With great difficulty, Jamal Eddin refrained from slapping the man across the face. Shibshiev was driving him crazy and had pushed him to the limit.
Shibshiev wasn’t much to look at. Small and stooped, he had an unhealthy gray complexion, and his cherkeska was always dirty. He lacked any of the elegance and physical courage that marked the mountain men and did not even wear the traditional Montagnard weapon tucked into his belt—a telling detail. He wore a long beard, which made him stand out among the Cherkesses of Saint Petersburg. How he had managed to get the czar’s stamp of approval was a mystery. Czar Nicholas execrated bearded men and had ordained that all at court, in the army, and in the city should be clean-shaven. He tolerated beards only among the Jews, the muzjiks, and certain indigenous regiments, with whom Shibshiev had never served. In fact, he wasn’t Chechen at all, but Uzbek, from the Kipchak tribe—a detail that escaped the notice of the Russians, who, in their contempt and ignorance of all other peoples, had failed to make the distinction. He had grown up in Dagestan and joined the imperial army as a “child of language.” General Fézé, whom he had served as an interpreter, had highly recommended him to communicate with the sons of khans studying at the military academies.
He had come to Petersburg a few years before Jamal Eddin, at the age of thirty-five. At the time, he had been very friendly to the infidels, especially to the young Circassians he sometimes visited. Jamal Eddin had known him for a long time and remembered him clearly. As a child, he had given Shibshiev a letter for his father, hoping to secretly bypass the authorities. The letter had ended up on the emperor’s desk, like all the others, and his efforts had earned Jamal Eddin a stern scolding and strict orders that he write only through the intermediary of the director. This incident had convinced Jamal Eddin that Shibshiev worked for the police as an informer charged with surveillance of the Cherkesses of the Cadet Corps, including himself. He had cut off any contact with Shibshiev immediately.
However, Shibshiev had changed over the past twelve years. He had taken a different path, in precisely the opposite direction of Jamal Eddin’s trajectory.
He was neither impressed nor attracted by the Christian lifestyle. In fact, his experience in the empire’s capital had transformed Shibshiev into something he had never been in his Dagestan village: a good Muslim. In Russia, he stopped smoking, drinking, and gambling. He learned to recite from the Koran and knew Sheik Al-Buhari’s Book of Hadiths by heart. This late-in-life return to the Sharia had made him all the more rigorously devoted to his religion. Now he obeyed all the precepts of the imam Shamil and concentrated his efforts on fighting the holy war, furtively and from afar.
Among the exiles of the Caucasus, Shibshiev was not the only admirer of Shamil. In the early 1850s, the imam’s victories had become legendary. Even his old enemies, even the hypocrites and the sons of the khans, had to admit that Shamil had brought honor to the Muslims. His network of spies now reached far beyond the line of Russian forts along the Caucasus. He received information from all over the empire, even the Saint Petersburg papers, which he had translated by his prisoners at the eagle’s nest of Dargo-Veden. He was so well informed that he had written to Queen Victoria, pointing out that his combat, and his alone, here in the mountains with his warriors, had prevented the czar’s armies from threatening the interests of the British as they advanced toward Afghanistan and India. Since, as he pointed out, the holy war was such a boon to the queen, he had asked her for arms. In London, in absolute secret, her ministers discussed whether or not to send rifles to the imam. And Shibshiev knew that he was a link in this chain, a cog in the wheel, and a relay in the organization of this formidable head of state.
When the czar had chosen him to serve Jamal Eddin, the eldest son of his guide and master, Shibshiev could scarcely contain his joy. He had galloped off for Kovno right away.
His disappointment was as immense as his hopes had been.
He understood instantly what the Russians had done to this boy. They had corrupted him, perverted him, and turned him against his father.
“Your forehead is as smooth as a woman’s,” he sneered, observing the absence of the zabtba, the blue callus that marked the faithful, above Jamal Eddin’s brow. He considered this to be ample proof that the boy did not pray as he should. Shibshiev did not even bother to look at his pants. He already knew that the knees were not worn out, as they should be if he knelt in prayer seven times a day as the faithful did. He could well imagine the rest. This Jamal Eddin was vain, soft, accustomed to luxury, his every action an affront to the law of God. He danced, he played music, he touched women and petted dogs. He used both hands at table and consumed food that the dietary laws forbade. He was even more impure than a giaour.
Profoundly shocked, Shibshiev pelted Jamal Eddin with threats and curses. He stuck to him like a shadow, relentless in his abuse. Jamal Eddin, who could not stand a confrontation or a row, considered Shibshiev’s behavior highly uncivilized. His crudeness and vulgarity were appalling. Shibshiev’s reproaches were so constant and so merciless that they exasperated him before he had even bothered to understand or register their substance. Most importantly, they were so excessive that they didn’t elicit in Jamal Eddin the least doubt or worry concerning his own conduct.
Since Jamal Eddin could not dismiss him without the czar’s approval, he simply tried to stay calm and tune him out—in short, put up with him. Only once did Shibshiev manage to shake his resolve, striking a nerve that touched Jamal Eddin so profoundly that he flew into a rage.
One evening the young lieutenant returned to his quarters to find that Shibshiev had fresh news from the Caucasus, information that seemed to have dropped from the sky. He announced that Jamal’s mother had died seven years ago and that the imam had chosen the eldest daughter of Sheik Jamaluddin Al-Ghumuqi as her replacement. He had taken other wives as well, who had borne him more sons. But that was nothing compared to the next piece of news. Shibshiev coddled his revenge triumphantly. No, it was nothing.
A year ago, Shamil had named Jamal Eddin’s younger brother, Mohammed Ghazi, as his spiritual heir and successor. The eighteen-year-old had legally taken his older brother’s place in a ceremony attended by all the naïbs.
Jamal Eddin listened to all this calmly and asked only one question—in Russian.
“Where did you get this information?”
“I know it,” Shibshiev replied, in Chechen.
“How?”
“I know it,” the servant repeated smugly.
“Who told you this?” Jamal Eddin exploded.
Jamal Eddin grabbed him by the collar. Shibshiev made no move to defend himself. He was not armed and would not engage in a fistfight.
Jamal Eddin let go of him. “Get out of my sight!”
He did not have to tell Shibshiev twice. The servant took the lieutenant’s coat, saber, and kinjals and left.
Stunned and enraged, Jamal Eddin could not believe the news. What? For the past thirteen years, he had written faithfully to his father, without ever receiving so much as a word of response. Never had the imam deigned to answer even one of his letters. He was so upset that he could not even find words for the exact reason for his anger. How could he have been stripped of all his rights of primogeniture when his father knew that Jamal was alive? The fact that Shamil had chosen this savage, this accursed shadow, Shibshiev, to deliver his message only added to the disgrace.
This kind of renunciation contravened all the laws of the kanly, as well as those of the Sharia, both the laws of blood and the laws of Islam. Such a repudiation signified the dishonor of the eldest son—and his death in the heart of his father. Shibshiev had delivered his message with full knowledge of these facts.