The Devils' Dance

by Hamid Ismailov

  ‘After that the Emir passed Stoddart on to the care of a naib, one of the most notorious thieves in Bukhara. He’d been told many times, “Don’t steal more than is decent!” But his greed knew no bounds. He made Stoddart write many letters to spies in Kabul and Khiva, saying that the naib had helped him, and ought to be rewarded. I’ve read these letters.

  ‘One letter said that his health was not at all good. The fact that the English had captured Kabul and Herat gave him hope, but the possibility of the English attacking Bukhara was frightening.’

  When Muborak’s account reached this point, the door was opened with the customary force, and a soldier yelled: ‘Rafail Ixsianov, out, with your belongings!’ Everyone fell silent.

  —

  Poor Sodiq was floundering at dinner time. His trembling hands spilled half of his cabbage soup on someone else’s bedding; hearing them curse him, he took refuge in his own corner and huddled there, immobile. Abdulla himself took Sodiq’s half-full bowl and passed it back to the soldier-cook.

  ‘You should have eaten it,’ Abdulla said, trying to draw him out. ‘The cabbage wasn’t sour this time, it was actually quite fresh.’

  But Sodiq simply sat there, as if struck dumb. His mood soon infected Abdulla. Rafail hadn’t been taken away to be set free, had he? Why would they release him? Ever since these arrests began, Abdulla had never heard of anyone being released from detention. Why had Rafail been ordered to take his belongings with him? If he was going to be sent to Siberia, there had to be some sort of court trial, although people were saying that courts and trials had been replaced by the so-called troyka – groups of three brought together to deliver whatever sentence the authorities wanted. Was that what the wretched lad was now facing? Is that how they might deliver Abdulla’s sentence, without calling him before an interrogator? By now he’d spent nearly ten days here, with no interrogator, no summons, and no judge.

  What Stoddart had undergone was happening to Abdulla in his own country.

  The events described by Muborak had to be checked with Professor Zasypkin. Especially whether the Russians really had been about to take Stoddart away with them. Would Zasypkin know about this? Hadn’t all this happened after the business with Witkiewicz? In what way should Abdulla include them in his novel? Did they need to be there at all, or would the book then be too wide-ranging, causing it to crumble under its own weight?

  He had to keep Oyxon in mind. After all, she was the heroine! He mustn’t get so carried away with Witkiewicz and Stoddart that he forgot about the Emir’s widow.

  Nodira and Oyxon’s relationship was what needed exploring. He had written enough about their life as Emir Umar’s wives, but when, after Umar’s death, Oyxon was wondering if she might leave the harem, why hadn’t Nodira offered her any support? After all, everyone knows that power at that time rested with Nodira, not her teenaged son, even if the latter had been newly enthroned. Still wet behind the ears, Madali preferred to amuse himself with his racing pigeons and leave the tricky matter of government to his mother: why was he allowed to make passes at his stepmother? Surely Nodira only had to say ‘Boo!’, and this thieving little tom-cat would have come to his senses? This was something that bothered Abdulla. It wasn’t easy to penetrate a woman’s mind. He might have sought his wife’s advice, if she hadn’t been jealous of his heroines… well, might it be precisely such jealousy that made Nodira happy for Madali to keep salivating over her junior wife? Or might she have actively encouraged the affair?

  Heaven and time set up a hundred intrigues thanks to jealousy,

  My glazed eyes stare amazed at the beloved.

  After all, if jealousy could rouse heaven and time to intrigue, how much more easily could it move a human heart?

  Shortly before the news of Gulxaniy’s ill fate reached Oyxon’s ears, she discovered that her father had been dismissed from the sinecure which Emir Umar had given him. Other officials were now in charge of weights and markets. After this snub, G’ozi-xo’ja took to his bed. But that was only the start of his troubles.

  One day, after afternoon prayers, one of the older harem women came to Oyxon’s quarters and announced, ‘His highness the Emir is permitting your highness to go and see her father. The royal carriage and horses are harnessed, be ready quickly!’ Oyxon didn’t bother with perfume or make-up: she picked up her veil and made haste to get into the carriage that stood just outside the door. She threw her veil onto the wooden seat and ordered the driver, ‘To my father’s house!’ The horses snorted and the carriage, with its decorative cloth roof, moved off. When they were approaching the gates of the harem palace, a strange noise was heard coming from the square. ‘I hope the road isn’t blocked, just when I’m in a hurry!’ Oyxon shuddered with irritation.

