Her maternal grandmother said that Asya obviously took after her father’s side of the family, but her paternal grandmother said that Asya took after her mother’s side, and ultimately, after giving her a good scolding for the gray, limp khinkal and misshapen kurze she made, they left her to her own devices. So she spent her time reading books that she found piled up on the shelves, most of them non-Russian, old, and in tatters. There she found antique collections of sermons, edifying tracts, and theological poetry by Mukhammedkhadzhi from Kikuni, Khadzhimukhammed from Gigatl, Omargadzhi-Ziiaudin from Miatli, Sirazhudin from Obod, Gazimukhammed from Urib, Ismail from Shulani, Chupalav from Igali. There she found lyric poetry by Magomedbek from Gergebil, Magomed from Chirkey, Kurbana from Inkhelo, Magomed from Tlokh, Chanka from Batlaich, and his disciple the romantic poet Makhmud from Kakhabroso. Asya leafed through these books without understanding even half of the abundant ornate metaphors and exotic analogies they contained.
The margins were cluttered with check marks and notes, some of them just words crammed together without punctuation. Within an eighteen-year period Avar literature had endured a series of shocks: First, in 1920 the Arabic alphabet had been transformed into adzham, the new Arabic-based script, and then, ten years later, adzham had given way to Latin letters, and the books with Arabic script were destroyed. Eight years after that, Cyrillic replaced the Latin alphabet, with additional symbols to mark guttural sounds, and their vocabulary swelled and multiplied. Before the Dagestanis had time to acclimate to one new writing system, they had to start learning the next. There was such confusion that the new Cyrillic words were written without spaces, like Arabic script, out of pure inertia.
But Asya wasn’t allowed to languish over books for long. She was extracted from her refuge and an attempt was made to force her out into society. This effort failed. Asya lurched like a crane when she tried to dance, flapping her arms wildly in the air. She avoided bright-colored clothes and preferred flat sandals to elegant, spangled high heels. Her hair was chestnut colored and thin, like corn silk, and her arms were skinnier, as her grandmother put it, than intestines. To complicate matters, on one of Asya’s visits to her father’s village she made a serious misjudgment. One day after lunch she went out onto the main street, where she ran into the village flirt, Chakar, who was carrying a plastic water jug. Chakar gave a friendly whistle, and set down the jug.
“Come on, Asya, join us,” she whispered. “We’re going out. Just put on a scarf.”
“Going out where?” asked Asya. Chakar’s free-and-easy manner disconcerted her.
“Just up the mountain and back with the guys. You’ll be home in an hour. Please say yes—I can’t go with them by myself.”
Asya felt a rush of emotion, flattered that the beautiful Chakar had invited her, happy at the prospect of some unexpected adventure—anything to pull her out of the oppressive monotony of village life—but scared that her grandmother would notice her absence and would tell her father afterward. Chakar was so nice, so sophisticated, so fun-loving, that Asya agreed to join her. She rushed home, rooted around in the chest of drawers, found a gaudy aquamarine-colored headscarf, and threw it on. Grabbing a rusty watering can for appearance’s sake, she ducked into the garden, and from there darted down terraced steps and climbed over fences until she reached the edge of the village, where an old brown jeep was waiting.
Asya got in front next to the driver, and Chakar sat in back, cramped between four big strong guys, giggling and joking in her soft voice. A fragrant breeze blew through the open windows. The rough road looped over ravines and abysses, threaded between huge granite boulders, forded streams, and plunged into wooded thickets, bouncing the jeep up and down as it crossed old ruts and ran over stones.
In the back, Chakar squabbled playfully with the guys, teased the driver, and jabbed Asya from behind with her finger: “I bet you don’t get to ride around like this in the big city, do you, Asya?”
The driver, a big, meaty fellow, inserted a CD of folk songs into the player. The guys in the back snapped their fingers, Chakar shouted “Vore, vore!” and the aquamarine scarf quivered and fluttered on Asya’s head. They sped up till they reached where the road turned, wheeled around the curve with squealing tires, and headed up toward the crooked groves of pine and birch and the alpine meadows scattered over the slopes there. Asya began to feel uneasy. She looked back at Chakar, who was squeezed between bulky male shoulders, then turned toward the driver. But everyone was laughing, singing along with the CD, and no one paid any attention to her. All at once her head was in her hands, and she’d burst into tears.
