Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

She smiled and put down her knife and fork, turned to him with shining eyes. ‘I have never met anyone as self-sacrificing as you. Never.’

He decided to push further. ‘To spend my last days of liberty in company such as yours will help me bear more stoically my impending return to the wilds. Would you deny a dying man a drink of water?’

She was visibly moved but prevented from answering by Prince David, who stood up to propose a toast. He cleared his throat and said, ‘My joy at the prospect of regaining my family is only matched by the anguish I feel on behalf of my deliverer, our guest tonight. I have only known him a very short time but I can confirm to you all that I have never seen a Muslim with so little of the Tartar about him. A young man whose opinions and manners are completely and truly Russian!’

While the toast was being drunk, Jamaleldin felt queasy at the praise that was not praise, the compliments that were intended as compliments but settled inside him like stones. What a freak he was! Better to focus on the luscious lady whose hair was the colour of autumn and whose loneliness, her lieutenant husband being away on duty, was a distracting temptation. Coffee in the drawing room, a seat at the card table. Jamaleldin added a pack of cards to his list of things that must accompany him to Dargo. He sucked on a cigar, knowing his father had outlawed smoking in all of his territories.

There were more of such dinners as he continued on his journey south accompanied by David. The garrisons on the Georgian Military Highway all the way to Tiflis threw parties in his honour. It was as if every officer stationed in the Caucasus wanted to meet him, every young woman wanted to dance with him, and every matron wanted to indulge in sentimental tears over his ‘sacrifice’. Jamaleldin, the deliverer, the hero, worthy of toasts and curiosity. And always by his side the watchful and grateful David Chavchavadze, too cautious to indulge in premature celebration, patiently tolerating and certainly not impeding what had turned into a spectacle, the procession of a champion, the last free frolics of the sacrificial lamb.

In Khasavyurt, at the frontier of Shamil’s territory, a ball was held in Jamaleldin’s honour. The opportunity to show off his dancing skills, his manly elegance and his natural handsomeness inherited from ‘he who must not be named’. By that time he had perfected his lines with young debutantes and bored army wives, with blondes and dark-haired Georgians, with seasoned beauties and those hovering on the edges of style. ‘Would you deny a condemned man a drink of water?’ He spun around the room with a Marta or a Maia or was she a Vardo? Marta, Maia or Vardo had full rosy cheeks, so large and firm that he wondered if they obscured her vision. Another turn and he noticed a movement in the window, the sway of the bushes and what could be a flash of cloth.

At the end of the dance, he excused himself and went to investigate. In the cold moonlit February evening, the sound of music and conversation followed him. He felt heady with a sense that he had done this before, he had seen something through a window, someone who beckoned to him, someone who wanted him. He moved around the building, approached the same twitching bushes he had seen from inside, wished that his progress was not so noisy. Spurs on the path, the swish sound made by moving his arm, the thud of his boots. A movement ahead of him. There was definitely someone there. In the splash of moonlight he could see that there were even two. They speeded up and he surged forward in pursuit, circling them so that instead of the forest, they were forced to head to the garrison wall.

No sounds from them, not a whisper. Their soft, soft steps in the leather slip-ons. He could see them clearly now and his heart skipped a beat. The two men of his dreams, their turbans, the folds of their cherkesskas, their sabres hung in a halter-neck. Before they reached the wall, before, as he knew, they would deftly climb up and over it, he called out. ‘Younis!’ The word was heavy in his mouth. He had said this before and now it was time to say it louder again, summon the old language and give painful birth to it. ‘Younis. Is it you?’

The older of the men stopped and turned around. The other one stayed by the wall. The older man came forward. His breath was heaving, beads of sweat between the bushy eyebrows, eyes scanning the background to check that there was no one else. ‘Jamaleldin?’

They had come for him at last. His father had sent them and here they were. A flood of Avar but he could understand this hug from Younis, this kissing of his shoulder. Embraces that pressed his body and hurt as if he were fragile. The other man, a youth, approached open-mouthed, then kept his distance.

‘Your father sent us to check that it was really you. That the Russians weren’t tricking us.’ Younis had hardly changed over the years. Only more white in his beard, more fatigue in the lines of his face, a thickness in his bearing, but the same voice, the same manners. More kisses. ‘Oh, he would be happy. Oh, I would say that I touched you too!’ He was talking to himself, ‘It’s him, it’s him. Subhan Allah. I was sure of it as soon as I saw him.’ More squeezing of his arms, tugging of his hair, pinching of his cheeks. ‘Look at you! Look at you all grown up. Praise be to the Almighty. Subhan Allah.’

Jamaleldin was floating, he felt drunk. With wine, yes, but also with this apparition, this dream come true. Was he speaking Avar or just understanding or both? Or laughing like a simpleton? The youth, Younis explained, was his nephew Mikail. ‘I taught him the Qur’an like I taught you.’ He gestured for Mikail to come forward. The youth obeyed but his expression was sullen. He was held back by the Russian uniform, repulsed by the imam’s son they had just seen dancing with a woman in his arms. He did not utter a single word of greeting.

For an instant, Jamaleldin’s sense of superiority flared. Who was this boorish highlander to disrespect him? An air of forest and swamp came from Mikail, the smear of mud where he had pressed his forehead on the ground, those nostrils flaring like an animal.

‘We must go now,’ Younis said. ‘There are others. You will see them soon. They are in charge of the negotiations. I am here tonight only because Shamil Imam specifically wanted someone who knew you from when you were young.’

He embraced Jamaleldin one last time and the magic returned, the dream come true. ‘We must go. Our work is done.’

The two stole back into the night. Unlike in the dream, they must leave him behind. He stood watching them leave; he kept standing even after he couldn’t see them any more. The moon disappeared behind a cloud, the shadows shifted. He could hear frogs and from further away the howl of a wolf. A powder puff of snow blew from the mountains. The cold seeped through his uniform. Unbearable to return to the ball; this starlight was enough.

His father had sent spies who watched him through the window. What were they saying about him now?

‘Do we report, Uncle, the wine drinking and the dancing?’

‘We report.’

‘And Shamil Imam cuts our tongues off?’

‘Fool. He will order us to pray for his soul.’

‘He’s not one of us. Russian, I swear. Can’t see any difference between him and an infidel.’

‘Mikhail, I will be the one to cut your tongue out if you say this again.’

First semester examinations began that week and brought more normality. I found the daily routine of invigilation soothing and welcomed the concentration needed to start marking students’ papers. My colleagues, busy themselves, oscillated between sincere shows of solidarity against last week’s police search of my office and the natural instinct to keep their distance. I wanted nothing more than to pretend that everything was normal. In the staff room I found a stash of pro-life leaflets, identical to the one put on my desk. Fiona Ingram said they had been left there by a pro-life student and distributed to all the classrooms. She showed me Gaynor Stead’s paper, which she had been marking. She had tried, she said with a straight face, but could not give her more than a four out of twenty. Last year I had given her a zero. ‘That girl does not belong in a university,’ I said and Fiona sighed because she did wish all her students well. The news that another of my papers had been accepted for publication (with only minor revisions) arrived as a much-needed boost to my confidence. Iain was pleased but it did not stop him from saying, ‘Let me have that report on Oz Raja by the end of the week, latest.’ This was the moment I should have said no. This was a chance to back out, but now that things were settling, I did not want to rock the boat.