The Mountain and the Wall (7 page)

“What on earth are you talking about?” The bleach-blonde in the corner sprang up from her seat. “We’ve been betrayed, the trap has snapped shut on us—you can do whatever you want, but what do we have to be glad about?”

“Khadizha, get a hold of yourself,” Shamil’s brother-in-law tried to rein her in.

But she went on: “People say they aren’t going to let anyone out, but my brother in Rostov has a wife and children, how is he supposed to get back home to them? You don’t have anything to worry about,” she said, addressing the stout policeman, “they’ll airlift you to Turkey in a helicopter, but what about the rest of us?”

“Why pick on me? And what does Turkey have to do with anything?” he retorted. “Know your place, woman! Look at her, popping up like a
shaitan,
foaming at the mouth…”

“What are you afraid of?” the man in beige shouted to her.

“Those women in veils!”

The stone-faced man blinked his right eye: “It’s because of those rabble-rousers discrediting Islam…”

“But they say that the ones discrediting Islam are you and the entire Muslim Spiritual Administration,” the young man with the lip jumped in again.

Everyone went back to shouting at once.

Shamil went out into the hot corridor and flexed his shoulders, as though trying to shrug off what he had been hearing. Then he got out his phone and poked at the buttons. Uncle Alikhan didn’t answer. He then tried his friend Arip, who worked in Moscow, but no luck there either. From the conference hall Shamil could still hear a chaos of voices, with Sharapudin Muradovich’s hoarse bass the loudest of them all.

Shamil hesitated for a moment, then stepped outside. Everything still looked the same as ever. He took in the narrow intersection where cumbersome transport taxi-vans were beeping stridently, then at some girls, chattering and laughing, who were clustered around the entrance to an ugly glass-fronted building featuring a multitude of fashion posters and shop signs, then at a bread-seller’s stall, with a head wrapped in a scarf poking out. The head shouted something
to a gaggle of barelegged boys who were running in the direction of a wooden fence covered with ads that had been built around an abandoned construction site. Cheerful shrieks could be heard from behind the fence; a huge puddle had formed in the excavation pit, and enterprising neighborhood kids had turned it into an improvised swimming pool and were splashing around. Across the street from the editorial office stood a row of brightly colored private cottages and crooked white huts, on one of which someone had scrawled a note in charcoal:
FLOUR FOR SALE.

Shamil turned the corner and went up to a table under a canopy where a woman sat limply, half-stupefied by the hot sun, selling kvass. He bought a big plastic glassful for a few ten-ruble coins, and walked over to a sun-scorched flower bed. Nearby stood a faded acacia tree, casting a meager shadow on the multicolored sidewalk slabs.

He sat down under the acacia on a bench covered with graffiti scrawled in black marker, sipped his kvass and stared thoughtfully at the street. In spite of the heat, a lot of people were outside, and the scene was alive with sound. Music blared from the little coffee shops and mixed with the buzzing of a chainsaw, the excited shouts of passersby, and the chirping of locusts. Shamil tried dialing Uncle Alikhan again, again with no success. “What am I so scared of?” he asked himself, straightening up in his seat.

He didn’t want to go back to the editorial office, especially since he figured he would be getting a regular job soon. Omargadzhi had told him that he would see what he could find out about a good position for him that might be opening up in the courthouse. Shamil gulped down the rest of his kvass, crushed the plastic cup, and looked around for a trash can. Failing to find one, he left the cup on the bench. He had to see Omargadzhi right away. He stood up and started off in
the direction of the waterfront, where a number of lawyers’ offices clustered in old, moldy-smelling wooden courtyards.

Turning down one of the streets there, Shamil ran into Khabibula. Khabibula gave a little hop for joy, jiggling his big barrel-shaped belly, beamed, baring rows of gold teeth, and started babbling: “
Salam
, Shamil! Where are you headed? I’ve just gotten back from the
kutan,
I brought back milk, cottage cheese, and some other stuff.
Vallakh,
I didn’t want to go, wanted to send Marat, but I had no choice. Look at the shape my shoes are in!” he said, gesturing at his tattered sandals. “I’m going to sell the milk and cheese and then I’ll buy some shoes, a brand-new pair. Salimat will yell at me, but is it my fault? I tore them today, walking around the city. They’re replacing the pipes on our street, there’s mud everywhere, and sharp stones…Why not come along with me, my friend—where are you headed in such a hurry?”

