Jamaleldin understood but what he understood could wait – there was no need to voice it, no need to put it into words. He wanted these moments to continue. His father talking to him as if he were a man, recalling the brave, strong fighters who were now granted eternal life; men who had once jested with Jamaleldin, who had taught him how to wield a kinjal, who had carried him on their shoulders. Father and son listened to the sounds of the night.
‘Tell me the story of the chicken, Father.’
Shamil smiled in the dark and Jamaleldin felt the warmth coming from him, all the memories of peace. ‘Long ago before you were born, when I was a young lad, our people, sadly, allowed themselves to forget Allah. Instead of the Sharia they followed the adaat. Do you know what the adaat are?’
‘They are our ancient customs and laws. They told people to worship the forest and the trees but they also taught us hospitality and honour.’
‘Yes, the adaat were a mixture of good and bad,’ Shamil continued. ‘A mixture of Allah’s laws and the traditional laws of the tribes. They taught us to be brave warriors but they allowed us to ferment grapes and get drunk. And worse than that the adaat supported blood feuds. Once a man stole a chicken …’
Jamaleldin smiled and drew nearer for here the story was starting.
‘He stole a chicken from his neighbour’s village. In reply the owner of the chicken stole a cow. The first man got angry and said,’ Shamil’s voice rose, ‘“A chicken is a chicken. It is not a cow!” In revenge he stole the man’s horse. When you steal a man’s horse it is as if you are stealing his honour. The horse owner went and killed the thief. Blood was spilled, it was serious now. The families got
involved. A vendetta began. Generation after generation carried on this feud. There were raids and fires, there was kidnapping and treachery. Hundreds of men died, all because of …?’
This was the pause that had delighted Jamaleldin when he was little. That part in the story where he would chip in and squeal out loud, ‘A chicken!’
It had been Shamil’s predecessors, Ghazi Muhammad (after whom little Ghazi was named) and Hamza Bek, who had first urged the people of Dagestan to stop the blood feuds and obey the Sharia. To draw strength from Allah’s laws, to tap into His power and push away the Russians. The invaders set aouls ablaze and destroyed crops; they were even destroying the forests in order to build their military roads. And when they captured a village, they defecated in the houses as if to mark their territory. At times they would also foul the wells. But it was not always easy to resist the Russians. Many tribes did not have the strength. They shirked the hardship involved or were lured by the riches of the red and white coins the Russians promised. Some succumbed to the pressure so wholeheartedly that they even joined in the aggression against their fellow highlanders. These traitors would ride with the severed heads of their own people dangling from their saddle bows.
Ghazi Muhammad al-Ghimrawi preached from region to region and from aoul to aoul, ‘What kind of repose could there be in a place where the heart is not at ease and the authority of Allah not accepted? Grab the strong cable of Islam and our enemies will not even find a weak protector!’ Ghazi Muhammad mobilised an army in which Shamil was a young naib. In one battle after another they took back the villages that had fallen to the Russians. But Ghazi Muhammad was martyred and his successor Hamza Bek only ruled for two years.
When Shamil became leader, he did not find support in Gimrah, his birthplace. The villagers insisted on obeying the Russian commander’s order of supplying five donkey-loads of grape vines and fruit. Shamil argued and threatened but he could not convince
them. This was Jamaleldin’s earliest memory – his mother and father packing throughout the night. After the dawn prayer, Shamil came out of the mosque and addressed his fellow villagers. ‘I am leaving you because I am unable to uphold the faith among you. After all, the best of Allah’s creation, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, left the best of cities, Makkah, when it was no longer easy for him to maintain his faith there. If Allah wills the faith to be strong in you, then I will return. If not, then what can you offer me, you whose houses have been smeared with the shit of Russian soldiers!’
The family moved to Ashilta and had to move again – always fearful of the Russians and suspicious of the hypocrites who were tired of fighting, who were bitter against the strictness of the Sharia. ‘Would the Russians have advanced so far without collaborators from among us?’ The answer was a painful no. That was why Shamil taught the prayer, ‘Preserve us from regression. Don’t try us, Lord, beyond our means.’ Too often the villagers would listen to Shamil preach his resistance and say ruefully, ‘What is he saying, when we can’t even defend our women against the Russians!’ It was the modern cannon that filled them with dread, the ‘Father of the Guns’, that beast set to devour them. Then when the tide turned, in twists and surprising turns, Shamil would leap from one victory to another and the spirit of resistance would rekindle in men’s chests. They would swell with pride and remember the old days of freedom. They would move to join Shamil and be among his murids. An autonomous Caucasus would shimmer in the horizon, credible again.
