For the time being, she needed to be alone in the silence of the night.
Bahou-Messadou knew that Shamil’s most ferocious adversaries were here at Ghimri, the aul, or mountain village, where he had been born, grown up, and gotten married. She knew that his community had voted against him when all the others had selected him as imam, and that his peers would have blocked his path had he wanted the consecration to take place here. She knew also that Shamil had broken their resistance with iron and fire. Was that why her son had emptied his own village of the faithful, dragging his troops four hours’ journey away to Ashilta, his chosen rallying point? Was it to avoid another bloodbath at Ghimri? Was that the reason?
Or was it because he was waiting for the men of Ghimri to openly betray him? Then he could break them, bring them to their knees, and force them over to his side. Was it a test? If so, Bahou-Messadou feared the consequences. She glanced around her.
It was a black, starless night, though she could see the reflection of the moon on the eternal snows across the mountain chain. The mountains. Their mass pressed into the tiny figure of Bahou-Messadou, closing in on every side but the left.
On the left was a drop into the void.
She heard the roar of the Avar Koysu, the raging river that rushed through the bottom of the chasm, and the soft, familiar sound of the pebbles that rolled beneath her thin soles and fell straight to the bottom of the gorge. Shamil was a good son who looked out for her, and he disapproved of her trips to the well in the black of night. But she did not need the daylight to know the number of steps between the ledges that hung over the path, which hung so low that the women had to bend over beneath the rock face to creep past. Bahou could smell the humidity of the rocks where the cliff face jutted out, she could feel the wind blowing about her feet, and she could hear the dull, muted roar of the river. She would slide the jug down from shoulder to belly and crouch down, holding the water close to her.
Nonetheless, had one of her grandchildren ventured out before the call of the muezzin to follow her here, she would have pinned his ears back.
Her thoughts returned to the village. When all was said and done, Bahou-Messadou was wary of Ghimri, even though she had lived there for forty-five years. She looked up to see the dawn piercing through the clouds that hung over the terraces of the aul.
Even though Ghimri was in the south, perhaps even farther south than Ashilta, the sun would not reach the hamlet, even on this clear September day. What Bahou-Messadou disliked most about Ghimri was the cold. How would they keep warm this winter, when Shamil had forbidden cutting down a single tree from the forest below? Not so much as a branch or the trunk of a beech tree or an oak, not even the bark of a chestnut tree. He saw the forest as vital, the best rampart to stave off a Russian assault. Bogged down in the branches, the Russian soldiers would become easy prey. As long as the forest was there, he said, the warriors of the Caucasus would be invincible, so he had issued strict orders that it be preserved everywhere. Anyone who touched it, even to gather wood to build a house or make a fire, would be punished. A felled tree would cost the offender a cow; two, his life. That was yet another source of discontent.
She paused a moment to catch her breath on the uphill climb. The village was so high up the mountain that the air was thin. She slid the jug over to her other shoulder, an action she never would have undertaken in public, and for good reason. Twisting the small of her back caused a flash of such sharp pain that she could not suppress a grimace. She continued up the path now, grumbling in her placid, quiet way. She groused about her body, which was no longer able to contain its suffering. The fear that someone would discover this made her avoid people’s gazes in Ghimri.
But why hadn’t Shamil taken the whole family to Ashilta? Why not move there once and for all? Because Ashilta was too far down the mountain? Too close to the Russian lines, too easily accessible? Regardless, he had still chosen the mosque of Ashilta for the ceremony of investiture. She herself had grown up in the shadow of its walls, and she believed what they said: the mosque at Ashilta was the greatest, the most beautiful, and the only one left standing. The mosque at Ghimri had been beautiful too, but the Russians had razed it to the foundations after desecrating the place with their excrement.
She glanced anxiously up at the overhanging rock. All she could see was a slab, barely distinguishable by its color, slightly darker than the uniform ash gray of the mountain. On this dark September morning, Bahou-Messadou imagined the village as it had been two years ago. She thought she could see the tiny one-story houses, like cubes with flat roofs, that served as the thresholds of the houses above them, piled one upon the other like boxes, arranged in an open circle like an amphitheater.
The first and largest row of buildings hung on the cliff, facing the void. The last was tucked up against the summit of the mountain. In between was a jumble of balconies and terraces, with a minaret and a few doorless, windowless lookout towers, a labyrinth so tightly constructed no stranger would ever venture in.
Everything, even the steep, narrow, tortuous alleys too narrow for two horsemen to pass, seemed designed to discourage the visitor and drive back the invader. In fact, with every fortresslike house defending the one just above it, the village could only be taken by assault.
Shamil had left nothing to chance. He had had the ramparts reinforced and had towers and redoubts built. Conscious of Russian artillery power, his choices were all motivated by a single question: despite all his preparations, could the infidels’ cannons reach his eagle’s nest? His chief, Khazi Mullah, the first imam, had reassured him. How could the Russians drag their heavy cannons up to these heights? How could they hoist so much weight up paths made for guerrilla warfare, trails so vertiginous that even the animals avoided them?
Of course, the Russians had taken these questions into consideration as well. Unfortunately for the men of Ghimri, they had found answers.
As the sun rose, Bahou-Messadou looked out upon a landscape she knew all too welclass="underline" a field of ruins, charred rocks and squat tree stumps. It had been two years ago yesterday, or perhaps tomorrow. What would happen if these pigs descended on the village again while Shamil was gone?
She had no illusions. If the Russians took the second path, high above the river and just as dangerous, there would be no sharpshooters or horsemen waiting to ambush them. They would find only the silver river of the Avar Koysu at the bottom of the abyss; the gray, overhanging cliffs; and the birds of prey hovering over the invisible herds. No one would block their path. They could take over the wells, the towers, and the tiny fields they had already burned to the ground. They could make themselves right at home. The family chiefs who had not followed Shamil to Ashilta would pay them allegiance. No holy war would take place at Ghimri.
And yet once, not so long ago, the men of the Caucasus had loved their freedom so fiercely that no young woman would have accepted a husband who had not laid at her feet the heads of a dozen infidels, their hands nailed to her father’s door.
Bahou-Messadou despised her neighbors’ cowardice. In her clan, those who favored peace were called the hypocrites. Somewhere deep inside, though, she pitied their weakness.
How could the survivors resist the invaders when, two years ago, such valiant warriors as Khazi Mullah, the first imam, and Shamil, who was then his lieutenant, had not been able to?
The Russians had decimated their ranks with weapons unknown to the village. They had blown up the mountain, dug into the cliffs with explosives, and climbed vertically from one ledge to the next, hoisting their cannons with pulleys and winches from one level to the next. Their soldiers had dropped like flies under fire from Shamil’s troops, and they had suffered great losses, but no matter. As the casualties fell, others took their places. The Russian army had an unlimited reserve of officers, soldiers, and serfs. Shamil said they had tens of millions of slaves.