Mameluke

By Murad El-Anis

Following the death of his parents Amin decides to leave his familiar world in search of a new life. But as the First World War reaches its height, fate carries him farther from home than he ever imagined. After being betrayed Amin becomes embroiled in the politics and chaos of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Forced to serve his political masters Amin holds on to the hope of one day returning home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Murad El-Anis
• Release date: May 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301156719

Book preview

October 1916

1916 had been a turbulent year for the world beyond our quiet mountains. War raged in Europe, engulfing everything in its razor-wire and poisonous gasses. All we heard was terrifying news of death and anarchy. Still, the war had not yet reached us. We had remained safe in our land of hidden peace, unknown and untouched by those who might involve us in their madness. So many times before, the world had forgotten us in its lunacy and it had continued about its business as my family and I lived out our quiet days. As a child I had believed it was the mountains that kept us safe from the harm that would otherwise claim us. There were two great peaks cradling our village. They were as steep and furious as a stone cage slammed into the earth from the heavens to keep us unseen by any worldly eyes. Green swathes of fine grazing lay over the slopes like sheets of perfect silk. The grasses were a rich dew blown by the breath of God from the palace of the east to settle over our guardians and wrap them in lavish décor. Every so often, bold and defiant bulges of an aged grey protruded from beneath the flowing ripples of swaying emerald. The mountains wanted to ensure we knew they were still there and as solid as ever.

My great-grandfather had brought my family to the mountains decades before. He settled in a village that sat at the very foundation of the narrow valley which the millennia had carved in the crease of the mountains’ union. Underlined by a rich layer of thaw-delivered silt, Navarn was a fertile and welcoming place. The steep-domed roofs that sat above its houses, granaries, stables and the single-roomed mosque at its centre could barely be distinguished from the fallen rocks that surrounded them. It had remained veiled for centuries, defying the challenges of time and change. Only once the infrequent visitor would draw under the shadow of the regal peaks would they come to understand that indeed people and not just lonely winds squeezed along the ravine. Only then the dancing whistles tickling their ears would be understood as the tunes of my flute and not the songs of the Caucus birds welcoming the traveller. The cleansing scent of the slopes would beckon the traveller into Navarn. There they would find a generous meal, an evening of rich company and a night of untroubled rest. Despite its subtlety ours was a place cherished by many people who stumbled across us with pleasant surprise.

Without failure the travellers would pass each year like a migration with no other purpose but that of resting themselves for a week or two in our well-fired inn. Just as sure as they would come – farmers, labourers, merchants, travellers and occasional aristocrats in search of humility – they would eventually bid us farewell. It was as though they did not wish to overstay their welcome. Fear of upsetting their hosts’ modest resources or even the wish preserve the delicate balance of our village drove them away; though we never wished to see any guest leave. Their departure was always a loss for us.

Each time a guest would arrive it was as though a relative who we had not seen for a year or two had finally answered a long-overdue invitation. The villagers were drawn from three families and less than sixty-three of us in total. At the first sight of a new arrival we would rush out brandishing glorious smiles and outstretched, attentive hands. In line with the old ways, each guest was held in the flawless grasp of meticulous hospitality for seven days before they were asked why they had come. Then it would be many days before any further action would be taken. It was customary for our small and gentle Navarn to be so aggressive in its hospitality. It was like a subtle secret held romantically within the hearts of those who loved it, only to release itself in a wave of addiction when the time came.

Rarely seen on any maps – except for those kept buried in the aged minds of Adyge patriots – our tiny yet resilient village entrenched itself in the cradle of its rocky custodians like a citadel brandishing the memory of an ancient people long-since diminished. Almost half a century before I was born in the mountains of the Adyge, most of my people had been decimated, chased south or re-settled on the plains to the north. The mighty hand of an imperial Russia emboldened by systemic victory and hungry for expansion hurled our people to the Diaspora. But that is a sad story that I shall save for another time. Until then it is a story that will sadly remain untold and obscure to the history books.

