The women had not dared to remove their veils in front of the murids, but they had pulled back the canvas and stood there, all of them, in the sunlight.
He nodded to them in farewell and rode off.
One of them watched, the tears trickling down her cheeks beneath her veil. She was crying with relief and gratitude, regret and pity. She cried for him, and for herself.
Varenka knew what awaited Jamal Eddin and all the difficulties he would face trying to adapt to this world that was so new and so different, that she had discovered and was now leaving.
The imam’s three sons crossed the river side by side.
Followed by the interpreter, the two Vladimirsky Lancers, the thirty-five murids, the wagons, and the baggage of Jamal Eddin, they made it unhindered to the other bank of the river.
No sooner had they reached the strand than they were surrounded by a horde of deliriously joyful Montagnards. All of them wanted to see, to touch, to feel, to kiss the hand, the leg, the boots of the eldest son of the imam, their guide.
Jamal Eddin, the beloved.
Nearly swept away by the jubilant crowd, Buxhöwden and Milyutin were suddenly cut off from their comrade and the rest of the troop. The crowd’s welcome did not extend to the two Russians, the infidels, the giaours. Threats and insults rained down on them from all sides.
Jamal Eddin tried with difficulty to advance toward his father. He too was isolated as the crowd separated him from Mohammed Ghazi and Mohammed Sheffi.
All around him—men on foot, simple villagers from the auls in ragged cherkeskas and shaggy papakhas—shouted with joy at the sight of him.
But to Jamal Eddin, their elation sounded menacing.
On the narrow mountain path that led to the black parasol, the crowd became increasingly dense and excited. It was impossible to move forward.
Jamal Eddin stopped and turned around.
He saw that the Montagnards had grabbed the bridles of Buxhöwden’s and Milyutin’s mounts, and were shoving and jostling the horses in an attempt to make them fall off the path. The two lancers saw that they were about to be knocked down, but they were defenseless against the hostile crowd.
Suddenly afraid they would be lynched, Jamal Eddin yelled at them, demanding that they clear the path for Buxhöwden and Milyutin to join him and remain by his side. No one understood his orders.
His stallion reared.
The interpreter, too far away, could not translate his words.
Jamal Eddin conveyed through gestures that he would not take one more step forward if the crowd did not let his escort pass. With a good deal of pushing and shoving, Bux and Milyutin finally reached him. He caught each one by the sleeve and hung on so that they would not be swept away again. With a light kick, his horse continued up the path, and the three men went forward, Jamal Eddin still hanging on to both of his friends.
A few steps from the canopy where the enthroned Shamil awaited him, a murid dismounted and started toward Jamal Eddin, clearing the crowd in front of him with his crop. Yunus.
He walked up to Jamal Eddin. But Jamal Eddin, still encumbered by the crowd hastening to touch him, kiss him, catch his leg, all the while yelping and shouting, did not greet him.
Once again he demanded that the crowd step back, yelling at those near him in Russian. His voice carried over the tumult.
His composure and tolerance were stretched perilously thin.
Without comprehending the reason for his anger, the crowd stepped back, amassing a little way away, kept in line by Yunus.
Jamal Eddin began riding forward again toward the imam, once again joined by his brothers on either side. Bux and Milyutin followed close by.
A dozen or so steps before reaching Shamil, Jamal Eddin and the others dismounted.
Jamal Eddin trembled with emotion. He could not even look at his father.
After all these years of waiting, he was no longer able to see him.
He approached with halting steps and bowed.
Shamil grabbed him with open arms, drawing his child against him. Tears ran down the imam’s cheeks onto his beard. He could not stop weeping.
Father and son remained locked in each other’s arms for a long moment, both conscious of the beating of the other’s heart.
Not a sound broke their silence; it was respected by all around them.
Then the imam lifted his eyes to those around them and said fervently, “I thank God for having kept my son safe. I thank the czar for having permitted his return, and I thank the princes for having contributed to it.”
Then he noticed Milyutin and Buxhöwden standing beside his other two sons.
He turned to ask the interpreter, “Who are they?”
“Your son’s boyhood friends, who wanted to pay you their respects,” the interpreter explained.
“I thank them,” said Shamil.
Jamal Eddin disengaged himself from his father’s embrace and stood up.
His friends asked if they could bid him farewell, Russian style.
“Why not?” Jamal Eddin replied.
With spirit and élan, each one embraced him and kissed him three times.
Shamil was worried that seeing Jamal Eddin in the arms of the giaours would make a very bad impression upon his people. In an effort to justify their behavior, he explained loudly to those around them, “These three boys grew up together!”
The imam then rose to greet Milyutin and Bux politely. He ordered Mohammed Ghazi to accompany them back to the other bank, with the protection of a hundred murid warriors.
This time, the three friends’ farewells were final.
Jamal Eddin embraced his companions one last time and asked them not to forget him. He also asked them to send Prince Orbeliani his regrets at not having made his acquaintance.
Courteous and gallant to the last.
The interpreter and the officers rode back across the river and returned to the Russian contingent on the hill.
Now that the Russians were gone, an unrestrained volley of gunshots and whoops of celebration at the return of the imam’s son broke out.
The echo of exploding guns and the clamor of men would ring in Bux’s and Milyutin’s ears for a long, long while.
They turned back, searching for the horseman in black more noble and elegant than all the rest. They saw only his back.
Riding next to Shamil, Jamal Eddin climbed the boulder in the direction of the woods. They zigzagged between crews of men, who were busy uprooting the shafts of banners, gathering the standards and carpets, and rolling up the tents. The army was packing up.
Father and son rode off toward the forest.
They were of equal strength and height. The older man rode a gray mare, the younger a big white stallion. The panels of their turbans fell in straight lines to the small of their backs.
For a moment, Jamal Eddin seemed to float above the abandoned parasol, above the teeming crowd.
Then suddenly, as though the mountain had swallowed him up, he disappeared.
Neither Sacha Milyutin nor Count Buxhöwden nor Prince Chavchavadze nor any of the other officers in their company at the exchange ceremony would ever see the “rebel’s son” again.
But they would tell of that intense moment, of watching Jamal Eddin disappear down the mountain path into the vastness of the Caucasus, carrying within him all that remained of the honor of men.
EPILOGUE
All That Remained of the Honor of Men Dagestan and Chechnya
1855–1858
“At first, we received letters from him,” Elizaveta Petrovna Olenina wrote in 1919, at the age of eighty-seven. “I learned that he had tried to escape three times, and that three times he had been recaptured by his brother Mohammed Ghazi, whose prisoner he had become.