The Kindness of Enemies: A Novel (40 page)
I bought a ticket and was told that they would be closing in an hour’s time. I hurried down the long path, the castle ahead of me protruding into the water, the sound of the seagulls all around. A number of people walked in the opposite direction, having finished their visit. I was the only one heading to the ruins. It made me feel as if I was running late, that my situation was touch and go, I would either make it in time or not.
The path was narrow and the dark rocky land dipped down straight. The cold wind messed up my hair but I felt warm from the exercise. The grass around me was high and dry, yellow and pale green. When I reached the headland I could see, below, the beach covered in pebbles. Then it was time to climb up until the sea surrounded me on three sides, until looking down at the craggy shoreline with the undulating froth made me feel slightly nauseous.
Here – I reached my hand out – were the stone walls on the cliff, thicker and higher now that I was close. Large holes from which guns once stuck out. I passed through the entrance, up slippery ancient stairs, my mind automatically retrieving that Mary, Queen of Scots visited here and that on a similar day in 1652, this was the one remaining place in Scotland in which a small garrison loyal to Charles II resisted Cromwell’s army. But I was here to see Malak and she was somewhere inside, waiting for me.
I did not find her as easily as I thought I would. I walked on the cobbled floor, passed through the semi-ruined keep and the drawing room, which was in better shape. Out in the quadrangle the sun shone on the moss-covered walls that rose up in incomplete storeys, upstairs rooms without ceilings. The grass was even here, a lawn, a sense of enclosure, hardly any wind and a stillness as if the seagulls were politely staying away. In front of the chapel Malak sat dressed in what could only be described as a kaftan, wearing a turban on her head. The other visitors must have thought she was in medieval costume; if she popped up in the background of one of their photos, they could claim they had spotted a ghost.
She was sitting on the grass on what I recognised to be one of the small Persian carpets from her house. She was reading a large hard-backed book which, when I came close, I recognised as the Qur’an. I stood watching her for a while, amused by her clothes and sense of the theatrical. What part did she think she was playing? Not that I suspected her of insincerity, but there had always been an attractive self-consciousness about her as if she were trying to please an invisible figure, an unseen audience who mattered only to her.
I joined her on the carpet, listened to her reciting. Not a single word was comprehensible to me. This must be how animals feel when they hear humans talk, this must be how infants experience language long before they are ready to learn it. When she finished the page she was on, she marked it with a brown ribbon and put it in the canvas bag she had at her side. ‘I am halfway through,’ she said. ‘The Qur’an is divided into thirty sections and, over a
fortnight, I have read fifteen. Every day I go somewhere different to pray and read a section. I’ve travelled up and down the country.’
I smiled. ‘You’re on tour then for a full month.’
She laughed. ‘It’s probably the most fulfilling one I’ve ever done.’
‘How do you decide where to go?’
‘Well, that is the fun part. I’ve been to spiritual places like Stonehenge, places where I have always sensed a powerful presence. This is one of them, can you feel it?’
I did not know how to answer her. If I said ‘No’ it would seem ungracious. If I said ‘Yes’ I might be lying. So I said, ‘Centuries ago, people in this very spot worshipped as you were worshipping just now. They believed like you believe.’ And centuries ago, as Covenanter history teaches, they also waged wars, resisted and rebelled around issues of faith.
She said, ‘Yesterday I prayed further north. In the middle of a suburb which was so artificial and depressing that I almost couldn’t bear to be there. But I stuck it out, telling myself that I would be the first one there ever to say the word “Allah”.’
‘Who heard you?’
‘No one. I don’t want anyone to hear me. The trees, the wind, the angels. That’s enough for me. Sometimes, I can’t bear to talk to people, Natasha. Not after what happened to Oz. I can’t be the same again. Sorry for not answering your messages. You are the easiest one to talk to because you understand. But I went through days when I did not want to talk to anyone at all.’
‘Why, Malak? It’s over and done with.’
