The Russian prisoners languished on the straw of Shamil’s well with eight hostages from Untsukul, the neighboring community he had punished for treason. These prisoners’ fathers had been decapitated, and following the traditional treatment of friends and relatives of traitors, the executioner had gouged out their eyes. As for the infidels, blinded by years of reclusion in the tomb, they dug each day a little deeper; their hunger, thirst, and exhaustion were such that they could barely stand up. This was the little group Bahou-Messadou was to join in the stinking obscurity of the pit. She well knew the fate reserved for enemy families.
To add to her pain, she was informed that her daughter-in-law, who had looked everywhere for her and finally come to the mosque, had been taken too.
Fatima followed her down the long ladder, the toddler still strapped to her back. The little boy wiggled, furious at being bound up like a baby.
Face-to-face in the dark, the two women peered at each other in the obscurity, crying out as one, “Jamal Eddin is not with you?”
“Calm down,” Bahou soothed, “he probably ran away with Patimat.”
The Russian prisoners, excited at the prospect of imminent freedom, paid no attention to them. But the blind captives of Untsukul, the village where Fatima had grown up, recognized her voice. They crowded forward to chase the two women, eager to get their revenge for Shamil’s cruelty. They rushed at them, their hands feeling for the one who carried the baby. She flung them off and backed away. As they groped for the child, two of them felt something warm and wet on their palms. It was their own trickling blood. They had grabbed two blades with their hands.
No one had thought to take away the women’s kinjals, and they used them now against the men, who were not armed.
Suddenly the thunder of hooves above them vibrated through the air of the cavern, and they heard gunshots. Everyone stood still and listened. Nothing. There was not another sound. Once again they were cut off from the world.
Then once again they heard cries, this time what sounded like orders. The trap opened and the ladder was thrown down.
“Descend.”
The sudden brightness prevented them from distinguishing who stood at the edge of the hatch. A stocky, veiled figure struggled above them. It was Patimat, Shamil’s sister. She fought them all, calling the hypocrites traitors, swearing that Allah would not let their crimes go unpunished.
Bahou was afraid the elders would throw her daughter into the pit.
“Descend!” she cried.
Patimat’s foot had barely touched the straw when Fatima accosted her.
“Jamal Eddin?”
“He was with the Poles.”
“They took him with them?”
“The Poles don’t know the mountain. As if they could cross the Avar Koysu on mules!” Patimat’s lip curled scornfully. She had never understood why her brother kept renegade Christians under his roof and let his son play with them.
“Ullou Bek captured them.”
“All five?”
Patimat nodded. “All of them, with the treasure.”
Everyone here knew what that meant. By now, their heads were swinging from the pommel of the bey’s saddle.
“The council decided that no one is to leave Ghimri,” Patimat continued, breathless. “Urus-Datu is preparing to meet the Russians. He is going to negotiate with them, with Ullou Bek as intermediary. The women and children are to stay behind, to welcome them to the village.
“As for Jamal Eddin, I don’t know,” Patimat said, her tone sharp with fury and anxiety. Her voice was hoarse, with the guttural inflections of the women of Ghimri. Unlike the other women, though, Patimat was tall like her brother. She shared his ardor, his piety, and his authority. Since her husband’s death, she had ruled over Shamil’s seraglio. Her passion for him was limitless, and she only differed with him—and only in the intimacy of their private quarters—on one point: his insistence on austerity. If it had been up to her, she would have established the power of the house of Shamil through the possession of fine arms and beautiful clothes. So she devoted a good deal of energy to adding to her collection of fine fabrics and kinjals with chased handles, squirreling away all the spoils she could find under her bed. As for her brother’s enemies, her hatred for them guaranteed her family’s safety here in the pit, at least for the time being. The punishment of the Untsukul traitors struck her as far too lenient. They deserved much worse for having made peace with the infidels. Patimat had also kept her dagger and fully intended to use it.
The three women sat down. More than by the stench of the place, they felt sullied by the proximity of the Russians.
Bahou-Messadou had taken her grandson on her lap and cradled him softly. She rocked him to and fro, chanting a variation of the “Ballad of Shamil,” the war song his horsemen sang as they left for battle, in the metallic voice that was hers alone.
She invented new verses out of old lyrics, varying the rhythm and droning away.
Patimat rocked beside her, her eyes closed. As her mother’s threnody went on and on, she relived the dark days in 1832 when cannon fire had destroyed Ghimri. From the forest where she hid, by the river, she had imagined what was happening in the aul above as she listened to the death chants of the last survivors.
In their gutted home, her husband and their very young son had stood with the rest of the warriors, sabers drawn, ready to fight the enemy hand-to-hand. Following tradition, each murid had taken his belt and tied his thigh to that of the man next to him, forming one body, a bastion of flesh. They would fight together and die together as one. Praying in unison, they asked God to forgive their sins, chanting the shahada as Bahou was just now:
When the infidels finally surrounded them, they leaped upon them, howling in vengeance, and cut them to pieces.
Patimat, Bahou-Messadou, Fatima, and all the other women standing on the ruined ramparts of Ghimri had watched them fight the Russians, hand-to-hand. They saw their men force them back to the ledge, grab them, and throw themselves into the abyss, taking the enemy with them in a final, fatal embrace. They had seen them fighting even in midair, falling in a slow spiral with the infidels in their arms before all were crushed, with a dull thud, on the boulders of the torrent below.
We were born the night the wolf howled, Bahou-Messadou continued to sing softly.
That evening, Patimat remembered, the village had been taken. Only two refuges remained.
She recognized in her mother’s song the call that had resounded through Ghimri that evening, a raucous cry that had come from the forest. It was Khazi Mohammed Mullah, the first imam, rallying his murids.