The Kindness of Enemies

1. KHARTOUM, JANUARY — FEBRUARY 2011

I stayed in Khartoum much longer than planned. Throughout the New Year and the run-up to the referendum, which resulted in South Sudan gaining its independence. Safia had hired a lawyer and taken me to court to prove that I was no longer a Muslim and as such deserved to be cut off from my father’s inheritance. My first instinct on hearing this was to brush it off and assume that I would be well out of the country before proceedings started. It did not strike me as important enough to postpone my return. When I casually mentioned it to Yasha, though, his reaction made me reconsider.

‘Why are you laughing?’ he said. ‘This is serious.’

We were in his flat. I was spending more and more time there so that I could access the internet. Evening after evening we sat opposite one another; I with my laptop and he spread out on a recliner, with his. Sometimes we worked and sometimes we watched films or I wrote emails to Malak. His flat had modern furniture compared to his mother’s downstairs. It was more comfortable too. He had no qualms about using the air-conditioner even when opening the window and putting on the ceiling fan would have been tolerable, if a little balmy. Soon I discovered that after eating the healthy dinner Grusha cooked, he would order takeaways and keep eating late into the night. He drank Pepsi instead of water. No wonder.

‘I am laughing,’ I said. ‘Because Safia’s charge sounds deliciously medieval.’

‘You have to fight this, Natasha.’ He was wearing a white shirt. It flattered him as did the gritty, end-of-the-day look.

I shook my head.

He picked up his phone. ‘Do you want rice pudding or crème caramel?’

This was the start of the post-dinner bingeing that I had recently been pulled into. He would order more food — kebab, pizza or shawerma — but I stuck primly to dessert. Grusha’s cooking was delicious and healthy. The kind of soups I missed: fresh vegetables and tender chicken or lamb. The ingredients were less packaged here, not beaten into submission by supermarket requirements. Often the vegetables were misshapen, twinned and oddly stuck together but their scent was pronounced, their taste more distinct. There was no reason to keep on eating after such a dinner. But this had become Yasha’s habit.

‘Crème caramel,’ I said.

‘Anything else?’

‘No.’ I had to resist the abandonment he was proposing. He put through the order. A large pizza that he would eat all by himself, two kebab sandwiches, pastry for dessert. Sometimes the shops would not deliver and we would have to go there ourselves and pick the food up. I liked these late-night drives, kept secret from Grusha, who would definitely disapprove. Yasha had taken me into his confidence, shared with me his nocturnal guzzling. I never had the heart to lecture him on watching his weight, let alone reducing it. I did worry that he was jeopardising his health but I did not want to embarrass him.

We would drive through poorly lit streets and past the airport. Once we saw a car explode, just like that, orange flames rising up. An excited group gathered. For a long time afterwards, the loud pop of the tyres numbed my ears.

‘Safia can’t go around making such accusations. It’s immoral.’ One of the buttons of his shirt had come undone. ‘And it’s obvious that her motive is greed.’

‘I don’t want anything.’ It was too much drama to be pulled into. But my father’s copy of Hadji Murad — I would like to have that. Surely it meant nothing to Safia; I doubted she could read Russian. ‘My brother deserves it all.’ I had been regularly meeting Mekki. Every time felt special, almost too good to be true.

‘I am opposed to this apostasy law but if it won’t be amended, then the message needs to go out loud and clear that it is virtually impossible to enforce. Safia’s position is weak. You will win and afterwards we can turn around and sue her for slander.’

I noted the ‘we’ in his sentence. It was because he was a lawyer. He wanted to help me in his professional capacity.

Instinctively I switched from Russian to English. ‘So let me get this straight. I am to go to court and prove that I am a Muslim? I haven’t got a leg to stand on. Nothing. I am not even sure if I am. What is this, the inquisition?’

He had been shaking his head as I was talking. Now he said, also in English, ‘That’s exactly it. You shouldn’t have to prove that you’re a Muslim — you are one by birth, by default. You have a right, a human right, to be a bad Muslim, a lapsed Muslim, a secular Muslim, whatever. She though, doesn’t have any right to excommunicate you, especially when she has something to gain out of it. Believe me, we can get this thrown out of court in a matter of minutes.’ He smiled as if this was a case he wanted to sink his teeth into.

‘Yasha, this is going to mess up my plans.’

He waved his hand in dismissal and changed back into Russian. ‘One week. Trust me. Just delay your return by a week.’ He paused and looked at me as if he was noticing something about me for the first time. ‘You’re the only one, apart from my mother, who still calls me Yasha.’

‘It’s because, Yassir,’ I emphasised his real name, ‘I’ve been away for twenty years. I’m stuck in a time warp.’

‘Well get you out of it.’

I was beginning to like his use of ‘we’. I guessed that he had carried it over from Arabic but still there was a grandness about it and a welcome.

The case ended up taking a lot longer than a week. To start with I had to prove that I was my father’s daughter. I had to prove that Natasha Wilson was Natasha Hussein. This required that I obtain my adoption papers from the UK, get them authenticated by the Foreign Office and the Sudanese Embassy in London. To my relief and surprise, Tony, all the way from Aberdeen, was helpful throughout this process. He ‘rose to the occasion’ as Grusha said and facilitated most of this paperwork.

Week in, week out I waited in Khartoum. Borrowing Grusha’s or Yasha’s car I would pick up Mekki from school or near his house. He snuck out to meet me behind his mother’s back. Lucky for me, he was at the age when he was allowed greater freedom and felt the need to exercise it. Having his own mobile phone also made the logistics much easier. ‘Where would you like to go today?’ I would ask when he climbed in next to me, his expression deliberately casual, though once or twice he did look over his shoulder to see if anyone was looking.