Against this backdrop of defeat, the need to live a quiet life should be clear. But the ritual passion expressed in the hearts of our country folk, as well as foreigners in search of atonement, elucidation or self-discovery, always triumphed over this sensibility. We were immersed in national pride and found honour in expressing it, even when we had little more than memories of our nation. Whenever the opportunity presented itself this duty would passionately erupt. A few radicals called for armed struggle. But most others spoke of our heritage whenever someone would listen, with the hope of preserving our identity. Welcoming guests, regardless of where they were from, was our way of celebrating the old ways.

My father, a quiet, gentle man of an incompatibly burly physique and coarse voice, regularly lectured me about the importance of this duty. Don’t let the fun of life or the boredom of death ever make you forget your heritage, he used dictate, pushing his values on me when I was old enough to understand him but still young enough to be impressionable.

Heritage is the only home we’ll ever have, he would continue, as his frown gave way to the dash of a faint smile on his bearded cheeks.

I will pass the same command on to you, in person if I can or in these pages if I can’t.

By the time I was born heritage and homeland for our nation converged only in our village and a scattered few like it. And so it was destined to be cherished like a precious summer dew evaporated into the heavens by the rising scorch.

Despite its place in the hearts of many, I was one of the few who were allowed to be loved by Navarn. Born to a young father and a girl who had compassionately loved him, time ensured that I grew from a new-born into a boy and from there into a young man as content as my father. Navarn guaranteed that I grew-up as a healthy boy with a passion for knowledge. I was content and discretely ambitious at the same time. Maybe the repetitive life of the highlands had given me time to think over my problems; or maybe it simply raised few issues in the first instance.

For my family, those early years were governed by the demands of the family trade. My father had inherited from his the business that had kept our village and our family alive for the best part of a hidden century – horse-breeding. The rearing of horses occupied almost all efforts of the village. The only exception was a small troupe of elderly widows who had lost their husbands to the certainties of age. They filled their days with weaving and replaced their loneliness with endless conversation. Our collective pride, the Kebardin, a mountain horse renowned for its hardiness and graceful strength, had been reared by our ancestors for centuries. Ours was a lineage blessed by generations of stewardship of the Kebardin and one which instilled the comfort of honour in the blood of my father and his ancestors. There were various breads of the Kebardin, all of which Navarn had reared at one time or another. But my father’s heard was comprised of the finest: the Shagdi, a strong short distance racer bestowed with passion and aggression; and the Sholokh, a very powerful horse capable of the greatest feats of endurance. The Sholokh, albeit not a very handsome horse, was my favourite. Its loyalty was unequalled and its determination beyond all comparison. It was said that even with a fatal wound the Sholokh will first bare his rider safely home and then lay down to die, having fulfilled its duty.

Like the infinite durability of the mountain horse, the men of the village had followed the tracks of their fathers out onto the steep grazing slopes each day of the year to tend the animals. Every effort was made to keep them healthy. Even the women invested themselves in the economy of breeding; losing themselves in days of labour to dress the horses ready for sale and marketing the stock with the charms of embroidery sent with seasonal caravans to neighbouring markets. The Kebardin was everything that we lived by and for; it dominated all aspirations and embodied all the sentiments of our identity.

Yet, breeding, rearing and trading in a currency so venerated it was almost idolised was not really lodged in my heart in the same way that it was for my diligent father. My passion was far less physical but just as spiritual. Books were the joy of my childhood and the tally on my bookshelf the measure of my wealth. Even at an early age I found an ardour for books, an odd virtue to most of my neighbours. Nonetheless, I was inspired by the fascinating characters I found in stories and the turbulence of their unfamiliar lives. I would attribute most of this early interest to the inspiring majesty of the mountains and the gossip of the widows. I would force every departing guest that he must either bring with him at least one book or the shame of having failed an excitable and impatient child. That was the cause of my euphoria at spotting a small convoy of a rider or two approaching along the winding path that meandered through the mountains to my door. I would collect, read, analyse and then re-read every book I was able to lay my hands on. If no book was brought for me I would insist that our guests would tell me stories plucked from their pasts.

