We Can Be Heroes

by Catherine Bruton

  Priti is wheeling her shoes up and down the pipe like a hamster on a wheel. ‘I looked it up on the Internet,’ she says to Jed. ‘You’ve got PAS.’

  ‘What’s that?’ says Jed.

  ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome,’ says Priti authoritatively. ‘It’s when a kid says he doesn’t want to see one of his parents even though actually he does.’ (Priti is clearly determined to cure me and Jed of all our ‘emotional baggage’, as she calls it, before the summer is out.)

  ‘Yeah, but I actually don’t want to see my mum,’ says Jed. ‘So I can’t have PMT or whatever it’s called.’

  ‘No, you don’t think you do because you’ve been programmed not to,’ says Priti, sounding all school teacherish. (I wonder if she gets this from Shakeel – or maybe her mum.)

  ‘Right. Who by exactly?’ says Jed, dead sarcastic.

  ‘Your dad.’

  ‘Actually, my dad’s always saying I should see my mum,’ says Jed.

  ‘He would do. That’s what they do, innit?’ says Priti, sounding more like a gangsta now she’s getting excited.

  ‘Why would he say that if he’s programming me?’ says Jed. ‘He respects my feelings. He says I’m dead brave for telling the truth about how I feel about my mum.’

  ‘If it is the truth.’

  ‘I should know what’s the truth and what’s not about my own mum, shouldn’t I?’ says Jed, sitting upright now (which is quite hard to do in a pipe).

  ‘Not according to the stuff on the Internet,’ says Priti. ‘It starts off with you saying whatever you know will make your dad happy because, no matter what he says, you know he’ll actually be dead angry if you say you want to see your mum.’

  Jed glares at her and I wish I wasn’t sandwiched between the two of them because if Jed takes a swing at Priti, I’m the one who’s going to get it.

  ‘You say you don’t want to see her and he tells you he’s proud of you for “telling the truth”,’ says Priti. ‘You know that’s the way to keep him happy. Then you say it so often you forget you’re saying it to make him happy and you start to think it really is the truth. Brainwashing complete!’ She grins.

  ‘Where are you getting all this crap from?’ says Jed, slumping backwards and looking away.

  ‘One of them Parents for Justice websites,’ says Priti. ‘According to them, PAS is a very effective device for getting custody because the courts nowadays take more account of the child’s wishes.’ (She’s definitely memorised this.) ‘I feel dead sorry for your mum,’ she says, and as she does so, she wheels her shoes right up to the top of the pipe so she’s practically vertical with her feet on the roof and all the blood running to her head, making her face go bright red.

  ‘You don’t even know my mum,’ says Jed.

  ‘Neither do you,’ says Priti and this makes Jed go bright red too – as if he’s going to explode.

  ‘If Jed has got PAS, what can his mum do then?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, she’s stuffed!’ says Priti, coming down quickly so that she’s sitting up again, her cheeks flushed. For some reason she’s wearing a fluffy sheepskin thing over a velvet, sequinned party dress, topped off with a funny knitted hat with bobbled bits that hang over her ears, even though it’s boiling hot outside. ‘The UK courts don’t recognise PAS, or if they do, they don’t do much about it. But they should because it’s child abuse you know. Your dad is abusing you.’

  ‘Don’t talk about my dad like that!’ Jed sits up again and has turned to face Priti. I’m stuck between the two of them as they glare at each other.

  ‘I’m only trying to help you,’ says Priti, who doesn’t look even a tiny bit frightened of Jed. ‘You feel like you’ve lost one parent and you’re frightened of losing the other, so you say anything he wants you to say to make sure that doesn’t happen. But he’s manipulating you, exploiting you.’ (I can’t believe how well she’s remembered all this.)

  ‘He is not!’ says Jed.

  ‘Just because he hates your mum doesn’t mean you have to,’ says Priti, the bobbles on her hat wobbling as she lectures him. ‘Or you should at least be allowed to see her and hate her like normal kids do.’

  ‘I don’t want to see her!’ says Jed, standing up so suddenly he hits his head on the pipe. For a moment, I think he’s going to cry, but he doesn’t. ‘Don’t you get it? I don’t want to see her, ever! So stop going on about it, will you?’

