“Not a word about Hamzat in their letter,” Yunus added.
Hiding his disappointment, Shamil let his horse dip his nose into the fountain. The two mounts drank in long gulps, the water whistling through their teeth.
“The letter was from the commander of the fort at Temir-Khan-Chura,” Yunus went on. “He wants to meet you personally.”
Shamil expressed no surprise, rejection, or triumph. He waited for the rest.
“He proposes a one-on-one conversation, at whatever meeting place you find appropriate. You pick the day and the hour, but the sooner the better.”
“General Klüge von Klugenau is inviting me?” he said with irony.
The request was indeed a first. It was a tacit official recognition of the imam Shamil as the religious authority and military chief of all the tribes of Dagestan and the only individual to be addressed in a procedurally correct exchange. The offer was worth taking into consideration.
“He’ll probably try to buy you off,” Yunus grumbled.
“Coming from anyone else but General Klüge von Klugenau, the proposal of a meeting would be unacceptable.”
“It still is. Even from him.”
Shamil listened to his instinct and his past experience. Among the infidels, this swarming vermin they had to crush everywhere, Klugenau was the only one who was not entirely contemptible.
After the first destruction of Ghimri, when the population was starving to death in the grottos and he was off somewhere, delirious, in a shepherds’ hut, Klugenau had taken the trouble to have three mules carrying three heavy sacks of flour sent to the survivors. This gesture, unprecedented in the Caucasus, had earned him the surprise, gratitude, and even a kind of respect among the Montagnards. The initiative had also earned him the ire of his superior, General and Chief of Staff Karl Karlovitch Fézé. The butcher of Ghimri and Ashilta, nicknamed Fazi the Louse by the local population due to his small stature and his despicable acts, was hated by all. Since the matter of the three sacks of flour, Fézé and Klugenau had been continually at loggerheads, especially concerning the general strategy of “pacification.” Fézé maintained that the natives understood only violence and vowed to show them that he was “more ferocious than they were.” Klugenau, who had the reputation of being as bad-tempered and vulgar as he was honest and generous, believed other means could be effective.
Both of foreign origin—Fézé was Swiss, Klugenau, Austrian—they each sought to please their master, the czar. Each one accused the other of incompetence. Shamil’s spies at Temir-Khan-Chura regularly brought back stories of their petty little tricks and major confrontations.
The spies also revealed that ever since the Russians had taken Ghimri and recaptured Kunzakh, the giaours had behaved as though the holy war were over. These filthy liars even went so far as to congratulate their Great White Czar for his dazzling victory. The network of Polish informers intercepted their reports to Saint Petersburg and translated them. They described the imam as a vanquished rebel, in chains and begging on his knees for the czar’s mercy. Shamil relished the portrait. These dogs were fooling each other now, comforting each other. As for his chains and his cage, he was still at large.
“Do you recall, Yunus, which of these pigs was bragging about my capture?”
“The Louse.”
Shamil chuckled. “His padishah’s arrival has left him sleepless, fretting about how to negotiate an arrangement. Now that he’s pressed for time, he’s even willing to let his rival engage in discussions with me.”
“They’re weaving the ropes to hang themselves with. Well, let them put them around their necks.”
“All the same, let’s see what Klugenau proposes.”
For a moment, the two friends were lost in their own thoughts. Yunus had no doubts whatsoever: the imam should refuse the offer.
“Lies, nothing but lies,” he said. “They’re still trying to fool us. The Russians are just like lice that sneak in and crawl all over; they infiltrate and multiply, as poisonous as the serpents that slither through the deserts of Muhan. We must destroy them wherever we find them.”
Remembering these words, taken directly from one of Shamil’s sermons, reinforced Yunus’s bellicose feelings and further convinced him that any contact with the Russians was pointless. He continued, citing with feeling, almost word for word, what he had heard from Shamil’s own lips at the mosque.
“We must destroy them in their homes, in their fields, by force and by ruse, so that they will cease to proliferate and disappear from the face of the earth.”
“You know how to listen,” Shamil said with approval.
“And to remember. I haven’t forgotten how those traitors took your nephew.”
“It’s worth it to try to make peace with Klugenau.”
Yunus was taken aback. Mystified, he turned to his friend and looked him in the eyes.
“You want peace?”
Shamil’s gray eyes were glassy, impenetrable. He blinked twice, as he did when he sought inner solitude to listen to the voice of Allah. He said nothing.
This time Yunus needed an answer. “You want peace?” he repeated, incredulous.
“I want the word of God to reign everywhere in these mountains.”
“But you said there’s no peace possible with Satan. You said that the devil speaks through all those who settle with evil and promote sacrilegious compromise. You said we must behead the hydra of submission.”
“I said I want the infidels out of here, forever. Yes, we could crush them today, give them a lesson here and there. But exterminate them?”
Shamil looked sadly at the jumble of dilapidated hovels that clung to one side of the valley.
“If they could raze Ghimri and Ashilta with a mere three cannons,” he sighed, “then, Chirquata! We’re not ready, Yunus. Not yet. We have to build a city in the heart of these mountains, an unassailable fortress where our murids from across the region can gather. A capital.”
“Dealing with these jackals will bring you nothing,” Yunus said stonily.
“Yes it will. Time.”
The call of the muezzin, coming from the little mosque below, interrupted their conversation. In a very short while, their thoughts and words had strayed far from the voice of the Lord. They dismounted.
“Allah will decide.”
Looping their reins around the pommels, they took the prayer rugs that were rolled up behind their saddles and let the horses go. They couldn’t stray far, for the promontory was too narrow. They would stay there, drinking at the fountain behind them.
As the sun set between the chasms of the Caucasus, they performed their ablutions at the fountain and knelt on their rugs, touching the ground with their foreheads. The shadow of the cliff behind them grew longer. The silence was broken only by the clink of the bridles, the murmur of the stream, and the rush of the damp wind from the gorge of Ghimri, which struck them head-on and made them sway. Miniscule figures in the heart of this immensity, they prayed fervently.
When Yunus got up, he was certain of one thing.
“Even Klugenau is a hypocrite. Especially Klugenau!”
“Therefore tell him to meet me here on this ledge. Two days from now, here at the fountain of Chirquata.”
Stunned at this conclusion, Yunus could not help protesting, “It’s a trap!”
“Insha’allah.”
“The knowledge of ‘All’ is what allows you to tell the difference between what is only passing and the eternal. Jamal Eddin, are you listening to me?”
No, the child had heard nothing. In the two days since his father had come home, he had been in a constant state of excitement. He was determined to accompany Shamil to the fountain; it was a desire that had become an obsession. He wanted to see the Russians.