The Emperor Nicholas was seated behind his writing table, dressed in a black frock coat. The long pale face Jamaleldin had grown to resent and revere, to fear and to serve, the familiar moustache curled at the ends, the fresh scent of eau de cologne and sense of physical wellbeing. The tsar’s hair was combed forward to one side in an attempt to hide his bald patch.
A voice in Jamaleldin’s head said in the Avar language, ‘
Praise be to Allah. Observe how a mighty king with endless riches and power over people’s lives is helpless before the ravages of Time.’
The humorous tone was familiar. It was an elderly man’s voice Jamaleldin was hearing and not for the first time; a man with a turban and a long white beard who was not necessarily addressing Jamaleldin specifically. He was addressing a whole group; he exerted no pressure on Jamaleldin to listen nor needed a reply. Sometimes Jamaleldin absorbed every word, often he pushed the voice away; but he was unable to silence it. These observations, sometimes exhortations, he knew, were ghosts of his previous life. They disturbed him because, unlike the phrases he had learnt as a child, these observations were fresh and relevant to the moment. Perhaps it was the voice of his father’s teacher Jamal el-Din, the Sufi sheikh he had been named after. Perhaps he had been endowed with the gift of communicating with souls across time and space. But that was far-fetched. Rationally, the composer of these phrases must be Jamaleldin himself and yet why would he have such strange, unbecoming thoughts? He must
never speak of them. They were like a squirrel hidden in the breast pocket of his jacket, threatening to wriggle out, not particularly to escape but to cause the greatest of social embarrassments.
Nicholas gestured for Jamaleldin to sit down. He looked fatigued and Jamaleldin wondered if this was perhaps not the best of days to approach him. Nicholas pushed aside the papers he had been working on and said, ‘I am sending you tomorrow to Warsaw. You will be with the Vladimirski Lancers.’
The disappointment caused Jamaleldin to lose his natural reserve. ‘But Your Majesty, I had hoped to serve you in the Caucasus.’
‘You will, but not now. It is not the right time.’ Nicholas folded his plump hands together. ‘I do not doubt your loyalty but I have other plans for you. When we subdue the Caucasus you will play your part. It will not be long now. We destroyed their supplies and laid waste to the forests. Our strategy has worked! And we will continue to harass them. We will tighten the cordon around them and only then, Jamaleldin, will I send you there.’
‘I hear and obey.’ It was the right thing to say, the only choice.
Nicholas’s curled moustache twitched. ‘You will rule Dagestan and Chechnya on my behalf. No one will be able to win the tribes’ loyalty and trust more than Shamil’s son.’
At the mention of his father, Jamaleldin felt as if he was forced to put on his best woollen coat in the height of summer. Shamil was not for him now; he was a legendary name, a lost love, as close and as far as an organ inside Jamaleldin’s own body, deadly to reach. He believed in Shamil’s eventual downfall; this belief came from the palace walls around him, from the roads he walked on, the artillery he handled, the teachers who taught him, the existence of cities such as Petersburg and Moscow, of the opera and the skating ring, the horse races and a pair of binoculars, a dance at the ball, the railway lines. Shamil’s defeat was in the trajectory of Jamaleldin’s life. Yet he flinched whenever Shamil was portrayed as an ogre. And he felt proud when he heard tales of his heroic
resistance. Jamaleldin’s heart would contract and all the Arabic words, all the Avar phrases, would frolic above a whisper and it would require extra effort to control himself, to maintain his usual non-committal expression. He was too intelligent to indulge in undue insistence or exaggerated displays of his loyalty; these would only attract more attention. Instead, he trod softly, careful to hit the right notes. Unlike the Central Asian princes who wore their native dress when they came to court, Jamaleldin did not even wear a cherkesska. Every conscious thing he did reflected his conversion to the Empire.
But it was not enough. Nicholas sat back in his chair and lowered his voice, kind and firm. ‘As for the other personal matter you petitioned me on, there can be no union between you and the Princess Daria Semyonovich. You are incompatible in status and background.’
Jamaleldin flushed. It was as if Daria herself had scrunched his love like a handkerchief and thrown it in his face. He now wanted this audience to be over. He wanted to grab his dashed hopes and run away.