Nothing allowed my mind to extend beyond the sanctuary of the village – which my body would never have wished to leave – like the pages of a crisp print or hand-written account. Any kind of story would do. A documentary, a tale of adventure or love, perhaps even the reports of some vizier recording the mundane facts of summer harvests. As long as my eyes could browse and my mind wander I was happy. Anything that could be read or written was priceless to me. My pious father adored my affinity for literature with an almost arrogant pride. He would smile each time I tucked myself away into my small corner-room or perched myself on my favourite reading-spot by the stalls. He didn’t speak to me very often, certainly not at length or in depth and this confused and even hurt me at times. But he was a quiet man and when I saw him smile at me I knew it was because he was proud of me. Whenever I parked myself into a book he would even stop my mother from disturbing me until I was done.

Maybe his protection of me was motivated by the belief that I was reading-up on the meanings of the Haddith or revising the Qur’an. Alas, despite all his wisdom my father was illiterate and so I adopted a tendency of telling him that I was indeed reading the Qur’an, the Haddith or some insight of the faith! I’ll admit, to this very day I remain tarnished with the subtle blush of guilt at deceiving my trusting father, though in my heart I feel it was a crime worth committing.

A second sin committed on my part was that of a lingering betrayal. I say this as my union with literature was very much an imbalanced and selfish one. I would read, and value every moment of it, but I wouldn’t dare venture as far as to write more than a sentence or two before growing tired of my contributions. All too soon I would return to the practice of taking, like a lazy husband who enjoys the comforts of his treasured wife but reneges on promises to buy her gifts. As I revisit those days I am saddened by the opportunities I sacrificed by failing to commit my incessant thoughts to ink. I am finally writing now in more fright than I would like to admit. I fear that I do not have much time left. I am sick and the physician tells me that my life could be over in a matter of weeks.

If only I were able to return to the place of my younger years with you, my dear child, and the woman who dominates each of the affections left in me, I would be content.

But that is not the fate we are destined for. That time is over and that place is gone. Both were eradicated, stolen from existence and given to the darkness from which there is no return. It was in that year of 1916 that that life all ended for me and a new one began. It was the year that I stopped reading, that I stopped aspiring to bear witness to the accounts of my admired authors, and that the happiness on my father’s face was replaced with utter sorrow. Both abrupt transitions were caused by the loss of the person who was irreplaceable to both of us. My mother was a delicate lady of the highlands, unlike the hardy, broad-hipped and firm-handed women of the Caucasus. She was fair skinned with long waves of brown hair so silken that the fine strands draping down her shoulders appeared almost red in the summer months and black in those of winter.

Her eyes were dark brown and matched the mystery of Ibn Khaldun’s tales, which I had read at least twice annually until the end of my marriage with literature. Her voice was delicate and warming, even when she would reprimand me for the mischief a lonely boy is prone to. She had a constant fragrance of fresh perfume that decanted from her skin and causing an addiction to her company. Her slender figure was always shrouded in a modesty that was doomed to fail in its attempt at concealing her beauty.

She was busier than most women of the village despite having just a single child and deceased parents, but she always found the time to devote an hour each night entirely to me. From the time of my earliest memories we invested ourselves in each other’s presence during the final hour before I met my sleep. My father believed that she was teaching me something, but in reality it was I who was the teacher, at least by the time I was seven. My mother had never learnt to read before she was married and for a long time had no interest in acquiring such skills. But the excitement of her son encouraged her to join in the multitude of worlds opened to us by what lay hidden behind a book cover. We read and spoke mostly in Arabic during those hours, a language which I had been taught by an Alim who regularly criss-crossed the mountains on his missions of benevolence and frequented our village. I then taught my mother but my father didn’t show any real interest in this foreign language. This only reinforced my father’s conviction that we were completing some kind of religious study and secured his blindness to our adventures. Had he learnt of our secret we would both surely have been in a lot of trouble! Worse still, we would have been forced to see the hurt in his eyes that he had been left out of our adventures. But then that is who my mother was to me, my confidant; and I hers. We shared secrets and dreams, the same way we shared a mutual love for the man who completed our world and who gave us the protection and peace in which we could depart for a short while every evening on a new adventure.

Good night, Amin. Dream my love. Tomorrow we’ll finish the journey…and start a new one, she whispered in excitement as she pulled the door to each night and left me to slip into a warm sleep.

