“I don’t want to,” whined Zaira.
“You’re so pretty, how can such a pretty girl not want to dance?” chirped Arsen.
Zaira said nothing and hung her head.
Shamil meanwhile ordered lamb shish kebab and a marinated seafood salad. He let his eyes wander idly over the stage, which was temporarily vacant, and the hall, which had been plunged into semi-darkness. The sound of a saxophone playing a slow tune was drifting in from somewhere. Shamil tried in vain to spot Nariman and Amina. When his food arrived, Arsen and Zaira were also nowhere to be seen.
A heavily perfumed girl paraded past, teetering on spike heels. With some surprise Shamil recognized her as the sister of one of his friends, and felt for his phone so he could share the information. Then he remembered that his phone wasn’t working, and anyway was on the sofa at home where he had tossed it. “Maybe everything’s all right now—no Wall, network’s back up. Maybe it was all just some kind of trick?” he thought.
When his order came, Shamil made short work of the meat and soaked up the last of the gravy with a piece of lavash. He began to feel drowsy. He paid, picked up the purses that the girls had left behind, heavy with the weapons, and headed for the balcony.
The balcony looked out onto the dark nighttime sea, whose usual rumbling was drowned in the loud music. A salty breeze blew from the shore, dispelling the heavy languor that had come over Shamil. He lingered there, leaning on the metal railings and listening to the unintelligible voices of the men smoking outside until Nariman, looking concerned, stepped out onto the balcony and beckoned to him.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, where have you been? Little Miss Prissy, Zaira I mean, Arsen was pressuring her to stay, and she made a scene.”
“Where is she now?”
“She took off somewhere, the little bitch. Ruined my night. I was making real progress with Amina, and then Arsenchik shows up, and he’s like, the chick gave me the slip.”
“I have her purse, how far could she get? All the guys will be hitting on her.”
“Maybe she went to security.”
“What, is she out of her mind?” Shamil was beginning to lose his temper.
They walked along the gallery, peering into people’s faces as they passed. On the dance floor a plump woman in a sparkly bra and a rhinestone-embroidered skirt was undulating her belly to an Arabic song. Crumpled banknotes poked out of her cleavage. Finally they heard Arsen’s voice:
“Le! Here she is!”
Arsen was over by the exit, glaring at Zaira who was standing there in stubborn silence, staring down at the floor. Amina stood beside her, alarmed, stroking her arm and trying to get her to talk:
“What happened, tell me? What’s going on?”
“Enough, we’re on our way, we’ll take them home,” announced Shamil, and they left the club.
“Take us home, please—but swear by Allah that you really will!” said Zaira abruptly.
Nariman gave a loud laugh. “Just look at her. Now she wants us to swear.”
“Zaira, they’re just normal guys,” mumbled Amina, “We were just dancing…”
“Shall we go to the beach and smoke some hash?” Nariman proposed quietly to Shamil.
“No, some other time, I’m going to bed.” Shamil turned away.
Nariman shushed him, then muttered, “All right, we’ll drop you off, then we can go get wasted.”
Zaira overheard him. “Take us home first,” she commanded.
“What’s with all the complaining? Just listen to her: ‘bitch, bitch, bitch’!” said Arsen. “Amina, why is your friend such a spoilsport?”
“She just got a little spooked, she’s fine,” simpered Amina. She had calmed down and was getting her second wind.
They sped along the empty streets, braking once to look at a crowd that had gathered and to ask some of the gawkers what was going on. It was just an ordinary fender bender. In spite of the late hour, a lot of men were still loitering around the streets. Amina was finding everything amusing; she looked out the car window as they went, attracting whistles and hoots from the sidewalk, and kept asking Nariman to play some song that only she knew. Zaira pouted and stared grimly at the road.
“I guarantee, I’ve seen her somewhere before,” said Arsen suddenly, casting a hostile look at Zaira.
“Where?” everyone asked.
“Right, like I’d really tell you all that.”
“You’re lying,” blurted Zaira.
Amina laughed. “You’re so funny, Arsen.”
“Where did you see me?” asked, Zaira, increasingly alarmed.
