It was then that the news reached him of Fatima’s death. At first Shamil continued as he was, sending one of his men to see to the funeral. He was needed here where his own troops too were worn out and so hungry that they had taken to grilling the corpses of Russian horses. But his naibs urged him to return home and promised that they would, on their own, be able to defeat the besieged enemy. However, no sooner had news of his departure reached the Russian camp than the celebrations started. They banged drums and played their pipes. The following morning they had even more to celebrate. The relief force they had given up hope on finally arrived from the town of Gurzal. But it ended up being a costly, indecisive battle that left both sides entrenched in bitterness. And Shamil was left without Fatima, his link to Jamaleldin, she who kept alive the hope that he would return. Now Shamil was solitary in his memories, for very few liked to speak of his missing son.
He finished cleaning the shoes and broached the subject he had especially come to talk about, ‘Sheikh Jamal el-Din, I seek your permission to appoint my son, Ghazi, as my successor.’
His teacher turned to look at him with questioning eyes as if waiting to hear more.
‘It is unseemly to praise one’s own offspring but the lad has demonstrated courage, horsemanship and skill.’
‘I know,’ Jamal el-Din nodded. ‘Ghazi does not act arrogantly and he has insight and compassion. But you must gather the scholars and the naibs. Let them consider the matter and deliberate among themselves. Do not impose your choice upon them.’ He raised his palms up in prayer. ‘Lord, give Ghazi the strength to promote Your religion, to guard his community and to act with caution and justice.’
The joy and pride Shamil should have felt was weighed down by the implications of this step. He was admitting his loss in public. Not specifically that Jamaleldin would never come back, but that even if he were to return, he would not be fit to take his father’s place.
As if sensing that it was Jamaleldin and not Ghazi who was in Shamil’s thoughts, the elderly man asked, ‘What came of that hostage that you were going to exchange him with?’
‘He was not valuable enough. I ended up exchanging him for some of our men. But I will not give up.’ He needed someone more valuable. This was the plan he had been working on. And today he had sent out scouts.
I told Malak that I had seen, from the upstairs window, little islands of snow floating on the river. They must have fallen from the Grampians. We were sitting in the kitchen without the lights on, just the pale dawn from the window. Melting snow meant clearer roads. I could leave today and get to work. There was no excuse to stay here longer.
‘Would Oz like a lift to the university? I can wait for him to wake up.’ She agreed that it would be helpful, especially with the semester exams starting next week, and wrapped her shawl closer around her, held her mug with both hands. I was stalling for time, unloading the dishwasher, cleaning the coffee maker. Outside one side of the sky was completely dark, like it was still in night. But it would not be left in peace for much longer; daylight was ready to enter. If I looked closely I could see new vulnerable depressions in the snow, areas of relative warmth. The edges, too, were melting away, the solid mass shrinking. Yesterday evening I had offered to pay for my board and lodging but Malak refused. ‘We are happy to have you as a guest. We are enjoying your company.’ This was generous of her because I hadn’t really contributed anything; I
should have, but I hadn’t, even offered to cook dinner. All I gave them was my interest in their past.
It had been a special evening, like a celebration of sorts, perhaps an unspoken agreement that it would be my last. Oz lit the fire and we sat on the cushions on the floor. I looked up at Shamil’s sword and down at the flames and I felt confident about my work, that I was on the right track, that I was worthy of my chosen subject. If I could get four papers on Shamil published in prestigious journals, I would have a bigger chance of promotion. I was saving too for a trip to Dagestan, to climb the Caucasus. ‘Come with me,’ I urged them both. The invitation tripped out spontaneously, so unlike me. I could tell by their eyes, by the way they exchanged glances that the idea piqued their interest.
Oz stood up and fetched his laptop. ‘Yes, let’s go this month, over the Christmas holidays. I’ll bet we can find cheap last-minute flights.’
‘It would be better to go in the spring,’ said Malak. ‘Early when the swallows fly back. There would be snow on the highlands, but the lowlands would be clear.’
‘Easter then,’ I said, my voice different with happiness. This would be my ultimate journey, my pilgrimage and they would lead me to Shamil, to knowing him better, to seeing the world through his eyes.