“Hey there, hey!” the others chorused, baffled. Chakar disdainfully commanded the group not to frighten the “little fool” any further, and to turn back toward the village.
The jeep braked dutifully, but the driver didn’t turn it around, instead springing down onto the roadside and wading into the tall grass up to his knees, doing neck stretches as he went. The others tumbled out after him.
“We’ll just take a little break here and then go back,” Chakar reassured Asya. She took a plastic bottle of spring water from under the seat and, springing up like a wild goat, splashed it onto the men, and they wheeled around and grabbed her by the arms, jokingly bending them backward. Thus began hours of torment for Asya. The others kept making promises, but showed no signs of starting back. First the driver sat down next to Asya on the ground, which was covered with fragrant flowers in bloom, each bearing its own complicated two-part name, and tormented her with tedious questions: “Are you in school? Where do you go? Who’s your father?” Then Chakar proposed a game of blind-man’s-bluff, and they tugged at Asya’s hands and wouldn’t leave her alone, though she didn’t want to play. Then they chatted with some people in a car that came by, and Asya hid her face so no one would recognize her. And even after they finally got back in the jeep and started back toward the village, the driver pulled over onto the shoulder, and the people in the back seat raised a fuss, with Chakar’s honey-toned voice squealing loudest of all, “Ch’a, ch’a!”
Asya was terrified, and was about to jump out of the jeep and head off for home on her own, but everyone soon calmed down, and they started back down the mountain. They finally made it back to the village after dusk.
Asya’s anxious grandfather was waiting for her at the road when they got back, and the “boys,” as Chakar called them, launched into explanations and reassurances, blaming everything on that k’akh’ba and her wiles. Chakar herself slipped away, flashing her duplicitous eyes.
At home Asya’s grandmother was waiting, armed and ready. She cursed and scolded, and pelted Asya with copper pitchers and embroidered pillows trimmed with pearls and stuffed with Grandmother’s braids. By the next day the entire village was buzzing with rumors about how so-and-so’s daughter, which is to say so-and-so’s granddaughter, had gotten into a jeep with some young men and had gone on a joyride into the mountains, and with Chakar too, that trollop—a decent girl wouldn’t even let herself be seen in her company, let alone engage her in conversation.
Many were the mothers who erased Asya’s name from the lists of potential brides in the village that day. Claiming illness, the girl was absent from the godekan for an entire week.
But these tribulations were behind Asya now, and as she hurried down the street with her jars of cream, the only things on her mind were the phrase “donkey salt” and Patimat’s son.
5
The waterfront was deserted. Shamil walked over to the old plastered railings in front of the black railway embankment; looking over the gleaming tracks he saw the chaos of buildings along the shore, and beyond them the dark, restless blue waves of the sea. In the distance to the left, brightly colored balloons floated in the sky, dangling their long, tangled strings, and the Test Your Strength machine was clattering on the midway, serving an as-yet invisible public. From his right came a vague rumbling sound, blending in with the hum of the surf. Shamil hesitated briefly, then headed off in that
direction, looking now and then at the foamy crests of the waves, the narrow strip of sandy beach, and the pile of black stones visible on the other side of the tracks.
Gradually the rumble became a plaintive melody, punctuated by clapping and exclamations of approval, and before long a crowd came into view. People had gathered around a little man wearing a wine-colored Circassian coat with a cartridge belt across the front. The man was singing, accompanying himself on a chungur he had picked up who knows where. He stood with his eyes closed, oblivious to his surroundings. His voice vibrated sweetly, the mulberry-wood body of the instrument throbbed and sighed, and the hem of the man’s Circassian coat fluttered and danced in the sea breeze. Next to him stood a man with a mustache, who smiled and extended a black microphone first to the bouncing strings, then to the chungur player’s jutting chin, then back to the strings. Shamil wandered over to the crowd and stood to one side, staring at the musician’s restless hands.