“I’ll tell you guys later.” Arsen nodded to his friends.
Shamil noticed that they had reached his neighborhood, so he asked Nariman to stop. Zaira got very nervous when she saw that he was getting out.
“Don’t worry, they’ll take you home,” Shamil reassured her, though he wasn’t really at all certain.
“Don’t get lost!” shouted Nariman after him.
The Priora roared off and disappeared, beeping a farewell.
The elevator wasn’t working. Shamil went up the stairs to the apartment, exhausted. “I got up too early today,” he told himself. When he got to his room he saw that his mother had already made his bed.
He shed his pants and T-shirt, collapsed on the mattress, and immediately fell asleep.
*Do you speak Avar? (AVAR)
†Go have something to eat. (AVAR)
PART II
1
In the morning the city came to life. Workers in dusty overalls walked briskly along the pitted streets to their worksites; women’s voices rang out as they darted through the courtyards with their milk jugs; joggers appeared on the streets in gaudy shorts, and old men trotted down toward the sea. Shamil awoke with a hangover. He stumbled around the empty apartment for a while, then, feeling a sudden burst of energy, he grabbed his swim trunks and set off toward the beach. Along the way he glanced into courtyards and observed clusters of children wielding rubber hoses, rinsing the lather out of freshly washed carpets.
He stopped at a booth to buy a hot crusty loaf of bread that had just been delivered from the bakery. The booth was outside a beauty salon. As he paid for the bread, he glanced into the salon window and recognized his neighbor’s daughter Kamilla. She was sitting in one of the salon chairs as the hairdresser worked on her thick hair; she didn’t see Shamil. He went on his way, breaking off and eating pieces of the bread one by one, his unshaven cheeks moving rhythmically as he chewed.
Kamilla went on telling the hairdresser about the Khanmagomedovs’ wedding.
“Ua, a million just for the dress!” gushed the hairdresser, as she liberated Kamilla’s curls from the velvet-flocked rollers.
“I saw it, Elmira showed it to me herself. It’s got real pearls, you can tell immediately, and the lace is all handmade.”
“Mashalla, mashalla,” whispered the hairdresser, enthralled, expertly working her fingers through Kamilla’s hair. “My neighbor chose something simple. Mermaid style, but plain, no spangles, no nothing. She looked pathetic, really, just drab, and later everyone said that she had gotten married on the cheap.”
“We don’t know what it cost, it might have been more expensive than it looked.”
“But it wasn’t! Some people I know went to the shop and found out exactly how much it cost. You can’t keep something like that secret from us. Now, how about we add a little gold glitter?”
“No, I don’t like it.”
“Yesterday, you know, I was doing a manicure. A really smart lady, has a good job. Anyway, she was complaining that her daughter is basically clueless, a hick.”
Kamilla laughed: “What do you mean?”
“She goes, my daughter’s as strong as any guy in the neighborhood, she wears her sweat suit everywhere. And when she’s late for the transport van, she just sprints after it and catches up!”
“Are you kidding?”
“I swear it’s true. So, anyway, one morning this
girl is on her way to school, and the van passes her. She starts running after it. She runs and runs…”
“And she caught it?”
“No, the van got to the corner and then someone blew it up!” For some reason the hairdresser gave a throaty laugh.
“When did they ever bomb a van around here? We’ve never had anything like that.”
“Don’t you remember, it was during Uraza Bairam. The whole town was celebrating, there were dance performances, they’d set up tables of food on Lenin Square. And the guys with the beards, you know, got upset that people were drinking, so they blew up the van.”
“Oh, I remember now. But it wasn’t the beards who did it. There was just some guy driving along, and he was juggling a live grenade, trying to impress his friends, and he dropped it by mistake—what an asshole!”