  And then he storms off.

  ‘That boy has serious anger-management issues,’ says Priti.

  Just then Zara sticks her head into the pipe.

  ‘Yuk. Have you two rug rats been snogging?’ she says.

  I go bright red and Priti does a gagging thing. ‘If I’m going to be honour-killed, I’d want a better reason for dying than that squirt.’

  But Zara doesn’t even bother to listen. She’s already heading off back to the house so we crawl out of the pipe and follow her. Jed is nowhere to be seen, and neither of us has any ideas about what to do, so we perch on Priti’s garden wall. I take out my sketchbook and start doodling a picture of me and Priti and Jed commando-crawling through massive underground pipes, like in The Great Escape.

  ‘Here, let me have a look,’ says Priti.

  She grabs the sketchbook out of my hand. ‘It’s us!’ she says. ‘This is well cool.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What are we supposed to be doing?’

  ‘Catching terrorists and honour killers, that sort of thing,’ I say, feeling embarrassed suddenly. I’ve been working on the comic strip loads since Gary came.

  ‘Cool! So we’re like a crack team of elite commandos?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What are we called?’

  ‘I thought maybe the Brummie Bomb Squad?’ I say, staring at my feet.

  ‘Lame,’ says Priti. ‘What about the Bomb-busters?’

  ‘I guess so,’ I nod.

  ‘Take my word for it – it’s way better. And you should change our names too, make us sound more like superheroes,’ she says excitedly. ‘Like, Jed could be Jed-eye and you can be – Ben-D! Cool, huh?!’

  ‘What about you?’ I ask.

  She thinks for a moment. ‘I’m tempted by Priti “left eye” Muhammed, but I’m going to go for Lil’ Priti – makes me sound hot and funky at the same time. Which of course I am.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I say.

  ‘So now all we need to do is come up with some cool storylines.’

  AUGUST 1ST

  Grandad reckons there’s enough horrific stuff in the newspapers every day to keep Hollywood in business for a decade. The really bad stories are his favourites: the ones that make out like the country is full of murderers and rapists and on the verge of civil war and anarchy. I sometimes think the worse the news is the happier he is. He says things like, ‘This country is going to the dogs!’ and, ‘I never thought I’d live to see the day,’ or, ‘It was never like this in my youth!’, but all the time he’s looking really chuffed about it.

  This morning, he’s sitting at the breakfast table, tutting over the local paper and looking even more excited than he did when Granny presented him with a new remote control after Jed’s last trip to the hospital. By the look on his face I know something really bad must have happened.

  ‘Have you read about this young Asian lad that’s been stabbed, Rita?’ he says.

  Granny looks up from buttering her toast. ‘It’s the parents I feel sorry for,’ she says. ‘I wonder if the Muhammed family know them.’

  ‘Bound to. They all know each other, don’t they, that lot.’ Grandad jabs at the newspaper with his toast. ‘You see, this is what annoys me. They’re calling it a racist attack just because the boy was Asian.’

  ‘He’s fighting for his life, Barry,’ says Granny.

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but if it was a white boy lying there in hospital, it’d never get this kind of coverage and they sure as heck wouldn’t be saying it was racially motivated.’

  ‘Do they know
who did it?’ asks Granny.

  ‘Newspaper boy reckons they have a couple of lads in for questioning. One of them’s called Tyreese – what kind of a name is that? Parents were just looking for trouble calling him Tyreese, if you ask me!’

  Jed looks at me and I look at him.

  ‘And do we know if this Tyreese is white?’ asks Granny.

  ‘Not yet, but that’s not an Asian name.’

  ‘So it could be a racist attack,’ says Granny, which sounds reasonable enough to me, but Grandad just lets out a big snort and tells Granny she’s signed up for the PC Mafia.

  When Grandad goes to the kitchen, Jed whispers, ‘Do you reckon it’s Zara’s Tyreese?’

  I shrug. ‘Dunno, but don’t tell Grandad.’

  ‘He’d love that, wouldn’t he? Probably give himself a heart attack he’d be so excited.’

