The look she exchanged with Fatima confirmed that they understood one another. It was the same look that had passed between them on the terrace the night before. It expressed the same pride, the same joy in belonging to this man—and the same provocative expression. Each was convinced that she had saved Shamil from the other.
Patimat’s incessant insinuations always hinted at the episode at the shepherds’ hut, and her veiled references filled Fatima with anger and fear.
“If this harpy had not interfered,” she thought, “perhaps Shamil would have had some peace of mind.”
When the shepherds had led her to the pitiful body of her husband, Fatima had had to fight the spirits who sought to push him over the edge. Day and night she had battled the spirits of evil, trying to pull him back to her, to life. And Allah had allowed the miracle to happen. The fever broke, and Shamil lived. The nightmare of almost losing him was followed by three weeks of blissful convalescence, a period suspended in time and space. She had never felt that Shamil was afraid of offending God by cherishing her so. In fact, his narrow brush with death had made him more peaceful and softened his character; he no longer worried about the future and felt newly free to love her.
Then, in a great flap of veils and clinking of bracelets and earrings, Patimat had appeared out of nowhere. Beating her breast, tearing her veils, wailing loudly, she had made a scene before her brother that Fatima would never forgive.
Patimat had dared to say that it was Shamil’s fault that their people had lost everything. She had lost everything, her husband, her son, her home, everything. And what was he doing about it? He was lounging around, playing sick. You could see the ruins of Ghimri smoking from the opposite bank of the Avar Koysu, Khazi Mullah was dead, their mother was holed up in a grotto, and the Russians were searching everywhere, shouting, “Where is Shamil?”
And what was he doing? Nothing. The great Shamil was doing absolutely nothing.
Leaning on one elbow, livid, with a flicker of madness in his eyes, he allowed Patimat to go on and on. She knew the violence of his wrath. Contradictors beware, Shamil could not stand being criticized. She continued to spit her accusations in his face. Shamil wasn’t worthy of carrying arms, because he had to rely on his own sister to teach him what service to God and the honor of men demanded. He heard her out, fascinated, without interruption. By the time Fatima finally pushed her out the door, the damage was already done.
The fever returned, and with it hallucinations. With his visions came the myriad anxieties that had already pushed him to the edge of the grave once. Shamil did not return as he had before. This time he returned from hell, stripped of all serenity and joy.
Fatima knew of the wounded man’s questions for Allah, of his fear at not being able to perform his ritual ablutions, of his terror at not being able to say his prayers, of the dreadful guilt he felt at having betrayed and lost the confidence of Allah. He let himself believe that the Almighty had reopened his wounds merely to protest the ostentatious wealth of his sister, the silver bracelets and necklaces of precious stones that she always wore. He could think that Patimat’s immodest vanity was the source of God’s displeasure. But the truth was something else altogether.
And when it came to this truth, Fatima and Patimat both agreed.
In discovering such happiness in the shepherds’ hut, Shamil had found in himself the weakness he punished in others. He had felt the desire that so endangered the survival of Muslims, a desire so dangerous that he tried to eradicate it wherever it was found.
The day before, when he had addressed the faithful, he had done just that. He had censured his own tastes and his own demands, struggling against the two tendencies that had nearly been his undoing a few years before: the temptation of peace and the temptation to forget.
“The Russians flatter you by inviting you to make peace. Do not believe them! Do not give up! Be steadfast and patient. Remember what happened when the infidels tried to confiscate your weapons in 1804. Thirty years ago, ten years ago, yesterday. And if God had not enlightened the elders in time, today they would be soldiers of the czar, marching far away from our mountains, fighting with their bayonets instead of our daggers. If God had not armed the hand of Urus-Datu, the Russians would have unveiled our women and dishonored them, and you yourselves would be forever dishonored. May the past serve as a lesson for the future. Better to die fighting the infidels than to live with them. Think about this. I forbid you not only to surrender, but to even contemplate surrender.”
His incantation was graven on the heart of each of them. Even that of little Jamal Eddin. Listening to his father, the child imagined Shamil spoke to him and him alone, looking directly into his eyes. He wanted to return this look, unblinking.
During the entire ceremony, Jamal Eddin had stared at Shamil until tears had welled up in his eyes; he had nodded his support and approval as he listened to the rhythm of his father’s voice.
“You may consider yourselves good Muslims. All your alms, all your prayers, all your ablutions, all your pilgrimages to Mecca will be for naught if the eye of the infidel witnesses them. As long as one Russian remains in your country, your mosques will be sullied. As long as there is one Russian on this earth, your marriages will be null and void, your wives illegitimate, and your sons bastards!”
Sitting with his legs tucked under him at his father’s feet, his small face upturned, Jamal Eddin gleaned from his fascination one certainty. This speech was directed at him, and him alone.
And in case he had misunderstood the meaning of the message, the words repeated themselves in a singsong in his mind. As long as one Russian is left, your sons will be bastards!
This last phrase he would be careful never to forget.
“Come quickly! A fight is taking place at your house!”
Abruptly ending the brewing storm between his mother and his aunt, the little boy rushed in, caught Bahou by the pant leg, and tried to drag her home in one motion.
“At my house?” she said, not moving. “Who?”
“All of them!”
“Your father?”
“Mirza Kaziaho, Yunus, Surkhaï, the others,” he panted. “They’re fighting about the khans’ treasure.”
Pulling her veil over her brow and the scarf around her neck up over her nose, the old woman hurried for home.
It was a one-room apartment with a central pillar that supported the roof beams. The walls were bare. Rugs covered the floor, and a few cushions were stacked in a corner. Eight or ten rolled-up mattresses were stored along the walls. The door was the only opening. A thick coating of soot, the result of a chimney that did not draw well, made the room look all the more dingy. Bahou had cooked here for years, for her neighbors, her relatives, and the wives of the naïbs who came from distant villages. Sometimes the guests, as many as fifteen or twenty of them, stayed for months, sleeping at Bahou’s house the entire time. The room was well situated since it led to the back courtyard that was reserved for the women of the household. When she had no guests, Bahou-Messadou used the room for storage. All kinds of things ended up here—the executioner’s axe, an old cradle, assorted bridles and saddles, pots. And the two chests of treasure from Kunzakh.
Coveted by the elders, stolen by the Russians, they rested in obscurity in this windowless room, a sanctuary that no man except Shamil, not even Jamal Eddin, had the right to enter. It was the harem of the imam.