The Kindness of Enemies: A Novel (19 page)

On the way out of the café, I threw the pro-life leaflet into the bin. A friend once said to me, ‘You’re not the first or last woman to have had an abortion. Get over it.’ But I was a Sudanese woman or at least, when I learnt the facts of life, I was preparing to be one. No matter how much I changed when I came to Britain, changed my behaviour and my thoughts, there would be layers of me, pockets, membranes and films that would carry these other values and that other guilt.

The thought of guilt led me back to Oz. What if he wasn’t innocent? How could I be sure of anything? Sit on the fence and be neither this nor that, believe in everything, believe in nothing. Know only excess and hunger. Too much sugar in my blood and a need for a roof over my head. The repairs to my flat were likely to take weeks, delays because of Christmas, delays because it was winter. Until then I would be a nomad, living in temporary accommodation and on the weekends with Tony or friends. The afternoon sun was hidden behind more snow clouds. It was time for me to head back to the university.

Iain walked into my office and closed the door behind him. He said, ‘I’ve just had two officers in my room interviewing me about Oz Raja.’

Why Iain? Because even though he was head of the department, he was Oz’s tutor too. I should have expected this.

‘What did they want?’ I wanted my voice to sound casual. Business as usual, as if this was another administrative issue, serious and urgent, but not out of the ordinary. I noticed that Iain’s hair was even bigger than usual today. He must have been a Duran Duran fan back in the eighties.

‘They wanted to know if Oz had been behaving suspiciously. They wanted to know if he drinks alcohol.’

‘He doesn’t.’

‘They wanted to know if he has a girlfriend.’

I paused for a second and then I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ Why drag the girl into this?

Iain shifted his weight. He pressed his back against the door. ‘They wanted to know whether he had always worn a beard.’

On another day, on another occasion we could have been laughing. All of this was the stuff of jokes. ‘Yes,’ I replied. I noticed Iain’s shirt was striped and his tie was striped, navy bars straight and slanting.

His voice rose a pitch higher. ‘They wanted to know why in the reports we submitted about the students vulnerable to radicalisation, Osama Raja’s name never showed up?’

I had written these reports. Two of them. I had written them well and I had written them with care. But I had not written them about Oz.

‘I had everyone backing out of this saying they won’t spy on their own students.’ Iain spoke more softly. ‘You volunteered for the training course. You wrote these reports. So what happened?’

He was right, hardly any academic member of staff wanted the added task of monitoring their Muslim students. ‘This is Scotland, not Bradford,’ was one of the comments, and ‘We don’t have enough Muslim students to justify the time and effort.’ I remembered Fiona Ingram saying, ‘I will not shop my students and end up losing their trust in the process!’

But I had no qualms. I had figured out, long ago, that it paid to do what the competition found difficult, distasteful or even just a waste of time. Besides, we had to show, in addition to our publications, that we were undertaking Continuing Professional Development. Attending this training course would count as such. It was held at another university and I went by train. It was only as I gazed out of the window at the Scottish green and shimmering
grey sea, that I admitted to myself that I was doing this to distance myself. From Hussein and from the titles of my papers. The two consultants who led the workshop were ‘industry specialists’ and not academics. It was assumed that we agreed with the effectiveness of the strategy to prevent radicalisation and by extension another terrorist attack. I remember thinking, ‘If you say so.’ I remember knowing that I was a hypocrite; I remember the reach to grab yet another opportunity. But the awareness was banal and familiar, like the fact that I was overweight, another fault I could live with.

Later, I applied what I had learnt at the course and referred two students. One of them was an international post-grad who was skipping classes. The UK Border Agency had already suspended one Scottish university’s licence to sponsor overseas students – so it was right that I should expose any irregularity. The other student, son of a halal butcher in Glasgow, was a nasty little number. Misogynist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, he had no qualms in sharing with me his extremist views. Instead of trying to argue some sense into him, I let him speak his mind and ended up writing a report that swarmed with details. There was no point in attending a training course if I was not going to put what I had learnt into practice.

I opened my mouth to explain but Iain went on, ‘Why couldn’t you identify Oz as being at risk, when now the police have him in for supporting websites that recruit Chechen Jihadist fighters who are linked to al-Qaeda? And what on earth were you doing in their house when he was arrested?’