  But we both want to know, so we bolt down our toast and head over to Priti’s straight after breakfast. Granny says it’s a bit early, but we tell her we have a special project we’re doing with Priti and she lets us go without even brushing our teeth.

  Priti answers the door before we even knock and puts a finger to her lips as she beckons us in.

  The sound of raised voices is coming from the kitchen. It’s Mik and Shakeel. There’s no sign of Zara.

  ‘Zara’s been in her bedroom crying since yesterday afternoon,’ whispers Priti as if she knew what I was thinking.

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘Because her boyfriend has been banged up!’

  ‘So it is her Tyreese!’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, course it is. Who else do you know with a stupid name like that? I told her he was trouble.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to him?’ asks Jed.

  ‘They’ve let him out apparently,’ she whispers.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Mik and Shakeel are having a big bust-up about it for a start. It’s all going off. You want to hear?’

  We both nod, so she ushers us into the dining room which is next to the kitchen and the three of us bundle under the table. Through the half-open door, we can hear what’s going on, but can’t see much because of the table cloth which hangs down nearly to the floor. Through the tasselled fringe at the edge I can just make out their shoes. ‘You can tell a lot from the shoes people wear,’ whispers Priti. ‘I reckon all shoes have a personality.’

  Jed pulls a funny face. ‘Told you she was halfway to the nuthouse already!’

  ‘Shut up, you two and listen!’ says Priti.

  ‘They put Said in hospital, brother!’ It’s Mik talking. He’s the one wearing funky designer trainers that remind me of Priti’s wheelies, only without the wheels. ‘You think we should just stand by and do nothing?’

  ‘There’s no point in retaliating,’ Shakeel replies. ‘What can it achieve?’ He’s wearing brown lace-ups that look like they’re from a sensible shop – the sort of place where teachers might go. (Perhaps Priti has a point about footwear.)

  ‘And you don’t think it’s at all sus that the police let this Tyreese go and two hours later, his little brother walks into the police station, face all mashed up, saying he’d been jumped on by a gang of Asian youths just moments before Said was knifed?’

  ‘Maybe that’s what actually happened,’ says Shakeel.

  ‘Then why didn’t this kid go to the police station yesterday while they had his brother in custody?’

  ‘Maybe he was scared.’

  ‘Like hell. I’ll tell you why – because Tyreese went straight home after the police let him go and beat up the poor kid himself! His own brother, just so he could make it look like he stabbed Said in retaliation or whatever.’

  ‘He’s trying to turn it into a race issue,’ says Shakeel.

  ‘It is a race issue, brother. I thought you were supposed to be the clever one!’

  ‘This Tyreese and his gang want it to look like the Asian kids started it,’ Shakeel replies. ‘You want everyone to think he’s right by retaliating?’

  ‘It’s a matter of honour.’ The white trainers are over by the patio door, the brown shoes by the work surface.

  ‘We don’t need any more trouble in this community.’

  I imagine a round, black bomb. Tick, tick, ticking.

  ‘Said is our cousin, man!’ Their feet are right up close now, so that I can imagine they’re almost shouting in each other’s faces. ‘We have to fight to protect our friends, our families, our community. Our right to be here.’

  ‘Yes, but it is not a battle to be fought with fists or knives,’ says Shakeel.

  ‘How do you propose to fight it then?’

  ‘It’s a battle for acceptance, for hearts and minds.’

  ‘Don’t give me that. You dress it up with your fancy words – but in the end you’re just a coward.’

  ‘There are different ways of laying down your life for a cause,’ says Shakeel. ‘Sometimes it means doing nothing even if it hurts your pride to do so. But you prefer Tyreese’s way of doing things?’

  The flame creeps along the fuse, closer and closer to the round, black bomb.

  ‘You mean, would I beat up my brother to save my own skin?’ says Mik. ‘Tempting as the offer is, when I take action, I won’t be cowering behind you, saying “He started it!”’

  ‘Exactly: personal sacrifice; taking responsibility for your own actions. We make our own bed and we have to lie in it – think about that, little brother.’

  The trainers take a step or two backwards then Mik says, ‘I can’t listen to any more of your bullshit. I’m going out.’