He would say, ‘Take me to Ozone,’ or Solitaire, or Tangerine, or Time Out. These were neither amusement arcades nor cinemas nor playgrounds. Instead they were stylish coffee shops and restaurants where we would sit in pleasant, often outdoor surroundings and afterwards I would pay a hefty bill. An eye-opener for me that nowadays a twelve-year-old’s treat was a latte. ‘Are you allowed coffee?’ I once asked but he said, ‘I’m a man,’ and so I shut up. Most of the time my brother and I spent together was in silence. He studiously dug into his treats and sat back in his chair quite pleased with himself. I, too, once I got over my British need for small talk, relaxed and enjoyed being where I was, looking at him, listening to snatches of the conversations around me. His similarity to me continued to be a novelty; his resemblance to my father would startle me every now and again.

I showed him a photo of my classic Skoda. ‘It’s a convertible,’ I explained. I pointed out the details I particularly liked, the dashboard, the gear stick mounted on the steering column, ‘Felicia’ written in lower-case cursive. I wanted him to learn.

He asked me about McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts. He had heard about them from his friends who travelled to Dubai or Cairo or KL. Sudan was under US sanctions and Mekki had never travelled abroad. ‘When you come and visit me, I’ll take you to all of these places,’ I promised and thought that my colleagues at the university would be amused at how American fast food could be a reason to visit Scotland.

Sometimes I irked him by being predictably adult. ‘Stop kicking the table.’ ‘No you can’t have another ice-cream.’ ‘Have you done your homework?’ Sometimes he unnerved me with his blunt questions. ‘How come you’re not married?’ ‘When are you leaving?’ or ‘Why does my mother hate you?’ These questions were tempered by his own frankness and gratuitous, though rare, confessions. A story of Safia’s quarrel with the gardener, how he once got caught cheating in the Arabic exam, how he lent money to his best friend, never got it back and they were now no longer friends. I liked it best when he spoke about our father. It brought about a slight fizz of envy for what seemed to have been their regular uncomplicated life.

Once, though, he spoke of him in reference to myself and the past. ‘He was angry for not keeping you in Khartoum.’ The structure of the sentence sounded as if he was repeating something his mother had said.

‘I was the one who wanted to leave. He shouldn’t have blamed himself.’ I would have said this to him in hospital if I had got here in time. Perhaps it would have made him feel better. He should not have felt guilty on my behalf. ‘I was sure I wanted to be with my mother. It would have been almost impossible for him to make me stay.’

‘Why?’ Mekki slurped the last of a chocolate milkshake.

‘Why what?’ I was thawed because almost everyone around me looked like me. I blended and the feeling was like warm, used bedsheets, lulling, almost boring.

‘Why didn’t you want to stay?’

‘I was afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

I breathed in. ‘Of never seeing my mother again.’ I was not sure if this was completely true, if this was the whole story. I remember her bribing me with the promise of a better school in Britain, brighter toys, bookshops. Sharpened pencils, a calculator, a microscope all to myself. I listened to her and believed her because of the alphabet letters on the wall of Tony’s house.

A movement caught Mekki’s eye and he turned around. Someone had tossed a heavy bag on a chair and it overturned. I was getting upset by his questions; a pressure was building in my chest. For the first time ever, I felt relieved that it was time to pay the bill and take him home. Then in the car, just as I was about to park, he said, ‘Teach me Russian. Starting from next time.’ What I had said earlier must have made an impression on him — the fact that my father and I always spoke together in Russian.

Yasha stayed away from the cafés and restaurants. His modus operandi was the takeaway, conforming to the Arab cliché that the obese were embarrassed to eat in public. I did not challenge him over this. Besides, my outings with Mekki sufficed. During the day when Grusha and Yasha were at work and I did not have access to a car, I worked on my papers. A number of times, I went by public transport to all the tourist locations — the museum, the camel market, the Mahdi’s tomb. These trips left me hot and strangely disappointed. Instead of enjoying what I judged to be well-kept secrets, jewels that the world had overlooked, I felt it unfair that the country remained behind an iron curtain, excluded from the interest of the global traveller.

‘Our government has a bad reputation,’ Yasha said. ‘All the world’s goodwill has now gone to the new South Sudan.’ He was working hard to protect the interests of the Southern Sudanese who had been living in the North all their lives. Overnight, they had been stripped of their Sudanese nationality and sent packing to the South. Those who could not afford the journey were stranded in limbo.

I liked listening to him rant about his work. This usually started as soon as he arrived home. I would be helping Grusha in the kitchen and he would walk in and stand near the fridge, his bulk filling up most of the space. It was a good thing that the maid left early, otherwise the four of us crowding the kitchen would have been impossible. Yasha would lean on the fridge, which made Grusha jittery as a kitchen chair had recently come crashing down under his weight and the fridge was more precious. He would start narrating his stories of the day — a new client he was defending, a case that got thrown out of court, a petition he was preparing. After dinner Grusha would go out to the veranda to have a cigarette while the two of us lingered at the table. Yasha would be saying something like, ‘It’s the principle that is at stake here,’ while I could see her chunky bare feet propped up on the patio’s low table, the glow of the cigarette in the dark. She reminded me of my mother.

He was positive about my appearance in court the next week, assuring me I had nothing to worry about. He sat with one hand over the chair next to him. The other one, which he had been eating with, hovered over the table unwashed. ‘Have you ever thought of moving back? Giving it a chance here?’

‘No I haven’t,’ I said. The stage was set for a romance. Every romantic attachment I had ever had ended, like my parents’ marriage, with rancour and bitterness. Only Yasha remained a friend.