“No, that was a different time. And it wasn’t some guy juggling, it was a drunk soldier driving along holding the grenade in his hands, and he dropped it. A girl was sitting there, she was from Kizilyurt, she kneeled down and shielded the grenade with her body, so nobody else would get hurt. At first the cops couldn’t figure it out, they thought that she was a suicide bomber, but eventually they figured out that she was actually a hero…”
“Wow…”
“Anyway, so I was on the van yesterday. It was completely packed, people had to stand. And a woman stops in the aisle with her feet stretched out like this,” the hairdresser spread her hands way out. “She looks around, and there’s nowhere to sit. ‘Just scoot over a little,’ she says to me. Everyone laughs. I had to give her my place and stand the whole rest of the way.”
Kamilla smirked: “Have you seen the sign they’ve put up in the vans? ‘Can’t get through? Just stop trying.’”
The hairdresser nodded: “And there’s another one: ‘Ride without a ticket, get thrown in the thicket.’ Har-de-har. And, hey, I’ve even seen one that says, ‘Keep your hands off the driver.’”
‘“Slam the door, get a free handicapped sticker—after we cripple you.—The Mgt.’”
“But tell me more about the wedding—what else are they going to have?”
“Well, last night they had the bride’s party at Elmira’s.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I say let the other girls go…why would I? I was invited to the groom’s party, anyway. They say Omarbekov is coming from Moscow with his son the oligarch. Everyone who’s anyone is going to be there.”
“Listen, is it true what they’re saying that they’ve canceled the flights to Moscow?” The hairdresser asked.
“I’ve heard the same rumors, but I don’t believe it…my uncle flew there just a couple of days ago.”
“Today my sister-in-law’s brother’s wife couldn’t get a flight out, and there’s another rumor about clashes in Moscow between Dagestanis and the locals. That’s why our phones can’t get any signal.”
“What do our cellphones have to do with it? Our men are always causing trouble wherever they are. My brother is always heading out to some street fight…”
“Cut it out! Our guys never start anything so long as no one tries to lay a hand on them. And they can smell fear, you know? If someone’s scared, they’ll beat him to a pulp.” The hairdresser set the rollers aside, sprayed something on Kamilla’s hair, then squeezed a drop of white gel from a chic little bottle and worked it lightly through. “Just look at these curls!”
“Thank you, Rakhmat, it’s perfect!”
Kamilla admired herself in the mirror: big curls, shiny with gel, framed her plump cheeks and cascaded onto the shoulders of her short dress, which was studded all over with sparkling gemstones. Matching stones gleamed on her high-heeled sandals.
“Shall we leave your bangs?” asked the hairdresser.
“Yes, let’s keep them,” answered Kamilla. She took one more look in the mirror, and, liking what she saw, she got up from the chair and reached for her name-brand knock-off clutch. “I’m already late.”
“Why so early? Usually they don’t start until after lunch.”
“It’s at eleven today, and they’re being really strict about permits. I can’t get there after Elmira—I’m going straight to the banquet hall from here.”
Kamilla went outside and, seeing a van with a ROUTE NO. 5 sign on the front windshield, signaled to it to stop, and got in. There were several passengers, two young men sitting with their legs out, blocking the aisle, a woman in a summer hat with a red flower on the brim, a fat woman in a leopard-print housecoat, and a girl in a light-blue dress.
Kamilla shut the rusty door, which had another one of those jokey signs on the panel above it—“For hitting your head”—and sat on a seat with tattered upholstery. In spite of the van’s decrepit, neglected-looking appearance, it was equipped with an up-to-date audio system with huge speakers. A hand-printed sign above them read: “Discount for girls in hijab.” A prison chanson was playing.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t gotten the driver she preferred, the blue-eyed master of the “7G,” a dead ringer for Leonardo DiCaprio. One time he hadn’t even charged her. A single incident marred this generally positive picture, however: she’d been riding back from the university; when they passed DiCaprio’s van by the shopping center, she saw some guy reach into the driver’s side window, grab him by the hair, and beat his head against the steering wheel. It was horrible!
The Gazelle raced on, weaving from side to side and rounding the turns with its brakes squealing. At the clogged intersections the driver pressed his hand to his heart in an appeal to other drivers to let him through, managing along the way to reach out through his window and shake hands with them as they passed, and to carry on a shouted conversation with the passengers over the blaring music. The passengers would ask him to stop somewhere—“here,” or “there,” or “over there by the woman in the green skirt,” or “wherever you can”—and proudly refused to accept change back from him when they paid their fares.
