Let Our Fame Be Great (6 page)

The young, idealistic Circassians of the early 1990s found the graveyard where she had lamented her loss, and began to commemorate their nation's destruction there, choosing as their remembrance day 21 May: the date when Russia proclaimed victory in the Caucasus in 1864.

Elif 's village stands a few kilometres inland from the tiny fishing port of Kefken, which also has a special place in the hearts of the
Circassians as one of the arrival sites of the massed refugees. It is a wild and bleak coast, with a few caves pushed into the low cliffs that mark the edge of the beaches. In these caves, Circassians sheltered and scratched the rocks with their names in the Arabic script they then used.

The memorial ceremony, which I attended in 2008, has become a tribute to how far the Circassians have come in uniting their far-flung nation. They had come from all over Turkey, from America, from Russia, from Israel. Many of them bore the green flag of Circassia, with its crossed arrows and stars, and they all stood together on the jagged rocks to throw flowers into the sea which formed the final grave for so many of their compatriots.

As the sun touched the horizon, an old man's voice rose in a lament joined by the quiet hum of other Circassians singing together. Hundreds of carnations arced through the air to land in the water, which heaved beneath them. Song followed song, as the purple stain of evening spread over the sea. Darkness fell and I sat on the clifftop watching as a bonfire flared up on the beach and the assembled Circassians – young and old – took a blazing torch in each hand and made a procession along the shoreline. The haunting melody of the Circassian song ‘Road to Istanbul' hung in the air like a floating scrap of silk: delicate but strong:

I sat in the bus driving back to Istanbul from Kefken musing on the amazing strength of the Circassians, and on how, after so many years apart, they had reforged the links connecting their nation together so quickly. It was only our small bus-full that was leaving the event. A horde of young Circassians remained, and they would drink and talk and dance all night at a building on the jagged cliffs. New friendships would be born, new courtships would begin, and maybe new marriages be agreed.

But, in some ways, the impression of a newly united nation was a misleading one. The nineteenth-century travellers who had been so amazed by the Circassians would have struggled to recognize some of their traits in their descendants. Circassians all over the world were often profoundly troubled by what they found in the communities of their compatriots in other countries.

It is not surprising perhaps that a Circassian who has grown up in the democracy of Israel has a different mentality to one who grew up in the communism of Russia, or the authoritarian strictness of Jordan or Kosovo. But it still came as a disappointment to Circassians – overjoyed by the new freedoms they found after 1991, and by their chance to visit the Russian Caucasus – to find their ancestors' homeland so, well, Russian.

I found Selim Abazi, fifty-four years old, in Milosheve, one of two villages in Kosovo where Circassians once predominated. He moved to southern Russia in 1993, and was joined by the whole Kosovo Circassian community in 1998 when the war with the Serbians started in earnest. He remained a fiercely patriotic Circassian, with the green-and-yellow flag tacked to the wall of his shack, but he had left the Caucasus to go back to Kosovo in 2000.

‘I did not like these Russians, they are communists and we had no relations with them at all, they were scared of us. We could speak to
the Circassians, but they too had become like Russians. They would ask us if we had only come to their country to find work and they would swear at us and say they did not have enough to eat for themselves, ' he told me in the broken Russian he had learned in his time in the Caucasus.

‘The Caucasus is beautiful, it is subtropical. But the people are bad, when they got democracy everything fell apart. There is too much alcohol, too many drugs.'

I got the impression Abazi was not being entirely open with me. He certainly never explained how he'd lost his arm, which was just a bandage-swathed stump. But his story was echoed by the few Circassians I managed to track down in the wretchedly poor Kosovan villages they had returned to in preference to the nice, red-brick houses the Russian government gave them to live in.

The graveyards were still full of Circassian surnames, the mosque – built by Circassians – stood tall, but the few old men and women left here would be the end of Kosovo's Circassian community.

Murat Cej's brother Musa lives in the Caucasus along with many other of his former neighbours, but he also came back to Kosovo when the war ended. We stood out of the rain and chatted – a translator having to help since Cej had not learned Russian during his stay – about the history of his people.

‘When we first got to Russia we were so excited,' he said, with a broad smile raising crinkles all around his watery blue eyes. ‘All the Circassians were asking how had we saved our language. These Circassians were very nice, but not the Russians, they did not like us. My wife, even though she's Albanian, wanted to stay there but I wanted to come back here. My father died here, and I will die here too.'

In other countries, too, Circassians had problems realizing the dream of moving to the Caucasus. Technically, as people whose ancestors originated in Russia, they have the right under Russian law to move back there. But, in fact, they struggle to do so, especially since the Chechen war has made Russian officials so suspicious of any foreigners in the southern provinces of their country.

Omer Kurmel, aged forty-five, is one of the leaders of the Caucasus Cultural Federation in Turkey. His organization, which has members
throughout Turkey's large Circassian community, aims to secure Circassian repatriation. He speaks perfect English, and has an American PhD, but even his diplomatic skills betrayed a slight frustration with the difficulties Circassians face in patching their people together.

‘It is not easy to get a visa now, it can take weeks. The security clearances go on. I understand that Russia is concerned about terrorism in Chechnya, but this has hit us particularly,' he said as we sat in his office in Istanbul a few days after I took the bus down from Kosovo.

‘I would say not more than a hundred people from here have moved back to the Caucasus,' he said.

He said the Circassians needed to emulate the Jews and launch a movement to move back to the homeland, while accepting the fact that Russians now live there. ‘When I was a teenager, like all Circassians I used to think that the Russians were bad people who had persecuted my people. But when I went to the Caucasus I saw that the local people had developed a common way of life with the Russians. The problems are because of our weakness, rather than Russian strength.'

