The Mountain and the Wall (31 page)

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The year of the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen militants.

PART IV

1

The thing that bothered Madina the most was that the blessed world of truth and justice that had been promised to her never came into being; instead, every night she was awakened by the sound of shots and screams, and by the red glow rising from burning homes. Once they had destroyed the bankers and policemen, the imams of mosques and the teachers at the new theological academies, the
mujahideen
started in on their former neighbors, relatives, and classmates.

“Brother Muslims!” she read on leaflets that fell out of Otsok-Al-Jabbar’s pockets, “collect
zakat
from everyone who is obliged to pay! If a man refuses, take it by force! And if he denies
zakat,
then take
dzhizia
from him, and fight him mightily, as with a
kafir
! Burn his property! Destroy his fields! Kill him in the name of Allah, and let not your hands falter!”

So long as the cause was taking revenge on murderers in the security forces, corrupt officials, and thieves, Madina passionately supported the calls for violent action; she knitted warm socks and sweaters for jihadists and was prepared to share everything she had with the
umma.
But then things changed. First the
mujahideen
murdered her uncle, her father’s brother, for some incautious remark. Her mother ran to Madina cursing, hurled the bag with their rations from the Emirate
at her, and grain had spilled out and scattered on the floor.

“It’s all because of you!” screamed her mother in her native language. “Because of you and your
abrek
we’ve become nothing but rotten meat! Our whole family has turned against us! We shouldn’t have supported you, you bitch. I should given you a good beating and thrown you out on the street the day you put on that veil!”

Madina bit her lips wrathfully and said, “Go away, then, leave!”

Her mother left, but rumors kept coming; more and more friends and family members were being killed by the
mujahideen,
and Madina couldn’t sleep or focus on her Koran and
hadiths
readings or her Arabic studies.

“What is going on, Al-Jabbar?” she would ask her husband. “Filth everywhere, there’s no running water or electricity, and they’re out persecuting perfectly innocent people.”

“Innocent?” snapped Al-Jabbar. “Those so-called innocent people tormented my brother and drove him into the woods with their slander and denunciation, and they were about to drive me out there too! Those people reject the teachings of Allah, Madina! They are ignorant and deaf and do not follow the holy sharia law. They paid the
kafir
state for electricity, gas, and water, and the
kafir
state used that tax money to destroy us…”

But Al-Jabbar’s voice wavered. People didn’t take him seriously when he spoke at
dzhamaat
assemblies and excluded him from important work assignments.

“Your husband,” the black widows and
Salafi
wives said to Madina, “hasn’t killed a single
murtad
! He never lived in the forest! Just giving food to a brother
mujahid
is hardly some major act of heroism.”

“But he follows Islam,” Madina said, trying to defend him.

“Follows Islam!” snorted the women, “Some hero you’ve found! Does he teach others? It’s not enough to live a righteous life—
the earth must be purged of the unrighteous.”

Madina sulked and stroked her belly; she hadn’t yet begun to show.

The people of the Emirate grew restless. They fled south in convoys, hauling their earthly goods to the other side of the Samur. There they encountered columns of the newly founded Belokano-Dzharsk
dzhamaat,
whose members dreamed about joining the Emirate, heading north.

Madina heard stories. There was a woman in Izberbash who murdered an emissary who wouldn’t let her get behind the wheel. A vintner from Derbent with the strange name of Peak had tracked down the men who had destroyed his cognac distillery and had mowed them down with a machine gun. In many regions the local people had disbanded the sharia courts.

“Still,” said the women, “there are a lot of people around who support the strictest Islam. And what was it like before? It was all about money—give money. Give money here, give money there, bribe your way into the university, pay off your teachers and your kids’ teachers. Now everyone will live honestly…”

But people still grumbled, even in the
dzhamaats,
which were bursting at the seams with new recruits.

“Half of our leaders spit on Islam, all they care about is making money!” whispered the young
mujahideen,
flashing their fanatical eyes.

And indeed, many of those who had taken over the converted government building had moved into confiscated government villas, taken former debauchees as their wives, sometimes several at a time, and under the banner of
tawhid
had taken up racketeering and banditry. When any of their confederates objected they answered, “Have you heard our emir’s instructions? We are to free ourselves of romantics and idealists, of the people who went off into the woods to fight for justice. We must struggle not for some abstract justice, but for faith in the
Prophet,
salallakhu alaikha vassalam
!”

This intimidated many former
gazavat
warriors. A few of them, after some hesitation, ran off and joined the burgeoning Nakshiband opposition. And one morning a group of armed young men attacked some
mujahideen
who were holding a meeting in a former school, and in the ensuing scuffle killed one of the
naibs
—a deputy of the chief emir.

Madina and her girlfriends were approaching the
madrasa,
when Zariat, wearing a black niqab, ran out and shouted, “The Sufi polytheists are attacking our men at the gas station! It’s a total bloodbath!”

“Al…Al-Jabbar,” Madina was shaking, close to tears.

“Say a
sabur,
sister, your husband isn’t there right now, he’s at the seashore. Some guys came up from the sea and just started shooting.”

“What, they came by sea? Who is it?” Madina was gasping for air.

The rest of the Muslim women ran up to them, waving their arms.

“It’s the damned
dzhakhils,
on account of the wine! They’re coming from Kizlyar, not the sea!”

“
Astauperulla,
sister! What wine are you talking about?”

“Our brothers destroyed the Kizlyar wine cellars, and the
dzhakhils
got all worked up. They said there were rare vintages there.”

“
Auzubillah,
may Allah save us from those ignorant
murtads
!” wailed Zariat.

Madina turned and ran, she had no idea where.

2

She ran toward the sea, past people covered with dust and tormented by fear and uncertainty. She ran past silent clusters of terrified girls dragging barrels of water.

