Jamal Eddin wiggled, trying to sit up, trying to understand. His arm hurt, but his concern was of another nature. Where was Bahou? What had she told the men yesterday?
“I’ll try.” That was all. “I’ll try. It will be difficult, very difficult. But I’ll try.”
He remembered that the Chechens had thanked her profusely, and that she had discouraged their thanks.
“I can’t promise you anything. Come back tomorrow after the second prayer.”
That was all. Was it really all? Jamal Eddin searched his thoughts.
“I’ll try.”
And since then, she had disappeared.
He stayed there, tied up, all morning long.
Around noon, the three Chechens returned to the room just as Bahou arrived. With an anxious look, she nervously pulled her veil down over her forehead.
“The imam cannot give you his authorization,” she muttered. “The imam cannot decide, it is Allah who commands. My son is at the mosque, praying, fasting, and listening to the voice of God.”
Avoiding the light and muttering unintelligible comments, she returned to the corner, where the Chechens had left her the day before.
“Shamil orders the people of Akulgo to join him,” she said rapidly, continuing in the same breath, “wait there, wait with him, pray, repent, and wait for the will of Allah.”
She added a few confused words and fell silent.
The three Chechens left hurriedly. Jamal Eddin heard Yunus stop them at the end of the gallery. What were they doing in Shamil’s house? Who had invited them?
Bahou-Messadou answered no questions. She was praying.
Outside, the morning silence had changed to a dull grumble, announcing the coming storm.
Blind and deaf to the world, she rocked back and forth, reciting her prayers softly. But Bahou’s chanting did not rise to God in his heaven, and it brought her no peace. What premonitions, what signs, what omens did she sense? What had she asked Shamil yesterday, and what business of hers was it? What had she said, and what had she done?
His heart going out to her, Jamal Eddin watched her shrink from one hour to the next, becoming a little old woman who moaned and droned just like other little old women. The child felt her anguish.
All day long, she did not move from the shadow at the back of the room. No one came to pay them any attention. It was as though neither one of them existed.
“Come to me,” he begged. “Bahou-Messadou, do you hear me? Come, set me free.”
By dusk, he no longer begged but snarled like a wolf, “Come here.”
She hesitated then. Humble and unsteady on her feet, she rose.
“Closer!” he insisted.
“Take your kinjal and cut my bonds,” he ordered.
The brutality of his tone made her conscious of her surroundings.
“Cut them!”
She obeyed.
What was left of his grandmother’s dignity now? She set about awkwardly changing his bandages in a disordered fashion, like a servant.
When she had taken them off, a pain shot through his arm, so sharp that he thought he would faint. But what was his suffering in comparison to Bahou-Messadou’s terror?
He clenched his teeth harder, stood up, and took her by the elbow, leading her out the door.
The house was empty.
The waves of people streaming through the alleyways carried the boy and his grandmother along toward the mosque. A huge crowd had gathered before the flat-roofed building to which the imam had retreated in solitude. The men had spread their prayer rugs on the square. The women stood, arms reaching toward the sky, uttering prayers and moaning softly.
The crowd fell silent as the khanum appeared, bent over beneath her veils. The tide of faithful parted before the old woman and the child.
It was a low-built mosque, with neither a minaret nor a dome. Funeral ceremonies were held upon the terracelike roof. The muezzin issued his call to prayer from an overhanging wooden ledge, supported by solid pillars. Jamal Eddin tried to lead Bahou beneath this little balcony, which served as an awning of sorts for the building. The slightest brush against his arm revived the pain and struck him to the quick. Pale as guilt-stricken criminals, the pair made their way through the mass of people to the closed door.
Fatima, Jawarat, Patimat, the wives of the naïbs, and the professional mourners knelt in the dust in a row directly before the door. All begged for pardon, sobbing and lamenting their faults.
Bahou knelt just before the doors, between her daughter and her daughters-in-law. The moaning that had ceased at her passage began anew, more loudly this time. Mohammed Ghazi, the children, and the babies added their tears to those of their mothers. Jamal Eddin remained beside them.
For two days and two nights, the murmur of groan and supplication carried on unceasingly. The crowd camped on the square, praying and fasting among the horses, cows, and goats. No one dared leave. Everyone waited, and their prayers filled the blank skies of Akulgo with a menacing rumble.
On the third morning, the sudden creak of the hinges signaled the opening of the double doors. The crowd fell still as Shamil appeared upon the threshold, arms open.
Blinded by the light of day, his livid countenance framed by the stray whiskers of his bushy red beard, he stood still for a long moment before the prostrate crowd.
Supported by Yunus and Akbirdil, Bahou-Messadou dragged herself toward him. She kissed the ground and knelt there at his feet, her forehead touching the dust. The imam’s eyes were swollen, as though he had been weeping. He studied her in silence. Then he climbed the few steps up the ladder to the terrace, which was scarcely higher than he was.
On the roof, Shamil raised his right hand and turned his eyes to the south.
“Oh, Mohammed, thy will be done, thy judgment fulfilled,” he proclaimed. “Would that thy just sentence serve as an example to all true believers. For thy commandments are unchanging and sacred!”
He turned to face the crowd.
“Murids of Akulgo, hear now the message of the prophet.”
Jamal Eddin had never seen that look, nor heard that voice. Normally he loved nothing more than Shamil’s eloquence. His father’s passion, the fervor of his fearsome harangues, which inspired in him a love of God and the ardor to serve Him, normally filled him with delight.
But his father’s tone today was utterly foreign to him.
“The Chechen people, forgetting their vow, are ready to submit to the will of the Russians and obey their laws. Their emissaries, too craven to tell me of their dishonorable proposals, addressed themselves to my mother. Playing upon her great kindness and her weakness as a woman, they convinced her to appeal to me in their stead. Her insistence in pleading their cause, her tears for them, and my infinite love and respect for her gave me the strength and the boldness to seek the will of Allah through Mohammed. With the strength of your devotion and your prayers to sustain me, I have thus begged the favor of the prophet, that he should deign to hear my presumptuous question. This morning, after three days of fasting and prayers, Mohammed gave me a response. And I was stricken by the thunder of His voice.”
The crowd held its breath. Shamil drew himself up to his full height.
“Allah has ordained that the person who first spoke to me of submission should be punished with a hundred lashes. And the first one who spoke, that first person, is my mother!”
Bahou-Messadou uttered a cry. A moan rose from the people. Jamal Eddin felt himself trembling. He searched his father’s eyes, but Shamil’s stare was fixed and veiled. Yunus and Akbirdil, holding up the old woman, bowed before him in silent supplication. Everyone knew that a Muslim was not permitted to strike his parents. All were aware that Shamil worshipped his mother. And they knew that a hundred lashes meant death. Surely the imam would commute the sentence.