The last question was the easiest to answer. To start with my research on Shamil was the sturdiest of footholds. To talk of the snow, their house, their connection to Shamil soothed me. He heard me out without interrupting.

‘Oz didn’t tick the right boxes,’ I said to Iain.

He remained standing and I remained sitting. The stripes of his shirt dazzled my eyes. They merged and moved. ‘Oz wasn’t lonely, he wasn’t depressed or isolated. He didn’t seem to me to have more political grievances than average. He wasn’t disadvantaged, and he
wasn’t estranged from his family. His parents are divorced but his father supports him. His father is, as far as I gathered, a successful businessman in South Africa and his mother’s an actor, so I judged Oz to be integrated and well adjusted. They’re pretty well off. I mean, how many people can afford a state-of-the-art treadmill in their house?’

My last sentence didn’t soften the mood. Iain’s head was tilted down towards me. I noticed that he was holding a pen in his hand. ‘Natasha, if this boy is found guilty how are we going to look?’

‘He’s not guilty,’ I said.

‘The police don’t go around arresting people at random.’

‘It still doesn’t make him guilty.’

Iain spoke to me as if I was someone else. ‘You aren’t answering my question. So I will ask you again. If he goes down, how are
you
going to look?’

‘Not good.’

‘That’s right. And I don’t want that and you don’t want that. So here is what you’re going to do. You are going to write me a report on every conversation you’ve had with Oz Raja. I want every email he sent you and every paper he’s ever submitted in your course.’

So I would write that he made snowmen and chopped practised cutting their heads off with a sword.

So I would write that he joked spoke about setting up a jihadist camp in the countryside.

So I would write that he was researching weapons used to use for jihad.

I must have scowled. I might have even shut my eyes. I couldn’t look at his shirt stripes any more. They were like electrical circuits.

Iain said, ‘I think the police might want to ask you more questions and check your desktop. I hope they won’t decide to seal off this room. Everyone walking down the corridor will want to know why!’ His tone then became friendlier, as if we had finished a meeting and now we were chatting informally. He even put his hand on the back of my chair. ‘Natasha, you’re astute enough to know what
needs to be done. You’ve always been an asset to us and I want you to continue to be so.’

He turned to leave the room. He put his pen in the pocket of his shirt and his hand on the doorknob. ‘And I don’t need to remind you that your contract of employment warns you against bringing the university into disrepute.’

No, he did not need to remind me. And I noted that he had not mentioned Gaynor Stead or the fact that her complaint had been upheld. A complaint against me was already in the system, being examined, being processed. Iain would expect me to feel grateful that he hadn’t brought this up. He would expect me to respond.

2. D
ARGO, THE
C
AUCASUS
, S
EPTEMBER
1854

Quickly it became also about money. Zeidat towered over her. ‘Shamil Imam doesn’t want it for himself; he doesn’t care.’ Her Russian had improved or more likely Anna was finding it easier to understand. ‘Look how we live!’ Zeidat’s hand swept over the bare room ridiculously referred to as the guest quarters, the walls stained with damp, the tired cushion Anna was sitting on. She was mending a ragged piece of netting brought in to protect Alexander from the flying insects that bit him through the night.

‘Look,’ Zeidat repeated as if Anna, in this confinement, had not noticed the broken chimney or the small lopsided window – and this room, as she had found out, was one of the better ones.

Anna continued with her sewing while Zeidat paced up and down. This flexing of muscles, her voice louder than usual, was because Shamil was away. His departure, a dawn gallop of horses, had not woken Anna. After bedtime, she would listen to Alexander’s steady breathing and to Madame Drancy who snored softly in her sleep. For hours, Anna would vibrate with injustice until, in the middle of an unspoken accusation, sleep would dunk her down and keep her oblivious to the break of dawn and the early movements
of the aoul. ‘Lazy,’ Zeidat had said in front of the other women. ‘Brought up in the lap of luxury, never done a day’s work. Satan pisses in her ear, that’s why the infidel can’t hear the call to the dawn prayers,’ she would laugh to the others, who always objected, who often defended Anna. Shamil’s orders were that she be treated as a guest but she was not fully shielded from Zeidat’s daily knocks, her twists of the mouth and sighs of exasperation. Today she was even more reckless because she was the one solely in charge now, she commanded and forbade. So breakfast had been water and dried bread for the hostages, no tea. Later, Anna guessed, it would be tepid unappetising soup or even no dinner at all.