But the Circassians face an uphill struggle. According to one report, 3,000 – 4,000 idealistic Circassians had immigrated to the Caucasus by 1993. It is hard to say now how many have joined them, but the number of foreign-born Circassians in the Caucasus would seem, if anything, to have shrunk since then.

Chen Bram, an Israeli anthropologist who has studied the Circassian communities in the Middle East, summed up the disappointment felt by many Circassians. They had dreamt of an ancestral homeland running with milk and honey, but instead had found a land where people ‘reel under economic chaos, huge inflation and political insecurity. Moreover, the poor systems of transportation, communication and other features of modernity that affect the standard of living in the cities made an unfavourable comparison to their lives in Israel. If one adds the havoc at local airports and the horrible and useless bureaucracy in general, it is easy to understand why some of the Israeli visitors heaved a sigh of relief upon returning to Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.'

Indeed, one Israeli friend in Kfar-Kama joked to me that Israel now ‘imports Circassians'.

The difference between the Circassians in the Caucasus and those in the diaspora are perhaps most marked in Jordan, where the Circassians have a privileged position. Circassians, more than the Bedouins and Palestinians who make up the rest of the population, have created a civil Jordanian identity and allied themselves closely with the ruling family. They act as a unit in the tribal law that regulates relations between communities, and hold high posts in government, the army and business.

Amman, the capital of Jordan, was founded by Circassian refugees on the site of a ruined Roman city and Circassians still provide the bodyguards for the royal family. Their property in central Amman is home to Palestinians who fled what is now Israel in a series of waves starting in 1948. Although they were initially poor, the Circassians have made money from property deals and from their closeness to the royal family, and are now Westernized and secular.

The Circassians I spoke to were fluent in English, and, despite being proud of their heritage, they came from the mould of wealthy Middle Easterners who looked to America and Europe for their culture. Before a concert and performance given by a dance troupe from the Caucasus, young and fashionable Circassians kissed each other on meeting, then stood and chatted in Arabic, their conversations larded with English phrases: ‘oh my God'; ‘reach common ground'; ‘no way'. My friend Zaina pointed out different members of the audience, with remarks that one was engaged to an American, another one had married someone from England, and so on.

I was surprised to hear of Circassians marrying outside their community, and asked Zaina if it was common. ‘Oh, it is better to marry a European than an Arab,' she said.

During my few days in Amman, I visited sports clubs with swanky swimming pools and tennis courts, and was invited to smart, air-conditioned flats on the outskirts of the dusty, sprawling city. I had come here particularly to meet a group of students whom I had heard about in Israel. While I'd been sitting with Khon in Kfar-Kama, which is just the other side of the river Jordan, he had wanted to
show me quite how much the Circassian diaspora had changed since those days when he and his neighbours had hunched round a crackly radio broadcast from Syria.

Turning on his television, he showed me NART TV, a station made by Circassians for Circassians and decorated with the Circassian flag in the top corner. It showed a folk dance, and then a children's tale, then some words by a Circassian academic, then some talking in the extinct Ubykh language. It was an interesting broadcast, but then, abruptly, it went back to the beginning again. This was on loop, and full programming had not started yet. Khon, however, was excited. This satellite television station could help provide the glue required to bring the scattered Circassians together.

When I tracked down the NART (National Adiga Radio and Television) TV team, I was stunned by how young they were to carry such a heavy burden. The oldest of them, and the originator of the idea, was Nart Naghway, a 24-year-old with a quite breath-taking degree of ambition.

‘As you can see,' he said, waving around the clean but messy office where his team was based, ‘we are a small group, but it's going well. We do everything here, we edit, shoot, make reports. There are thirteen of us, mostly students at the university. We had this dream, but the money issue is critical. Most people make a business plan before they start a television station, but we decided to do it the other way around. We thought we'd create the TV station first.'

He had already forged contacts with Circassians in the Caucasus and in Turkey, and planned to broadcast in all the languages of the diaspora. He would also broadcast, he said, in the different dialects used by Circassians – Kabardian in the east of Circassia and for people originating from there, Shapsug for people originating from the Black Sea coast, and other dialects in between. Circassians who did not speak Circassian would also be served with broadcasts in the languages of their home countries. The sheer complexity of broadcasting a multi-national television channel in at least four languages and an unspecified number of dialects did not seem to daunt Nart at all.

‘We will have Circassian lessons in English, in Turkish, in Arabic, that is the main role of NART TV, to teach the youth. We must use
modern technology to keep this nation alive. If we cannot communicate with each other face to face then we need to use the satellite. The internet is nice but not everyone can use it.'

As if that plan was not ambitious enough, he also told me they planned to gather archive footage from all over the Circassian community to create a resource for future generations to draw on, while also preserving the current generation from assimilation by the nations that threaten to swamp them. As we chatted, another man walked into the office. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, very fit and smartly dressed. He spoke perfect English, and handed me his business card. His name was Yinal Hatyk and he was, much to my surprise, chief of staff to Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan.

With easy authority, he took over the conversation from the younger Circassians and required little prompting to tell me his story. He visited the Caucasus for the first time in 1986 aged twenty-two. He had gone to live in the city of Nalchik for a month along with five other Jordanian Circassians. A few years later, he started working with Prince Ali because King Hussein – the prince's father – wanted his son to learn about the traditions of the people, and that included the Circassians. The prince took the project to heart. Together they hatched a plan to ride horses to the Caucasus, thus re-creating the links between the old Circassian communities, and perhaps reigniting old trade routes. In 1998, they rode up through Jordan, Syria and Turkey, caught a boat across to Russia and turned west towards Nalchik.