Oz, laptop on his crossed knees, was doing the research. He read out, ‘Tindi is a small picturesque aoul with a historic minaret, in the south-western mountains close to the Georgian and Chechen borders.’
‘That’s our place then,’ I said.
He kept on reading, ‘According to Wikivoyage, travel to Dagestan is extremely dangerous and strongly discouraged. And here’s the latest headlines:
Russian security forces clash with militants in Dagestan, nine killed.’
This dampened us for the time being. I was and had always been a coward. Malak said there were plenty more ways to spend
a holiday than courting danger. Only Oz, all bravado, still seemed keen. ‘You can’t believe everything you read,’ he argued. ‘Besides, we’re not tourists.’
‘What are you, Ossie?’ his mother smiled.
‘I won’t look out of place.’
‘You only have to open your mouth,’ she said. ‘Besides, your fancy trainers will give you away.’
He scowled at her. ‘I’ll get new ones from Primark.’
She laughed. ‘What a comedown!’
He was, I had noticed, proud of his clothes. But then many students nowadays were. They surprised me with their Uggs and Hunter wellies; their leather jackets and mobile accessories. The markets had them by the throat; they might be in debt, they were surely struggling, but they needed what generations before them had easily done without.
Perhaps if I wasn’t there they would have argued about his allowance. Instead Malak started to speak about her parents and grandparents; all those descendants of Shamil that history didn’t record. Stories that Oz hadn’t heard. It was a pleasure to watch a mother hand over strands of the family narrative to her son. She was talking to him as much as to me. ‘Our side of the family,’ she said, ‘followed the fatwa that with the collapse of Muslim rule in the Caucasus they should emigrate to the Ottoman Empire. Others stayed on and were deported by Stalin, and those who stayed struggled throughout Soviet rule. The mosques were shut down, it was forbidden to read or write Arabic and practising Islam had to be done in secret. Only the very tough could resist; most ordinary people lapsed. When I hear Muslims in the West complaining, I have no sympathy for them …’
Oz interrupted her, ‘Come on …’
‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘We have the freedom to practise and teach and bring up our children in our own faith. Can you imagine, Oz, what it is like when generation after generation grows up with all their Islamic teachings muddled up and pushed to the far
side of memory? Snatches of verses here and there, a vague idea of Ramadan, no solid scholarship to back them, none of the blessing that comes from reciting the Qur’an. It is the biggest loss to become religiously illiterate, to be left without a choice. This is why my side of the family packed up and left. To spare themselves all this.’
I was surprised by her deeply held convictions. Too often she came across as malleable. Oz seemed surprised too but in a different direction. ‘You always said that your parents weren’t religious.’
‘They weren’t in the sense that you would understand it. My mother didn’t wear hijab, for example. But their faith mattered to them. I was the one who was the rebel. I ran away from home because I wanted to become an actor. I broke their hearts because I had grand ambitions.’
I would have liked her to say more but Oz stalled her with his question, ‘But they forgave you, didn’t they?’
‘Of course.’ She smiled at him. A smile I would always remember because of all that it held. ‘Parents will always forgive their children, no matter what.’
It mattered to him that she said that. I wondered what he had done wrong or what he considered to be wrong or what he believed would hurt her. I envied them the ease between them. I could not reconcile the idea of forgiveness with my own parents. With my mother who left my father for Tony. The sensibilities of 1980s Khartoum were mine against my will. That world where men owned the streets and women pretended to be shy even when they weren’t. That time and place where sparks flared up at the slightest provocation; where words like ‘betrayal’ and ‘disgrace’ undid lives. Over the years I had tried to rid myself of such baggage but never fully succeeded. I understood my father’s feelings of shame and, later, my own failed romantic attachments seemed like an apt punishment, because although I went through the motions, these casual relationships never felt right.
Nor could I reconcile the idea of forgiveness for my father whom I hadn’t seen in over a decade. He visited me once when I
was in university. He came, he said, all the way from Khartoum especially to see me. I kept telling him I was busy with exams and I only met up with him twice. The first time he was waiting for me outside the library and I was ashamed to be seen with him around the campus. He was wearing flimsy clothes in one of the coldest springs, his English was rudimentary and I had, by then, almost forgotten my Arabic. So ironically my mother’s language became our only way to communicate. We must have looked weird. On the grounds of a Scottish university, an African father and a mixed-race daughter, dodging the rain and speaking Russian. I told him that my graduation was next week but I did not even ask about my grandmother or my old friends. There was only the resentment at his presence, the impatience to get rid of him. ‘I will attend your graduation ceremony,’ he said.