After almost a month of trying, I finally heard from Malak. It turned out that she was not much of a writer; her emails, few and far between, were a couple of dashed lines or links (where I was merely copied among various recipients) to such things as headshot photographers she was recommending or obituaries of actors who had recently passed away. This time was a response to me telling her about Safia’s accusation.

Yes you are a Muslim — fight for it.

Don’t worry about Oz.

A day later I heard from him. He had changed his user name. Instead of SwordOfShamil, it was now Osama.Raja.

Hi Natasha,

I’m sorry I behaved poorly that day you came over. I wasn’t up to talking much and to tell you the truth, it was because what happened psyched me out. The cell felt as small as a cupboard and for the first two days there was always someone watching me and writing down what I did. Not that I could do much. I was afraid all the time. Even to stand up and pray, let alone ask which direction was the south-east. I couldn’t sleep and then after a few days of this, I started dreaming even though I wasn’t asleep. My mind played tricks on me. It was weird and disorienting. Then they started asking me questions and as I kept answering I felt that I was lying, even though I wasn’t. I kept thinking I must give them the right answer not the wrong answers when the simple truth was that I hadn’t done anything wrong. Now Malak keeps saying that ‘anything’ means anything suspicious, whatever got me into this trouble in the first place. She’s mad at me.

I didn’t go back to uni when the term started. I’m looking at moving — even changing my degree. Once I get started on filling application forms, I’ll put your name down as one of my referees if that’s okay with you?

Thanks for coming over that day. It made me remember that I liked your classes and your papers about Shamil. I’ve been reading them again. I started to think of myself as a student not a criminal.

Apparently I made the news. See …

I clicked on the link and found myself in a far-right website under the heading The Stain of Al-Qaeda has Reached Scotland. Even though he was not charged.

I must have sighed too loudly because Yasha looked up from the kofta sandwich he was eating. I told him about Oz, switching to English. He followed and replied in English.

‘That student of yours needs to man up. If he were in any part of the Arab world he would have been beaten, too. He would have come out of this with a broken rib or a broken nose. Or worse. Or not come out at all. He should count himself lucky.’

‘Well, he was born in Britain and so his expectations are based on that.’

Yasha snorted. He put down his sandwich and ambled to the fridge. At home he wore jellabiyas which made him look as regal as a giant. I suddenly felt discouraged from telling him about the police searching my office or Gaynor’s complaint against me. Such battles belonged wholeheartedly there.

Yasha and Grusha had an active social life. I was familiar with some of their friends, other cross-cultural families in which the mothers were Eastern European and the fathers Sudanese. I caught up with the news of those in my age group, how many children they had, who was in Dubai and who was in Moscow or Cape Town or Washington or not so far away in Port Sudan. I was shown wedding photos on mobile phones, heard descriptions of holidays spent and family reunions made. So this was the tribe I belonged to, here were my species. They knew my mother and my father, they had known me as a child and this gave them a confidence in their approach. It was hard not to relax with them, enjoying their company, practising that dance from Russian to English to the Arabic words I was now remembering or relearning or a little bit of both.

In three different languages I was told that Yasha and I were truly suited to each other. And weren’t you childhood sweethearts too? So what’s stopping you? His weight? Help him lose it, take him back to Scotland with you and put him through surgery. What other excuse? Your job? But don’t you want to be a mother? Surely you do and you can’t keep putting it off for ever.

How easily their words wormed their way through me! I was vulnerable, away from home and instead of resenting their interference in my private life, a sadness would wash over me, a sense that their words were too little, too late. I played a game of ‘what if?’ — what if my parents’ marriage had survived, what if Tony had never shown up? The sensory details around me evoked incomplete memories, half-formed scenes more serene and rosy than I would usually admit. Grusha showed me old photographs of a picnic on the bank of the river. I could not remember any such picnic. And yet here was the proof. My mother in wide seventies-style trousers, orange swirls fuzzy and almost psychedelic; my father’s hair like Jimi Hendrix’s. He was carrying me on his shoulder and my mother was looking up at me, smiling, reaching up one arm to hold my elbow as if helping me balance, a cigarette in her other hand. I could not remember being such a happy child.

Quite a portion of Khartoum’s social life revolved around weddings from which I was exempt due to my recent bereavement. I would stay behind while Grusha, dressed in her best and still resembling Hilary Clinton, got in her car and headed off. Sometimes Yasha accompanied her or went out with his own circle of friends. Grusha told me how for almost a year after his wife’s and daughter’s deaths, he kept to himself and shunned company. He stayed at home and ate his way through the pain. She seemed relieved that he was now adjusting.

It had taken me time to find Tony’s old house. Whenever I had the car, I would be on the lookout for the metal railing with the alphabet letters. One afternoon, I turned a corner and there it was, on a busy road that bore little resemblance to the one I remembered. But it was definitely the same house. Here, in front of it, my mother had parked and left me in the car to go inside and deliver a cake. Our lives were never the same again.

It was not enough for me to see it from the outside. I got out of the car and rang the bell. I waited and looked at the railing; it had not stood the test of time, it was rusty and the wall beneath it yellow-brown with dust and age. Cracked too, here and there. The letters themselves looked dated, cursive and pretentious. They had captivated me as a child and roused my ambitions. I peered through the gate; there were no parked cars and the house looked deserted, the garden overgrown and unkempt. I had started to turn away, when I heard sluggish footsteps. A tall man in a dirty jellabiya opened the door. He must be the resident watchman. I had not prepared what to say so I asked for Tony.

He shook his head and confirmed that no one was living in the house.