The morning after sitting outdoors with his father, Jamaleldin watched his mother, Fatima, sob as she handed him his best clothes. A white tunic and a high lambskin papakhi. He must look his best today even though he was thin and fatigued with dark shadows under his eyes. ‘Take your kinjal with you,’ said Fatima, controlling herself. ‘But never use it against your captors.’ She was eight months pregnant and her face was puffy. ‘You must always act honourably, with courage and patience. Never cry. Never let them
see you crying. Remember, you are an Avar. Remember always that you are the son of Shamil, Imam of Dagestan.’
Jamaleldin adjusted the halter around his neck and put his kinjal in place. He was ready to go now, his mother breaking down, his father’s hand on his shoulder. The whole of Akhulgo was gathered and Shamil lifted his palms up in prayer. ‘Lord, You raised up Your prophet Moses, upon him be peace, when he was in the hands of Pharaoh. Here is my son. If I formally hand him over to the infidels, then he is under Your care and protection. You are the best of guardians.’
Ghazi tugged at his brother’s sleeve and said with characteristic bravado, ‘Let me go instead of you.’
‘Don’t be silly. I am more valuable to them.’
There was Djawarat giving him a small handful of fried grain with salt as a goodbye gift. Her sweet smile and her sleepy, docile baby.
There was Akhulgo ugly around him. A woman crouched over a dead relative raised her arm up to flap wildly at carrion birds. Keep off, keep off, she repeated, keening softly. The siege had prevented them from burying the dead. They lay in piles, decomposing and starting to smell, shameful under the morning sun.
Fatima was still clinging to him and crying; Djawarat was by Fatima’s side, her arms around her.
Three of his father’s naibs escorted him away, carrying their banners. They guided their horses down the tricky slopes and Jamaleldin breathed the air of the lowlands. Akhulgo was above him now, and here, at last, were the Russian lines. The enemy, smiling men who held their arms out to their prized hostage. Tears of anger rose to Jamaleldin’s eyes but he would not break down. The naibs were lowering their banners in a final salute; they would go back and tell his father that Jamaleldin was brave and did not flinch. He walked into enemy territory with his kinjal at his side. They would tell Shamil that the Russians treated his son with respect and did not disarm him.
Forward now into a mass of tents and horses, men whose words made no sense. Their large beardless faces; their own particular smell. They stared at him and some laughed. Laughter was a language Jamaleldin could understand. Some of it was good-natured; he was, after all, a symbol of the ceasefire, a reason to celebrate. Tonight, they would be issued extra rations of vodka and there would be songs around the campfire. But there was another kind of laughter. He was little and they were grown men. He was something and they were something else; men who made faces and pretended to snatch away his kinjal.
‘Watch him. He’s like a trapped animal.’
‘He’ll use his dagger on you given the chance.’
‘Give me that!’
Jamaleldin leapt at the soldier, punching and scratching. Without the kinjal he was a mere prisoner. Without the kinjal he was a disgrace. Jeering, the worst kind of laughter.
‘We’ll tame you, you little savage. We’ll tame you in no time.’
‘Look at these wild eyes!’
‘Enough. Give him back his kinjal, Alexi.’ Always, as Jamaleldin was to learn, there were kind ones embedded among the rest. They would pop out like secrets, ready to make a difference.
Inside a Russian tent, the size of it, a world so much softer than the houses made of rock. The pistols of the soldiers, their boots. To see a cigar for the first time. It smoked and glowed! An object that entered the mouth and was neither food nor a twig for cleaning your teeth. The sun moved in the sky, shadows lengthened and no Russian stood to make the call to prayer. His father would be at the mosque now, Ghazi too. Were they thinking of him? He stared at two lamb cutlets, he sniffed the porter wine. This was not for him. Where was the cheese and the flat bread? Where were the honey and the pancakes? His stomach growled and for the first time in that long clumsy day, he burst into tears.