“I’m going to see Omargadzhi, to ask him about a job.”

“Which Omargadzhi? K’Iurbanizul Omargadzhi?” Khabibula chuckled gleefully, wiping his wrinkled mouth as he walked. “He came to see me at the tenth
kutan
: I beat him at chess twenty times! Twenty! When he sees me now, he takes off running…”

“Have you heard the rumors, Khabibula?” asked Shamil, slowing down and trying to match his steps to his companion’s short stride.

“What rumors? Oh, you must mean about Mesedu’s roof tiles being blown down in Shamkhal? Sure I have. Salimat told me. She should have asked me to install the tiles—if she had, nothing would have happened. I really put them up to stay, just ask Magomed. But Zapir, Paizulla’s son, she asked him to do it. That’s why…”

“No, not about Mesedu,” Shamil waved his hand. “It’s something else. They say we’re being walled off from Russia. Border troops, you name it. Like the Berlin Wall.”

They stopped at a crossroads, jammed with honking cars. Faces poked out of the car windows, frowning, and arms waved wildly in the air. Young pedestrians crowded on the curbs, photographing the traffic with their cellphones. Khabibula gestured toward his ears to show that he couldn’t hear anything above the traffic noise.

“
Le
, where are they all going?” he asked, perking up at the sight. “Just look at them!”

“Must be road work up ahead.”

“Come on, my friend,” Khabibula proposed again. “I’ll give you some cottage cheese…What’s this about a wall?”

“Supposedly they’re building a wall in the north, to cut us off,” repeated Shamil, reluctantly.

“
Ai, astauperulla
,” laughed Khabibula, “Forget about that
khapur-chapur
of yours! What are you talking about? Have you been visiting the newspaper? It’s those journalists of yours making it all up. Here’s our turn.”

He waved his plump hand toward a long, cluttered street, littered with private shops.

“I can’t, but look, don’t take it the wrong way—I’ll come by later, Khabibula,” Shamil smiled. “I swear—but not right now.”

“When can you? I have to go back to the
kutan
,” his companion answered briskly and straightened his cheap shirt over his big belly.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Shamil promised vaguely, looking back at the honking cars.

“I’ll be expecting you!” cried Khabibula with a smile, giving him his hand. “See you then, my friend.”

And off he went, limping and shuffling lightly in his tattered sandals. Shamil turned back in the other direction and followed the crowd.

“
Le
, what’s going on there?” he asked a young man who was running past.

“Some kind of demonstration, I think,” the man said hastily, glancing sideways at Shamil as he ran, then immediately dissolved into the mob. The Dagestani national anthem buzzed in Shamil’s pocket, and he eagerly pressed his phone to his ear.

“
Salam aleikum,
Uncle Alikhan!”

“
Vaaleikum salam,
Shamil.” His uncle’s voice was hollow and hesitant. “I saw your calls, but couldn’t answer, there’s a meeting going on here in the Ministry. Have you already heard about it, about the wall?”

“Yes, they were talking about it at the paper.”

“They say it’s true…” Uncle Alikhan breathed heavily into the phone. “We’ll be making a decision…The separatists are gathering there to talk about it too, looks like.”

“At the Kumyk Theater?” asked Shamil, watching the young people flowing in a smooth stream into the square, heading toward the theater, a semicircular building with an elaborate façade.

“I’m not sure. Where are you right now?”

“I’m here too.”

“You shouldn’t be standing around there—anyway, we don’t really know yet ourselves, we’re trying to figure it out. Farid from the government, the one who…”

His uncle’s voice cut out. Realizing that he’d lost the connection, Shamil put the phone back in his pocket and took a look around.

3

People flowed in from the side streets, and their bright T-shirts painted the square in a blurred, ever-changing play of color. Shamil stood on tiptoe and saw a group of people clustered around the theater entrance,
where a man stood with a megaphone. He was speaking in Kumyk, and it was impossible to make out what he was saying. Shamil wedged himself through the crowd. Gradually he began to catch individual words. The crowd exclaimed approvingly:

“
Tiuz
!
Tiuz
!”