To gain access I lied that I wanted to look inside with a view to buying the house. He let me in. The path used to be strewn with attractive pebbles but most of them had worn away. I walked to the back and found the swimming pool. It was predictably smaller than I remembered and empty, with broken and missing tiles at the bottom and all along the sides. I remembered swimming here with a Tweety Bird inflatable ring while my mother was indoors. In room after room, there was only decay and filth, human excrement and the scurrying, scratching sound of rats. The light fittings and ceiling fans had been either removed or stolen. The bathrooms were stripped down to almost rubble. Upstairs in the master bedroom, the branches of a tree had pushed their way through the rectangular hole where the air-conditioner used to be. There was a horrible smell that turned out to be a recently dead pigeon. I lingered, absorbing it all, feeling it seep into me; it stirred in me an ache I could not at first understand. Only later did I recognise it as homesickness. A yearning for an identifiable place where I could belong.

Later, when I described the court session to Malak, I told her about the small beleaguered judge with crinkly white in his hair. He peered down his glasses at the papers in front of him. He cleared his throat now and again. I would have felt more confident in some kind of jacket, my shoulders straight, a tissue in my pocket. I would have preferred to stand in my sensible black shoes instead of these moist sandals.

‘Why did you change your name? Hussein is a good name, the name of the grandson of Muhammad, peace be upon him.’

‘Did you become a Christian when you were adopted?’

‘Are you or have you ever been married to a non-Muslim?’

‘Why do you know so little about the faith you were born into?’

Yasha had coached me on what to say. I went along as practised. The sound of the ceiling fan grew louder, the judge looking up at me over his glasses, down at the papers he was shuffling with his hand. The room and the whole building had a colonial feel to it. There were not many people about. I made a point of not searching for Safia. Was she here or not? I was afraid of her, now, because she was sure of herself, of what she was and what she was entitled to. But Yasha was backing me up and Malak was on my side.

‘You are an adult,’ the judge said after he ruled in my favour. ‘Your father made a mistake in not keeping you by his side, in not bringing you up as a Muslim — but he is gone now to meet his Lord and we must not speak ill of the dead. In fact it would seem that your father repented and admitted his mistake. We can only ask Allah, the Most Merciful, to forgive him. But as I said, you are a mature adult. It is your responsibility now to learn about your religion and to practise it as best as you can. Do you have something to say?’

I said that I was not a good Muslim but I was not a bad person either. I said I had a brother that I wanted to keep in touch with. I said that I wanted to give up my share of the inheritance to him. Apart from my father’s Russian books and Russian keepsakes, I wanted nothing. I said that I did not come here today to fight over money or for the share of a house. I came so that I would not be an outcast, so that I would, even in a small way, faintly, marginally, tentatively, belong.

2. GEORGIA, SUMMER — AUTUMN 1859

It became a habit, whenever possible, to walk in the garden and stop at the greenhouse where she could look up at the mountains. Occasionally she would see plumes of smoke, imagine or actually hear a faraway sound of gunfire, but what was actually happening eluded her. There were only things David said and her imagination. A new policy towards the Caucasus, a new Russian leader, Field-Marshal Bariatinsky, who was brilliant and effective. For the first time in all these years, almost overnight, Shamil was losing one battle after another. Aoul after aoul fell to the Russians; the tribal chiefs who had fought by his side were now turning against him.

Anna held Ilia’s hand and walked at his pace. His other hand brushed the flowers and bushes along the path. Sometimes he wanted to stop and examine a pebble or a beetle crawling in the mud. The slowness of this walk suited her. It was her first time attempting a full round of the garden after her confinement last month. She still sensed the new lightness of giving birth to Tamar, shifting the weight from her stomach to the outside world, the pressure lifting from her pelvis and lower back. But she was still weak from losing too much blood; once in a while she felt her womb contracting. While the deliveries were quicker, these after-birth pains seemed to get more painful with each successive birth. She had missed Ilia these past few weeks, unable to focus on much other than the newborn and her own health, but he had made his misery and jealousy felt. Crying at times until he sweated and shook; regressing into baby habits he had given up many months ago. ‘Ilia is a good boy,’ she sang to him. ‘Ilia is Mama’s friend.’ She understood how overlooked he was feeling, how he had been demoted from that important spot of being the youngest in the family. And how special Tamar’s birth had been, a little girl again, resembling Lydia so much that it was as if time had looped back. David doted on her, and poor Ilia struggled to gain the attention he had until recently enjoyed.

He leaned forward now to tear up a flower. He shoved it in his mouth. She knelt down to remove petals and dust from his tongue. ‘Does it taste nice?’ He shook his head, spitting out the rest. ‘Ilia, Prince of Georgia.’ She looked into his eyes. They were like David’s.

He repeated the words after her. This stress on the name and the title as if it were being granted for the first time, this affirmation, was something that Shamil had taught her when he used to say Anna, Princess of Georgia, Alexander, Prince of Georgia. Squatting now on the garden path, she would like to stand up again with some elegance, or at least dignity, without using her hands to push herself up. Her mind wandered to worry again about Alexander’s lessons and how his new tutor was a disappointment. She had said to David that she would give him another month, another chance, before starting to search for a replacement. A faint clutch deep in her stomach. She could not help it, she had to pitch herself on all fours before heaving herself up to stand again. The children claimed, it seemed, every part of her body — from mind to womb.

She took Ilia’s hand again and they headed back to the house. She repeated, ‘Alexander, Prince of Georgia; Ilia, Prince of Georgia; Tamar, Princess of Georgia.’ And to herself, she whispered what Shamil had said to her that one time, ‘Anna, Queen of Georgia.’ How far-fetched all this was. A free Georgia, indeed. Unless it happened one day in the distant future, long after she was gone. But she wanted the children to carry the idea, to know who they were, to not lose themselves completely just because the reality around them insisted otherwise.