Kamilla got out near the park, which was named after some German who had designed it years ago. She’d only gone a few steps when she heard taunts and wolf whistles behind her.
“Hey, baby, where’d you leave your skirt? Hey, can I use your phone?”
Kamilla walked on without slowing down or looking around, trying to act normal. The guys who sold CDs on the street had already set up their noisy canopies; behind money-changing tables, proprietors waved wads of cash in the air, and children carrying gym bags darted in and around the crowd.
She passed a courtyard with trellised grapevines, under which a man sat reading a newspaper, with his bare feet propped on a chair in front of him; she then turned into an alley. There, matrons sat on benches exchanging whispered gossip, and food stands filled the air with a commotion of appetizing smells and sounds. A crowd of teenaged boys rushed past Kamilla, splashing her with water from a spray bottle. She drew herself up to her full height, planted her sturdy, high-heeled feet wide, and inspected her dress with horror.
“It’ll dry in the sun, dear!” the chuckling women on the benches reassured her.
“Hey, I’ll dry it for you personally! Give me your number. Hey, baby! How about you take us with you!” men shouted insolently.
Kamilla continued on and soon came to a splendid white building. On its flat roof stood a big helicopter with gleaming tinted windows; around it guards armed with machine-guns had taken up positions lying along the edge of the roof where they could look down onto the street from different angles. The building had been tightly cordoned off. A crowd had gathered and was gaping at the row of Land Cruisers and Porsche Cayennes parked outside. With dignity Kamilla made her way through the jabbering throng, adjusting her shimmering dress and hair as she went, and extracting from her clutch the gold-embossed invitation with its dancing figure on the cover and a crest in the form of an eagle.
A mustached policeman winked at her: “Give me a call later.”
At last Kamilla made it through into the cool lobby and lunged for the lad
ies’ room, so she could put herself back in order. Singing could already be heard from the second floor.
2
In the huge banquet hall, a flurry of thousand-ruble and hundred-dollar bills swarmed in the air above the dancers like snowflakes. In front of the elaborately decorated head table, a troupe of drummers was entertaining the newlyweds, juggling their drumsticks in the air, springing from one foot to the other in their soft-leather boots, and jumping agilely onto one another’s strong shoulders to form a lively human pyramid.
Steam rose from the boiled beef and khinkal, forming a warm cloud that softened the tipsy guests’ exuberant faces. The bridegroom’s father circulated around the hall with a twisted ram’s horn goblet, clinking glasses with all the guests as they arrived. Long, ardent speeches alternated with a deafening lezginka or a stirring Caucasian song.
Men kept coming up to Kamilla and asking her to dance; after twelve dances she lost count. A wallflower sitting opposite turned periodically to her neighbor and hissed: “Some people make a point of sitting at the end so they’ll get invited first.”
Kamilla didn’t particularly take to the women seated at her table, who had the look of poor relations in their tiger-print scarves and tight skirts. They displayed an unabashed curiosity, and every once in a while one of them would blurt out something like “Look, Crazy Maga is on the move!”
Crazy Maga was indeed in constant motion. He strode around the hall, embracing businessmen and athletes as he went, poking them in the sides with his hairy fists. Occasionally he would drag some random girl out from behind a table and launch into a frenzied dance around her, tossing up handfuls of banknotes that rained down on her head. Then he would stop abruptly, kiss this latest partner on the crown of the head, and set off to the tamada’s table.
“Five minutes!” gasped the relatives in the tiger prints. “He danced with her five whole minutes! It’s scandalous!”
Five minutes was of course too much. Indecent, even.
The singer Sabina Gadzhieva appeared in a latex dress, heavily made up, her voice hoarse. Kamilla managed to get up close and even to clasp her hand at one point in a round dance. Anticipating the bride’s entrance, a relay dance began, with the dancers passing the traditional wedding baton from hand to hand until finally one of the more mature female guests, dressed to the nines, would invite the groom to dance, after which the groom was to invite the bride.
The Mountain and the Wall Page 11