“
Munafiqs
! Hypocrites! They put on the hijab to keep from being murdered, while living in
nifaq
! They enter Islam from one side, and come out the other!” she muttered, watching the girls: anything but think about her husband.

“Hey, stop! Where do you think you’re going?” an armed man shouted to her from around the corner.

“To join the battle!” Madina flew past, amazing the timid onlookers.

She rounded the corner and there was Shamil. He was walking along, taking big strides, a heavy rucksack bouncing against his back. Madina remembered the games they used to play as children in Ebekh; she recalled their dance at a wedding in Kaspiisk, his confession of love, their courtship, and she recalled the all-encompassing loathing, the scorn, even, that she had come to feel for this rudderless hypocrite.

“Go on, keep walking,” she whispered, “Just keep on walking with that rucksack of yours. If I had married you I would have turned you over to the
shaitan
! Al-Jabbar is handsomer, stronger, smarter, better, closer to Allah.”

She stopped to catch her breath, but Shamil had vanished. He hadn’t seen her.

Shamil was on his way to the house where Asya was living. They would load up their things and join an armed convoy heading for his home village.

“I should have gotten another weapon. Here I am like some fool with my rubber-bullet gun…”

For the first time in many days he felt at ease and even happy. The obsession with Otsok that had taken root in his head was gone, and instead something tender, something gauzy and chartreuse, had taken its place.

“Asya,” he said to himself quietly, and before he could even be surprised at himself for saying her name, something buzzed in the sky
overhead, then it hummed, then it growled, then it roared.

The shadow of the thing in the sky sped along the ground and across the building façades, and the roar became a deafening howl. Then within the howl there arose another sound, something excruciating, piercing, and thin. At that moment there was a tremendous explosion behind the nearest houses, and everything was engulfed in hot smoke. Shamil fell to the rumbling earth, clutching at his aching ears. People came running out of the smoke, covered with blood, their mouths distorted with panic.

Shamil tossed away his rucksack and rushed into the smoke toward the wounded people. The street itself was maimed, strewn with fragments of glass and cement dust. Shamil coughed. “Where are they?” he repeated to himself, over and over. His people were waiting there, with Asya. But the buildings were unrecognizable, their shredded, shattered contents jutting into the scorching, smoky air. On the ground, people writhed in agony, dying.

There came another roar, something exploded and thundered, now from some other direction. Shamil braced himself against a wall that had been left standing. Behind it, in what had been a private home, weak groans could be heard. The world wavered and floated before his eyes. With a mighty effort he pushed away from the wall and staggered on in the direction of the house, which was gradually becoming engulfed in smoke. On both sides the buildings stood with their roofs turned inside out, their paneless windows gaping.

“
Vai alla, vai alla
!”

Shamil wanted to add his voice to the chorus of howls, but he restrained himself and pressed on, flexing his limbs as he went, bumping into bewildered, panicked people, all of them rushing somewhere. On he went, on and on and on, and he lost all sense of time and no
longer understood what was going on around him.

On the corner of some endless street he came upon a demolished antique shop. Out of the remains of its ruined wall bulged a chaos of antique kettles, wooden chests, and engraved bronze plates that had tumbled down from the walls.

“They’re bombing the port!” shouted a man, his face stained with ash and blood. “The docks, the warehouses!”

Shots whooped from the sea. A
mujahid
draped in a black flag with a white horizontal saber on it had climbed up onto the roof of one of the surviving houses with his automatic weapon and had begun strafing the street. Everyone lurched and fled, Shamil among them. The shattered streets belched up cursing people, and a terrible, thundering crash was heard. A dog tore past, leaping across the splayed metal fittings and the fragments of adobe bricks.

“Where’s their house?” Shamil asked and asked, and no longer understood what he was asking.

Cement dust rose in a column above the street, blinding him; there was a buzzing in his ears. Up ahead a man was running, showing the rubber soles of his shoes. Shamil ran after him, slipping on plastic bags scattered on the ground. Rounding the turn, he saw several more people running. On a rooftop someone was shouting hoarsely, “
Tokhta
!
Tokhta
!” Behind them something heavy lumbered across the roof, sending tiles crashing to the ground, but the people ran on, seeking shelter from whatever it was making that terrible roar. Shamil rounded one last corner, then heard nothing more…

EPILOGUE

Laughing, Anvar ascended the stone steps and, springing up onto the flat roof, sat down next to the women to watch the dancing. Above the newlyweds hung an aurochs head, adorned with colorful ribbons, and wedding silver jingled on the bride’s forehead, the back and crown of her head, her neck, temples, chest, belly, and the hem of her dress.

A man wearing a goat-head mask poured wine out of wineskins into goblets made of animal horns, and teased and joked with the people dancing. Between the
zurna
players and the drummers a bright-eyed girl stood tapping a tambourine. She sang about eternal snowcapped mountain peaks and spring thaws, about lovesickness and mourning doves, about unfaithful lovers, and about death, which did not exist.

They danced: Kerim and Zumrud, Dibir and Madina, Makhmud Tagirovich and Khandulai, Yusup and Abida, Otsok and Marian, Maga and Khorol-En. The women and children clapped from the rooftops, and the young people went around with wooden trays serving
khinkal
and hot meat.

Shamil took his place in the groom’s seat. He could hardly recognize Asya’s features in the face that the timid bride was trying to conceal from him, or his near and distant cousins in the merrymakers who had organized “wolves’ games,” competitions with people dressed in wolf costumes, to entertain the villagers.

The ornamentally carved window shutters had been flung open; they looked out onto the square, onto the faces of the people celebrating there, some of whom Shamil barely recognized. Among them one profile stood out, a man of fifty wearing a bright homespun shirt belted with a silver sash. The man watched the celebration with a sly smile.