To my father, she was a wife, a friend and a guardian. They had been married at a very early age at the bequest of their fathers. My grandparents wanted to establish a bond between their families and a place in the world for their children at a time when war with Russia was still a recent memory. The upheavals of Muscovite resettlement policy had taken much of my mother’s family away and her parents were soon to follow. They wished to spare her the exertion and trauma of life as a refugee. They felt it would be better to ensure for her the loving companionship of a highlander who would preserve her family’s identity. Despite an obvious disparity in the financial class of their families – the former poor the latter wealthy, prior to the apocalypse of 1869 when the war was lost – the match was a grand success. A handsome, well-built young man, hardly more than a boy who burst with enthusiasm and candour and a delicate, beautiful girl of splendid etiquette unrivalled but for her spontaneous rashness – was there eve a better suited couple?

Less than a year had passed before my mother’s slim belly began to plump as though she had swallowed a melon whole. I was on my way into this world. Unfortunately, the grandparents that I would have otherwise enjoyed had deceased before they had the time to hold me in their arms. As my father’s two brothers had long since resettled in Turkey and my mother’s brother and two sisters in Syria and Russia the three of us were left alone. That isolation brought my parents closer together than they had been in the initial months of their shy marriage. As I grew in height and weight so too did the comfort with which my father held my mother and the liberty in which they spoke in endless conversations about anything from the meaningless to the essential.

My father would never have been able to tell me about the young, tireless love he held for my mother but I saw it clearly each time I saw them together. They were truly inseparable, so much so that he would often contribute his efforts to the house chores just so he could spend more time with her – and tackle the mockery of his friends at a later date. Likewise, she would lend a helping hand in the paddocks when she could no longer take their separation. The curses of convention didn’t bother either of them. By my earliest memory they had fused into a single entity that required both halves to exist. By the time she was taken there was no distinction even between halves, only a single life that ended with the loss of the most vital organ like a body which dies when its soul is taken.

The villain was a disease that appeared incurable while it occupied our house. It was later found to be a rampant infection, but a curable one. The diagnosis came only once the disease had passed away with my mother and best friend. Once the old widow who doubled as the village physician had left the room the proud husband hurled himself against the floor beside the wife’s deathbed and let out a cry of nothing less than agony. I stood there unable to move or raise a whimper for fear of interrupting my father’s mourning. I felt stiff and cold as though I was a carving in the slabs of the wall against which I pressed myself. The body that I felt bold in by then served only to shiver like a trampled weed under a strong gust. I was seventeen and had already passed the verge of manhood. But in that moment I wished nothing more than to cling to my mother’s breast and bury my face in the curve of her neck as I had done as a little child.

My father continued to descend into despair until he had collapsed fully and fainted under the punishment of his heartache. I left him there and forced my limbs to carry me outside where I too collapsed. I spent the night curled up like a Ferrell child on the mat by the log stack that my mother used to gradually diminish as she stoked up the stove. It was bitterly cold and damp with a thick cloud of mist surrounding the mountains as though they had wept in sorrow and the tears evaporated like a mournful emission. With her death my happiness became a figment of memory and my father’s life even less than that. Our village became a cemetery rather than a home.

Chapter 2

November 1916

The funeral had been a particularly lonesome one, even by the solitary standards of our mountains. The old widows meandered in a column of black sheets draped liberally over their elderly torsos. Their old legs carried them behind the precession like harbingers of death patiently stalking their next victim. My father had at first refused to allow anyone to join us but custom overcame his ardent objections. I would have liked to believe that he conceded because he knew my mother would have wanted a traditional funeral. But unfortunately his capitulation was solely a result of his diminished strengths.. It was heart breaking to see that he did not have the will to seal his wife’s burial in the way he wanted to. Even worse, I don’t think my mother would have wanted anyone other than the two of us to lay her in the ground

The flattened track that led to the village cemetery climbed up a steep gradient of slippery grass that was kept short and dicey by the mechanised munching of the horses. At the summit a plateau of sorts held a dull grey chamber in which my mother’s body would reside in a tightly wrapped white cloth. My father and two of the men that accompanied the ceremonial caravan carried my mother, her lifeless body wresting on their shoulders.

