The Mountain and the Wall (29 page)

                       
The midwife gasped.

                       
“
Vababai, vadadai!
Triplets, and not a single son! Surakat will be so upset!”

                       
They immediately set aside the umbilical cords to be dried and made into a decoction to give the newborns later when they suffered illness or insomnia. They filled a basin with salt water, and tossed in some burning coals, a set of metal tongs, and three silver rings, and washed the babies in it. Khandulai’s sister-in-law rushed to Surakat with the news.

                       
Soon guests came to see the newborns, and along with them Khandulai’s mother, bearing a marvelous cerated birch-wood cradle with a charm to protect the babies.

                       
“Who would have thought that we’d need three cradles!” She shook her head, contemplating the babies with amazement and joy.

An aunt brought a second cradle, and a third was
delivered by the new mother’s grandmother, who, having treated herself to some sweets, ensconced herself upon a three-legged stool and set to swaddling the infants. She tucked her great-grandchildren into the cradles on crackling mattresses embroidered in a crisscross pattern, and with a pair of sharp scissors underneath each one. She lifted them across a kettle full of watery kasha, black as night and steeped with sprouted barley grains, and then sang a lullaby over the cradles:

                        
Lai-lai-dalalai,

                        
May your brothers be many,

                        
Your parents be proud,

                        
May your clan respect you,

                        
Love and protect you;

                        
May Beched bless you with health

                        
And shower you with wealth!

                        
Lai-lai-dalalai…

                
They named the first girl Khorol-En, which means Ear of the Fields; the second—Marian, in honor of the crucified Isa’s mother; and the third—Abida, Arabic for “She Who Worships.”

                       
And from that day on the women of the village started bringing their sick children to Khandulai.

                       
“You gave birth to triplets,” they would say, “You have magic powers. Bathe my sick child and cure him…”

The line weaved on and on. The queue wavered but did not break.

“It’s only a temporary shortage. Soon there’ll be work for everyone. I heard that they’re printing new money, colored green for Islam.”

“Dollars, you mean?”

The line tittered and chattered quietly. Shamil flipped ahead again:

                
…and though they begged Khandulai to marry Surakat’s brother after Surakat was murdered by the scraggy outlaw Kebed, she dug in her heels.

                       
“How can you, where’s your conscience?” her mother asked. “You have three daughters. Who’s going to feed them? Who is going to defend their honor when they grow up?”

                       
“There are enough men in the
tukhum
to defend my girls,” Khandulai would say, adjusting her pendants proudly.

                       
Meanwhile the girls grew. When Khandulai sat down to work on her felt rug pad, Khorol-En, Marian, and Abida would sit in a little row with needle and thread and mend clothes. Khandulai would tell them about the gods who lived at the peak of Rokhel-Meer, about their terraced fields and houses, their bows and arrows, their toothpicks.

                       
“Don’t forget to leave three spools of thread for Gamalkar,” Khandulai would say, rhythmically working the rug press. “Or he’ll come take you to live with him.”

                       
“What’s he look like?” asked Khorol-En.

                       
“He has no arms or legs, and he goes around with a leather bag full of wool,” answered Khandulai.

                       
“Let him take Marian,” frowned Abida, who was always in a bad mood.

                       
“No, let him take Abida,” whimpered blonde Marian.

                       
“Let him take them both,” laughed black-eyed Khorol-En. “When we were having apricot compote with oatmeal today, Abida and Marian didn’t share any with father’s spirit.”

                       
“We forgot to.”

                       
“How could you forget?” Khandulai shook her head. “If you don’t share with your late father’s spirit, he will turn into a Hungry Ghost and will show up here in the village. He will be very, very angry and will take revenge on us for not sharing with him.”

                       
“Will the Ghost look like Papa?”

                       
“No, he would be enormous, as tall as the sky, and black as soot.”

                       
“Khandulai’s father-in-law, overhearing her stories one day, flew off the handle: “What is the matter with these women? Haven’t our scholars taught them that there is one god, Allah?”

                       
“Have you forgotten how you yourself used to sacrifice goats to Saint George?” mumbled Khandulai’s mother-in-law. And she told Khandulai about the time she had run into Untul Ebel in a distant village.

                       
“
Vai-vai,
” her sister-in-law’s mouth fell open. “Untul Ebel! Is it true that she’s as tall as a tree, and has holes in her face where her cheeks should be?”

                       
“And she has a really, really long nose and you can’t see her eyes under her red hair?” Khandulai joined in.

                       
“Not at all! She didn’t look like a woman, she appeared to me in the form of a baby, completely naked. This baby is walking along, and its skin is as coarse as bark. The baby is groaning—I hear this groaning sound, and it’s at night, so I say, ‘Run up the mountain, down along the river, cross over onto the land. I will give you oil to rub on the cracks in your hands and feet!’ I gather up some old things that are lying
around: worn-out trousers and old shirts, work shirts, I take them and leave them out behind the garden; let Untel Ebel pick them up there…Oh, oh, my poor Surakat!”