The song ended, and the listeners applauded and shouted in Lezgian. Bulky men with microphones appeared on both sides of the singer, and they too began shouting, waving their free hands in the air. Their voices poured out of a big speaker that had been set up under an anemic little tree. The crowd listened in silence, sighing like a hundred-mouthed monster.
Shamil didn’t understand Lezgian, but he lingered and listened. Now, above the heads of the performers, a huge poster appeared, showing a stern-looking bearded man in a white bashlyk and a big papakha with a green ribbon tied around it.
“Magomed Yaragskii?” Shamil thought out loud.
“Khadzhi-Davud of Miushkiur,” a man standing next to Shamil uttered proudly, glancing briefly at him, then looking back at the performers.
The name meant nothing to Shamil, and he was about to head for a side street when one of the singers unexpectedly began speaking in Russian. From the way he spoke, Shamil realized that the man was reciting a speech that he had memorized and rehearsed many times.
“Thanks to our dear singer Yarakhmed. As you have correctly assumed, he was singing about our very own Khadzhi-Davud. And Khadzhi-Davud is the great hero of the Lezgian people!” roared the speaker, now throwing a quick glance down at some notes. “At the beginning of the eighteenth century he united all of Lezgistan and led our ancestors against the Persian garrisons! He traveled to Kaitag and Kazikumukh and persuaded their rulers to help in the war with the Iranian Shiites! From Derbent to Shemakha everything was in flames! They locked Khadzh-Davud up in prison, but he escaped and led the people forward! The Lezgians drove the Persians out of their towns and fortresses, but the Persians were greater in number! Our Khadzhi-Davud turned to Peter the Great for help, but Peter wouldn’t help. Still the people loved Khadzhi-Davud and came to him from all corners of Caucasian Albania. Our men seized Shemakha, assassinated the Iranian puppet, robbed and slaughtered scores of Persians, and took their children into captivity! Russian merchants there aided the Persians, and these merchants paid dearly. So Peter decided to take Shemakha and give assistance to the Persian shah! The Iranian rulers of Ganjaand Yerevan began to arm themselves for battle. But nothing came of it. The cowardly Persians drank and caroused all night long on the banks of the Kura, and only toward morning did they begin to prepare for a fight, and our brave Lezgians attacked them, routed them, and returned home in triumph with their booty. But they needed allies. Russia wouldn’t help the Lezgians, and Khadzhi-Davud had to turn to the Turks for aid. He said to them, ‘Help us, but let us keep our freedom!’ And he was named Khan of Shirvan and Kuba, and made his capital in Shemakha. Russia and Turkey took the adjoining lands for themselves, and left the free lands of Lezgistan in Khadzhi-Davud’s hands. But there was one serpent that wanted to destroy him. A former ally, the Kazikumukh khan, wanted to become shah in Lezgistan, so he asked the Turkish sultan to put him on the throne in the place of Khadzhi-Davud. The treacherous sultan invited Khadzhi-Davud, his family, brothers, and guests to Ganja, and when Khadzhi-Davud arrived, they arrested him and banished him to a Greek island. There our hero died, and thus did the Kazikumukh usurper begin to rule in Shemakha!”
The speaker stopped for breath and for some reason tugged on the middle button of his half-unbuttoned shirt.
“Now our Lezgian lands are again in the hands of an enemy. We must recall our worthy ancestor Khadzhi-Davud of Miushkiur and regain them for ourselves!”
The listeners cheered. A brisk, dark-skinned man elbowed the speaker to one side and began barking something in Lezgian, his voice cracking. The crowd buzzed in approval.
He then switched to Russian: “It’s because of the treacherous politics of the Azeri and Dagestani authorities! Why is nobody talking about the Lezgian question? The Azeris are, believe me, Turks who have come to our ancient Albanian lands! They mean to destroy the southern Lezgians but will not succeed! No border is eternal! Let them sit on their suitcases in fear!”
The crowd roared. A young man standing next to Shamil cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “We’ll eviscerate them!”
