The old women remembered that, when Shamil was a child, he would often disappear into the mountains, to the back of the caverns with the giants, to meditate upon the loss of the believers. Only the devil’s disciple would have dared to wander near the sulfur fields of Arakhanee, where tongues of fire welled up between the rocks and wreaths of smoke rose from hell along with the stench of sulfur.
They told of Bahou-Messadou’s son, born left-handed, sickly, and scrawny. In those days, his name was not Shamil but Ali, Ali the Southpaw, Ali the Impure, and he was a sad sight indeed. Frequently susceptible to fever and evil spirits, he did not learn to ride or shoot or participate in games like the other children. Poor Bahou, these hypocrites moaned, poor thing, between a drunk for a husband and a sickly child, luck certainly hadn’t smiled upon her. And then one day when Ali was seven, she wrapped him up, naked, in the pelt of a sheep she had skinned herself. She left him lying in this bloody sheepskin for seven days and seven nights. Then, among the hundred names of Allah, she chose a new one for him: Shamil, he who embraces all. Though still left-handed, when Shamil changed his name, his nature changed as well. He began to grow like a weed and secretly trained to develop the skills of an athlete. But God was not responsible for this transformation. No, it was the giants who had fashioned him in their own image—a colossus.
Bahou didn’t care about the jealous old ladies and their silly stories that blended the outrageously false with a grain of truth. Nonetheless, she was wary when such gossip was echoed in the conversations of the men in the council of elders. If Shamil had been here, they wouldn’t have dared speak that way!
More children came running down the hill toward Shamil’s house. Squat and unexceptional, it was in the middle of the village and had remained intact, with its ground floor stable, its mud walls that had flaked off in places, and its ladder. Its wooden balcony was supported by two pillars that had been scorched black by the flames. The fire had gone right over the roof, sparing the family’s few possessions—the big cushions on the benches, the carpets decorating the walls, all of Shamil’s books, and the precious manuscripts of his Sufi mentors. Even Muessa, his beloved cat, named after Mohammed’s, had been spared, not a hair singed. Surely this was proof that Allah watched over them.
Bahou hesitated. Amid the chickens, the firewood, the nuts and little bouquets of herbs drying on the terraces, the crowd of angry matrons was growing. Ghimri was like a huge stairway she would have to climb against the tide. She had a few words for the elders, and those words could wait no longer.
The village sages were stunned when Bahou-Messadou barged through the council door. No woman had ever dared force her way in.
A dozen men with trimmed medium-long beards sat cross-legged on the narrow platform that ran along three walls, facing the mountain. On the remaining side, the room opened out onto a wooden balcony, a sort of open loggia supported by thin pillars planted in the boulders overhanging the void. Bahou had known them all for nearly half a century, but she defied all custom by bursting in on them. Her behavior was inexcusable. She uttered the words that, in the Caucasus as in the Orient, were the equivalent of a talisman. Azh dje ouazhek: I am your guest.
This phrase, which every traveler pronounced when asking for hospitality, placed her under their protection. As long as Bahou was in their dwelling, each member of the council must guarantee her safety. The moment she left to go home, she would cross the threshold of their domain and her fate would be in God’s hands. They could slit her throat or shoot her in the back. But she would have said what she had come to say.
Eagle-nosed, gray-bearded, his lower lip split by an old wound whose scar extended all the way down his neck, the tall and noble patriarch Urus-Datu sat in the center.
“Salam Alaïkoum,” he replied in Arabic to her request for hospitality. Peace be with you.
The old man touched his forehead, lips, and heart as Bahou-Messadou answered him with the same words and gestures. A murmur of discontent went round as she advanced to the center of the circle.
Bahou-Messadou was blinded by the daylight that struck her full in the face. It took her a few seconds to identify the old men who sat before her. There was Saïd Mohammed, the qadi who lost all his sons in the massacre at Ghimri. And Kural Mohammed Ali, the muezzin, her own nephew, who might take her side.
Bahou-Messadou was in no hurry now, and acted as though no urgent danger threatened her. Time seemed suspended as she silently scrutinized these austere horsemen with their craggy faces and sparkling eyes, her relatives. She knew they were all brave. Noses broken at the bridges and the scars of blows on their brows, across their cheekbones, and down their cheeks were proof of the violent combat that each had experienced in the past. Why were these men ready to make peace with the enemy? Did the yoke of Shamil weigh that heavily upon them?
Their expressions were far from amiable. She sensed the resentment of these men, some of whom she had played with as a child. At the time, boys and girls had not been so strictly separated. They had been forbidden to mingle beginning only a decade before, under the rule of Khazi Mullah, the first imam. It was he, her son’s friend and mentor, who had outlawed dancing and music and all the secular gatherings where men and women could meet, and he who had demanded the sequestration of the weaker sex in seraglios and the wearing of the veil when they went out. Barely ten years. Bahou-Messadou respected Khazi Mullah’s teachings to the letter.
Frankly, the imam’s imposition of another veil hadn’t made much difference. It was just a scarf, a sort of handkerchief that covered the mouth up to the nose, knotted at the back of the head. All it took was a dip of the chin to put it on or take it off. For the rest, she had kept her mother’s long, straight shirt that revealed the bottom of her pants. It had been white in her youth, then red, the color for married women. Now that she was old and a widow, it was blue. It had no pockets. Pockets had always been forbidden.
In addition to Khazi Mullah’s kerchief, she wore another scarf, which covered her forehead down to her eyebrows, and, on her head, a long white shawl draped over her entire body, covering her to her ankles.
Nonetheless, the moment she walked in the door, everyone recognized her. Even draped from head to foot, the familiar figure of Bahou-Messadou had not changed. Her posture was still noble and erect, her manner dignified.
Of course, time had made her a bit rounder, perhaps a little stooped, but she had put on no discernable weight as was often the case with age. And if she was imposing, it was not due to her height or her weight, as was the case with her daughter. It was something else. Her eyes. All one saw was her eyes.
Instinctively she tried to hide their brilliance, blinking slowly like a cat and softening their flame beneath a coat of tears. But Bahou-Messadou’s eyes flashed. Joy could make them sparkle, anger or attention darken them to almost black. The members of the council knew this predatory look, this fixed stare, the eyes’ clear but indefinable color somewhere between green and gray. The look of Shamil.
With a habitual gesture of her chin, she dropped the kerchief that covered her mouth. One of the few privileges of her age, Bahou-Messadou did not have to hide her beauty or avoid tempting the devil. She was permitted to reveal herself, unveiled, before the hypocrites. One privilege she did not enjoy was that of the first word.