Bahou knew that her son’s real battle was not the one he led against the Russian invaders, but the struggle against disaffection among the believers. They had elected him. What had he to fear in the future? She imagined the echo of the chant she had heard in the night, one voice, in unison, crying “Shamil, imam!” And his answer, ringing out in all its power over their voices.
“Be strong,” he thundered. “Be vigilant. Prepare your weapons, fortify your villages, and mortify your flesh, for soon you will mortify that of your enemies. We shall nail their hands to our doors, their heads will roll down our mountain slopes, and the rivers will run red with their blood.”
Fatima followed her mother-in-law down the path to the water. She too was replaying in her mind the scene she had witnessed the previous evening.
Like Bahou-Messadou and the other women of Ghimri, she did not usually attend any public gatherings, not even the djighitovkas, the famous equestrian games held outside the town gates. She had never seen her husband’s remarkable litheness as he nudged his horse into an instant gallop beneath the posterns, nor had she ever heard him harangue the crowds. Until the day before, she had only known of his reputation for powerful eloquence.
Yesterday had been the first time, and it still struck her like a revelation. True, she knew that students from Koranic schools far away came to listen to him preach at the mosque. Like them, no doubt, she was impressed by his passion, his authority, and the fire of his conviction. But at home, Shamil was given to silence and rarely raised his voice. By nature he was a man of few words, but in the privacy of their room, she could scarcely shut him up. She never tired of hearing him whisper the tales of his adventures in her ear, as he had that night when he returned from battle. Fatima knew the words relieved his tension. He told her of his admiration for the imam Khazi Mullah, his dead friend, the story of their first victories and defeats, his hesitations about the future and his doubts about decisions he must make. He always ended with the same question.
“What do you think?”
She was too humble and too clever not to sense the direction in which his instincts were leading him. She tried to follow him along the paths he had already outlined, confirming her approval of decisions he had already made.
“Fatima, what do you think?”
The very few times she had hesitated or expressed doubt or disagreement, he had asked her to explain her reasons. She dared to do so, revealing her concerns. He teased her about her fears, but he always listened.
But yesterday, when she had seen him on the roof like a gigantic dark shadow hovering over his murids, she had been taken aback. It was the shadow of God on earth. This morning, this strange impression lingered, one that Bahou absorbed as well with the same surprise and pride.
As they reached the courtyard, the two women found Patimat plucking the chickens found beneath the rubble with exaggerated vigor, obviously fuming with ire.
Her stoutness was a sign of her status; it also kept her from having to go down the mountain to draw water or work in the fields. Instead she was mistress of all domestic chores, a distribution of roles that no one dared to challenge. Shamil’s return necessitated a thorough housekeeping. She must reopen the reception rooms and prepare big meals for visitors from neighboring villages and the naïbs, the leaders of his army. But the Russians had slit all the sheep’s throats and burned all the stores of barley.
This morning, though, Patimat was not grousing about the material problems of the household. Her brother had just ordered her to pack up everything for a move from Ghimri. They would leave the village tomorrow. To go where? No answer. She knew where this new caprice came from. Really, Shamil was far too receptive to his wife’s influence. A man like him! For years now, Patimat had been encouraging him to take a second wife—advice that did nothing to improve relations with her sister-in-law.
Absorbed in her thoughts, Patimat said nothing to the peasants whose villages had been destroyed; anonymous figures, slumped beneath their veils, they silently gutted the chickens at her feet.
To leave Ghimri, the burial place of their ancestors, the cemetery where her own husband rested? Winter was coming, and the Russians would not return for a while. Why go into exile with no threat on the horizon? Bahou would be all for it; she had always hated Ghimri. The prospect of this maternal betrayal was the ultimate irritation. Yes, of course the old lady talked about marrying her off to a man of Ashilta. And negotiations with his relatives, the visits it would require of Bahou, and the preparations for a wedding could not be carried out from here. No matter, Patimat could wait. She was in no hurry. Her brother still needed her, more than ever, in fact. Fatima let her children run all over the place. She would be incapable of overseeing the organization of the seraglio and the apartments of the new imam. What would happen to Shamil’s precious manuscripts, his speeches, and his weapons, to all that he treasured, without Patimat? What would happen to the Koran that he had inherited from Khazi Mullah, whose iron fittings she polished, and that she wrapped up in the finest material every night?
Her legs spread wide, her head in a cloud of feathers, Patimat relived the spectacle she had witnessed yesterday. She too had seen Shamil on the roof and listened to his impassioned words, equally impressed by his wisdom, his power, and his beauty.
“We are the refuge and the protectors of the true believers, the terror of the infidels and of irresolute minds. Obey our law and heaven will endow you with all its beneficence. Your worldly goods will be respected, your safety ensured. I say to the hypocrites who persist in their obstinacy, I shall obtain by force what they have refused me in good grace. My warriors will descend upon their auls like black clouds. We shall leave fear and destruction and bloody footprints in our wake. My words may carry little weight in their hearts; my acts, however, will convince them.”
Remembering this speech, Patimat smiled to herself. If the murids acclaiming her brother had known his faults and weaknesses as she did, they would have been too surprised to believe them.
She knew what the legend did not say, what the words to the “Hymn to Shamil” left out. She could have told them how the story of the “Death Leap” ended, and of the hero’s flight into the mountains the day after the first attack on Ghimri.
Forgetting the ordeals of the believers and the service of God, the third imam of Dagestan had fallen asleep in a conjugal embrace, cradled in the loving arms of his wife. And that was the secret of the disappearance he had never wished to explain. His wife had held him captive in a shepherds’ hut for six months.
Fatima could go on all she liked, the hypocrite, about the shepherds who had come to get her at the home of her father, the surgeon of Untsukul. She could tell how they had brought her to Shamil, who lay hidden and wounded in their little hovel. She could talk about the sores that covered his body as he spit blood from the lung that had been pierced by bayonets. She could go on about how her father had nursed him back to strength. Fatima was still from Untsukul. And the people of Untsukul were still traitors and sellouts. By their charms and their drugs, they had sought to bewitch the man known everywhere as the Lion of Dagestan. Patimat preferred to pardon with a smile today, but the thought that the great Shamil had barely escaped infamy by abandoning the fight still made her burn. It was she, poor little Patimat, a widow, who had found the strength to make him hear the call of duty.
“Just imagine,” she sighed, “if I hadn’t been there.”
With this sigh she greeted her mother and her sister-in-law, who had just put down their ewers against the two thin posts that supported the roof. She tossed the last plucked chicken into the copper pot and got up, dusted off her tunic, and, in case no one had heard, asserted, “Yes, what if I hadn’t gotten involved!”