It was no longer a question, but an accusation.
“Why are you taking away my honor?” he cried.
Shamil caught him by the collar and grabbed a handful of pebbles himself. He tightened his grip and dragged the child toward the ruins of the mosque.
He forced his son to sit astride what was left of a low wall and sat down with him, as they had on the terrace of the old house. But this time, father and son faced each other.
“Your master, Sheik Jamaluddin al-Ghumuqi, taught you about zikr, didn’t he? The ‘Memory of God,’ attained by finding solitude in a crowd, through internal breathing and concentration. I’m going to teach you another technique that will help you hold on firmly to the cord of Allah,” he said, placing the nine pebbles in a horizontal line between them. “Look. Listen. And repeat. There is no other god but Allah. La ilaha illa Allah.”
Eyes half-closed, Shamil took the pebbles and placed them, rapidly and precisely, one on top of the other. As he ecstatically pronounced the name of Allah, his breaths became a communication with the divine breath. He breathed in deeply, exhaled, and inhaled again, powerfully and rhythmically, in syncopated time with his monotonous chanting.
Jamal Eddin knew the throbbing cadence. This was the litany that accompanied departure for battle, actions of grace—the life of his people since the dawn of time.
Instinctively he began to follow the familiar rhythm, rocking back and forth, breathing in time with his father, concentrating on the movement of the nine pebbles. Pick up, set down, pick up again, set down again. La ilaha illa Allah. In a state bordering on a trance, he murmured the incantation. Little by little, he joined in the recitation, incessantly repeating the ritual phrase out loud.
Chanting in time, with the same panting breaths blending with infinity, the voices of the man and the boy rose above Akulgo. Ever stronger, louder, and huskier, they echoed throughout the mountains above. Their chanting filled the air, embracing the universe and rising toward God until it became one with God.
When this mystical ecstasy was at its peak, they fell silent, both in a state of bliss. For a long while, they sat completely still.
At the first light of dawn, Shamil murmured in the child’s ear, “Wherever you are, you can always return to these mountains through the zikr. The Memory of God will bring you back. Practice it mentally, in silence, without moving, in the depths of your soul. And never forget, Jamal Eddin, that liberty is found in the Memory of God. Now go say good-bye to your mother. It is time.”
The murmur of a crowd rose from the valley floor. The Russians raced through the camp, grabbing their weapons in haste before running to the river. The wave of excitement was caused not by panic, but by impatience and curiosity. The officers lined up along the banks of the Andi Koysu in tight ranks. The guards encamped at the foot of the promontory pressed forward like an audience before a stage. All eyes looked up toward the fortress, observing an unprecedented scene. Instead of their sappers zigzagging from one plateau to the next, two enemy horses picked their way down to the trenches. The first was a bay pony, one of those little Kabarda stallions they had all come to recognize, whose vigor justified their worth. Astride the stallion was a child of about ten who gracefully guided his mount down the steep incline as though the two were one. His white linen coat, tightly cinched at the waist, fell in folds onto his boots, and the superb white lamb papakha on his head was so high and so full that it looked like a crown. Accustomed to the cries of warriors swooping down in hordes like a flock of crows in flight from a ledge, General Grabbe’s soldiers were stunned by the silence, the solitude, and the gravitas that emanated from this approaching vision. The murids’ standards were always black, black like their beards and their long cloaks. How could these barbarians have preserved this immaculate costume amid the stench, the filth, and the dust up there? A dagger with a silver pommel hung from the child’s belt and a long saber gleamed at his side.
The message was clear: this was not a hostage but a prince. The imam had sent his son not as one of the vanquished but as a warrior chief to deal with the Russians as their equal. Dignified and elegant, the young horseman embodied that message to perfection. Heedless of his horse’s steps, he ignored the cracks and holes in the ground, the rocks and any other obstacles on the treacherously steep path. Not once did his gaze turn to the winding river that lay below, nor to the crowd of strangers smoking and exchanging noisy banter as they commented on his descent. He stared beyond the trenches and the tents, beyond the mountain range, straight ahead at the faraway line of the ridge.
The boy was accompanied by the naïb Yunus, whom the interpreters and officers had met during the negotiations. His face, sharp as a blade and as proud, distant, and closed as his protégé’s, expressed a mixture of defiance and anxiety. His bearing was rigid, his tension apparent in the way he gripped the white flag close to his body rather than letting it unfurl from his extended arm as was customary.
The young boy’s stallion had barely touched the shingles of the bank when Yunus spurred his mount forward, passing him and covering him with his entire body.
One behind the other, they crossed the trenches that bordered the camp. The officers shared a moment of consternation as the pair arrived at the Russian lines. Should they disarm them?
They thought to take it slowly, beginning with the boy’s saber. Jamal Eddin started, then drew back violently when a soldier began to reach for his sword. Confronted with such vehement resistance, the officers understood the potential consequences of insisting. Better to let it go.
As for the other—the snarl on Yunus’s face discouraged any further impulse.
Escorted by soldiers, followed by the interpreters, they were led to General Grabbe’s tent.
Jamal Eddin stared straight ahead, jaw clenched. Oblivious to everything around him, he moved forward.
General Grabbe was seated beneath the canopy, savoring his breakfast on this first day of truce. The samovar of tea purred on its golden burner.
The arrival of the hostage he had demanded for weeks, this precious guarantee, whom he had made a condition sine qua non for peace talks, aroused in him little more than a vague curiosity, barely a flash of satisfaction.
Yunus dismounted. Grabbe did not bother to look at him, much less extend a greeting, but commented casually in the naïb’s direction.
“You there, you go back up to your village and tell your imam that if he wants to see his progeny again, he’ll have to come here. In person. Go on now! After that, we’ll talk about making peace.”
Yunus trembled with humiliation and rage. The Russians had toyed with him. The Russians had tricked him. They couldn’t have cared less about him or the imam or his son. Most important, they didn’t care about making peace. Shamil was right. They wanted the imam himself. Dead. The murids, dead. Fatima, Jawarat, and all the children, dead. The sacrifice of Jamal Eddin was in vain. The infidels would attack, no matter what.
With the same lazy indifference, the general ordered that the hostage be led to his headquarters. If the child was hungry, he added grandly, they could feed him.
Yunus’s hand was at his dagger. Jump Grabbe, slit his throat. But the boy stood next to him, and he knew what would happen to Jamal Eddin—what would happen that very moment—if he killed Grabbe.
One of the interpreters, an Armenian veteran of the Caucasian army with whom Yunus had dealt during the negotiations, saw Yunus’s face twist with hatred and feared the worst. The Armenian slapped him on the back casually and spoke to him in the Avar vernacular.