  Then the harem gates opened and the carriage moved out onto the square. In fact, the square was packed with a great number of people yelling and shouting: their attention was focussed on something. Had the Emir put on a public feast? Or was there a tightrope performance? But then there would be trumpets blasting away and drums beating. Leaving the palace fortifications, the carriage jolted over the brick-paved road down towards the square. Oyxon quietly lifted the silken curtain on her left. An enraged mob and a pile of stones met her gaze, and her heart missed a beat. Still, she could have passed on without looking, she had enough stones of misery hitting her own head: did her heart have room for a stranger’s grief? But Oyxon held out for only an instant, before moving to lift the curtain on her right. In the middle of the square, a young man was kneeling, his white shift stained with bright red blood; his head was bare and his hands and feet were bound. The low-lying sun blinded Oyxon, and she wondered if what seemed like blood was just a reflection of the red evening light. Again, her heart sank.

  The carriage had reached the square by now and had begun to pick up speed, drawing nearer and nearer to the middle of the square, where the young man knelt, his body upright. The red light spilled into the carriage, flooding Oyxon’s eyes. Where had she seen a sun like this before? It was then that the crowd started screaming, and the stoning began; one missile clattered against the carriage’s shaft. The driver lashed the horses, and they galloped off. Oyxon was paralysed with fear, she could not move her hand to lower the curtain. She saw the youth, in the middle of the square, bound and now crumpled. The red light throbbed between her temples. It was her cousin Qosim. ‘God help me!’ Oyxon cried, crumpling to the bottom of the carriage in a state that looked like death.

  Her sisters came from Shahrixon and spent two months looking after her. Nodira gave her a room in her own chambers. Only her body returned to the world; her soul did not. If only she could pour oil over herself and set herself on fire. Or she could say she was going on an excursion to see the spring tulips, then throw herself into the Qora-daryo river. But either the human heart is as tough as rock, or quite the opposite: after six months she began to think about her paralysed father, her little brothers. It was then that something happened to counter this treacherous world, this world of the flesh: Oyxon let her eyes weep tears.

  Even after she had recovered, Oyxon did not return to her quarters: sensing the fears that besieged this junior wife, Nodira set aside a room in her own house for her and let her have more maidservants as well as Gulsum. Oyxon could now bar her door and lock herself away. And there was much to hide away from.

  Perhaps because they were both the offspring of sayids, or because they shared the hostility of the late Emir’s senior wife, Oyxon had become close to Zubayda, the late Emir’s youngest wife. The girls spent hours in each other’s quarters, gently mocking Nodira’s sumptuous poetry evenings and devising their own satirical lampoons. True, Oyxon never breathed a word to Zubayda about Qosim: this secret she kept buried deep in her heart. But Zubayda was in every other respect Oyxon’s confidante.

  One evening, Oyxon arrived outside Zubayda’s chambers to find Madali behaving as outrageously as he had with he
r. Either because Zubayda was afraid of him, or because she felt so downtrodden, she failed to object to his lust. Oyxon didn’t have the courage to burst in, but nor could she retreat: her legs were paralysed. Thus she witnessed Madali the Fornicator committing rape.

  Afterwards, Oyxon attempted to get Zubayda to say what was on her mind. For some time the girl refused to speak out or complain: she remained mute. But one evening the sayid’s daughter broke down, weeping on her fellow-wife’s shoulder until all the bile in her heart was released. Just as they were cursing this scoundrel to hell, Madali burst in on them, reeling from drink. ‘Have you been giving away my secrets?’ he slurred, and then, before Oyxon’s very eyes, hacked Zubayda, with her finely plaited hair, to death.

  News of this grisly deed was only spoken in hushed whispers within the palace, but many of Madali’s other acts reached the ears of the common people, who condemned him in the strongest terms.