Zeidat swept down and squatted in front of her, her breath dry and sour. She clicked her fingers in front of Anna’s face so that the diamond on her ring flashed. ‘Recognise this!’ It had belonged to David’s mother; it was looted from Tsinondali. ‘Your husband is rich, isn’t he? So he needs to pay us. We must have fifty thousand roubles. We need to build our villages again, the ones you burnt down, the trees you cut down, the crops you destroyed, the pastures you razed, the cattle you did not pull away like decent warriors but shot down for no reason other than that you are evil Russians.’

I am Georgian, not Russian.

It was difficult to stop the words from coming out but still it was a challenge that she welcomed. Being able to restrain herself was itself a reassurance that she had control. She needed these proofs throughout the day. A little while ago, when Zeidat walked in, Anna had ordered Drancy to step out of the room and noted with bitter satisfaction the reply of ‘Yes, Your Highness’. Insisting that Alexander continue with his lessons, asking him to speak French at all times with Madame Drancy. She was clinging to who she had been, insisting on being more than a prisoner. ‘Anna, Princess of Georgia’ was how Shamil had addressed her. He knew who she was.

‘Write a letter,’ Zeidat hissed.

‘I have written to my husband.’

A smirk. ‘And he has not paid up. Maybe your husband has forgotten you. Write to that rich tsar of yours. Tell him to pay your ransom. Beg him for help.’

‘No.’ She should have heeded the warnings and stayed in Tiflis for the summer; later on she should have escaped immediately to the forest. Now, especially, she could not approach the emperor when he was so troubled by the campaigns in the Crimea.

Zeidat looked like she wanted to hit her. She opened her mouth but Anna interrupted, ‘The tsar will not hand over Jamaleldin.’ She remembered him clearly now as the exotically handsome aide-decamp, walking two paces behind the tsar. ‘And Jamaleldin himself would never want to come here.’

A vagueness skimmed over Zeidat’s eyes. Jamaleldin was not her son; perhaps that was why she cared more about the money. But Anna had heard Shamil say, ‘I want my son back.’ She had understood him because of Lydia.

Zeidat cocked her head to one side. ‘The tsar will return Shamil Imam’s son. And your husband will pay the money.’

‘My husband does not have fifty thousand roubles.’

‘Liar,’ Zeidat snorted.

‘I am not a liar. His wealth is in the land.’

‘Then he will have to sell it, won’t he?’

‘We don’t sell our land. It belongs to our ancestors and to our children. It is more than a possession.’ Tsinondali was vivid to her, more so than the present. Tsinondali was big and bright and waiting for her. When she was young, her father would speak disapprovingly of a neighbour who sold his land to cover debts, of a cousin who neglected his estate, of a friend who mistreated his serfs. The land was a responsibility, part of the fabric of the family. Not for sale.

Zeidat stood up. ‘Haughty, haughty. Do you think I believe such nonsense? Sell, borrow, steal, we don’t care. We want both: Jamaleldin and the money. Otherwise what will happen? You asked Shamil Imam this when you were presented to him and what did he say? He said “Our ordinary laws and customs will apply.” Did
you understand what he meant? Of course you didn’t. Well let me explain. It means no more of the “guest” nonsense. It means you are a prisoner-of-war, like any prisoner. How do you treat us, you Russians, when our men fall into your hands? When our women fall into your hands?’ She squatted down again close to Anna. ‘Let me tell you, I lost sisters in Akhulgo dear to me, one a cousin and another a close friend. When the village fell, they could see the Russian soldiers climbing up, coming close, they could not escape and so they knew the Russians were going to capture them; do you know what they did? They covered their faces with their veils and jumped from the cliffs.’ Zeidat’s voice rose to a pitch. ‘Because being captured by the Russians is worse for a woman than death. Do you understand what I am saying? If the negotiations fail, you, Anna, would become a prisoner-of-war. You would be tossed out of my home and I would do it gladly. If the money isn’t paid, if Shamil Imam doesn’t get his son back, he will hand you over as a gift to his favourite naib. You understand, Anna, what I mean by the word “gift” – of course, you are not a child. That is our custom. Already every day now one of his naibs approaches him with an offer to purchase you. So write to the tsar.’