‘I can’t let go of the disappointment, it’s held inside me like a grudge. I carry it from place to place. It’s not that I love him less. Love doesn’t change, it doesn’t go away. But he was suspected of not behaving with the decency and broad-mindedness I brought him up with.’
‘And he was released without charge. So why are you judging him?’
‘Because I expected better of him, that’s all. He allowed the dark side to distract him even if it didn’t win him over completely.’
I smiled at her dramatic choice of words. The dark side. I smelt the sea and heard the seagulls. ‘Did you get Shamil’s sword back?’
‘Oz got his laptop back. And we both got our phones back. But not the sword.’
‘How come?’
She shook her head. ‘I have no idea. But in a strange way I don’t mind waiting. He surrendered it, didn’t he? He didn’t fight with it and shatter it to pieces. He knew better. He understood that surrender meant humility. He accepted defeat graciously and saw it as Allah’s will. There aren’t many like him now. Wisdom is in short supply.’
‘You never told me,’ I said. ‘How did your family get back the sword after Shamil handed it over to Field-Marshal Bariatinsky?’
‘In 1918 a soldier was captured by the Red Army and it was in his possession. Instead of being placed in a museum it was sold as a trophy and my great-grandfather bought it. But you must tell me about your time in Sudan. It was important, I can tell.’
Yes, it changed me. I might still not have reached home or settled where I belonged, but I was confident that there was a home, there, ahead of me. My homesickness wasn’t cured but it was, I was sure, propelling me in the right direction.
When I finished speaking, Malak said, ‘You must come with me.’ She sounded vague, as if she had not thought it through.
‘Where?’
‘To Orkney. We could have zikr on the beach; I could read another part of the Qur’an.’
Zikr on the beach. I remembered the zikr gathering she took me to in London. It was powerful, heady. It haunted me, afterwards, for days and nights. I hesitated a little before committing myself.
‘It would be good for you,’ she nodded, as if the prospect was becoming more real to her.
Sufism delves into the hidden truth behind the disguise. Malak, the teacher disguised as an actor. Natasha the student, acting the part of a teacher. I had come to her today needing to connect, wanting to spend time in her company. Perhaps it was time to acknowledge that what I was after was spiritual. She was ready to be a guide and I would fight my weaknesses in order to follow.
After ten years of exile, my father was finally permitted to go on Haj. He was accompanied by Sheikh Jamal el-Din and other members of the family. I, on the other hand, was detained by the Russian authorities. My father spent six months in Istanbul before performing his Haj in Noble Makkah. He then settled in Radiant Medina. There, he sent letter after letter to the viceroy of the Caucasus as well as the tsar explaining that he had been taken ill, that he believed he did not have long to live and that his last request was for his son to join him. It was as if my father’s fate was to long for absent sons. First Jamaleldin, then me. He wrote to me too, words that would break the most hardened of hearts. I used to reply with messages of hope, saying that I was leaving in a few days’ time, that I would be joining him soon. Eventually after patience wore thin, I lost my temper with the Russian authorities and threatened to escape. It had an effect. They had plans that, in the future, I would become their representative in the Caucasus and so, grudgingly, they agreed to let me go.
From Constantinople I could not travel directly to Radiant Medina. The route was blocked by bandits. So I changed my plans and headed to Noble Makkah, with the intention of proceeding to Medina as soon as I completed my Umra. I was circling the sacred Ka’aba when I noticed from the corner of my eye a dervish, dressed in a green turban and rags, looping in a disjointed way, and as was typical of men like him, preoccupied with the prayers he was muttering, intoxicated by where we were, oblivious to all else. He jerked to a standstill in front of the Black Stone and gave out a cry of pain. ‘O Believers,
’
he shouted. ‘Pray for the soul of Imam Shamil
.’
I pushed my way through the throng and reached his side. He was rocking backwards and forwards. I grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to look at me. ‘When did this happen?’
He swayed his head from side to side, ‘Now … this dawn … last night.’
‘My father is in Medina, twelve days’ march from here – how can you know?’