Nicholas chuckled. ‘So Russian women are to your taste … eh? Well, go ahead, have as many as you like, why not? But marriage, no. You must marry from your own kind. A tribal chief’s daughter, perhaps. Or an emir’s. This would further increase your acceptance among the highlanders. Think of the future,’ he concluded with a flourish. ‘You will be my mouthpiece in the Caucasus. You will bring enlightenment to your own people. For this I have fashioned you.’
4. D
ARGO, THE
C
AUCASUS
, J
UNE
1854
In his teacher’s home, Shamil could put the war behind him, give up the burden of command and learn again. He reached out and took over the cleaning of Sheikh Jamal el-Din’s shoes. The elderly man’s long white beard rested on his chest, his bright penetrating eyes were sources of light. Outside in the night air an owl hooted.
‘The great Shamil is cleaning my shoes!’ There was a warm jocular tone to his voice, one that listeners never forgot.
The two of them sat cross-legged on square cushions, a rug spread out in front of them on the earthen floor. The door of the house was open to let in the summer breeze and every once in a while it creaked on its hinges nudging shadows across the room. Shamil’s rifle and sword were hanging on a nail dug into the plastered wall. In any other house, they would have been next to the master of the house’s weapons but here there was only the washbasin and pitcher used for wudu.
‘In your presence, I am not great. I am the young boy who came to you in Yaraghl with neither knowledge in my head nor much strength in my body.’ These were sharp memories as all memories of awakenings are, that time when the swirl of unnamed desires
settles into the focus of purpose. Shamil had been a moody child with a sense of loneliness so acute that it resembled arrogance. The cheerful pastimes of others his age left him baffled and disdainful. When one day the neighbourhood boys ambushed him and left him bleeding from a dagger wound, he had been too proud to seek help. Instead he had staggered to a cave in the mountainside and fastened his torn skin with the mandibles of ants, applied crushed herbs and rested until his wound healed. But instead of returning home once he recovered, he set out to seek physical and spiritual strength. He found it in the mystic teachings of the Sufi sheikhs of the Naqshbandi Tariqa.
‘I recall,’ Jamal el-Din said, ‘that you had fight in your soul. You were disciplined, too. When it was time for books, you were studious and patient. When it was time for athletics, you were energetic and sturdy.’
Shamil smiled. ‘I used to repeat the prayer you taught me. ‘Lord, make me grateful and make me patient. Make me small in my own eyes and great in the eyes of the people.’
‘And today the Ottoman sultan has nominated you as the Viceroy of Georgia.’
Shamil laughed, ‘You have heard already. No news escapes you! Advise me. Shall I accept?’
‘It is only a fine title. The sultan is offering you what he doesn’t possess.’
‘He is anticipating victory.’ Shamil’s voice quickened. ‘If the Ottomans and their allies, Britain and France, launch an attack on Tiflis, I can attack from the east and cut off the Crimean peninsula from the rest of Russia.’
‘If they attack Tiflis …’ His teacher’s voice trailed off and then he started again. ‘Has Queen Victoria replied to your letter?’ Jamal el-Din had written the letter himself for his calligraphy was outstanding, and despite his age, his eyesight was strong. The letter would reach her through the British general-consul in Baghdad, who advocated supplying the mountain tribes with ammunition
against the Russians, and was fluent in Arabic.
Our resistance is stubborn,
Shamil had dictated,
but we are obliged, in winter, to send our wives and children far away, to seek safety in the forests where they have nothing, no food, no refuge against the severe cold. Yet we are resigned. It is Allah’s will. He ordained that we should suffer to defend our land. But England must know of this … We beseech you, we urge you, O Queen to bring us aid.
‘No, I have not received a reply.’ Shamil sounded more subdued.
‘Lord Palmerston was working on our side. His opposition to Russia is deep but he is no longer foreign secretary. As home secretary, his influence is reduced.’
‘I fear that the right time has passed,’ said Shamil. ‘That all of Britain’s efforts have sunk into the Crimea.’
Sheikh Jamal el-Din was quiet. He patted his hand on his knees and his head sank deeper into his chest. At first the prayers he was saying were inaudible, but Shamil caught the recitation of the beautiful names of Allah.
When Jamal el-Din finally spoke, he said, ‘I am filled with foreboding about this war in the Crimea. There will be much bloodshed and misery.’