Then a man with a mustache took the megaphone and began to speak.

“
Aziz yoldashlar
! We’ve been hearing rumors that there’s going to be a new government. What’s going on? Why? Those
khakims
have closed themselves off in the government and decided, without consulting us, that the Kumyks are peaceful, the Kumyks will put up with anything, they can be removed from power without any fuss…”

The crowd buzzed.

“How were things before? The Avars and Dargins had the most powerful positions in the Republic’s government, and they gave us the third place. And we always agreed to that. And now what? They want to change everything! Here in our homeland we always lived together with the Russians like this…” The man with the mustache clasped his palms tightly together. “…in peace! And then the others came down from the mountains and what happened? The Russians left…”

Indistinct shouts were heard from the front rows. All Shamil could make out was the word “Wall.”

The man with the mustache shook his head: “I don’t know a thing! Nothing at all! They’re not telling us anything! One day I hear ‘There’s a Wall,’ the next day, ‘There’s no Wall.’ All I know is that everything is all mixed up.” The man rubbed his palms together. “They want to divide everything up themselves, and keep the people out of it.”

The crowd again moaned and stirred. Another man took the megaphone. He was draped in a green cloth with a slogan stamped on it, “
Tenglik
,” in huge black letters.

“They’re trying to force us into secondary roles! But who was the first to make peace with Russia? The Kumyks. Who suffered most of all during the Civil War? The Kumyks. Who gave more sons to the Great Patriotic War than anyone else? The Kumyks. Who revolutionized agriculture? The Kumyks. And what do we have now? They took our ancestral lands. We’ve lost nearly all our arable land! Do you see Kumyks at the bazaars? Not a single one! Do you see our traditional crafts anywhere? Nowhere! We’ve closed our eyes to it until now, because we’re a wise people. But we can’t put up with it anymore. I’m telling you, it’s time…”

The square filled with sound, including, for some reason, shouts of “
Allahu akbar
!”

“It is time to liberate the plains from the usurpers, it is time to unite with our Turkic brothers,” roared the speaker. “Long live the Kumyk republic!”

Shamil looked around. The square fell silent for a moment, then came back to life, chanting “Kumykstan! Kumykstan!”

Meanwhile a neatly dressed man with a round white beard mounted the steps to the theater entrance. He waited for the shouting to die down, gave the crowd some unintelligible greeting, then began to speak in a resonant, confident voice, glancing down now and then at some notes on a piece of paper.

“You were saying just now that Moscow gave us land, and that the Tarkov chiefs, our leaders in the past, had a good relationship with Moscow…But let us remind ourselves what that means. What exactly is Moscow—who are the Rus? The Rus are Varangians, and the Varangians are Turkic Kipchaks—they wouldn’t have a language or a culture if it wasn’t for us! It was the Turks, together with Attila, who brought literacy, metalworking, and the plow to Scandinavia.
It was the Turks who gave Rus the alphabet. Cyril and Methodius were our own blood brothers, who converted the ancient Turkic runic alphabet into European letters and who devised the Glagolitic script, which had forty sounds—the exact number our language needs. And Christianity? The Patriarchal seat of the Eastern Church was located in Derbent as far back as the fourth century, and it was there that the Turkic clergy ordained the Georgian, Albanian, Syrian, Coptic, and Byzantine priests! In the Middle Ages, Desht-i-Kipchak was the biggest country in the entire area of what is now Russia. The Russian ruling elite and nobility were Turks who spoke their native language. Take the word bathhouse—
banya
—know what that is? It’s
bu-ana
!—our steam room. The Turks reigned for centuries in Kiev, till the Slavs swarmed over the city wearing animal skins, and the ancient state fell to ruin. Now our
kurgans
have been destroyed, our steppe plowed over, our cemeteries defiled. But we will not lose hope! We will take up the blue and yellow Khazar flag, will add the green of Islam, and make a new banner for the free Kipchak Steppe!”