  Emir Umar had had a butler called Bahodir, whose wife had been Madali’s wet-nurse. The butler’s children were thus the young Emir’s milk-brothers and -sisters, and Madali used to call Bahodir his father. This milk-father’s wife was a woman of peerless beauty and charm. Spurning every form of honour and decency, Madali laid his lecherous hands on the foster-mother from whose breasts he had drunk.

  As soon as Bahodir discovered this affair, he renounced his property, his wife and his children, washed his hands of the whole thing and set off for Bukhara. Once Bahodir was out of the picture, Madali moved his foster-mother into the chambers of the late Zubayda.

  As if these foul acts were not enough, he recruited two whores, Xushhol and Bibinor, and gave them complete power over the Fergana region. They could go into any respectable house they liked and commandeer the most chaste veiled virgins for the harem. In a short time these debauched creatures became so rich from bribes that even the most respected and influential Beys of the Emirate of Kokand could not compete with their turnover, their splendours and their weaving looms.

  Oyxon saw all of this, and she hid from it, like a hare that comes across a nest of vipers: she could do nothing but hope to wait it out, helpless and powerless.

  One day Nodira decided to hold an enormous poetry contest in memory of Emir Umar: it was open to poets from far and wide, even those from foreign countries. When the day came, everyone in the palace rushed to the beautifully decorated hall to see Nodira, the queen of poets. Oyxon also appeared, dressed rather modestly out of consideration for the senior wife. What luxury, what splendour!

  Nodira had introduced an innovation, one which seemed almost sacrilegious to some: the guests at the feast sat on their haunches around low tables with carved legs. Poets and scholars moved as they wished from table to table, trying the roast quail, baked pies flavoured delicately with herbs, tiny dumplings from indented wooden bowls. Cupbearers and serving maids carried jugs of fruit juice, and wines were served in crystal chalices specially imported from Iran. A great number of singers and musicians were gathered there; their tender music stirred the most deeply hidden feelings. Finally, a visiting Maulana declared the contest open by reciting in Farsi:

  A hundred different dishes have been made

  And countless tasty treats already laid –

  The mind is overwhelmed at such a spread

  And all the ceremonial greetings have been said.

  Appetite is boiling in the pot of pleasure.

  And nature is loath to give any measure.

  Rich foods and sweets crammed down by the hour,

  Then nature’s inclined to turn somewhat sour…

  Oyxon herself was similarly inclined; she was so revolted by all this nauseating falsehood that she slipped out of the hall and returned to her chambers. The party was in full swing, and the music and singing were audible even in her quarters. Oyxon found a bowl of sour milk and drank her fill of it.

  All the maidservants were busy in the hall, leaving Oyxon alone in Nodira’s apartments; she sat there, absorbed in her own thoughts, when a silhouette suddenly appeared at the window. The cry rose to Oyxon’s lips instinctively: ‘Gulsum!’ Her voice was suffused with fear.

  The door screeched open, and the silhouette spoke:

  ‘There inside the window is my noble beloved,

  At night she drinks wine, by day she is my desire.

  ‘I made up that couplet especially for you. It came out well, don’t you think?’ Madali closed in on his stepmother.

  A scream for help died on Oyxon’s lips; she lay there like a corpse. Before returning to the poetry contest, her rapist recited over her, ‘Your father is a G’ozi, a warrior for Islam; you too are fighting for your faith.’

  —

  In an attempt to overcome his anxieties, Abdulla sat down next to Professor Zasypkin and came straight to the point.

  ‘There’s something I want to ask you: did the Russians really attempt to save Colonel Stoddart?’

  ‘As far as I know,’ the professor said, ‘an envoy was sent from Bukhara to Saint Petersburg in 1840, where he was received by Tsar Nicolas I and given a document addressed to the Emir of Bukhara. This document expressed approval of relations between Russia and the Emirate of Bukhara, and Russia’s Tsar announced that he was sending an ambassador to Bukhara along with a specialist in mining work, which the Emir had requested.

  ‘As a supplement to this document, the Russian vice chancellor also wrote a number of letters to the vizier of the Emirate of Bukhara, in which the points of Tsar Nicolas I’s document were repeated, with a request to treat their ambassador favourably, and to provide him with the means to return home at any time he wished.