Why white? I queried to myself. It will only get dirty in there, I continued as I stepped to the edge of what was nothing more than as a sludgy pit housed in bland stonework.

I stood limp at the brink of the earthen hole into which I was about to help lower the woman who brought me into this fragile world. Desperate to hold back my sobbing I was searching for a diversion. All I could muster was this worthless question about the white cloth. At best I could only find an answer that would never alleviate my pain; at worst such a question would have stirred accusations of unfaithfulness. But I just kept asking myself that same question over and over, as though finding the answer was going to make everything feel normal again. Why white?

Sheikh Ibrahim, the only man from the village who knew the Qur’an by heart, was about to recite a verse from the Holy Book. I felt guilty questioning the religious traditions while standing next to him. But when he attempted to explain our loss as part of God’s designs I found some distraction. Anger welled up inside me and I wanted to scream. As much as I later came to find peace in the Sheikh’s argument, on that awful day and many that followed it nothing comforted me.

Much of what followed passed by me. I didn’t see or hear anything real for many hours. My senses failed me like those of a decrepit old man who is just about ready to retire from this world. Rather than the images of my mother being lowered into the grave I saw her smile descend over me with the flare of devotion carried on the cheeks of a young mother. I heard her recitations caressing my mind and bringing me tranquillity. It was just as when she had cared for me as a whimpering child tormented by winter flu. Only the virus I was infected by now was the wailing of the widows. But I could not avoid the touch of abandonment pricking at me with each gust of the rain-sodden wind. How much misery could be felt on a single day? Had I not come to experience more heartache in the months that followed the funeral I would deny that any greater hurt were possible.

By nightfall I had recovered myself enough to bare my limp frame away from the fresh mound of earth piled above a body so loved it very nearly still breathed. I crawled out from the low burial chamber and steadily lifted the final stones in place to seal the grave. My father had disappeared much earlier, even prior to the final mourning of the villagers. He had not spoken a word to anyone, least of all to me. I felt that I no longer existed to him; that somehow the bond between his son and his wife that had fused us together since conception had dragged me away into the afterlife with her. We all deal with death in a different way than we think we will. But being forgotten like that hurt me as much as being abandoned did and I was to become very familiar with both in the coming weeks.

I saw very little of my father during the forty-days of mourning that followed the funeral. He came and went about his work in the very rhythmic fashion that he had always done, but he did so with a gaunt expression on his face and an absence of mind.

Keep the fire stoked Amin, he said to me in the evening before departing for his ritual stroll to the graveside.

He spent an hour or two each night after the village had fallen asleep kneeling besides my mother’s grave praying. He said those five short words each night as he left, but one night his voice was different in its tone and deliverance. He looked me in the eyes, which he had not done since my mother’s death. I saw an apology in his deep brown gaze that was as sincere as he had been in our previous, complete life. It was the last night of the mourning period and I at first believed this brief change to have been motivated by the chapter we would turn in the morning. But my heart did not leap or my spirits rise. I also saw a farewell in his fleeting glance, one filled with remorse and depression for his prevailing inability to love me as he had just some weeks earlier. He didn’t intend to be cruel. I knew that much. He could not love anymore; his heart had been wrapped up in a white cloth and buried in brown dirt where it would be ruined by the age of loss.

Of course, father, I replied in a fragile voice and then watched him turn slowly and duck his head as he stepped over the ledge and pulled the door too behind him.

For a moment or two I could hear his footsteps trudge through the muddy snow that laced the village in winter. Once the sound of his footsteps disappeared I made my way outside and began selecting the smallest logs from the heap of frost-bitten timber. I didn’t wish to take too many and in so doing devour the stockpile before the worst of winter had passed so I made sure that I was economical. Now that the small house was vacant, except for my lonely presence, I felt no real need to keep the fire stoked until my father would return so I wrapped a second blanket around my shoulders and sat by the lingering flickers of the fire with a book resting on my lap.

