Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

She continued, ‘I have done nothing to deserve this. I ask you to return me to my home. I do not belong here.’

‘My son Jamaleldin was innocent too when the Russians captured him. He was eight years old. You are a mother, you have a young son. Tell me, is it right, is it fair to pull a child away from his parents?’

She hesitated before she replied. It would not be right to criticise the tsar and at the same time use him as a threat against her captives. Her ambivalence towards Russia must never show. She had said to David, ‘I am Georgian, not Russian.’ But here, in this stone world, in this war, with this enemy she was as Russian as she could ever be.

He lowered his voice. ‘Answer my question.’

She was conscious of the brush of silk on her cheekbones and nose. ‘No, it is not right to hurt any child in any way.’

He bowed his head in agreement. ‘For years, I searched among my prisoners for someone of importance. Prince Orbeliani was my captive for six months but he was not weighty enough. I could only exchange him for some of my men. But you, Anna, Princess of Georgia, are distinguished. You are valuable. This is my hope.’

After his words were translated, he seemed to reconsider. ‘Not my hope, my conviction that you would be valuable enough to the tsar. You will be exchanged for my son Jamaleldin.’

Would the tsar exchange his godson for a woman and a child? Maybe, maybe not. Her voice was a pitch higher. ‘If the tsar doesn’t accept? What will happen then?’ It was as if she had asked an embarrassing question. The lips of the translator twitched. One of the guards looked at her, his eyes bold as if he could see through her veil.

Shamil sounded distant when he replied, ‘Our customs and laws will prevail.’

She shifted in her chair. It was wooden and crude. She had not sat in a chair since they had left Tsinondali.

‘I have waited fourteen years,’ Shamil was saying. ‘You are the granddaughter of the King of Georgia. You are a fit person to write to the Russian sultan. Let him return to me my son Jamaleldin from St Petersburg and I will free you on the hour. I am giving you my word and I am a man true to my promise.’

‘The tsar will not give up Jamaleldin easily. He is his protégé and his favourite.’

‘And I am his father. He is my flesh and blood. Wouldn’t you do the same for your son?’

She did not have an answer. Not for him. Lydia’s blood was on his hands.

He said, ‘You will now sit and write a letter to the tsar begging for your release. Tell him Shamil demands his son and tell him my people also demand a ransom. The details of the ransom will follow. Write to your husband too, Prince David, that if my demands are met I will return you pure as the lilies, sheltered from all eyes like the gazelles of the desert.’

She wanted to laugh at his lilies and gazelles. But if she started to laugh, she would cry.

‘There is another matter that you need to know of,’ he continued. ‘I abhor trickery. I can forgive anything except deception.’ His voice rose as if he was giving a sermon. ‘Deceit is an offence against Allah and his servant Shamil. The first time I find you plotting to escape I shall have you killed. To cut off heads is my right as imam.’

If he expected to frighten her, she was unmoved. ‘You need not threaten me. My rank and upbringing forbid me to lie. I have no intention of tricking you.’

‘Then what is this?’ Shamil opened his palm and his steward handed him a letter. ‘I have letters addressed to you which I have had translated. But this letter is neither in Russian, nor Georgian, nor Tartar. What is this script? Are you trying to trick me?’

‘No, I am not. Show it to me.’ She stood up and pushed aside her face veil. The script was clearer now. And without the black silk barrier, Shamil seemed closer, his eyes lighter, all his features more in focus. She reached out for the letter.

He could see her face now and later she would wonder if his expression changed in any way. But he tore the letter in shreds. ‘It is a coded message and you will not be seeing it.’

Her eyes fell on a fragment on the floor. ‘This is not a coded message. This is French, a foreign language. It is written to my son’s governess by her mother in France. How dare you destroy it! Madame Drancy is another of your innocent victims. This letter is addressed to her. It is not yours to dispose of.’

‘Understand my rules, Princess of Georgia.’ He still remained seated but he did not look up at her. ‘You will neither send nor receive anything which my interpreters cannot translate for me.’

The translator gestured for her to return to her chair. But it was too late, she was too angry to sit. ‘I cannot be held responsible for what others send me. As for your staff, they are surely limited in linguistic ability if they cannot tell the difference between French and a secret language!’

In the pause that followed, it occurred to her that she had now provoked his anger, now she had gone too far. He rose and they stood facing each other. She was conscious of his height and his mass, his aura of mountains and war. When he spoke, he spoke in her own language, the interpreter made redundant. ‘You will be given the letters after I have read them. Conduct yourself well, Princess, and you shall have nothing to fear.’

Jamaleldin’s face remained hot as he wrote his dispatches, as he walked to the stables and as he patrolled this city that bristled in Russia’s grip. He was stationed in Warsaw, with the Vladimirski Lancers. In the mornings when he faced the mirror to shave, his face felt especially hot, and when he let his mind wander, his hand went slack and the razor cut his chin. Yet, to be honest, he was not completely surprised by the news of the kidnapping. He was like a child who had committed a misdemeanour and after a longer than average reprieve was finally caught. It was bound to happen. His father reaching out to claim him, the method brutal, their names linked and on everyone’s tongue. It was bound to happen, and now this was the chosen hour.

Jamaleldin walked into the officers’ mess and headed towards the dining table. He avoided the group who were bunched avidly over the latest newspaper from home. Thankfully, there were not many of his friends left. Most of his regiment had been despatched to the South Crimean front. Once again, as was the case in the Caucasus, his request for active service was denied and he was now part of this token force that had been left behind to assert Russia’s hold over Poland. Jamaleldin sat facing the opposite direction from the group of officers and ordered a steak from the waiter. He could hear a game of billiards in the adjoining room, the click of the balls against each other, the occasional high cry of success. When his dish came, he whispered bismillah like his mother, Fatima, had taught him years ago. Most of the time he forgot to say it, but these days the past was easily accessible, the Caucasus clearly visualised. In his dreams, his father’s men surrounded him. Imran, Abdullah, Zachariah, Younis. They beckoned and shouted in a language he could no longer understand. His teeth mashed the food as if eating was a duty.

Here was the companionship he wanted to avoid. Two strolled over and joined him. They recounted the previous night’s adventures and how Pavel, another officer, had lost a huge amount of money at the gambling table. He was now bereft not only of his month’s allowance but of his watch, his silver cufflinks and his mare, a beauty they had been admiring all summer. And where was Pavel now? He was still asleep in his cot, not yet recovered from his hangover. ‘Will he remember that he has gambled away Sultana?’ This was said with a laugh. Jamaleldin smiled as he swallowed. Not much of a response was expected from him. Appreciation for this latest gossip, a suggestion to send seltzer water and lime as a remedy to the unfortunate Pavel, or at the most a jovial dash over to Pavel’s quarters to throw cold water on his face and witness his first agonising wakeful moments? Instead as Jamaleldin was cutting another piece of steak, the old solemn words fell out of his mouth, the kind of sentences he had made a career out of holding back. The world is a carcass and the one who goes after it is a dog. This was what Sheikh Jamal el-Din had taught his disciples and this was what Shamil repeated night and day.