The negotiations lasted for three days and failed. Jamaleldin should be handed over now, like any other hostage voluntarily
turned over and held temporarily during a ceasefire. No ransom was demanded from Shamil, no ransom was expected to be paid. Instead Jamaleldin found himself in a carriage. He had never been in a carriage before. Next to him a Russian staff officer sat with his legs wide open, taking up more space. The wheels rattled and Jamaleldin listened to the hooves of the horses through the forest and on a newly built road. If he tried to escape now, he would be able to find his way back to Akhulgo. But it would be dishonourable to do that; he must wait. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked but the staff officer only smiled and gave him an apple. Jamaleldin was leaving Dagestan. He was no longer a hostage now, he was being kidnapped away from his father’s territory. On to the misty unknown, to the city of the tsar himself, St Petersburg.
Shamil fought and when he despaired of winning, he longed for martyrdom. During the negotiations, the thinness of his fighters was visible and there were more damning reports from the Russian spies, the collaborators who circled among Shamil’s forces pretending to be translators and intermediaries for the peace process. It became known that Shamil’s men were weary and restless. The front lines of Akhulgo were destroyed and the corpses piled up. This was too valuable a prize for the Russian generals to pass. They changed their plan. Instead of a surrender on their own terms, they would aim for a bigger prize – a complete collapse of Akhulgo and the humiliating capture of Shamil. This would crush the resistance once and for all. The negotiations were halted and Jamaleldin was sent away. Then the Russians hit with their greatest force.
For a week the highlanders fought back. Every reinforced position was destroyed and yet the murids would stay up all night trying to rebuild. But it was useless now. Too numb to fear the Russians, they feared instead their own spiritual weakness. Defection loomed at them as the ultimate temptation, the dishonourable outcome. With everything slipping away, arms, homes, families and
properties, only the spirit was left and that spirit belonged to Allah and was created to be free as the eagles that circled the mountains.
Shamil sat on the cliffs in full view of the Russians. Below were green groves and the foaming river. He prayed out loud for an enemy bullet in the middle of his forehead. The treachery of the Russians devastated him. He had been ready to surrender in return for permission to live in Dagestan and to have Jamaleldin back. Reasonable demands, but the Russian general had deemed them insolent. The Russians wanted to drag Jamaleldin across the country, all the way to the tsar himself. And they were not above mocking the divisions between the highlanders and the way the naibs, even during the negotiations, voiced their individual opinions. The Russians, on the other hand, were one force, an organised, powerful entity united in loyalty to the tsar, obedient to authority.
Shamil accepted their demands of sending away the families for whom Akhulgo was not home but the Russians granted nothing in return. Instead they acted swiftly and cruelly, dispatching Jamaleldin without Shamil’s permission, treating him like a criminal, not a worthy adversary. The Russians were, he said to Fatima, as poisonous as the snakes that crawled in the steppes.
On the last day before the Russians finally took Akhulgo, Shamil made a decision. His family would elude the soldiers and escape on foot by nightfall. As for himself, he would fight to the end. Many years later he would recall that time with pain and wonder. How he dressed for battle and headed to the stables intent on slaughtering his horse so that it would never carry a Russian rider. He stroked its mane and when it turned to him and whinnied, he felt sorry and spared it. He stood in his house and looked at his books. One of them was especially precious to him –
Insan al-’Uyun,
copied by the scholar Sa’id al-Harakamil. Shamil held it in his hand. Who would read it again? Who would value and appreciate it?
He gathered his remaining followers and issued his harshest orders. ‘Avoid capture at all costs. Escape from the Russians or fight
with the last ounce of your strength. If you are wounded, throw yourself in the river.’
In small groups, for they could not all stay together, Shamil’s family groped their way down the cliffs. They clung to the rocks, often treading on each other’s feet, pressing their bodies against the mountainside. It was slow progress, with the river gushing below and the Russians swarming up the cliffs. They would hide in caves and emerge to move again. Arguments on how to proceed, true and false alarms, Fatima holding on to her belly, Ghazi still clutching a kinjal in his hand.