News came that Dargo had fallen. The room in which Anna, Alexander and Madame Drancy had been held was now rubble. Shamil and his family had fled to Gunaib, high up in the mountains. There he was making ‘one last stand’ as David, excitedly, put it. David might have left the army but he still had access to the news. And he was not alone. Georgia held its breath and suddenly everyone was competing to gather information about Gunaib. A desolate rocky plateau, near Shamil’s birthplace. Gathered around Shamil were his family and closest allies, his firmest supporters. Day after day the Russians sent envoys to demand his surrender, to negotiate conditions that would be acceptable to both.

‘But he’s stubborn,’ David said over dinner. ‘Down to four hundred followers now and he’d rather die fighting than give up. Did you know that on the way to Gunaib, his gunpowder and wagons were robbed by his own people? They hurled insults at him as he passed. I tell you, he’s finished.’

The food was straw and cloth in Anna’s mouth. These days she avoided company so as not to get drawn into arguments or cause her milk to curdle from aggravation. But she could not possibly get away from David. She must listen to such talk.

‘Rewards have been posted for him in case he flees. We want him alive but can one reason with a fanatic who prefers martyrdom?’

In desperation she steered him to their latest disagreement — a governess for Alexander instead of a tutor. The predictable banter was preferable to the news.

But David was relentless. ‘Another of his naibs came to his senses and betrayed him, giving us direct access to Gunaib. Every regional commander is there now with his own detachment of men. Shamil is outnumbered ten to one. It’s a matter of days now.’

The siege of Gunaib lasted for two weeks. Two weeks of rumours and counter-rumours. It was said that Shamil offered to surrender if he and his family would be released and allowed safe passage to go on Haj. It was said that he challenged the Russian commander to personally come and take his sword away from him. It was said that the final ultimatum was given — unconditional surrender or the death of the whole village, women and children included. And this was not a rumour. This was true.

Anna, standing in the garden near the greenhouse, looking up at the mountains, could do nothing. Through tears — which were in themselves hypocritical, indulgent, ridiculous — she imagined the scene that captured the imagination of the nation. Shamil on his white horse, followed by the remnant of his bedraggled army, their torn banners held up high for one last time. It shamed her that he was lied to. Promised that none of the tribal chiefs who had turned against him would be allowed to be present and yet there they were, gloating. Promised that he would not be disarmed but at the last minute, just before the surrender, they took away his sword.

It was said that his face was impassive. It was said that he was noble in defeat as he had been in success.

Then the newspapers took over. She would sit with Ilia perched on her knees, his arms swatting the pages, and she would read about Shamil’s ‘triumphal progress’ as he left Dagestan, as he descended the mountains and headed towards Stavropol. The young and the curious ran after his carriage, military wives welcomed him with garlands, crowds lined the streets to see him drive past and parks were lit up in his honour, choirs performed … ‘A ball at Mozdok railway station!’ her voice rose loud and sudden to the extent that Ilia slipped down to the floor in surprise.

David laughed in satisfaction. ‘Orders from the tsar himself. Shamil is to be respected and celebrated as a worthy, honourable adversary.’

There was a lot to take in as she nursed Tamar, cajoled Ilia, hired a new nurse, remonstrated with Alexander to obey his hapless tutor. She took to accusing David of exaggerating only to find it a day later in print.

The tsar receiving Shamil during a military parade. The two swap comments on military matters and embrace. Really?

Shamil, impressed by the wonders of St Petersburg, the towering achievements of Russian industry, a visit to the planetarium and the Zoological Gardens, a visit to see the Crown Jewels, a visit to a sugar factory.

Massive crowds camped in front of his hotel (the thought of him in a hotel of all places was in itself bizarre), but here it was in print, crowds waiting just to catch a glimpse of the Lion of Dagestan.

Shamil and his entourage driving up for a gala performance. His son, Ghazi, in tears after the performance of Les Naiades, deeply moved by the ballet’s sentimental story of unrequited love.

Shamil saying that if he could be born again he would devote his life in service to the empire.

Anna was finding it all more incredible by the minute. ‘Are we to believe that now in captivity he loves everything Russian? That he regrets all these years of war?’

David, puffing on his pipe, assured her that she was being unreasonable. ‘In his own words Shamil was expecting to be tortured or executed. Now he is getting a taste of Christian mercy and he is grateful.’

‘Grateful to be treated like an exotic pet for people to gaze at? And don’t tell me that there aren’t ulterior motives behind this. They want something from him, David. These people don’t give something for nothing.’

This time he agreed with her. ‘Yes. They want the whole Caucasus to submit behind him. They want no more challenges.’

She heard Tamar crying and left him to go to the nursery. Her steps quickened as the cries mounted in volume and intensity. It was a joy that she could make her stop crying just by calling out her name, just by picking her up, feeling her dampness, looking into her eyes. Such true need, such anguish. A glistening tear wetting the smallest of lashes. One little tear. Tamar, named after Queen Tamar the Great, the first woman to rule Georgia in her own right. ‘Tamar, Princess of Georgia,’ she said. ‘I’m here. Don’t cry.’

Six months later, she found herself in Moscow. ‘When the tsar invites you to dinner, how can you refuse?’ David said. ‘What excuse can you give?’ The ball was held in Shamil’s honour. A reconciliation between him and the Chavchavadzes, a forging of bonds must be witnessed. Petersburg society would appreciate such a scene. Anna dressed as she would dress to attend a funeral except that she wore all her jewels. Diamonds on black. It aged her but she did not want to look attractive. She did not want to look happy. Why pretend? David’s enthusiasm was due to a monetary gift promised by the tsar, a much-needed boost to regain Tsinondali. It had not been easy for him to convince her to travel. They had argued, and because he had won the argument he did not criticise her choice of clothes. If this was a whim, he would humour it.

