Free The Kindness of Enemies: A Novel by Leila Aboulela

and our home and our future.’
    He looked at her as if he was sorry for her. Then with a gesture of impatience he picked up an ashtray. ‘My future and my children’s future is Russia.’
    ‘Why are you differentiating yourself from me? We are the same – we’re Georgians, not Russians.’
    He shook his head. ‘Your own grandfather, a wise king and a man of peace, ceded Georgia to Russia. He spared us bloodshed. Look at these Chechens, hard-headed as the mountains that bred them, fighting years on end, and every day I lose one lad after the other. Every day my clerk writes a letter to the family of a Seregin or a Panov, telling them that their son has been killed defending tsar, fatherland and the Orthodox faith. Why all this waste, why does Shamil continue when common sense says that we will win, when common sense says that they are resisting all that would be good for them?’
    ‘What good?’ She was sullen now, the arguments narrowing around her.
    ‘What good?’ he snorted. ‘Peace for one, prosperity too. Modern roads, sanitation, education, enlightened thinking. Everything that is uncouth and reprehensible to be replaced by what is civilised and rational. No one in his right mind, given a choice, would choose primitiveness over advancement. You can’t live in the past, Anna, you can’t be like them.’
    Tears came into her eyes and as if in sympathy her breasts, though not full, started to leak. Lydia’s milk. She would like to feed her now, to douse the baby’s thirst and her own anger. Instead it was her nightdress that was becoming wet. Not every Georgian was glad to submit to Russia. But David deliberately shunned those objecting members of the family who had had their lands confiscated and were held in Moscow against the threat of political intrigue. It irked Anna that her grandmother, the dethroned Queen Maria, was commanded at times to attend court for certain functions, then ridiculed for her clothes and tanned skin. Why did these humiliations not touch David too? In Petersburg society, hangers-on went around describing themselves as ‘Georgian princesses’ as if the phrase had no protection or use. In Anna’s case, the title was a right – she was granddaughter of George XII, the last king. David wouldaccuse her of being proud if she mentioned this. In turn she would defend herself by saying that she wanted simplicity and closeness to the peasants, that she worked hard and did not indulge herself in luxuries. Then they would argue even more.
    She looked at him now, holding his cigar in one hand, the mother-of-pearl ashtray in the other, and saw what she had not wanted to acknowledge. This was not the bridegroom she had exchanged vows with in church, the husband who brought her to Tsinondali, the lover who swam with her in the river. It was not only that he was older, the lustre lost from his hair, the boyish look in his eyes replaced with the keen desire to advance. His beard was gone; his clothes, his concerns, his watch with the double chain and seal, his manner of speaking, were more Russian than she could ever be.

3. P ETERSBURG , J UNE 1854
    Jamaleldin, granted an audience with the tsar, waited in the reception room on the upper floor of the Winter Palace. His uniform was that of a young officer in the Imperial Escort. He had even volunteered to fight in the Caucasus and was awaiting the tsar’s consent. All this would pave the way to his marriage to Daria Semyonovich. It would subdue her parents’ doubts, manifested in the cool reception he often received from Daria’s mother, the veiled comments about his slanting eyes. To fight the highlanders would seal his loyalty; it would, he believed, dispel the memory that he was Shamil’s flesh and blood. Let everyone know him only as the tsar’s godson. Let them remember his outstanding performance in his military examinations, his accomplishments that included astronomy, painting, a fluency in English and French, and not least his