Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

On the last day before the Russians finally took Akhulgo, Shamil made a decision. His family would elude the soldiers and escape on foot by nightfall. As for himself, he would fight to the end. Many years later he would recall that time with pain and wonder. How he dressed for battle and headed to the stables intent on slaughtering his horse so that it would never carry a Russian rider. He stroked its mane and when it turned to him and whinnied, he felt sorry and spared it. He stood in his house and looked at his books. One of them was especially precious to him — Insan al-’Uyun, copied by the scholar Sa’id al-Harakamil. Shamil held it in his hand. Who would read it again? Who would value and appreciate it?

He gathered his remaining followers and issued his harshest orders. ‘Avoid capture at all costs. Escape from the Russians or fight with the last ounce of your strength. If you are wounded, throw yourself in the river.’

In small groups, for they could not all stay together, Shamil’s family groped their way down the cliffs. They clung to the rocks, often treading on each other’s feet, pressing their bodies against the mountainside. It was slow progress, with the river gushing below and the Russians swarming up the cliffs. They would hide in caves and emerge to move again. Arguments on how to proceed, true and false alarms, Fatima holding on to her belly, Ghazi still clutching a kinjal in his hand.

Shamil’s naibs urged him to escape. They knew that as long as he lived, the resistance would continue. They persuaded him to join his family who were hiding down in a ledge and by doing so he missed the Russians’ ultimate entry into Akhulgo. Those that stayed behind, too wasted to escape, hid in caves in order to ambush the Russians. Others pretended to lay down their arms only to turn on their captors at the last minute. Young women, fearing rape, covered their faces with their veils and jumped into the river. In every trench, in every stone hut and cavern, women and children fought desperately with stones and kinjals. One child after the other fell. One mother, insane with sorrow, picked up the dead body of her son as if it were a weapon and heaved it at the soldiers.

Akhulgo was reduced to what the Russians wanted it to be; the stench of the corpses, the wailing of children, houses and stables turned to rubble. It had cost them half their forces and lost the highlanders hundreds of families. The siege had lasted eighty days, far longer than expected. But it was all worth it to be able to report to the tsar that Akhulgo had fallen and that Shamil had been captured. The soldiers were instructed to turn over every corpse, to search in every nook and cranny, to question all who were alive and could speak. It was inconceivable that he had eluded them, that he had got away to continue to be a thorn in their side. He must be hunted.

The enemy was now above Shamil. When he caught up with the group that included Fatima and Ghazi, they hid for three days in a cavern halfway down the mountain. Djawarat and her baby were missing. One of his uncles had been martyred. His sister was one of the women who had covered their faces with their veils and drowned in the river. Grief seeped through his pores, the claws of death so close that he could almost hear them scratching. He held Ghazi close, desperate for the sweetness the child offered, his youth, his soft cheeks, his innocent voice. The void of the missing baby, a picture of Djawarat the last time he had seen her, frantically sewing something or the other in preparation for the escape. It was warm and claustrophobic in the cavern. Fatima slept most of the time. He dozed next to her and dreamt of Djawarat. She had fallen on the ground and their son was crawling over her. It was not a good dream. But how could he go back and search for her?

Light-headed from lack of food, they groped their way in the moonlight. They crossed a ravine by balancing a tree trunk from one side to the other. He thought Fatima, heavily pregnant, would not be able to make it but she did. He carried Ghazi on his back, his shoes in his mouth. Dawn, and from high up came a volley of shots, the blur of Russian sharp-shooters among the sycamore trees. They were after him. The only solution was to hide again. Ghazi was wounded in the leg. He cried out, ‘Throw me in the river,’ remembering his father’s orders at Akhulgo.

It became a pattern to hide by day and move by night. They paused when they reached the river and, to fool the Russians, they built a raft and filled it with straw-stuffed dummies. They launched the raft at dawn and while the Russians fired at it, Shamil and his group waded upstream.

Making wudu in the river, the truncated prayers of the traveller, and inland through dry brushwood, thirsty again, sucking water from the hoof-prints of mountain deer. Steadily they reached the summits and sandstone of Chechnya, crossing for days the looped river; wading, climbing and clinging to the cliffs. The mountains closed in against them and, looking above, the sky was a jagged strip between two cliffs, but these moss-covered boulders were their refuge too.

Resting one day at noon they were fired at by a group of villagers from Shamil’s birthplace, Ghimra. These young men had defected to the Russians and were hunting Shamil. He recognised their leader and called him by name. Shamil pulled out his sword and raised it high, shouting, ‘One day, soon, I will stab you with it.’ He was bolstered by a vision that one of his men had seen. A great river rushing over Akhulgo drowning everyone except Shamil and a few.

It was not only the Russians they were fleeing from but, as with the Ghimrans, their allies too. Leaders who had defected to the Russians in return for keeping their chiefdoms. They wanted to hand Shamil to the Russians, and knowing the mountains, they were more than qualified to track him down. Shamil spotted two of his adversaries, Ahmed Khan and Hadji Murat, who had raised a party and succeeded in coming close to Shamil’s group. He prayed that Allah Almighty would veil their eyes and weaken their resolve, and they did not fire a single shot.

Fatima pale, her stomach protruding from her skinny body. Ghazi crying from hunger, unsteady even though his injured leg was healing. Shamil picked him up and Ghazi dropped his head on his father’s chin. ‘My neck isn’t strong enough to carry my head,’ he said. Shamil held him all night. He was the only child he had now. Jamaleldin out of reach and Djawarat’s baby dead. The sad news had come from Akhulgo carried by a fighter who caught up with them on horseback. Djawarat had been hit by a bullet in her chest. She lay partially trapped under the rocks while her baby, as in Shamil’s dream, crawled on top of her body. For three days, she called out for water and chewed on the fried bits of grain she had sewn on the borders of her veil.

The next evening bullets whizzed past the group as they walked exposed on the top of a hill. No longer able to hide, Shamil and his companions attacked the Russian picket and sent the soldiers running back to camp. Shamil paid a mountain shepherd to carry the wounded on horseback. He paid for water too. But lagging behind with Fatima, he later discovered that everyone in the group had drunk their fill and forgotten Ghazi. He cursed them and carried Ghazi again through the night.

‘I will die of hunger, Father.’

‘No, look ahead.’ He pointed to the top of the mountain. ‘When we get there we will feed you bread and all sorts of good things. You will feel full.’

They prayed fajr and climbed the last mountain as the sun was rising. A rider headed towards them. He had been searching for them and his saddlebag was full of bread and cheese for Ghazi. ‘At last we are free of the Russians,’ Fatima sighed, but Shamil broke down and wept. ‘I wanted to fight till the end. Where will we seek refuge and settle now? In this world there are only those who hate us.’