“These Azeris don’t allow the Lezgians to study the Lezgian language, they register them as Azeris, persecute and destroy them! They won’t even let them open Lezgian cafés!” The dark-skinned man slapped his thigh. “They changed the name of our ancient mosque in Baku from ‘Lezgi Mosque’ to ‘Twelfth-Century Mosque!’ How can we stand idly by and let that happen? In Karabakh they turned our countrymen into cannon fodder, and even fired on them from behind! They give them no autonomy whatsoever! And what if they start in with pogroms? What will we do then? Russia won’t help us!”
“The Russians are dirty cowards!” Shamil’s neighbor bellowed.
“You know, don’t you, that the best Azeri poets, the best athletes, the best composers, all of them have been Lezgians who were fluent in Persian. They adapted everything to their own culture. But we must remember that we’re not alone! The Talysh also want to split off from Azerbaijan! The Zakatal and Belokan Avars want to split from the Azeris! Remember how hard it is for our brothers the Udins. They may be Christians, but they’re Lezgians too, their roots are here in Caucasian Albania! And there are only four thousand of them left! We’ve sat around long enough under the Avars and Dargins. Even the Kumyks in Dagestan have more seats in Parliament than we do, and we were here before the Kumyks! Let us unite northern and southern Lezgistan! Those internationalists who are sitting out there on the square,” the dark-skinned man nodded in the direction of the city, “are undoubtedly Azeri agents and traitors to the Lezgian people! They’re making money on the backs of our unfortunate countrymen, whom the Azeris enslave and treat like pariahs.”
The crowd bustled and shouted. Shamil couldn’t make out what they were saying. His young neighbor bellowed through his hands: “The tsaps are assholes! Total assholes!”
Then there was someone new standing next to Shamil and his noisy neighbor. It was a young man with a protruding lower lip—the same one Shamil had seen at the newspaper.
“Hey, sissy, shut your trap, yelling is for grownups,” he said, crowding the man to one side.
“So, are you a tsap too, or what?” smirked the loudmouth.
Several onlookers turned to look at them.
“Not at all, I’m a Lezgian myself, but I know the Azeris inside out. Who are they going to give autonomy to? The likes of you? You must have heard by now that Russia has closed itself off from us!”
“You, gada, what are you spouting off about?” drawled someone in the crowd, stepping closer.
“Brother, don’t muck everything up,” Shamil intervened, nudging the kid with the lip to one side and looking him straight in the eye. “Don’t make a stink, they’ll rip you to shreds.”
Unexpectedly, the kid calmed down and obediently took a few steps back.
In the ensuing pause Shamil could hear the next speaker, a man neatly dressed in a suit jacket despite the heat:
“They drew the national border between the Russian Federation and Azerbaijan along the Samur River channel
without any discussion with the people there! As a result, entire Lezgian villages and enclaves formed on the territory of Azerbaijan. I got a letter from a group of people in the village of Khrakh-Uba, complaining that for many years they’ve been living there like unwelcome aliens. And on their own land, too! They’re experiencing the same kinds of problems as illegal immigrants in a foreign country! The people of Khrakh-Uba sent a whole series of appeals to both the central and local governments. And what was the response? All the bureaucrats sitting in Derbent can think about are their own personal waterfront properties! All they can come up with is, ‘if you don’t like it, then move.’ But how are they supposed to move, with their family cemeteries and historical lands in Azeri hands? And what if we try to drive the Azeris from Southern Dagestan, what then? The Republic owes us an answer. Why won’t they help their own disenfranchised people? Why isn’t a single one of them here to speak with us?”
Someone poked Shamil in the shoulder. “What’s with all the bitching and moaning? Is your pal here looking for trouble?” It was the same drawling voice that had first challenged the kid with the lip.
Shamil turned to look at the kid, who was standing tentatively to one side, staring sullenly at the crowd.
Shamil lowered his voice and laid his hand gently on the drawling man’s neck.
“Don’t pay any attention to him—he doesn’t mean anything by it. He hit his head pretty bad, recently. You know how it is.”
“If he opens his trap again, I’m going to beat the shit out of him.” Shamil’s interlocutor shook off his hand; he wouldn’t back down.
“Must be an Azeri,” the loudmouth suggested again.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” promised Shamil in a conciliatory tone, and backed toward the young man with the lip.
The Mountain and the Wall Page 6
