Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

The morning after sitting outdoors with his father, Jamaleldin watched his mother, Fatima, sob as she handed him his best clothes. A white tunic and a high lambskin papakhi. He must look his best today even though he was thin and fatigued with dark shadows under his eyes. ‘Take your kinjal with you,’ said Fatima, controlling herself. ‘But never use it against your captors.’ She was eight months pregnant and her face was puffy. ‘You must always act honourably, with courage and patience. Never cry. Never let them see you crying. Remember, you are an Avar. Remember always that you are the son of Shamil, Imam of Dagestan.’

Jamaleldin adjusted the halter around his neck and put his kinjal in place. He was ready to go now, his mother breaking down, his father’s hand on his shoulder. The whole of Akhulgo was gathered and Shamil lifted his palms up in prayer. ‘Lord, You raised up Your prophet Moses, upon him be peace, when he was in the hands of Pharaoh. Here is my son. If I formally hand him over to the infidels, then he is under Your care and protection. You are the best of guardians.’

Ghazi tugged at his brother’s sleeve and said with characteristic bravado, ‘Let me go instead of you.’

‘Don’t be silly. I am more valuable to them.’

There was Djawarat giving him a small handful of fried grain with salt as a goodbye gift. Her sweet smile and her sleepy, docile baby.

There was Akhulgo ugly around him. A woman crouched over a dead relative raised her arm up to flap wildly at carrion birds. Keep off, keep off, she repeated, keening softly. The siege had prevented them from burying the dead. They lay in piles, decomposing and starting to smell, shameful under the morning sun.

Fatima was still clinging to him and crying; Djawarat was by Fatima’s side, her arms around her.

Three of his father’s naibs escorted him away, carrying their banners. They guided their horses down the tricky slopes and Jamaleldin breathed the air of the lowlands. Akhulgo was above him now, and here, at last, were the Russian lines. The enemy, smiling men who held their arms out to their prized hostage. Tears of anger rose to Jamaleldin’s eyes but he would not break down. The naibs were lowering their banners in a final salute; they would go back and tell his father that Jamaleldin was brave and did not flinch. He walked into enemy territory with his kinjal at his side. They would tell Shamil that the Russians treated his son with respect and did not disarm him.

Forward now into a mass of tents and horses, men whose words made no sense. Their large beardless faces; their own particular smell. They stared at him and some laughed. Laughter was a language Jamaleldin could understand. Some of it was good-natured; he was, after all, a symbol of the ceasefire, a reason to celebrate. Tonight, they would be issued extra rations of vodka and there would be songs around the campfire. But there was another kind of laughter. He was little and they were grown men. He was something and they were something else; men who made faces and pretended to snatch away his kinjal.

‘Watch him. He’s like a trapped animal.’

‘He’ll use his dagger on you given the chance.’

‘Give me that!’

Jamaleldin leapt at the soldier, punching and scratching. Without the kinjal he was a mere prisoner. Without the kinjal he was a disgrace. Jeering, the worst kind of laughter.

‘We’ll tame you, you little savage. We’ll tame you in no time.’

‘Look at these wild eyes!’

‘Enough. Give him back his kinjal, Alexi.’ Always, as Jamaleldin was to learn, there were kind ones embedded among the rest. They would pop out like secrets, ready to make a difference.

Inside a Russian tent, the size of it, a world so much softer than the houses made of rock. The pistols of the soldiers, their boots. To see a cigar for the first time. It smoked and glowed! An object that entered the mouth and was neither food nor a twig for cleaning your teeth. The sun moved in the sky, shadows lengthened and no Russian stood to make the call to prayer. His father would be at the mosque now, Ghazi too. Were they thinking of him? He stared at two lamb cutlets, he sniffed the porter wine. This was not for him. Where was the cheese and the flat bread? Where were the honey and the pancakes? His stomach growled and for the first time in that long clumsy day, he burst into tears.

The negotiations lasted for three days and failed. Jamaleldin should be handed over now, like any other hostage voluntarily turned over and held temporarily during a ceasefire. No ransom was demanded from Shamil, no ransom was expected to be paid. Instead Jamaleldin found himself in a carriage. He had never been in a carriage before. Next to him a Russian staff officer sat with his legs wide open, taking up more space. The wheels rattled and Jamaleldin listened to the hooves of the horses through the forest and on a newly built road. If he tried to escape now, he would be able to find his way back to Akhulgo. But it would be dishonourable to do that; he must wait. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked but the staff officer only smiled and gave him an apple. Jamaleldin was leaving Dagestan. He was no longer a hostage now, he was being kidnapped away from his father’s territory. On to the misty unknown, to the city of the tsar himself, St Petersburg.

Shamil fought and when he despaired of winning, he longed for martyrdom. During the negotiations, the thinness of his fighters was visible and there were more damning reports from the Russian spies, the collaborators who circled among Shamil’s forces pretending to be translators and intermediaries for the peace process. It became known that Shamil’s men were weary and restless. The front lines of Akhulgo were destroyed and the corpses piled up. This was too valuable a prize for the Russian generals to pass. They changed their plan. Instead of a surrender on their own terms, they would aim for a bigger prize — a complete collapse of Akhulgo and the humiliating capture of Shamil. This would crush the resistance once and for all. The negotiations were halted and Jamaleldin was sent away. Then the Russians hit with their greatest force.

For a week the highlanders fought back. Every reinforced position was destroyed and yet the murids would stay up all night trying to rebuild. But it was useless now. Too numb to fear the Russians, they feared instead their own spiritual weakness. Defection loomed at them as the ultimate temptation, the dishonourable outcome. With everything slipping away, arms, homes, families and properties, only the spirit was left and that spirit belonged to Allah and was created to be free as the eagles that circled the mountains.

Shamil sat on the cliffs in full view of the Russians. Below were green groves and the foaming river. He prayed out loud for an enemy bullet in the middle of his forehead. The treachery of the Russians devastated him. He had been ready to surrender in return for permission to live in Dagestan and to have Jamaleldin back. Reasonable demands, but the Russian general had deemed them insolent. The Russians wanted to drag Jamaleldin across the country, all the way to the tsar himself. And they were not above mocking the divisions between the highlanders and the way the naibs, even during the negotiations, voiced their individual opinions. The Russians, on the other hand, were one force, an organised, powerful entity united in loyalty to the tsar, obedient to authority.

Shamil accepted their demands of sending away the families for whom Akhulgo was not home but the Russians granted nothing in return. Instead they acted swiftly and cruelly, dispatching Jamaleldin without Shamil’s permission, treating him like a criminal, not a worthy adversary. The Russians were, he said to Fatima, as poisonous as the snakes that crawled in the steppes.