Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

This episode of harsh discipline turned out to be a solitary one, condemned by the tsar, and never repeated. When Jamaleldin finally reached Petersburg, it was decided that military quarters were no longer suitable and that a family would foster him. A town house for him to live in, children who grudgingly shared their toys and clothes, parents who were not his parents. Better the kind nanny with the kerchief tied around her wide face. She reminded him of the peasants of the lowlands; she knew how to talk to him — not in the Avar language, but words didn’t matter — he understood the tone of her voice, the clucks and music in her sentences. She held him on her lap and sang him lullabies as if he were still a baby, as if he were a newborn. He was exhausted. Exhausted from the assault of newness; of space, sounds and smells betraying him, food not being food and speech not being speech. All this strangeness demanded his attention, all these new people in his life drew him out, pushed or goaded or cajoled him. His mother had told him not to cry, he was an Avar, he mustn’t cry. All that Jamaleldin had to do, he told himself, was wait, watch out and wait, be alert, be ready.

An invisible leash kept him tethered to his enemies, kept him cowed and conscious of his weakness in comparison to their strength, of his smallness and what he quickly realised was his ignorance. He must learn, they kept telling him, not only the Russians but the Caucasian chiefs who had allied themselves with the tsar and were now brought to meet him, those Asiatic princes who looked like him but had betrayed his father. You must learn to speak Russian, they all said. You must learn these modern ways so that one day, when peace comes, you will go back to your people and help them.

During the day, he became too busy to watch out for his father’s rescue. Night became his time to wander free. He could lie very still and strain his ears for the soft leather steps of a highlander, anticipate a midnight raid. Which of his father’s men would come for him? He went through them, exercising his memory: Zachariah who was the bravest, Abdullah who was more reliable, Imran who could speak Russian and come in disguise. Or it could be Younis, who used to visit him in the Russian general’s tent in Akhulgo, following an arrangement made by his father. Younis taught him more of the Qur’an and made sure that he was keeping up with his prayers. This, perhaps, was why Younis’s face and voice remained longer in Jamaleldin’s memory. For slowly, as week followed week, he forgot to expect the relief expedition, although there still lingered a faint hope for it to surprise him, to take him unaware; as if he had just been momentarily distracted and everything would go back to how it had been before.

Later, when he was eleven and sent to the Cadet Corps, he toyed with plans of escape. The urge to flee would only come when he was reprimanded by a teacher or set upon by a bully. Humiliated, he would plot to steal a horse, wrap food in a rag and set off back to the Caucasus. But he was an able student, an amiable schoolmate and soon puberty brought with it a self-absorption that calmed him down. What felt like an alien challenging prison became a home with known boundaries, tightly filled with much to keep him exercised and amused.

And he was special, after all — he was the tsar’s ward, he had a place in court. A palace he had only encountered in the descriptions of Paradise. Gliding staircase, glittering chandeliers, beautiful women, their breasts cradling jewels, dressed in rustling silks, who caressed his hair and cooed in their own language. The military parades, the steeplechases, the labyrinthine, teeming streets, of the city; magicians and clowns, a trip to the theatre, sledges, and girls peering at him over their sable muffs. Slowly, the present, the here and now, asserted itself and shoved all else to the back of his mind. Jamaleldin began to enjoy the fact that he was an intriguing figure at court, that others were drawn to his difference. Soft-spoken and even-handed in his dealings, he got along well with young men his age. He possessed, too, the keen ability to ferret out the best in others. It suited his patrons/captors to think that he had forgotten his past and it suited him to maintain this impression.

But his memories of Akhulgo were vivid and when alone with his thoughts he could smile at his brother Ghazi, he could smell his father’s beard and breathe the cloudy air of the highest peaks. The images he recalled were tied to the past. He could not speculate on how Ghazi looked now as an adult or how much Shamil’s new home in Dargo resembled Akhulgo. Jamaleldin was not interested in his family’s present, a present he could not access. Nor would he bite the hand that fed him. His captors’ values must be his values, their rules obeyed, their aspirations supported. This was why he offered to serve in the Caucasus. He would be a link between the two sides, he would carry peace and modernity to the highlands. Greater Russia’s goal, the subjugation of the mountain tribes, had become, for him, an abstract attainment. He did not have the tools to question it or doubt it. It was too much a part of the larger scheme of life.

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.’