There they were, a band of pillagers, including some of Shamil’s closest friends, standing, sitting, and kneeling, and rifling through a collection of objects that lay scattered about them on the floor.
Standing in the doorway, blocking the light, Bahou scolded them in a loud voice.
“What right do you have?”
They paused only briefly in surprise before returning to their haggling. The heads of all the clans of Chechnya and Dagestan continued to divide the treasure of Avaria among themselves, claiming this golden sheath or that silver dagger, this sword or those bracelets, by bargain or threat. Jamal Eddin was astonished at such splendors from another world. He had never seen anything like them. The khans’ amber cups and gem-studded jewelry lay amid the gleaming plunder taken from the Russian soldiers: their medals and epaulets, their belts, caps, and boots and, most important, their weapons. All were there before him.
Wide-eyed, the little boy shivered with a yearning to touch, to possess.
“Who gave you the right?” Bahou repeated angrily.
“I did.”
Shamil’s voice. Jamal Eddin, hiding in his grandmother’s veils, had not seen him. Neither had Patimat, who had come running after them and now stood in the doorway. Shamil leaned against the far wall in the shadows, his head down and arms crossed. He was watching the distribution. The two women stood there, paralyzed. Shamil had authorized the presence of his generals in his harem? Shamil had sanctioned the pillaging of his war treasure?
“The imam will have his part,” scolded the Chechen mullah Hadj Tasho, who had rivaled Shamil for the supreme title at his investiture at Ashilta.
His beard was long and full, and he wore a high papakha draped with the white turban and a long green coat, the color of Islam. With a jerk of his chin, he pointed to the second chest, which remained sealed and intact.
“The best part.”
The best part. Really? A dubious Patimat was about to demand what the chest contained.
The unequivocal message in the look her brother shot her stopped her from opening her mouth. The two lines between his eyebrows had deepened, and his frown was more severe and downright threatening. His cheekbones were more salient, his cheeks hollow, and his lips pursed. His steel-gray, almond-shaped eyes narrowed like blades. When Shamil’s gaze struck upon someone this way, it was best to shut up and disappear. The two women did so immediately, taking the child with them.
The following day’s exodus resembled Shamil’s habitual maneuvers only in the secret of the destination and the silence of the troops. Otherwise the procession looked like the interminable Russian columns that were sometimes visible on the horizon, a pantomime of shadows moving across the crests of the ridges.
Doubled over by immense bundles of firewood, Fatima, Bahou, Patimat, and the other wives made their way down the incline to the water. They carried most of their supplies and household goods on their heads and backs. Like ants, all they left behind were small piles that blended with the ashen rocks. Even the ruins no longer resembled dwellings but were merely rocks, no different from any of the others that studded the mountain. It was hard to imagine that only yesterday the remains of a village had existed on this ridge.
Patimat was against this exile, but she knew very well that they would have to abandon Ghimri before the snow fell.
The Russians had done their job in slaughtering the herds and burning the harvest. The survivors of Ghimri would starve if they remained there this winter. But here, and everywhere, the problem remained: how to stay warm and cook without felling a single tree? All night she had led Jamal Eddin and the few children from the other auls around the village to collect every precious stick of wood. They had dismantled the houses, cut up the beams and roofing, gathered logs and twigs, and recuperated the nails. On the terraces of Ghimri, on every level of the vast amphitheater, squabbles broke out over utensils, tools, and anything else that might come in handy. And at Shamil’s home, the heated discussion had continued late into the night.
Jamal Eddin returned frequently to the window of his father’s house to listen from afar to the angry voices of the naïbs coming from the guest room. They were still quarreling when it was time to leave. Unlike his mother and grandmother, he found the turbulent atmosphere exciting, the promise of action to come. What took place at dawn did not measure up to his expectations.
After the last few frenzied hours, the column formed calmly. Not another sound was uttered, not an insult, not a baby’s cry, not even a neigh from any of the horses. All that could be heard was the dull roar of the torrent below, which grew louder as they neared the river.
With their bundles of wood, some of which were so long that the branches trailed after them, Fatima and the women advanced carefully, one after the other, in the tracks of the three cannons that the Russians had abandoned.
The murids rode before the cannons, their whips at their wrists, carrying their standards with extended arms, in a long, black line that zigzagged over the narrow trail. Jamal Eddin, severed forever from the world of women since Yunus’s tutelage, sat astride in front of the youngest of the horsemen. Like the others, he was dressed in black, proudly wearing his sole cherkeska, his heavy sheepskin hat, and his boots. For a weapon, he carried a baton at the waist. The horse lowered his head as he slipped and slid down the steep incline. The child gripped his mane to keep from sliding onto his neck.
Before them paraded the naïbs, Shamil’s inner guard consisting of Yunus and the ten tribal chiefs, whose saddlebags bulged with treasure. Their disgruntled expressions showed that the altercations of the previous evening were far from settled. Each felt cheated by the division of the spoils and resentful toward his peers, a feeling exacerbated by the sight of Shamil’s share, which was so heavy that it had to be carried separately on the back of a mule.
Indifferent to their hostility, Shamil led them all, the mule following behind, tied to the saddle of his prancing gray mare.
It was true that he had kept the best part for himself.
When he reached the bridge over the Avar Koysu, the bridge where he had once strangled the last child of the khans, a boy scarcely older than his son, he signaled to the men to stop. He dismounted.
Suspended on the steep incline, the column came to a vertical halt behind him. All the men and women could see what was happening on the riverbank.
Jamal Eddin saw his father approach the mule, then stop and turn around. He advanced to the river, dipped his hands in the water and splashed it on his face. The naïbs, who had stopped on the shingles, dismounted as well and came to kneel at his side. Piously they turned their faces toward the Lord to render him grace together. The murids and the women who had stopped on their way down the rock face shared their prayer, giving themselves over to Allah’s protection in the secret of their hearts.
Jamal Eddin saw his father rise and return to the mule. He seized the coffer and lifted it off the beast’s back in one sharp tug, and carried it to the middle of the bridge. With a blow of his kinjal, he broke the lock. The astounded crowd stared at the jumble of metal and precious stone, the source of the elders’ betrayal and last night’s disputes. All of these wonderful things, carried by caravan from Persia and Turkey, the presents of the shah to the khanum of Avaria, the sultan’s gifts to the noble beks of Kunzakh, now belonged to their imam. Jamal Eddin was pleased to recognize the daggers that had left him open-mouthed with wonder the day before, as well as the Russians’ weapons. The best part.
Shamil allowed the murids to absorb the magnitude of this prize. His treasure would enrich his army and finance the holy war for a long time to come.