The cravenness of his own village, after the opposition of his own clan and the discord within his own family, opened a breach in Shamil’s soul, one wide enough for despair to enter. Even his own formidable pride could not fill the void. Yes, Akulgo had held. But the holy war was lost.
Defeat. But the defeat wasn’t due to the Russians’ power or their numerical superiority. Nor to Grabbe’s obstinacy, his indifference to his troops, or his basic negligence, based on a fundamental ignorance of Dagestan that had made him blind and deaf to all difficulties. No, Shamil did not owe his defeat to the infidels. It wasn’t due to the spirits either, or the evil eye or this unprecedented heat wave that had turned Akulgo into a furnace. The defeat of the holy war was due only to his Muslim brothers’ lack of faith.
A great bitterness toward them rose in his soul. They were not fit to have been born. Their conduct was shameful. The destiny that lay in store for them was ugly and base. Let them be lost, let them all be damned in surrendering. He couldn’t save them from themselves or keep them from slavery in this world and eternal damnation in the next. He begged the Almighty for forgiveness. The shadow of God had not been up to the task. He had not been able to unify them. Let them go feed from the Russians’ hands, let them go beg for a cease-fire and accept all their conditions.
They were out of ammunition. The tunnels and caves were collapsing. The survivors amounted to a poor little group of women and children. And the Chechens weren’t coming.
It made no sense to continue this carnage.
The fight for the triumph of Allah wasn’t over, though. Now the imam’s task was to keep the flame of God burning. Save the faithful warriors, save the children.
“In order to spare your son, you are going to sacrifice all your people?”
Shamil had his answer. He had lost this battle. The Almighty commanded him to accept the deal. He must follow the advice of naïbs who were wiser and more pious than he. Play for time. Send up the white flag.
Tomorrow at daybreak, he would send Jamal Eddin to the Russians.
Night found the child in the stable. Among the few scrawny horses that had survived the siege were the little gray mare his father rode in the campaign; Tsaol—Solitude—the splendid white stallion Shamil reserved for the charge and equestrian games; and Koura, Jamal Eddin’s beloved pony. Koura was hardy and playful. Shamil had given him the pony at the feast of the sacrifice, when Jamal Eddin had immolated the lamb with his own hands for the first time. Thus at age seven he had become a man, a horseman, and a servant of Allah.
The pony greeted him with a friendly neigh. The child pressed his cheek against Koura’s, put an arm under his neck, and held him close, running his fingers through his rough mane.
“Remember, my proud one, when we galloped down the slopes, bolting like the devil down to the river? That was before the Russians came to camp at the foot of Akulgo. Before I broke my arm, before—”
Before Bahou-Messadou’s death, he almost said. But he preferred the memory of their rides together.
“And when I grabbed the stones in the puddles, and you, you pretended to dip your head low before I did.”
Had they really attempted these acrobatic feats, hoping to perform them before Shamil one day as part of the djighits’ show?
He breathed in the smell of the horse, and with it the smell of their cavalcades. He felt the pony’s jugular, swollen with the heat, beating against the inside of his arm, the carotid just under the skin.
Pressed against each other, the child and the animal stood very still, unperturbed even by the horseflies and the flies that tortured them both. Only the occasional tapping of the other horses’ hooves on the stone floor and of their tails whipping through the still air broke the silence. Catching hold of Koura’s ear, Jamal Eddin murmured, “Should I kill you too, to keep the enemy from capturing you? My brother, I bid you farewell. Tonight I shall die.”
He drew his kinjal, then hesitated. He knew how to slit the throat of a sheep. He could find the courage to slit his own throat. But Koura?
“Put that back!”
Shamil stood very straight beneath the sloping roof, his colossal figure blocking the light.
“Your life does not belong to you. Your life belongs to God!”
Even in his dirty robe, his face blackened by powder, his beard dusted with gray and the folds of his turban undone, he spoke to the child with merciless authority.
One look told Jamal Eddin that this was not his father speaking. It was the imam. The man who preached at the mosque, who was capable of tearing out the tongues of the hypocrites and raising a hand against his own mother.
“Thank the Almighty for all that you do not know. For all that you cannot understand. For all His mercy may allow you to learn. Thank Him for your fate. And ask His pardon, here, now, for not having seen, for not having understood what He has decided for you. Repeat after me, ‘Lord, I beg You, give me the strength to do what You wish me to do.’”
“The strength to do what You wish me to do,” the child murmured.
Jamal Eddin raised his head. For the first and only time, Shamil clearly read defiance in his look.
“How will I know what He wants me to do?” Jamal Eddin said bitterly. “God doesn’t listen to the prayers of slaves.”
“He doesn’t listen unless the slaves pray for deliverance. The strength of their arms may compensate for their weaknesses.”
This response seemed to calm the child.
“Down there. Can I keep my weapons?”
Hunger had made him hallucinate. He imagined the camp below like a dark pit swarming with serpents, worms, and a thousand nameless beasts. The thought of being swallowed up by these reptiles overwhelmed him with a sense of disgust that bordered on terror.
“Can I wear my kinjal?” he insisted. “Can I use it against them?”
A fleeting glimmer of compassion broke through the harshness of Shamil’s expression.
“God willing, you will not stay long in the Russian camp. Not long enough to use your dagger.”
“But how must I act with them?”
He remembered what Patimat had said. Even if the infidels had given Hamzat back to her, his odor would have changed and she wouldn’t have recognized him. Jamal Eddin, too, would change odors. Never let them touch you. Never accept even the least thing to eat.
“With the infidels, as everywhere in this world, you must live by holding on to the memory of the presence of God,” Shamil replied. “Live, my son, and show them that you have preserved your most precious asset, the fortune no one can take from you: the faith of your ancestors.”
Jamal Eddin was silent as he contemplated these words. He raised his eyes again and looked directly into his father’s. He was suffocating with incomprehension, anger, and fear.
“But tomorrow,” he said haltingly, “on your orders, I shall betray the faith of my ancestors.”
His emotions and his efforts to control them made him short of breath.
“I shall betray God.”
His voice broke and he started over. His voice higher this time, he spoke rapidly.
“Tomorrow, on your orders, I shall commit what the Almighty forbids. Why?”
“Pick up nine pebbles here, and then follow me outside.”
Burning with rebellion, trembling with anger, Jamal Eddin did not obey. “Why are you making me unworthy of you? Of Him?”
Raising his voice, Jamal Eddin repeated, “Why are you making me unclean, instead of letting me die?”
Choking on his words, he took a deep breath.
“Why you, my father, you, the imam? You!”