Shamil looked out of place amidst the wine and dancing. As much as she had been out of place in the aoul at Dargo. He looked fatigued, as if everyone’s eyes on him were casting a net to hold him in place. If only they would not gape, these jaded couriers. If only these Asiatic mountain princes, who had switched allegiances to Russia long ago, would not gloat so openly. She could hear them whispering. ‘Are there no children for him to play with today?’ they sniggered. He survived these functions by withdrawing himself from the adults to spend time with those who were instinctive and pure.

When she walked towards him she sensed his ache for the mountains. The minder by his side, a Russian official, assumed that he must initiate an introduction, jog a memory. But Shamil did not need reminding of who she was. ‘Anna, Queen of Georgia,’ he said. His voice had not changed, nor his tone.

It was not the correct form of address and the Russian official with all good intention said, ‘Princess Anna,’ in such a way as to suggest that Shamil should repeat it. A silence as everyone waited for the repetition. The longest moment of silence when she stood like a queen and breathed like a queen, a moment in which Georgia was its own kingdom, not annexed to Russia. This continued until awkwardness interrupted. The air bristled, skirts rustled and someone was clearing his throat. Next to Anna, an aged general changed the subject and drew Shamil away. The guests mingled, saying that Shamil had become hard of hearing and forgetful. And she went home knowing better.

3. KALUGA, RUSSIA, 1859–69

From the upstairs window Shamil could see a church and beyond it the railway station. The houses were in even rows, built on a flat road, tame under a blanket of snow. There were no peaks, no jagged rocks; beyond the hills the forests were pine instead of birch. He had known all along that Russia was vast and different but to find himself living in it was still a surprise.

In this provincial town, south of Moscow, he had been given a three-storey house. For the first few months he was alone without his family, pacing the empty rooms, sensing his minder hovering just outside the door, policing him but not wanting to intrude. Shamil had formed a favourable impression of his pristav, Runovsky. The officer was well-mannered and sensitive, genuinely interested in his charge. He wrote down the things that Shamil said and answered his questions about Russian life. It could have been worse, Shamil knew, but he was still wary, understanding that he was now fulfilling a role in his adversary’s agenda, a role that was still unclear. All this largess was for the sake of illustration. And once they were done with him, they would change in some way that he could not yet predict.

He told Runovsky how much he admired the Russians for their treatment of him in captivity; they were neither angry nor intent on harming him. The crowds that swarmed to see him off at the railway platform in Petersburg had made him put his hand on his heart and nod to them to express his thanks. He responded to their sincerity, sensed their simple, difficult lives. They hailed him as a hero against oppression because they knew only too well what oppression was. He told Runovsky that he had expected abuse and humiliation. His own men in the Caucasus would hurl dirt on the Russian prisoners and kill them given half the chance. Shamil had prided himself in treating Princess Anna like a guest, but he realised now that from her point of view, he must have been only doing what was right.

It was interesting to discover that Runovsky had served in the Caucasus for several years. Together they went over details of fortresses under siege and battles lost and won. To hear the perspective of his former enemies was illuminating. To recount history in parallel was intellectually fulfilling. And it was not only Runovsky; officers and soldiers who had served in the Caucasus wanted to meet him. Most of them were respectful; even those who had been prisoners of war would bend and kiss his hand as they used to do in their time of captivity. A few, though, made him angry when they told lies. When one lieutenant boasted that he had been given the St George’s cross for storming the aoul of Kitouri and capturing the naib Magamoi, Shamil rose to his feet and shouted that Magamoi was already dead by the time Kitouri surrendered. A martyr’s name must not be sullied and Shamil trembled as he strode out of the room. That such falsehood could be repeated and believed made him feel old.

Runovsky, in charge of the household, issued Shamil an allowance. It was too much money and every time he went for a walk, he would give it away to the beggars he passed. As the weeks went by, the beggars of Kaluga came to wait for him. He never turned them away empty-handed. Runovsky took him to task for this. They would only spend it on vodka, he said. ‘But if I give them too little I would be mocking them,’ Shamil replied. ‘It says in my Book to help the poor. Does it not say that also in yours?’

Great portions of Shamil’s day were spent reliving the fall of Dargo and then Gunaib. He would not talk to Runovsky about this, he could not. In private, in solitude, he wanted to identify the errors made and by whom; he wanted to pinpoint the moment when the tide turned against him. Not for the sake of learning from his mistakes and improving his future performance (he was not in denial) but for the sake of knowledge. Those last weeks before the surrender were worse than the surrender itself. There he was from mosque to mosque preaching, no, begging, bullying, cajoling, for more men to join the jihad, for those who were already enlisted not to drop out. It was no use. Had he not taught that martyrdom was better than surrender? And yet Allah had not graced him with it, had not crowned his achievements in the best of ways. When the Russians gained the peaks above them and that was a sign that they were done for, that the end was near, that even Gunaib, that impenetrable fortress, had been betrayed and was now ready to crumble, he had gone around with fire in his heart pleading with his men to kill him. ‘Kill me,’ he said. ‘I give you permission to kill me before they come for me. Spare me the shame.’ They turned away though he held their arms, held their faces between his hands and saw in their eyes helplessness and love. ‘If you won’t kill me then leave me,’ he said. ‘Save yourselves. I give you permission to leave Gunaib and I will stay here alone. I will fight when they come; I will fight them until my sword is shattered into small pieces and I will die alone.’ But they would not go. These men who had lasted this long and would last for ever. They were the upright, the robust whom the Russians couldn’t buy with their ‘red and white’ coins. By this time, many of his naibs had already changed sides, naibs who had been his friends, naibs he had esteemed and trusted. ‘We must be pragmatic,’ they said to him but he never listened. ‘We must think ahead.’ All he knew was that fire is better than shame and he had won before, he had rebuffed them before, decade after decade, year after year, so why was it all slipping away now?

