Squatting with her back to him, she was serving tea to three strangers.
This morning, when she was crossing the first courtyard, Mohammed Ghazi had brought her a message from three Chechens who had stopped him on the village square. They begged an audience with the khanum Bahou-Messadou. The old woman’s heart skipped a beat. Still hoping for news of Hamzat, she invited them to Jamal Eddin’s room.
They gave off the acrid odor of the suint that soaked the wool of their hats. They reeked of sweat, leather, and the steam that rose from the boots and burkas they had left at the door. These men had come from a long way off.
Sitting in a semicircle before the brazier that Bahou-Messadou had moved to the back of the room for them, they drank the hot, black liquid in long, grateful gulps, without uttering a word. When they had all set their bowls down, they spoke, one after the other.
Jamal Eddin listened absently to their consultations. He was dreaming of the day, the hour he could leave. He turned his face toward the door and life outside.
Akulgo was a beehive, a Tower of Babel of all languages, all castes, all peoples: Polish officers, Russian serfs, Georgian peasants, Dagestani horsemen, Chechen warriors, Lesgiens, Inguches, Ossetians, Circassians. Free and captive, Muslim and Christian, deserters and renegades. Shamil listened to those who taught him what he needed to know: the great art of military fortification. Arsenals, garrisons, shelters, and trenches. They cut into the rock, bored tunnels, dug wells, and mapped out canals. They hollowed out the mountain, digging an underground defense network in its depths, a system that would allow them to face the longest attack and the most brutal charge. Jamal Eddin heard the sound of the pickaxes on stone, the hammers on wood, the bustle of an entire people preparing for combat. Without him.
Exasperated by his weakness, he turned his attention to his grandmother, who had come to his bedside. The ordeals of the past few years and the anxieties of recent months had made her thinner and broken her frail figure. Even Jamal Eddin realized that she was now a very old woman. He knew as well that her dignity, her will to live, and a desire to fulfill her duty were what kept her going. She still carried her head high and looked straight ahead; nothing diminished the liveliness in her eyes or the gentleness of her smile. Bahou-Messadou went about her business with her usual energy, coming and going from sickroom to kitchen, from well to fields, receiving the guests her age and rank attracted here in the new capital, for the time being in her grandson’s room.
All Jamal Eddin saw was the look that she gave her guests, her gray eyes shining and attentive above her veil as she listened to their requests. He could tell that she was not smiling; on the contrary, she grew more serious and sober. What news had they brought her that was so grave?
They were poor and dirty. Their cartridge belts and the sheaths of their sabers and kinjals were plain, enhanced by no silver. What did they want? Jamal Eddin heard only a breathless murmur.
Only the customary compliments praising the khanum Bahou-Messadou’s wisdom, spoken loudly in Arabic, had been intelligible. They had heard of the goodness of Shamil’s mother, they said, and of her son’s respect for her, as far off as their little village. This had given them hope she might understand the horror of their situation.
Their command of Kumik being limited, they spoke in Chechen. Jamal Eddin understood only one word out of two. Each of the three men said more or less the same thing, and little by little he grasped the situation. At home, the hardships of war had become close to unbearable. Since the grand padishah’s tour of the region, the infidels had returned with a vengeance. Three times they had burned the village to the ground, raping their women and taking their children as slaves. They had followed the imam’s orders. No one had surrendered, and the men had managed to flee to the forest. Three times they had rebuilt their villages from the ruins. Three times the Russians had contaminated their wells, burned their harvests, polluted their mosques with filth, killed their sheep and goats—everything. The village had resisted, three times. Following Shamil’s law, no one had surrendered.
But even the most courageous could not face the famine that was sure to come with winter. Dysentery had done the rest, and with the summer, the Russians would return. The only ones left to fight them were the sick and the wounded, a few old men and some women. The village needed some relief. The village must make peace with the infidels, even for just a few weeks, a few months. But how could they make peace? The murids were everywhere, punishing even the thought of surrender. Between their cruelty and the czar’s, between mutilation and hunger, there was no choice—and no hope of survival. Could the khanum talk to the imam, tell him personally of their situation? Ask his consent for a temporary capitulation, allow them to lay down their arms for just a few days? The time to take a deep breath?
“This will be difficult. Very difficult.”
The child stopped listening. He turned his face toward the door, dreaming of the moment he would jump on Koura the Proud, gallop through the three gates of the enclave, and ride off down the mountain.
After she had fed and bandaged her grandson for the evening, Bahou sent a servant to Shamil asking permission for a visit. She waited in her own apartment in the harem instead of Jamal Eddin’s room. The invitation came at a bad time; Shamil, his naïbs, and Yunus were deep in consultation. Bent over a map of Chechnya, Shamil listed the communities that were ready to betray him. It was unusual for his mother to disturb him at this hour. Surprised, almost apprehensive, he interrupted the session and went immediately to her home.
Witnesses said later that the imam stayed for a long while, leaving Bahou-Messadou’s apartments only at about midnight.
He left the harem with heavy steps, walking along the gallery past his son’s room without even looking in. He strode into the room where his counselors were still waiting for him, walked past them, crossed the courtyard, entered the mosque, and shut the door.
Alone.
It was broad daylight when Jamal Eddin woke up. The door to his room was wide open, and the slate gray light of a storm hung over the gallery, the courtyard, and the ramparts. There was no sound at all, none of the ordinary noises of rocks being pounded to make powder, or the bawling of the buffalo when they were let out at dawn. No clamor of the newly arrived, forced to dismount before the walls of Akulgo because of the narrow alleyways. Even the muezzin was silent, and there was no call to prayer. Fatima, Jawarat, and Patimat were nowhere to be seen. He could not hear Mohammed Ghazi and Saïd, Jawarat’s son, playing in the courtyard of the seraglio. Yunus’s three children and Sheik Jamaluddin’s were not crying. There was no noise, no movement, not a breath of air, not a sign of life. Absolute silence had fallen on the house, and the city. Only Muessa, Shamil’s cat, locked in his master’s house, meowed pitifully, his cries filling the emptiness. No servant came to feed him or set him free.