Instead of answering, the dervish started to cry. He shuffled away from me, back into his inner world. And all I could think of through the din of grief was that I was too late, too late to see him and he wanted to see me, he was ill and he made them twist his bed so that it was facing the door, so that he would see me as soon as I came in. Now I was too late and it was the Russians’ fault, as it had always been their fault for every misfortune that beset us. ‘Forgive them,’ he told me before he left Russia. ‘I order you to forgive them.’ And I argued with him, saying, ‘I cannot control my heart.’ He said ‘I know more than you. Forgiveness is for your own benefit, not theirs.’
I set out for Medina on that very same day. I walked barefoot on sand as hot as coals but not as hot as what I carried in my breast. We belong to Allah and to Him we return. I could not believe that I would not rush into my father’s arms, that I would not tell him my news, that I would not wait for the approval to shine in his eyes.
When my father left Russia and arrived in Istanbul, it gratified him to turn down the hospitality of the Russian ambassador and say, ‘I am a guest of the Ottoman sultan.
’
Sultan Abdelaziz received him ceremonially and offered him a choice of palaces, all too ostentatious for my father’s taste. Crowds lined the streets to cheer him and men kissed the ground that he walked on. On finding out that the sultan was preparing an army against Ismail Pasha of Egypt who had just opened the Suez Canal and was showing signs of rebellion, my father offered himself as a mediator. He travelled to Egypt where Ismail Pasha honoured him by coming off his throne and seating Imam Shamil on it. My father reasoned with him saying, ‘If war breaks out between you and the Ottoman sultan, it would delight the infidels.’ Ismail Pasha took heed of his counsel and, on his suggestion, sent his son to wed the sultan’s daughter. A war between Egypt and Turkey was avoided and everyone rejoiced.
On the steamer back to Istanbul, a storm broke out and the waves raged up high and fearful. My father wrote a prayer on a piece of paper and asked that it be thrown overboard into the water, without touching the ship. It was and the sea calmed down.
When my father first arrived in Noble Makkah, the crowds that gathered were such that the police had to intervene and protect him so that he could perform his prayers. An elderly ailing scholar who was a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, insisted that his children carry him to meet my father. He said that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, had told him in a dream to expect a distinguished guest.
I missed his funeral prayer. Vast numbers walked in the procession. Those who couldn’t touch him, lay down on the ground in the hope that his body would be carried above them. It was said of him that he passed through life like gold through fire until Allah Almighty elected his soul.
When I was able to, I arranged, in his memory, a charity meal for all Chechen pilgrims. I said to them, ‘My father once governed you. When you return to your homeland ask its people to say a funeral prayer for him and request that they forgive him and pardon his severity.’
Later I heard that on the night of his death, the sky above the Caucasus turned a bright red.
My father did not die a martyr but his life ended with the greatest of honours. He was buried in the Garden of Baqi near the grave of Al-Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet, peace be upon him. Shamil Imam, who followed the path of truth, the fighter in the way of Allah, the learned, the leader. May Allah Almighty purify his soul and multiply his good deeds. Al-Fatiha.
I am very grateful to the following for their feedback, advice and, at times, inspiration:
Arzu Tahsin, Elisabeth Schmitz, Katie Raissian
Stephanie Cabot
Dr. Christine Laennec, Professor Michael Syrotinski
Vimbai Shire
Khadijah Knight, Bruce Young, Zvezdana Rashkovich, Natalia Fadlalla
Nadir Mahjoub
For researching the life of Imam Shamil, these books were the most helpful:
The Shining of Daghestani Swords in Certain Campaigns of Shamil,
by Muhammad Tahir al-Qarakhi (translated by Ernest Tucker and Thomas Sanders)
Highlanders,
by Yoáv Karny
Let Our Fame Be Great,
by Oliver Bullough
Captivity of Two Russian Princesses in the Caucasus,
by H. Sutherland Edwards
The Sabres of Paradise,
by Lesley Blanch