A storm had gathered some distance away but its thundering surfed along the mountain peaks as though searching for me. My mind wandered for a while. The ancient folklores of the Adyge tell the story of the Mountain of Elbrus, a fortress of rock so imposing it had become the residence of the immortal gods. They existed there untroubled and uninterrupted as they expressed their whims with the lives of men. But a rogue Nart – a giant of our myths – grew frustrated with the gods and their insolence, and so he attempted to ascend their mountain and challenge them. Alas, he was caught before he reached its summit. The gods chained the Nart to a protruding rock where he was eternally exiled for his insubordination. He reminds us, the legend explains, of his distress, suffering and pain by cracking the great chains that bind him against the mountain in a thunderous roar. An old neighbour, who I called Uncle Albak, used to finish this tale with a warning: And so it is that the skies crack so violently with cruelty in their winds when a storm brews and stings the Martyr of Elbrus. Be wary, child, when the thunder rolls for he sacrificed himself for us once, we must not forget him. My distraction, however, was not for the sake of the Nart. I felt just as chained and exposed as him.

Since my mother’s death my thirst for adventure and the written word had left me. I had been unable to read to the end of a single sentence since the funeral. I had spent much time reciting the Qur’an, but that had been largely by memory. Instead, I liked simply to hold the leather bound covers of my favourite books. Occasionally I brushed my cold fingers over the leaves of their pages to remind me that there was still something to discover in life. A little more than an hour passed before I judged it about time to heap a couple of more logs into the charred fireplace in preparation for my father’s return. It seemed that I had judged wrongly when I heard a tapping on the door.

I leapt to my feet in fear that my father would be upset about the cold that would leave him unsure where the outdoors ended. The fire sparked briefly as I thrust the iron stoker into its belly but it only emitted a useless glimmer of heat into the main room which soon dwindled. The gentle tapping sounded again, but this time a little louder as though reluctantly attempting to wake me. Our house was a humble place with little furniture in the square, low centre room except for a small wooden table, accompanying stools and a heavy leather-covered chair by the fire. Nonetheless I managed to stumble and collide into each object around me with such a raucous I feared waking the entire village. I knocked over the low table hurling a pot plate and cup onto the stone slabs of the floor. Like my nerves they broke with a loud crack and some left-over milk spilt onto the filthy rug under my feet. Such domestic chaos never used to anger my father. But lately, his mood had no patience. He would not shout – although I wish he would – but he would ignore me with even more conviction. His silence was liberated to roam freely across the terrain of my anxious mind and spared me no mercy. A brief look on his face of shame and then nothing, as though broken plates or wasted food were irrelevant. I wanted him to care. I wished that he would help me fix things when they broke. Or even to get angry with me and shout. But he had given me nothing for weeks. I rushed to clear up the mess not because I didn’t want him to see it but because I didn’t want to see him not care. I couldn’t bare it any longer.

Before I could finish mopping up the mess I had made with my loose sleeve the door crept open slowly in front of me. Had I left the door unlatched? Of course, we didn’t worry about thieves slinking around up in the mountains. But the door had to be locked each day to prevent it from blowing open by the prevailing winds in winter. I guess I just didn’t care as much anymore about these kinds of domestic things either.

Amin? a soft voice whispered. Is that you? a young man asked in a quiet but gregarious tone.

I could only make out a silhouette creeping around the doorframe and lurking towards me. Heavy robes, typical of the month, hung off his tall frame like stiff sheets of slate having been frozen in the chill. A hood concealed most of his face but as he came closer to me and drifted into the realm of naphtha orange shed by the dwindling fire I could see a handsome, youthful face hidden behind a short black beard. His eyes were mysteriously familiar to me but I still did not recognise them.

Amin? he pressed again in concern.

Is there some mistake, I didn’t hear myself invite you in, I replied with a gruff voice in an attempt to build an impression of austerity towards this intruder.

I’m sorry, I thought I heard something.

I’m sure you did, but it wasn’t an invitation to let yourself in!

Standing to my feet I noticed that this young man was much taller than I, though that’s certainly not unusual as I am quite short. He removed the thick hood and stepped forward a little further as he dusted the melting water off his coat. He looked at me with a flicker of embarrassment at his rudeness but then an expression of subtle heartache swept across his face.

I’m sorry about your mother. I heard only a fortnight ago and came right away, he said in a compassionate voice that became more familiar with each word.

Without diverting from my inquisitive course – despite the