Alexandra Lapierre - Between Love and Honor

Facing his father in the saddle, Jamal Eddin glowed with pleasure as he answered the questions Shamil murmured in his ear.

Intimately entwined, father and son raced toward the towers, blindly pursuing their path, to the surprise of all on the battlefield.

Yet no one would have thought to criticize the mullah’s behavior. He was the guide, the religious and military chief, the third imam of Dagestan and Chechnya. It was he who had led them to victory. He was, above all, the only one here to have found his loved ones alive and unharmed. Allah had spared his family. For the second time. This was clear proof that Shamil was favored by God. For the chosen one of the Almighty, anything was possible.

Even tenderness.

The odor of rotting flesh made her want to gag. Bahou-Messadou walked down the path to the water, this path that, for the first time in her life, she had not taken the day before.

A blackish liquid streamed across the ledge, making it sticky, and her steps were uncertain as she navigated her way through the oozing muck. Flies landed on her forehead and buzzed around the jug, settling on her veil, her hands, and the hem of her pants. Their agitation unnerved her, causing her to watch her steps carefully. If she had felt sick at the sight of the wine that had trickled over the ridge long ago, it was nothing in comparison to this nauseating slime that trickled between the rocks now. The blood of the beheaded infidels, the blood of the hypocrites, the blood of the elders, of women and children and all the innocents of Ghimri seeped into the striations of the rocks, flowing down to the riverbanks where it stagnated in great pools. Even the river was turning purple. Even the spring seemed cloudy and impure, not fit for ablutions.

The night of the massacres—just last night—her son’s first act had been to pray. His second was to honor the dead. His third, to punish. The gorges of the Avar Koysu resounded with the cries of the hypocrites and the pacified who had led the Russians here. Their horribly mutilated corpses rotted, unburied, between the two watchtowers, an abject lesson to those tempted to go over to the infidels.

General Lanskoy, one of the few who escaped the massacre, had returned to the fort at Temir-Khan-Chura, more dead than alive. The spies later declared he died of fright, succumbing not to his wounds but to jaundice. The others lay at the bottom of the abyss, among the bats that flew through the obscurity of the chasm below Ghimri. Shamil had had nearly a hundred of the dogs thrown off the cliff, delivering them to the eagles and vultures below.

Men from the neighboring communities, women and children of Arakhanee, Irganai, and all the auls that the scouts had razed on their way to Ghimri, had arrived en masse to help dig graves and join the murids. They participated in the funeral ceremonies with chants and dances that lasted through the night on the roof of Shamil’s house. It was another miracle: his house was still standing, perfectly intact. The cannons and the flames had not touched it.

The shouts of the believers blended with the wailing of the mourners and made the few survivors in the pit shiver in fear. Prisoners of the Caucasus, the new Russian captives were perhaps the only ones who understood how little their Christian arrogance had convinced the local population. On the evening following the massacre, Shamil could thank the invaders. Their brutality had served the holy war, driving the last waverers into his arms.

Compelled to choose between two parties, both capable of decimating their ranks, the Montagnards much preferred men of their own blood and faith. There was nothing to be gained by befriending the infidels. The Russians tried to buy their submission, but they never kept their promises and they never paid. In twenty years, they had proven their duplicity, paying both rebels and pacified in the same way, murdering even their own partisans. They had even shot the khan, Ullou Bek.

Terror for terror, in the eyes of the people, the yoke of Shamil was the more worthy. Serving God and fighting for their freedom epitomized all that remained of Muslim honor. The imam was right.

In her mind’s eye, Bahou saw him as she had yesterday evening, standing on the roof at his full height of six foot two, facing the mountain as he led the mourning and addressed the crowd.

“I have come to you with the Koran and the sword, and I will lead you. Take comfort, the day of deliverance is at hand. This world is a carcass, and he who would win it is a dog, but we shall rid it of the infidels for good, as it is written.”

After the horrors of the day before, she finally allowed herself a mother’s pride. Never given to vanity or coquetry, she nonetheless reveled in his beauty. She admired Shamil’s naturally noble carriage and the elegance of his clothing, as she had last night at the funeral ceremonies. She liked the lighter coat he wore, which was a deep black. She loved to see his white turban shine in the night, his arsenal glinting at his belt. Her son’s weapons were such sacred objects that not even Fatima was allowed to touch them. He took pleasure in cleaning them himself. But on those rare evenings when he was at her house, he left the privilege to Bahou.

A vague smile crossing her lips, she relived the moment when the murids had cheered him. The time of bad omens, when she had spilled the water and feared that Shamil might not be able to return to save them, that morning seemed long ago. Today she was confident. Allah watched over them. She no longer doubted that her son enjoyed divine protection. She saw as proof the ultimate and unexpected resistance of Urus-Datu, which had saved them from the worst fate. Had the Russians not slaughtered the elders, Shamil would have been compelled to avenge their betrayal of his children, his wife, his sister, and his mother. He would have had to strike the elders in the flesh, along with all of their descendants, their sons and grandsons—even those who had opposed the hypocrisy of their fathers by following him to Ashilta, the bravest of the brave. The families of the elders would then have sought vengeance, taking a life for a life, pursuing the blood relatives of Shamil from one generation to the next, extending their reprisals far beyond Ghimri. It was the law of kanly. This was the evil that Shamil feared and fought everywhere, the vendetta that was capable of tearing his Muslim brothers apart.

Bahou knew that her son’s real battle was not the one he led against the Russian invaders, but the struggle against disaffection among the believers. They had elected him. What had he to fear in the future? She imagined the echo of the chant she had heard in the night, one voice, in unison, crying “Shamil, imam!” And his answer, ringing out in all its power over their voices.

“Be strong,” he thundered. “Be vigilant. Prepare your weapons, fortify your villages, and mortify your flesh, for soon you will mortify that of your enemies. We shall nail their hands to our doors, their heads will roll down our mountain slopes, and the rivers will run red with their blood.”

Fatima followed her mother-in-law down the path to the water. She too was replaying in her mind the scene she had witnessed the previous evening.

Like Bahou-Messadou and the other women of Ghimri, she did not usually attend any public gatherings, not even the djighitovkas , the famous equestrian games held outside the town gates. She had never seen her husband’s remarkable litheness as he nudged his horse into an instant gallop beneath the posterns, nor had she ever heard him harangue the crowds. Until the day before, she had only known of his reputation for powerful eloquence.