The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva Read Free Book Online Page A

man in beige cleared his throat. “And what about the wine industry? We produce ninety percent of the cognac in Russia—the Kremlin’s entire stock of alcohol is made up of Dagestani spirits!”
    “This is no time to be talking about booze,” boomed a stone-faced man in a skullcap.
    “Let me finish,” the man in beige shook his forelock.
    But the stone-faced man, his focus on something in the empty air above everyone’s heads, continued: “The way you’re talking now, we’re supposedly going to become big oil magnates. But what makes umma is not oil, but faith. Maybe things here will get like they are in Chechnya: if you take a second wife, you get a one-room apartment, and if you take a third, then you get a two-room apartment. But the way things are here now, everyone condemns you for taking a second wife,and meanwhile they spend all their time at the saunas, astauperulla. If Moscow turns away from the Muslims of Dagestan, then what they’ll do is close ranks around tariqat, the pathway to Allah. The people who are ruining Islam need to be told, in the words of one wise sheikh, ‘Leave the forest to the wild beasts and come and join the people.’ Those who have strayed need to be brought to the true faith, may the Prophet have mercy on them, salallakhu alaikha vassalam. Schoolchildren need to be set on the path of true knowledge. But instead they’re being taught that human beings descended from the apes. What normal man would believe that? The almighty Allah began Creation with the human race, with Adam, aleikhi salam, made him out of red, white, and black clay. From his left rib Khava was created, and from them originated all life on earth. All the prophets, beginning with Adam, have brought us Islam—that is, tawhid, monotheism. And Allah accepts no other religion but this one. The Russians will leave, and there will come fitna, a time of troubles. Some who have strayed from the path call it gazavat, but they haven’t a clue what gazavat really is. May Allah protect us from those who cause trouble for its own sake. The main thing is to teach our neighbors what’s right, every single day. If you yourself perform dua , but your neighbor drinks, you must teach him. Otherwise in the next world he will tell the angel, ‘Do not take me down to hell, take my friend, who failed to teach me.’ And you will have to answer for the sins of your neighbor.”
    “What on earth are you talking about?” The bleach-blonde in the corner sprang up from her seat. “We’ve been betrayed, the trap has snapped shut on us—you can do whatever you want, but what do we have to be glad about?”
    “Khadizha, get a hold of yourself,” Shamil’s brother-in-law tried to rein her in.
    But she went on: “People say they aren’t going to let anyone out, but my brother in Rostov has a wife and children, how is he supposed to get back home to them? You don’t have anything to worry about,” she said, addressing the stout policeman, “they’ll airlift you to Turkey in a helicopter, but what about the rest of us?”
    “Why pick on me? And what does Turkey have to do with anything?” he retorted. “Know your place, woman! Look at her, popping up like a shaitan, foaming at the mouth…”
    “What are you afraid of?” the man in beige shouted to her.
    “Those women in veils!”
    The stone-faced man blinked his right eye: “It’s because of those rabble-rousers discrediting Islam…”
    “But they say that the ones discrediting Islam are you and the entire Muslim Spiritual Administration,” the young man with the lip jumped in again.
    Everyone went back to shouting at once.
    Shamil went out into the hot corridor and flexed his shoulders, as though trying to shrug off what he had been hearing. Then he got out his phone and poked at the buttons. Uncle Alikhan didn’t answer. He then tried his friend Arip, who worked in Moscow, but no luck there either. From the conference hall Shamil could still hear a chaos of voices,