‘You can’t,’ I replied. ‘The seating is limited and I only have tickets for Mum and Tony.’
The second and last time we met he took me to lunch and I ate in silence, barely answering his questions. And yet on that occasion I was more relaxed; I even smiled at one of his jokes and noticed the new white in his hair. When he warmed up, he called my mother a whore and Tony a racist. ‘A thief,’ my father spat out, spittle flying from his mouth, who stole her away from him, as if she didn’t have a will of her own. As if she and I didn’t spend afternoons in Tony’s villa, me in the swimming pool hugging a Tweety inflatable ring, the chlorine jamming my nose and the two of them upstairs, behind a locked door with the air-conditioner humming. But I wouldn’t defend the indefensible; I tucked into my meatballs and left him to rant.
‘I should not have let you go with them,’ he repeated. ‘All my friends advised me to keep you but I didn’t listen.’
I sounded grown-up when I replied, ‘It’s been good for me to come here.’ I sounded confident, as if I had moved on and the past hardly mattered to me at all. I was doing well in my studies and this impressed him. He had little to offer me if I chose to return
with him. Sudan was in a state of economic collapse, the civil war against the south was raging. He had, as expected, failed in every business venture he started – he had neither the necessary political connections nor the dogged perseverance – his was another brilliant mind burned out by a dysfunctional post-colonial state. The house he was building was still incomplete, his only car a wreck, his debts mounting. I was much better where I was. At the end of the lunch, which didn’t include dessert, my father gave me money. Five twenty-pound notes in a grubby envelope. Tony had stopped supporting me since I turned eighteen and I worked part-time in the student union shop, so I hesitated a little but then I took his gift.
Malak, sipping her green tea, said, ‘I should wake up Ossie so that you’re not delayed. It would be better for him to get a lift from you in case the buses are still disrupted. And it would be good for you to have company in case your tyres get stuck in the snow.’ Her face was still puffy with sleep, gentle without make-up.
I assured her that I was not in a great hurry. I stood up to make myself another mug of coffee and to wash my cereal bowl in the sink. In the first orange rays from the rising sun I saw the car approaching. So for sure the roads were clear enough. No more doubts, no more procrastinations. I could leave, I should leave. The car came closer, but later I realised there must have been another car, one that was already parked out of sight of the house. My telephone buzzed. It was a message from Tony.
Need to talk to you. Bad news from Khartoum.
I looked up and through the window saw two policemen. Before I could tell Malak, they rang the bell. She went to answer it and then everything happened very fast.
One of them speaks and says the other name instead of Oz. His voice is loud, says they have a warrant for his arrest. Malak asks why and the answer starts with ‘t’, ends with a suffix and she draws in her breath. I am glued to the kitchen floor, mobile phone in my hand, open at Tony’s message. They are everywhere now,
lots of them, not two, with their shoes clomping, but Malak doesn’t say take your shoes off. They leap up the stairs, I catch a blur of dark uniform. Footsteps above me. Malak is calling Oz. This makes them angry. They think she is warning him off and two of them run, banging the bedroom door open. I hear him say, ‘What the fuck!’ I hear a scuffle but then Malak’s voice, telling him to be calm, to best do as he’s told. I walk to the landing but one of them is holding the sword in his hand, the sitting room is in disarray, one of them comes up to me, his large face looms close. He carries two laptops – mine and Oz’s. The white one is mine, I say but he takes my mobile too. His voice is loud but he just wants my name and my address. I tell him why I am here, but still my laptop gets carried into their car. They clamber down the stairs, Oz in handcuffs, Malak following. Oz is wearing his coat over his pyjamas. His lips are dry and his eyes, his body, the tilt of his head, are rigid with anger; anger a crust pressing down fear. Before they prod him out of the house, he looks at me and I have nothing to say.