“Don’t worry, old man, not to worry. You’re a man of faith, Allah is your friend, he’s watching over you. He’ll protect you all, you, your Shamil, and his kid.”
Jamal Eddin involuntarily recoiled at the man’s vulgarity and his overly familiar tone. This reaction, his first since the officers had tried to take his saber, jolted him back to the horror of reality.
He could not restrain himself from doing what he had sworn to himself he wouldn’t do; he turned in his saddle and looked back at the village.
It was then that he saw the dark figure of his mother, leaning over the ramparts, apart from the other women. It was she who had dressed him in this bright costume a short while ago. She wanted him to be handsome, to do them honor. She had sworn that their separation would last only a few days, that soon they would be together again. He had held back his tears as he nodded. He sensed the courage and effort it cost her to make her words persuasive, to convince herself that they were true.
She had clasped him in her arms. And then, in a low voice, she had blessed him. Around his neck he wore what the infidels could not see, his most precious possession: a small silver tube containing a verse from the Koran, an amulet to protect him from the evil eye, which she had strung on a leather cord.
He thought he could hear her sobbing up there, all alone. Hidden in her veils, leaning over the chasm, Fatima called to him. She could no longer hold back her tears, he knew it. He could not bear her pain and glanced away, looking for Shamil.
The imam had accompanied him to the outer limit of their lines. Astride his white charger, Tsoal, the best of all his stallions, his colossal figure filled the sky. Barti Khan, Akbirdil, and three of his other companions stood behind him on horseback—the guard of the prophet, the guard now so pitifully reduced. The shaft of their pennant pointing to the ground, the flag dipping low toward the earth as a sign of farewell, the naïbs paid their respects to the imam’s son.
From the moment of their parting, Shamil had not moved from this spot. Nor would he.
Jamal Eddin could clearly make out his turban, his long red beard, the sparkling gleam of his weapons. But he could not distinguish his father’s features.
Up to the very last second, he had thought Shamil would change his mind, that he would keep him back, that he would save him. But as the two trudged through the piles of rotting, unburied cadavers, among his comrades infested with worms and flies, whom no mother, no sister could protect any longer from the vultures, Jamal Eddin had understood. What choice had they left, both of them, but to believe in the honor of the infidels?
In exchange, the Russians would allow the survivors to go home. The women, the children, and the elders would be able to leave Akulgo and return to their villages. General Grabbe had given his word.
Shamil had stood immobile on the brink of the abyss that separated the murid forces from the army of the czar. Falling into line, Jamal Eddin had halted beside him.
The moment he had dreaded, the instant of separation, had come.
His heart leaden, fighting back his tears, Jamal Eddin had reached for his father in a gesture of love. Shamil had stopped him with words no father in the Caucasus had ever uttered.
“Do not embrace me, I am not worthy of it. My son, I beg you to forgive me.”
Jamal Eddin had wanted to throw himself at his feet.
“With the help of God, I will bring you out of the camp,” Shamil had continued, as overcome with emotion as his son. “You will not stay long with the infidels. I swear to you,” he had added solemnly, “never will I abandon you.”
Shamil made no further gesture toward the small boy who looked up at him. But his father followed him with his eyes and accompanied him in his soul.
Was he already regretting having listened to the advice of his men?
Beneath his father’s unflinching gaze, a look at once hard and full of tenderness, Jamal Eddin straightened up.
Swallowing his tears, he sat up in the saddle and kicked his pony lightly, guiding Koura slowly forward between the tents.
He plunged on among the horses, the cannons, and the soldiers. For an instant he seemed to float above the swarm of giaours.
Then suddenly, as though swallowed up by the multitude, he disappeared.
Book Two
The Other Side of the Mirror in the Splendor of the Russian Court
1839–1855
“For God and for the Czar!”
CHAPTER V
An Unexpected Discovery 1839–1840
“Pretty name, your Akulgo. A victory that has a nice ring to it. Akulgo, like Borodino and Waterloo.”
The kibitka flew over the snow. The sound of the runners gliding over the ice-covered ground, the harness bells, even the horses’ heavy breathing as they galloped in rhythm was muted in the winter air. Only the officers’ voices broke the stillness as they crossed the vast hollow that led from Tsarskoye Sielo, “the czar’s village,” to Saint Petersburg. Thirty versts in a straight line. At this rapid speed, the sleigh would be there in a few hours. Thirty versts, in addition to the three thousand that one of the two passengers had just traveled.
He was coming from the Caucasus. It had taken four months to travel across the empire, four months of unbridled racing, from the famous Akulgo that his companion had just mentioned to the Alexandrovsky orphanage at the edge of the imperial domain.
The circumstances of the war had made this twenty-three-year-old lieutenant the abductor and jailer of a child he had been forced to snatch from his mountain home and bring here, to this institution reserved for wards of the state.
Mission accomplished.
The child was alone now, without bearings whatsoever, at the other end of the earth. Far, so far away from his own world.
The lieutenant had just handed him over to the doctors and teachers who, at this very moment, were trying to get the boy to undress so that they could examine him and judge his physical state and his reflexes. A Muslim boy, stark naked in front of women? A Muslim boy, poked and palpated by the hands of giaours? How would he survive such humiliation? How could he possibly survive in such an alien world?
The lieutenant imagined so well the helplessness and confusion of the child that he could not bear to think of it. Any more than he wanted to remember the series of degrading acts his superiors had forced him to commit.
Jamal Eddin had been taken from his people and concealed from his father in an act of betrayal—and on the explicit orders of General Grabbe, commander of the armies of the Caucasus.
By order of the czar.
Abducted with complete disregard for all custom, for their word, and for their code of honor.
With scorn for the glory and grandeur of Holy Russia.
Strapped tightly in their parade uniforms, the two officers sat next to each other, stiff and straight, behind the coachman. Their conversation was reduced to an occasional word, cut short by the biting cold. They shivered under the sable blanket they shared, cocked hats pulled down tightly on their heads against the cold, their sabers clutched between their knees. The wind blew through the white plumes on their hats, the lustrous hair of their furs, and the gold braid at their collars and cuffs, which sparkled in the pale light of winter.