In the last short night, which he spent in prayer at the mosque, surrounded by the moans of the wounded and the smell of the dead, Ghazi came in and hovered. When Shamil turned his head to the right and the left to finish, Ghazi fell to his knees before him. Ghazi wanted to say spare the children of Gunaib, spare the woman you love, Chuanat; spare your lovely daughters, your newborn grandson. Spare the crooked legs of your favourite daughter. The longer Ghazi knelt before him, the more selfish martyrdom became; the longer Ghazi knelt the clearer it dawned that this was defeat and that defeat was Allah’s will. Instead of martyrdom, it was time for Shamil to accept this failure. Disappointment stabbed him like an arrow.

He agreed but he had conditions of his own. First, he and his men would still be carrying their arms when they surrendered to the Russian general. Second, he would be allowed to go on pilgrimage to Makkah accompanied by his family and anyone who wished to join him.

Neither condition was honoured. As he rode out, they came between him and his followers and disarmed him, claiming that the general was afraid of armed men. His sword, which he wanted to keep fighting with until it was shattered to pieces, was taken from him and handed over to Field-Marshal Bariatinsky. And instead of setting out for the pilgrimage, here he was in Kaluga being asked by this pleasant Russian minder about what he thought of the local women’s low necklines.

Apparently every officer arriving in Kaluga had strict orders to pay him an official visit. They liked to hear him praise the tsar and Russia, they beamed when he expressed gratitude for the house he was living in. Sometimes they asked to see the fabled seventeen wounds on his body. Sometimes they just stared. He waited to find out what more they wanted from him. Days spent with memories, nights spent in prayer. Often he thought of his son Jamaleldin and longed to talk to him. If Jamaleldin were here now, he would translate for him, explain to him and help him. The son would lead the father. This was yet another thought that made him feel old.

Zeidat covered her ears with her hands. ‘Oh this sound is intolerable. Must the Russians have all this clamour to remind them to pray?’

The church bells of Kaluga were tolling. The sound filled the large family room on the first floor, furnished all round with cushions in the Ottoman style. Shamil looked across at Chuanat, who was sewing. He was relieved that she was here, that they were together at last. It had lifted his spirits to have the family gathered around him. They were all here except Ameena, whom he had divorced before leaving Dargo and made sure that she was safely back home with her family in Bavaria. The elderly Bahou, too, had not been able to attempt the journey. Now with him in Kaluga were his two sons, Ghazi with his wife and baby and young Muhammad-Sheffi; his two older daughters and their new husbands, the younger children and their nannies. The house was full of their voices and footsteps. A piece of the Caucasus to wrap around him.

Chuanat looked up at Zeidat, who was now not only covering her ears but swaying from side to side in exaggerated agony. ‘You are so rude. When Anna was with us in Dargo, she was often complimentary of the azan and never complained about it.’

He smiled at Chuanat. In the months before she came to Kaluga he was anxious that he would lose her. She could have asked the Russians to return her to her family in Armenia but she didn’t. Instead, she chose to join him in exile. Her presence made all the difference. Here she was evoking the memory of Anna. It was right to do so. He said, ‘Anna is a princess and she conducted herself like one. You must distinguish, Chuanat, between royalty and a tribeswoman.’

Zeidat snorted. ‘I am proud of my heritage, Shamil Imam.’ The daughter of Sheikh Jamal el-Din had every reason to be.

‘Your heritage should have given you more sensitive ears. Listen to what these bells are saying.’

She made a face. ‘There aren’t any words, just a ding ding.’

He paused to listen to the bells but not with his ears. ‘They are saying “Haqq! Haqq!”’

Zeidat raised her eyebrows. ‘Is that what they are saying to you?’

‘Yes, they too can remind us of Allah. If you listen carefully you will hear them say His name. Truth! Truth!’

There were quarrels in the house because everyone was cooped up together. The young ones were bored and when they were bored they quarrelled. The air was not as pure as in the mountains. Ghazi’s wife fell ill with fever. Permission was granted for Shamil to build a mosque in the garden. Good, resourceful Runovsky facilitated the whole process. As time dragged on the mosque become a haven for Shamil, a place to escape to. He spent longer hours there, reciting the Qur’an in a place where it had not been heard before, kneeling down on a piece of earth that had never been pressed by the forehead of a believer. There was a sense of peace in this. To be told don’t fight any more, you have done enough, stand aside, stand aside and worship. That was how he interpreted his defeat in Gunaib. It was a command from the Almighty to stand aside and worship because the years were running out.

Gifts came to him from the tsar and from other dignitaries. He could not accept the gold tea tray and when he found that, instead of returning it, young Muhammad-Sheffi had hidden it in his room, Shamil ground each cup under his feet. He made Chuanat cry when he tore her new green dress. ‘When women in Dagestan can afford silk, then you can wear it,’ he shouted. A subtle danger was creeping into his household.

Often he thought of his son Jamaleldin. This was the world he had been thrown into when he was eight years old. No wonder it had seeped into him, weakening his resolve, gnawing at him from within. So strongly did he feel Jamaleldin’s presence that he was not surprised when on one fine summer afternoon, a peasant woman knocked on the door and said that she had known Jamaleldin. In the reception room fitted for visitors, furnished in the Russian style, she sat across from Shamil, her kerchief knotted around a wide face, and told him that she had been Jamaleldin’s nanny, long ago, when he first came from Akhulgo. He listened to her, as the shadows in the room lengthened, describe a shy little boy who could not speak a word of Russian, a child cut off, bereft and still restrained because his mother and father had taught him to be brave, had told him that an Avar mustn’t break down into tears. She visited again, bringing an officer who had been Jamaleldin’s childhood friend, bringing others who had known him well. These people nurtured his son when he could not and, years later, were still loyal to Jamaleldin’s memory. They could not be Shamil’s enemies. He owed them friendship and gratitude.

