Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

‘Why are you alone?’ he blustered. ‘Where’s that Georgian prisoner Father gave you?’

‘I exchanged him.’

‘For how many men?’

‘None.’

‘What?’

‘I got things instead.’

‘What?’ Ghazi leant forward. The light from the fire flickered on his face.

‘Things I need.’

‘Medicine, you mean?’

‘Sort of. What’s your news?’

‘It’s not going well,’ Ghazi said, picking up a yellow rose and raising it to his nose. He meant the war, the battles, the resistance. ‘As long as Russia was losing in the Crimea, the men had hope. Now it’s all gone, especially after the cholera outbreak. Hidalti said —’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Chief of artillery. There is so little ammunition now. He said, we need to make every bullet work. So we’re getting the men to drive an iron nail through each bullet.’

‘Is this practical?’

‘Not really. All of lower Chechnya is in their hands now. We need to get it back. And there are bad feelings among the tribes, too much rivalry and bickering. Some of them betrayed us and submitted. Then the Russians betrayed them too. They moved the tribes that surrendered to Manych.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Far north. And it’s a dump. Father himself couldn’t have come up with a more severe punishment. The other day a Chechen delegation came to him asking to negotiate for peace. He said to them, ‘Do you want to go to Manych as well?’

Jamaleldin smiled, ‘I’m sure they had no case after that.’

‘Of course. Who in their right mind is going to give up their land without a fight?’

It disappointed Jamaleldin to admit it but it was true. ‘The Russians don’t want peace any more. There was a time when they did. But Father refused all talk of peace. Who has the courage now to talk to him about surrender? I tell you, my illness is a blessing.’

Ghazi smiled. ‘You have become a true Sufi. Thanking Allah for your misfortune. All these lessons Father arranged for you must have paid off.’

To laugh would aggravate a fresh bout of coughing. Jamaleldin bit his smiling lips. It was a pleasure just to look at Ghazi, to watch his face. It did not really matter what news he brought with him. ‘I have a gift for you,’ Jamaleldin said.

‘Me?’

‘Yes. Look on the shelf over there. Bring it down.’

Ghazi stood up. ‘What on earth is this?’

‘A music box. You turn it and listen.’

Ghazi sat down and started to turn the handle. He looked like an overgrown child.

‘Gently, man,’ Jamaleldin said.

The music box was painted in gaudy colours. On it was a picture of the Lake of Lucerne with swans afloat on the shining water. The first notes of ‘The Gondolier’s Song’ filled the room. Ghazi’s mouth fell open. When he could speak he said, ‘This is beautiful, brother.’

Jamaleldin watched the muscles on his brother’s hand as he turned the handle. In exchange for the Georgian prisoner, he had also got books, paintings and an atlas. It would be better if his father never heard about this. He would not understand.

Ghazi listened intently as ‘The Gondolier’s Song’ gave way to ‘The Skater’s Waltz’. He tilted his head in appreciation. This was the Ghazi Muhammad feared by every Russian serving in the Caucasus. And here he sat enraptured by a toy, simple. His enemies would jeer if they saw him now, they whose pleasures were sophisticated, whose tastes were more refined. Jamaleldin felt a rush of love for him.

Ghazi said, ‘We have to hide this.’ From Shamil and Shamil’s spies. Even the Russian newspapers were confiscated, let alone this devil box.

Ghazi stayed with him a couple of days. He could not be spared for long. Jamaleldin spoke about Russia, about girls skating on ice, about the steeplechase and the railways. Good, kind people, neither devils nor monsters. Ghazi took it all in, fascinated and wanting to learn. No matter what, Jamaleldin would always be his older brother. The one who knew more.

By spring Jamaleldin was emaciated. Shamil sent a messenger to Khasavyurt begging for the army doctor. It was agreed that three naibs would be held hostage in the doctor’s absence. Two other highlanders half-dragged, half-carried the unfortunate doctor up the steepest and most terrifying of terrains. By the time he reached Jamaleldin, five days later, he was trembling from fatigue and nauseous from vertigo. Jamaleldin was too ill to apologise. Instead he was happy to see the doctor. At last someone he could speak Russian to, ask for news of friends, go over memories.

There was nothing the doctor could do for him. A few preparations to ease the pain. But the talking was enough; this drawing towards him of his other, Russian life. Days and years that mattered, that could not be erased. His accomplishments, his friendships, the good times, even the disappointments — how the emperor refused to give him permission to marry Daria Semyonovich or to engage in active service in the Crimea. He shared all this with the doctor, indulging in the memories. Listening to the doctor as he narrated the latest military gossip, who lost money to whom and who was called to fight a duel. Bright brief life as he had known it.

After the doctor left, the summer weather enabled Jamaleldin to lie again on the roof. He watched the wind orchestrate the clouds. He saw the sun melt the last avalanches of snow. He turned to look at the local yellow roses he had come to need, delicate petals, proud thorns. When he dozed, it was as if their tenderness and scent fused into him.

Then even to be carried up to the roof became too exhausting. When Shamil visited him, he did not, like Ghazi, stay in the corner of the room. Instead he held Jamaleldin in his arms and prayed for him. The prayers dulled the terror that often flared up as vicious as the disease itself. The prayers lulled Jamaleldin to spaces where the pain subsided and sleep was within reach. His father’s hand lay on his chest; it felt heavy and reassuring, a memory of childhood, of other blessings. Shamil propped him up and made him spit, rubbed his back, gave him honey to drink. Jamaleldin saw the sadness in his eyes, the crush. Only three years since his return. Only three years together. Jamaleldin wanted to live, wanted to feel healthy again but death was pulling him away against his will, against his father’s will.

Jamaleldin fell into a deep sleep and woke up in the middle of the night to see his father standing up in prayer. He recognised the recitation learnt long ago in Akhulgo. For truly with every hardship comes ease. Truly with every hardship comes ease. He thought he had forgotten these meanings but he hadn’t. They were buried under the new things he had learnt — French and the poems of Lermontov, how to draw a map, how to buy a railway ticket — but the foundation had remained: there is no god but Allah, Muhammad is His beloved. There are no limits to His Mercy, there is no will except His will. There were colours in the room now and his father growing taller so that his head touched the roof. Sheikh Jamal el-Din was also in the room, sitting on the floor and on his chest was an eye, an open unblinking eye that was looking straight at Jamaleldin. I must be dreaming, the fever gone to my head. Such a great constriction that it was hard to breathe. He heard the chants of the Orthodox funeral services. Were they burying a Russian? They must be. A dear, good friend who had walked by his side and helped him up when he stumbled. Who made him laugh and taught him something useful, something he couldn’t now recall because he was dizzy from the room’s breaking brightness. How strange that the eye on Sheikh Jamal el-Din’s chest was the only light in the room! His father was large, very large, but his voice was soft and Jamaleldin felt the room swell up with angels.