This was a point of disagreement between them; Jamal el-Din the more peaceful of the two, the more eager to reconcile, negotiate and forgive.
Shamil repeated what he always said in these situations. ‘Wars are never won with kindness. If men respected compassion I would have been the first to grant it. But even our own warriors are only in awe of power.’ Nothing was more damaging than the weak Muslims who defected to Russia, who gladly or by force marched with the tsar’s troops. Or they became spies, hypocritically claiming they were on Shamil’s side and then reporting his secrets to the enemy. Or else they deliberately misled him so that he would walk into an ambush or launch an attack based on misinformation. He must always be on his guard, he must take nothing at face value. He must distrust.
‘The world is a carcass and the one who goes after it is a dog,’ Jamal el-Din murmured as if to himself.
‘Men of bad character punish their own souls.’ The leather shoe in Shamil’s hands was becoming darker in colour because of the varnish. Sometimes he was not sure who was the scourge of his life, the Russians or those who betrayed him?
As if reading his mind, Jamal el-Din said, ‘To get what you love, you must first be patient with what you hate.’
Shamil shifted his position so that his back was closer to the wall. ‘You speak the truth.’
‘Was it gunshots that I heard earlier in the afternoon?’ Jamal el-Din turned to look at him.
‘Five prisoners of war attempted to escape by smuggling a letter in a loaf of bread. They gave the loaf to a Jewish peddler and he was carrying it as part of his provisions for the journey. I will not tolerate treachery.’
‘A loaf of bread,’ Jamal el-Din repeated.
His tone made Shamil uneasy. When a prisoner faced his death sentence without flinching, Shamil spared him and gave him his due praise. But those who wept and fought were deprived of his mercy. Was he truly just? There was a hole in the heel where the leather was eroded. He searched the room for the necessary needle and began to mend it.
‘Come with me to Mecca,’ said Jamal el-Din. ‘Let us visit the house of Allah together.’
The words, the prospect had an instant effect on Shamil. He felt light and carefree. ‘Oh what a pleasure that would be, to put down my sword and take off my turban. To become a simple pilgrim dressed in rags chanting, “To you my Lord I come”.’
‘To you my Lord I come,’ Jamal el-Din repeated. ‘So what is holding you back?’
‘My son Jamaleldin …’ The words were heavy on his tongue, his fingers slackened. He felt it on his skin, that tingle of humiliation always associated with this particular defeat, this constant, eroding loss. ‘I wonder sometimes how I am able to sleep at night, to eat, to make my wives smile while my son is worse than dead.’
Jamal el-Din stiffened as he always did when he heard what he disliked.
Shamil continued, ‘I fear that not only is he a hostage but that the infidels have corrupted his soul and taken away his religion.’
‘Malicious gossip.’
‘It has been fifteen years. Fifteen years without my care or guidance. A strong adult might withstand such a trial but he was just a child.’ The sense of injustice was always fresh, never faded or stale. ‘Now on a night like this, I think
what
is he doing? How can the son of Imam Shamil be unclean and not pray five times a day? Even our language, he must have forgotten it by now.’
Jamal el-Din closed his eyes. ‘There is no strength or might except with Allah.’
Instead of repeating after him, Shamil said, ‘I will get him back. I will return him to Islam.’ For how long has he been saying this and every plan was thwarted, every hope turned to nothing? He had promised Fatima that he would bring her eldest child back to her but he had failed. Nine years ago, as she lay dying, she wept and called for her son and though she did not name him, everyone knew it was not Ghazi or little Muhammad-Sheffi that she wanted.
Shamil was on the battlefield. He had lured the Russians across the mountains, up to ten miles from his stronghold in Dargo. He had been patient, tiring them out as they made their way down the steep descent with their heavy baggage trains and lengthy lines. He had cut off segments of them by blocking the mountain paths with tree trunks and while they figured a way to overcome these barriers or broke into confusion, he sent his horsemen in a full attack or fired at them with hidden sharp-shooters. Disorder broke out as one Russian column after another fell back, low morale set in as the dead piled up and the chants of the Orthodox funeral services merged into one another. Shamil and his men were attacking them from every side and they could now barely resist or fight back. With ammunition and food supplies running low, they remained under siege for several days.