still of vital importance. Shamil will be captured. His own men are beginning to tire of this war. Believe me, he can’t last long.’

Outdoors, she walked slowly, careful not to slip on any unexpected ice patches. The garden lay before her, bare and attractive. Near the greenhouse, she could look up and see the mountains. They were there now, Chuanat and her baby; Bahou and Ameena. She missed them, she could not help it; there was an appetite inside her for them. She wanted them to know that she was going to be confined soon and that Alexander still chanted ‘la ilaha illa Allah’.

The snow on the peaks was the colour of cream. When will blood cease to flow in the mountains … After all these years, would Shamil finally be defeated? She had dreamt again of him last night. She often did. Most of the dreams had neither a setting nor a plot. They were just dreams of his presence. And in his presence was a force, a fullness that was sufficient, an end in itself. Sometimes in the dreams, she did actually see his face. But more often than not there was only his silhouette.

5. THE CAUCASUS, MARCH 1857–JULY 1858

A rumour was going around that the Russians had given Jamaleldin a slow-acting poison. They had given it to him before his release and only now were its effects showing. He was losing weight rapidly and was always coughing. Too weak to go out riding, he spent most of his time lying down.

Jamaleldin knew better. He knew the first time he coughed and a glob of blood fell on the snow, melting it a little, seeping into a lighter red. It had been the first clear day of spring and he had gone out riding with Ghazi. They carried their falcons on their wrists. He felt the weakness overcome him, a dizziness as if he had not eaten, even though he had. He stopped over the plains and let Ghazi ride on without him. I do not want to hunt, he realised. Frost all around him but he felt hot. He veered his horse towards the north and stared down the slopes, out towards Georgia. His other life was there, all the things he knew and missed. But he felt too tired to yearn, the bird heavy on his arm. He slipped down from the saddle and was seized by a violent fit of coughing. The falcon grew restless, it fluttered its wings. His chest was tight; all this mountain air around him and it was a struggle to inhale even a little of it. Perspiration broke throughout his body. He saw the blood on the snow.

‘Father, this is not a poison working through me. It is a disease called tuberculosis. I have come across it in the Russian army. There is no cure for it. Because it is contagious. I need to leave Dargo. I have to be alone. It takes a year or so to run its course …’ He did not add, ‘… it usually ends in a painful death.’ He would break down if he did and a man of the Caucasus must not be seen to cry.

Shamil arranged for him to move to Soul-Kadi, an aoul hidden behind the massive peaks that made up the Gates of Andi. He gave him a young Georgian prisoner-of-war to nurse him and five armed guards. Shamil was always fearful that Jamaleldin would be recaptured by the Russians; he would not take any chances.

In Soul-Kadi, Jamaleldin found the solitude not only bearable but welcome. The villagers made no demands on him. They left roses at his door, baskets of food. The house he was in was small and bare but it had a roof and when he had the energy, he climbed up and dozed in the fresh air. At night he slept on a cot rather than on the floor — a Russian habit, and when he was weak, that cot was carried up to the roof. On his back he would watch the clouds moving, trailed by the winds.

His father put aside his pride and sent down to the military fort in Khasavyurt for medicine. The medicine came but did not help. It surprised Jamaleldin that his father still had hope. Love clouded his vision. Or else he was simply a powerful man who did not easily give up.

In the middle of winter, Ghazi came to visit. He hung up his gun and slipped down to sit cross-legged on the floor. He sat far away from the cot because Jamaleldin insisted. Ghazi’s good health lit up the room with a rude glow. His strength was like a force of nature contained indoors. Jamaleldin kept roses in the room to overpower the smell of illness. Ghazi brought in other smells, of sweat, horses and clothes damp from rain.

‘Why are you alone?’ he blustered. ‘Where’s that Georgian prisoner Father gave you?’

‘I exchanged him.’

‘For how many men?’

‘None.’

‘What?’

‘I got things instead.’

‘What?’ Ghazi leant forward. The light from the fire flickered on his face.

‘Things I need.’

‘Medicine, you mean?’

‘Sort of. What’s your news?’

‘It’s not going well,’ Ghazi said, picking up a yellow rose and raising it to his nose. He meant the war, the battles, the resistance. ‘As long as Russia was losing in the Crimea, the men had hope. Now it’s all gone, especially after the cholera outbreak. Hidalti said —’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Chief of artillery. There is so little ammunition now. He said, we need to make every bullet work. So we’re getting the men to drive an iron nail through each bullet.’

‘Is this practical?’

‘Not really. All of lower Chechnya is in their hands now. We need to get it back. And there are bad feelings among the tribes, too much rivalry and bickering. Some of them betrayed us and submitted. Then the Russians betrayed them too. They moved the tribes that surrendered to Manych.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Far north. And it’s a dump. Father himself couldn’t have come up with a more severe punishment. The other day a Chechen delegation came to him asking to negotiate for peace. He said to them, ‘Do you want to go to Manych as well?’

Jamaleldin smiled, ‘I’m sure they had no case after that.’

‘Of course. Who in their right mind is going to give up their land without a fight?’

It disappointed Jamaleldin to admit it but it was true. ‘The Russians don’t want peace any more. There was a time when they did. But Father refused all talk of peace. Who has the courage now to talk to him about surrender? I tell you, my illness is a blessing.’