But what did the Russians want from him? To command every fighter in the Caucasus, whether they were Circassians or Chechens or Dagestanis, to lay down his arms? He would. To swear allegiance to Emperor Alexander II? He did. To support the new policy of enforced mass deportations of the highlanders, robbing them of their ancestral lands? He would not.

The best of guests came to stay. Sheikh Jamal el-Din brought with him blustery rainy weather and memories of the Caucasus. The young felt grounded once again. Zeidat was on her best behaviour. While Shamil, in the presence of his teacher, had the chance to feel mature but not old, still protected and not quite an orphan yet.

Jamal el-Din filled him in on the news from home. They were alone in the mosque after evening prayers. Over time, the Tatars of Kaluga had been joining the prayers and the circles of zikr which Shamil led. Now that Sheikh Jamal el-Din had taken over, the feelings in the gathering were refreshed as he added weight and substance to what was already there.

‘When the coffin arrived in Ghimra,’ he was referring to the recent death of Ghazi’s wife, ‘people said, “This isn’t how we imagined Shamil’s family would come back to us.”’

‘Ghazi took his wife’s death badly,’ Shamil said. Unlike Muhammad-Sheffi, who embraced Russia and wanted to join its army, Ghazi was bitter and unwilling to change. Often he would lie in bed balancing an unsheathed sabre on his finger, only rousing himself up to pray. Neither old enough to be content with reflecting back on an illustrious career, nor young enough to be flexible, Ghazi’s position was unenviable. Shamil worried about him.

Sheikh Jamal el-Din said, ‘A new wife would compensate his loss.’

Shamil pondered on the logistics of arranging a marriage while they were in exile. Russian approval would be needed to bring over a bride from Dagestan.

‘I heard you were suffering,’ Jamal el-Din was saying. ‘That’s why I came.’

‘I am well, as you can see. What you heard must have been exaggerated reports.’ Shamil’s voice was low. Not because anyone was around to hear him, but because of a new inner flatness.

Jamal el-Din’s eyes looked bright. ‘It is good to reassure myself.’

‘We are honoured by your visit.’ It was more than that. A sweetness in the general gloom, a reason for optimism.

Lightning made him see his teacher suddenly aglow. He was older than Shamil but it was as if he had levelled off at a certain age while Shamil’s hair and beard had turned white. With the rumble of thunder Jamal el-Din murmured, ‘The thunder extols and praises Him, as do the angels for awe of Him …’

Shamil listened out for the quickening fall of the rain. It lifted his spirits further, dissolving the distance between earth and sky.

‘You have my permission to go on pilgrimage,’ Sheikh Jamal el-Din said.

Shamil was taken aback. He thought that he had always had his teacher’s permission, that it had been his for decades. It was the tsar he was waiting on. Last year the tsar had turned down his request, saying that the situation in the Caucasus was still unsettled.

‘I will join you and we will go together,’ Sheikh Jamal el-Din said.

Shamil bowed his head in appreciation. He must write to the tsar again. ‘Unless the Caucasus is completely pacified, the Russians won’t let me go.’

‘They fight amongst each other. The blood feuds which you repressed have now flared up again,’ Jamal el-Din said. ‘The Chechens have gone back to how they were before they were governed by Sharia.’

‘Let their new masters crack down on them now.’ He did not feel any grudge or nostalgia for the past.

Jamal el-Din nodded in agreement. ‘And those who don’t want to be ruled by the infidels are packing up and moving to the Ottoman Empire.’

Shamil sighed. He would go there himself, if he had the chance.

Their conversation meandered. The rescue of Shamil’s books from Gunaib, memories of past and better times.

‘I ask myself what went wrong,’ said Shamil. ‘Almost overnight I lost control. One day I commanded thousands, the next day I was on the run and even then my wagons were robbed on the way. Something happened, something changed.’

Sheikh Jamal el-Din closed his eyes. ‘You changed.’

‘How?’ He was fully alert now, his senses sharpened as if waiting in the dark for an enemy to pounce.

‘You began to think you were invincible.’

‘No man is invincible.’

‘True. But you no longer believed that you needed my spiritual support. You began to believe that your naibs were strong and that your tactics were excellent. You began to believe in your own abilities and you said to yourself, what does that old man know about warfare, what does that dervish understand besides mysticism?’

‘I have always revered you.’

‘And I prayed for you. All through the decades of your success. Then you became arrogant. I am your teacher, you swore allegiance to me. It is my right to chastise you. So I raised up my palms to Allah Almighty and read Al-Fatiha.’

‘As if I was already dead.’ Shamil did not feel pain, only interest.

‘A week later you were captured by the Russians.’ There was no anger in Sheikh Jamal el-Din’s eyes, no vindictiveness, no malice.

Shamil leaned forward and kissed his hand. He had asked the question and received the answer. Let the Russians think what they wanted to think. Let them understand in their own logic, in their own language how he resisted them for decades and why, almost overnight, he fell. But he had his own answer now, to hold to himself. Without spiritual support, nature took its course. Without blessings, without miracles, one and one made two and an object thrown up in the air fell down; a man could not see in the dark, fire burned and bodies needed food. Without blessing, without miracles, the physical laws of the world govern supreme and those strong in numbers and ammunition sooner or later must defeat the weak.

A crop he had tilled and watched, with pleasure, its vegetation grow green, now lay yellow and dry before him, flaking. There was now only one direction for him to go in, carrying his sincerity and long years of devoted service. One last journey to make.