I will go back to my own life and this will be a memory. Do you find yourself easily changing? Do you match the company you keep?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess I do or at least did. I would like to be braver. I would like, just as an example, to be assertive enough not to mind my name or not to care what others think about my mother’s job.’
‘What’s wrong with her job?’
He sat up straight and didn’t reply. I could hear Malak in the next room close. At last he said, ‘It is not others that are the problem. Their thoughts become my thoughts.’
‘You’re young,’ I said and that was not the right thing to say. He felt somewhat rebuked.
Malak came into the kitchen, her face shining with sweat. She refilled her water bottle from the tap. ‘Ossie, show Natasha the flag that was sent to Shamil from England,’ she said as she walked out again.
In the living room, he moved a tartan rug from the top of a trunk and knelt down to open it. I sat next to him on the floor and it had been years since I had done that. My knees creaked and I shifted my heaviness on the carpet. He showed me portraits of Shamil; sketches and paintings made by Russian journalists and artists who accompanied the troops. They were orientalist in ethos: one of him standing alone in prayer while behind him his men were on horseback, swords drawn, ready to charge. In others, he wasa hawk-like figure, with brooding dark eyes. In a family album, someone had collected fragments of the comments written in the West about Shamil. Oz read them out loud and when Malak joined us, she supplied the appropriate accent and I was soon laughing.
A French accent for Alexander Dumas: ‘Shamil, the Titan, who struggles from his lair against the tsar.’
The MP in the House of Commons lauding Shamil’s stand as a check to tsarist designs in India: ‘… a really splendid type who stood up to tyrants … and deeply religious even if he did have several wives …’ The Caucasus blocked the route to Delhi and Shamil was their man.
‘Look,’ Malak said and took out a scrap of material preserved in a sealed glass case. Three scarlet stars stitched on a dull beige background that must have been white at the time. ‘This was part of a banner that was sent to Shamil as a token of support. Imagine a group of English ladies, a sewing circle, stitching away in a parlour. Wasn’t it good of them, Natasha?’
Oz shook his head. He was right to be sceptical. These tokens were not enough to save Shamil. All the newspaper articles that extolled Phoenix rising from the ashes of Akhulgo, all the calls in Parliament for an independent Dagestan, all the collections for the ‘poor, brave Caucasians’, the talk of training from Indian army officials on modern artillery methods, at the end only provided him with moral support.
‘These three stars on the flag,’ I said, ‘probably represent Georgia, Circassia and Dagestan even though Georgia had ceded to Russia.’
Oz showed me sheets of music enfolded in a romantic colourful cover of warriors with their swords and Arabian steeds. The title was The Shamil Schottische and Malak gave us a demonstration of the dance, a slower polka that really needed a partner, she said, but Oz would not oblige.
It was part of the magic of the day, to watch her dance and laugh, to listen to Oz teasing her. She was light on her feet, saying‘The composer was English and to use Shamil’s name to market the tune must mean that he captured people’s imagination at the time.’ The sun shone on the sweep of her black hair, her jade earrings. The sight filled me with a sense of privilege, a gratitude I had not felt for a long time. Here we were, the three of us, fascinated by a common past – faithful to it, even. I at least to the history, they to an ancestor they were proud of. It was only in a specific period of Shamil’s career that he won British favour – the years after Akhulgo, the politics surrounding the Crimean War, up
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess I do or at least did. I would like to be braver. I would like, just as an example, to be assertive enough not to mind my name or not to care what others think about my mother’s job.’
‘What’s wrong with her job?’
He sat up straight and didn’t reply. I could hear Malak in the next room close. At last he said, ‘It is not others that are the problem. Their thoughts become my thoughts.’
‘You’re young,’ I said and that was not the right thing to say. He felt somewhat rebuked.
Malak came into the kitchen, her face shining with sweat. She refilled her water bottle from the tap. ‘Ossie, show Natasha the flag that was sent to Shamil from England,’ she said as she walked out again.
In the living room, he moved a tartan rug from the top of a trunk and knelt down to open it. I sat next to him on the floor and it had been years since I had done that. My knees creaked and I shifted my heaviness on the carpet. He showed me portraits of Shamil; sketches and paintings made by Russian journalists and artists who accompanied the troops. They were orientalist in ethos: one of him standing alone in prayer while behind him his men were on horseback, swords drawn, ready to charge. In others, he wasa hawk-like figure, with brooding dark eyes. In a family album, someone had collected fragments of the comments written in the West about Shamil. Oz read them out loud and when Malak joined us, she supplied the appropriate accent and I was soon laughing.
A French accent for Alexander Dumas: ‘Shamil, the Titan, who struggles from his lair against the tsar.’
The MP in the House of Commons lauding Shamil’s stand as a check to tsarist designs in India: ‘… a really splendid type who stood up to tyrants … and deeply religious even if he did have several wives …’ The Caucasus blocked the route to Delhi and Shamil was their man.
‘Look,’ Malak said and took out a scrap of material preserved in a sealed glass case. Three scarlet stars stitched on a dull beige background that must have been white at the time. ‘This was part of a banner that was sent to Shamil as a token of support. Imagine a group of English ladies, a sewing circle, stitching away in a parlour. Wasn’t it good of them, Natasha?’
Oz shook his head. He was right to be sceptical. These tokens were not enough to save Shamil. All the newspaper articles that extolled Phoenix rising from the ashes of Akhulgo, all the calls in Parliament for an independent Dagestan, all the collections for the ‘poor, brave Caucasians’, the talk of training from Indian army officials on modern artillery methods, at the end only provided him with moral support.
‘These three stars on the flag,’ I said, ‘probably represent Georgia, Circassia and Dagestan even though Georgia had ceded to Russia.’
Oz showed me sheets of music enfolded in a romantic colourful cover of warriors with their swords and Arabian steeds. The title was The Shamil Schottische and Malak gave us a demonstration of the dance, a slower polka that really needed a partner, she said, but Oz would not oblige.
It was part of the magic of the day, to watch her dance and laugh, to listen to Oz teasing her. She was light on her feet, saying‘The composer was English and to use Shamil’s name to market the tune must mean that he captured people’s imagination at the time.’ The sun shone on the sweep of her black hair, her jade earrings. The sight filled me with a sense of privilege, a gratitude I had not felt for a long time. Here we were, the three of us, fascinated by a common past – faithful to it, even. I at least to the history, they to an ancestor they were proud of. It was only in a specific period of Shamil’s career that he won British favour – the years after Akhulgo, the politics surrounding the Crimean War, up
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