Ghazi smiled. ‘You have become a true Sufi. Thanking Allah for your misfortune. All these lessons Father arranged for you must have paid off.’

To laugh would aggravate a fresh bout of coughing. Jamaleldin bit his smiling lips. It was a pleasure just to look at Ghazi, to watch his face. It did not really matter what news he brought with him. ‘I have a gift for you,’ Jamaleldin said.

‘Me?’

‘Yes. Look on the shelf over there. Bring it down.’

Ghazi stood up. ‘What on earth is this?’

‘A music box. You turn it and listen.’

Ghazi sat down and started to turn the handle. He looked like an overgrown child.

‘Gently, man,’ Jamaleldin said.

The music box was painted in gaudy colours. On it was a picture of the Lake of Lucerne with swans afloat on the shining water. The first notes of ‘The Gondolier’s Song’ filled the room. Ghazi’s mouth fell open. When he could speak he said, ‘This is beautiful, brother.’

Jamaleldin watched the muscles on his brother’s hand as he turned the handle. In exchange for the Georgian prisoner, he had also got books, paintings and an atlas. It would be better if his father never heard about this. He would not understand.

Ghazi listened intently as ‘The Gondolier’s Song’ gave way to ‘The Skater’s Waltz’. He tilted his head in appreciation. This was the Ghazi Muhammad feared by every Russian serving in the Caucasus. And here he sat enraptured by a toy, simple. His enemies would jeer if they saw him now, they whose pleasures were sophisticated, whose tastes were more refined. Jamaleldin felt a rush of love for him.

Ghazi said, ‘We have to hide this.’ From Shamil and Shamil’s spies. Even the Russian newspapers were confiscated, let alone this devil box.

Ghazi stayed with him a couple of days. He could not be spared for long. Jamaleldin spoke about Russia, about girls skating on ice, about the steeplechase and the railways. Good, kind people, neither devils nor monsters. Ghazi took it all in, fascinated and wanting to learn. No matter what, Jamaleldin would always be his older brother. The one who knew more.

By spring Jamaleldin was emaciated. Shamil sent a messenger to Khasavyurt begging for the army doctor. It was agreed that three naibs would be held hostage in the doctor’s absence. Two other highlanders half-dragged, half-carried the unfortunate doctor up the steepest and most terrifying of terrains. By the time he reached Jamaleldin, five days later, he was trembling from fatigue and nauseous from vertigo. Jamaleldin was too ill to apologise. Instead he was happy to see the doctor. At last someone he could speak Russian to, ask for news of friends, go over memories.

There was nothing the doctor could do for him. A few preparations to ease the pain. But the talking was enough; this drawing towards him of his other, Russian life. Days and years that mattered, that could not be erased. His accomplishments, his friendships, the good times, even the disappointments — how the emperor refused to give him permission to marry Daria Semyonovich or to engage in active service in the Crimea. He shared all this with the doctor, indulging in the memories. Listening to the doctor as he narrated the latest military gossip, who lost money to whom and who was called to fight a duel. Bright brief life as he had known it.

After the doctor left, the summer weather enabled Jamaleldin to lie again on the roof. He watched the wind orchestrate the clouds. He saw the sun melt the last avalanches of snow. He turned to look at the local yellow roses he had come to need, delicate petals, proud thorns. When he dozed, it was as if their tenderness and scent fused into him.

Then even to be carried up to the roof became too exhausting. When Shamil visited him, he did not, like Ghazi, stay in the corner of the room. Instead he held Jamaleldin in his arms and prayed for him. The prayers dulled the terror that often flared up as vicious as the disease itself. The prayers lulled Jamaleldin to spaces where the pain subsided and sleep was within reach. His father’s hand lay on his chest; it felt heavy and reassuring, a memory of childhood, of other blessings. Shamil propped him up and made him spit, rubbed his back, gave him honey to drink. Jamaleldin saw the sadness in his eyes, the crush. Only three years since his return. Only three years together. Jamaleldin wanted to live, wanted to feel healthy again but death was pulling him away against his will, against his father’s will.

Jamaleldin fell into a deep sleep and woke up in the middle of the night to see his father standing up in prayer. He recognised the recitation learnt long ago in Akhulgo. For truly with every hardship comes ease. Truly with every hardship comes ease. He thought he had forgotten these meanings but he hadn’t. They were buried under the new things he had learnt — French and the poems of Lermontov, how to draw a map, how to buy a railway ticket — but the foundation had remained: there is no god but Allah, Muhammad is His beloved. There are no limits to His Mercy, there is no will except His will. There were colours in the room now and his father growing taller so that his head touched the roof. Sheikh Jamal el-Din was also in the room, sitting on the floor and on his chest was an eye, an open unblinking eye that was looking straight at Jamaleldin. I must be dreaming, the fever gone to my head. Such a great constriction that it was hard to breathe. He heard the chants of the Orthodox funeral services. Were they burying a Russian? They must be. A dear, good friend who had walked by his side and helped him up when he stumbled. Who made him laugh and taught him something useful, something he couldn’t now recall because he was dizzy from the room’s breaking brightness. How strange that the eye on Sheikh Jamal el-Din’s chest was the only light in the room! His father was large, very large, but his voice was soft and Jamaleldin felt the room swell up with angels.