  We see Mik’s trainers move in our direction and hastily pull in our feet and hold our breath.

  ‘Mik,’ calls Shakeel. ‘Brother, wait!’

  ‘You’re no brother of mine,’ says Mik and then we all hold our breath as he storms right past us.

  Boom! The bomb goes off.

  * * *

  We have to wait ages after he’s gone before we can get out because Shakeel just stands there in the kitchen for what seems like an hour, his brown shoes not moving.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I ask.

  Priti shrugs.

  ‘I wish he’d get on with it,’ whispers Jed (which can’t be easy for someone as loud-mouthed as him). ‘I’m dying for a pee!’

  Eventually, Shakeel goes upstairs and we all pile out from under the table. My left leg has got pins and needles from staying in the same position for so long. Priti says she can’t feel her bottom. Jed offers to give her a kick to wake it up.

  ‘Not likely!’ says Priti, thumping him.

  ‘What do you reckon all that was about?’ I say quickly.

  ‘You heard what Shakeel said about not using fists and knives,’ says Jed. ‘He’s got something bigger in mind! Boom!’ He mimes an explosion.

  ‘That’s not what hearts and minds means, is it? Blowing their brains out?’

  ‘Guess it must be,’ says Priti, rubbing her bum frantically.

  ‘Bet he’s gone off to fix up his bomb right now,’ says Jed.

  ‘I don’t reckon that’s what he was saying at all,’ I say, unconvinced.

  ‘He can’t just admit it right out, can he? Not even to his own brother,’ says Jed. ‘But you heard what he said about personal sacrifice, laying his life down for the cause, making his own bed and lying in it – making his own bomb and dying in it more like!’

  ‘It’s all going to kick off after this,’ says Priti, who’s still wiggling her bum. ‘When Mik gets angry, there’s no telling what he’ll do.’

  ‘I’m telling you, it’s Shakeel we need to keep an eye on,’ says Jed. ‘If this Said is a friend of theirs, or your cousin or whatever, he’s going to want revenge!’

  ‘And when he finds out that Zara is snogging the bloke who knifed Said then there’ll be an explosion, I can tell you!’ Priti says, patting her pink, velour-covered behind vigorously to try and get rid of the pins and needles.

  ‘She must be bricking it!’ says Jed.
r />   ‘So she should be,’ says Priti. ‘I’m so going to enjoy saying I told her so.’

  WHAT THE INTERNET SAID ABOUT BEING A MUSLIM KID IN BRITAIN AFTER 9/11

  Priti and me found this stuff on the Newsround site (which is like the Ten o’clock News for kids, so it must be right). It’s a survey they did a few years ago, but Priti reckons it’s still pretty spot on.

  1. Six out of ten of all kids interviewed agreed that life for Muslims had got harder since the 2001 terror attacks on New York. (‘Can’t remember what it was like before,’ says Priti.)

  2. Four out of every ten Muslim children taking part in the Newsround survey thought the news showed Islam in a bad way. (‘Too right!’ says Priti.)

  3. One in three Muslim kids interviewed said they had been bullied, and half of those believed it was because of their religion. (Priti has never been bullied, but this does not surprise me – who’d take her on?)

  4. Seven out of ten Muslim kids identified themselves as Muslim rather than British. (‘I’m my own person,’ says Priti. ‘I object to being put in a box and labelled in this way!’)

  5. Nine out of ten Muslim children think kids generally need to know more about Islam and almost half of all kids interviewed agreed they wanted to know more about Islam. (I’d like to know more about Islam. Jed doesn’t. Priti reckons I need to know more about just about everything.)

  6. Eighteen per cent of the children interviewed said they associated Muslims with religion, eight per cent said clothes and seven per cent said headscarves. (Jed said curry. Priti said stupid rules. I would have said my dad dying, but neither of them asked.)

  AUGUST 2ND

  Today is Saturday, but it doesn’t really feel like the weekend because it’s holidays and there’s no school or anything. After breakfast, Uncle Ian turns up out of the blue (like he does) and offers to take me and Jed out in his van.

  I don’t really want to, but Granny says, ‘That’ll be nice for you all!’ And I can see she’s tired and probably needs to have a day off from us.