  ‘It was in this letter that we find Colonel Stoddart mentioned. The vice chancellor put it this way: “As is well known, his highness the Emir was intending to send the Englishman Stoddart together with the ambassador who has arrived here, but, fearing an attack from Khiva’s forces, abandoned this intention. In accordance with the mutual treaty between Russia and Great Britain, this intention is very precious to us.”

  ‘“Since these former anxieties have vanished, we hope that his highness the Emir will now put his intentions into action. To deliver the said Englishman to us, the most convenient route is via caravan to Orenburg. There, a bold military governor will know what measures must be taken.”

  ‘I don’t know exactly which words were used, but that was the general sense.’

  Abdulla was convinced of the accuracy of Muborak’s tale, whereas the professor, when he stopped at this point, had given more of a lecture than a narrative. Now he bent down close to Abdulla’s ear and reverted to his odd bookish Uzbek: ‘Why don’t you ask the Kosoniy about the questions that interest you? He’s an extraordinary historian.’ Zasypkin pointed out the man who had complained about sweeping with two brooms and stacking them vertically.

  ‘Of course, of course. I don’t know him, though…’

  ‘Come, I’ll introduce you.’

  The professor went up to a rather sullen-looking old man with bushy eyebrows and a wan face under a black and white skull-cap.

  ‘Mr Kosoniy, allow me to introduce comrade Qodiriy, the writer.’

  Occupied by his own thoughts, the learned man looked slowly at Abdulla. ‘Qodiriy the writer? I’ve heard of you,’ Kosoniy said in a bored tone. ‘I don’t read modern writers, though; I read in the old Arabic script.’

  The professor again put a word in: ‘Comrade Qodiriy is writing about events of the nineteenth-century: about Madali and Nasrullo. I thought that the two of you could have a talk.’ The professor went discreetly back to his place.

  ‘So you’re writing about the Khanate of Kokand and the Emirate of Bukhara? There’s Abdulla Amiriy-Lashkar’s History of An Underage Prince; also relevant is An Account of the Blessed City of Kokand, also The Ghazi’s Anthology, Hakim-to’ra’s Historical Selection – wonderful sources. Niyoz Muhammad of Kokand wrote the History
of Shah Ruh, a book which was lithographed in Kazan.’

  Kosoniy listed so many books, so many sources, that Abdulla’s head began to spin. The older man seemed to sense this, fell silent for a moment, and gave Abdulla a penetrating look. ‘To put it bluntly,’ he concluded, ‘there are a lot of books, and life is short.’

  ‘You must have heard what Muborak was saying?’ Abdulla enquired.

  ‘No: what did he say?’ asked Kosoniy with interest.

  ‘Nothing much, just one thing,’ said Abdulla, ‘that the English came to Emir Nasrullo’s palace.’

  ‘Nasrullo wasn’t the only one: your blue-eyed Englishmen also paid a visit to Madali in Kokand and Mirzo Rahim in Khiva. And it wasn’t just the English, the Russians were at it, too; they were constantly rushing back and forth.’

  ‘Did the Russians mean to rescue the English envoy Stoddart?’ asked Abdulla, narrowing the focus of his enquiry.

  ‘He may have called himself an envoy, but he was nothing but a spy. Emir Nasrullo quickly saw through his slanders and loose talk. He threw him in a pit a couple of times, put him in a dungeon. The Russians sent their envoy to rescue the unwanted colonel. In the circumstances, Emir Nasrullo showed the Englishman a lot of favours, he gave back the possessions he had looted from him. At that time, Nasrullo had already decided to attack Kokand, but that’s a different story. The Emir’s vizier meant to take Stoddart into his own custody, but your Englishman begged the Russians to intercede and ended up safe in their embassy.’

  After this brief narrative Kosoniy gave Abdulla a fixed look. ‘It’s time for afternoon prayers, I think. Are you a believer, or one of the moderns?’

  ‘Praise be to Allah,’ Abdulla responded. Kosoniy slyly winked at him and said, ‘We’re lacking a congregation, but the two of us together will have to do: God will forgive us.’ He pointed to the space next to him, and Abdulla kneeled.