                       
One summer Khandulai went to collect ice in a cave where the walls were frozen even in July. When she started to chip at them, the elders ordered the entrance closed off with a big boulder.

                       
“May the ears of grain multiply in your field!” exclaimed Khandulai. “Why have you locked me up in here?”

                       
“Give us a name! Anyone—widower or handsome young man, whoever you want!”

                       
“Why should I get married?” Khandulai stood her ground. “I’ve already got three daughters!”

                       
“Just give us a name!”

                       
“But why?”

                       
“A name!”

                       
And they kept her locked up in the icy cave until Khandulai was chilled to the bone and finally shouted to the people outside:

                       
“Chantilav!”

                       
“Chantilav? Do we have a Chantilav living in the village?” the elders asked skeptically.

                       
“There’s this loner named Chantilav, a
chanka
who lives on the outskirts. A conspirator who was exiled from the neighboring khanate. He has
kunaks
from Mesedil
tukhum,
in the middle quarter of the village. They have accepted him here.”

                       
They sent some boys to inform Chantilav that he’d been selected to marry Khandulai. And so she acquired her second
husband. After a whispered consultation with the mullah, she moved to a different part of the village, leaving her daughters in the home of her first husband…

Shamil skipped ahead:

                
The outcast Kebed, whose hair had grown wild and matted, heard that the haughty girl who had rejected him was again living with a man, and he came up with a devious plan…

Shamil skipped several more pages:

                
Trembling all over, bloodied, Chantilav fell onto his mighty chest.

                       
“How can it be?” they asked later in the
godekan.
“Chantilav gathered and armed a group of his friends, crept back to his native village, and overthrew his half-brother, and after all that, what happens? Some stinking outlaw lies in wait and sticks a knife into him!”

                       
Khandulai, who had grown up in a free society where an assembly was called to discuss every last little thing and no one paid tribute to anyone, now found herself the absolute ruler of an alien khanate. Envious people, old dignitaries, and Chantilav’s former comrades-in-arms all sharpened their daggers against her, and her Turkish bodyguards demanded incredible fees.

                       
“If the child I am bearing under my heart is a boy, then there will be an heir and I am saved,” thought she at night in the palace. “But if not?”

                       
So then Khandulai decided to appeal for help to the cursed murderer, her rejected suitor Kebed…

Flip, flip, flip: “Twice a widow,” he read, “Khandulai…”

He smirked. “Really, it’s getting to be a bit much,” he said to himself. “This Khandulai woman is a regular Black Widow.”

The booth was finally just ahead. Shamil took a quick look around, then turned all the way to the last page:

                
I was taught from childhood that there is no God on earth. But now that I, Makhmud, have lived my life, I can state absolutely that He exists. And I can even tell you, dear readers, where souls end up after death.

                       
Our souls end up at the top of Rokhel-Meer, the Mountain of Celebrations. And there, on Meer, will be a place of purity, where there is no poverty, no scarcity, no want. There will be a great village there with tanneries, armories, and stone workshops. Its dwellings are part of the very cliffs; there, benign white spirits will feast together with the people, and the celebration will never end. There too, I hope, will dwell your Makhmud, he will drink fresh
buza
and watch as the dove-gray steam rises above the green-white-blue peaks…

“Break it up, go on home! There’s no more bread!” howled someone in a crude bass.

The line fidgeted and dispersed.

5

So Shamil didn’t get any bread. He headed morosely off, but noticed a chartreuse-colored cloud, a light expanse of cloth billowing in the wind amid the hushed crowd, barely touching the earth.

“Asya!” exclaimed Shamil, discerning her familiar little nose in the waves of undulating cloth.

She smiled and floated toward him.

“What is that thing you’re wearing?” Shamil snickered, looking over Asya’s turban with its strangely flowing sail, and at all the gauzy material lightly enveloping her figure.

“I’m covering my
avrat.
”

“That may very well be, but you’re actually attracting attention.”

“You’re not the first to tell me that. They said that your external hijab needs to reflect your inner hijab.” Asya looked around guiltily. “I simply wanted to cheer myself up,” she said. “With everything that’s going on around here…you can’t make any sense of it.”

“Why aren’t you in Georgia?” Shamil got in a little jab. “Bearing in mind that I have no intention of leaving town.”

“Forget the letter,” Asya snapped, and then asked, “You’re not going to make fun of me just because of that, are you?”

“Anyone in my position would.”

“But you’re not just anyone,” objected Asya with uncustomary haste.

“Where did you get the nerve?”

“You try to live in a house without water or light for a whole week! What’s it going to be like in the winter? We’re going to have to get ahold of some kerosene lamps.”

Asya had spent the last few days hauling buckets to the neighboring
quarter to get water from the people there, who still had some utilities running. In the evenings people locked themselves inside their homes, lit stearin candles and huddled there quaking at the slightest sound. The women covered themselves completely from head to toe, cowering from the ferocious guardians of morality patrolling the streets, while the older men glowered, fiddled around with the felled telephone lines and their mute televisions, grumbling under their breath.