by Saima Mir
‘Ms Khan left this for you, sir,’ the concierge said, handing him a note and a parking stub.
‘What is this place?’ he asked the concierge, showing her the note.
‘It’s a warehouse, sir. Not far from here.’
He thanked the woman and climbed back into the car. He was entering the new postcode in the satellite navigation system, when the phone rang. It was Akbar Khan.
‘I’m on my way, Khan Baba,’ he said. ‘She got held up at work. I will call you as soon as I have collected her… Yes, Baba. Salaam.’ He never knew how much detail to give the Khan. He didn’t want to say anything to upset his employer, especially in this case, since he was collecting his daughter.
The concierge had been right: the location was not far. A young man in a high-vis vest waited at the entrance to the street named on the parking stub. Michael showed him the paper and he waved him on and down towards what looked to be a vacant plot. As he got closer, he counted ten cars parked up, each one worth more than his house. He felt ill at ease as he left the car park. Even if he achieved his dreams of becoming a surgeon, he was unlikely to live the kind of life on show here.
The attendant was waiting for him and recognised the look. ‘Obscene, in’t it?’ he said. ‘There’s people visiting food banks and these guys get to live like this.’ They walked on through a tunnel of wet cobblestones the colour of copper when it rusts, towards the light and roar of a crowd. The passageway opened out into a courtyard. A sign on one of the walls dated them as Victorian.
‘What is this place?’ said Michael.
‘A private venue – for those in the know,’ the attendant replied, tapping his nose.
‘This must be some party.’
‘That ain’t exactly what I’d call it,’ said the young man, as he led him towards a door into the warehouse.
The smell of sweat and the taste of iron hit Michael hard as the metal door swung open. A crowd was gathered around a huge cage that stretched around ten feet high; inside it, two bloodied men were pummelling each other. ‘Ms Khan is at the front, on the right,’ said the attendant, pointing.
A solitary woman stood in a sea of angry men, their adrenaline-fuelled fists punching the air, their faces contorted as they roared, and hers no less so, possibly more. Her dark hair fell across her face, her voice was strong, echoing as she shouted to the fighters, telling them to punch harder, move faster. Michael felt the crowd around her blur out, and when she came into focus, she was primal, her pull so strong that he couldn’t stop looking at her.
‘How did you know I was here for her?’ he asked the attendant.
‘None of your beeswax how I know. She’s been coming here for years. She’s paying for my little brother’s posh school. Proper bright, he is. Anyway, I can’t stand here yapping. My shift’s nearly over – bit like this match,’ he said, as one of the fighters slumped to the floor.
When a few minutes later the bell sounded and the winner was announced, Michael took advantage of the interval to make his way through the gentrified cage-fight enthusiasts towards Jia Khan.
‘Did you find the place easily?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘Follow me,’ she said.
He did as she instructed, walking a couple of steps behind as she navigated the crowded space. She was swift, moving faster than the women he knew. She stopped next to a stocky woman in a loud shirt and a black hat.
‘Jaani, I’m leaving now, so we need to talk about my winnings,’ said Jia. The woman waved her quiet, frowning. She was sweating to the point of melting; the synthetic shirt was a bad decision. ‘You’re the only person I let get away with that kind of rudeness,’ said Jia, and the woman smiled, her rouged lips wide over her yellow teeth.
‘It’s already done, my darling, take a look at your app. You know I always do you first,’ she said, winking.
Michael watched as Jia checked her phone, before thanking the stocky woman.
She led him back to the car park, where the parking attendant was waiting with a small suitcase and an overcoat. He handed Jia the coat and she slipped it on before getting into the car.
‘We’ll give you a lift, Ali. I need to say hello to your mother.’ she said. ‘Come on, get in.’
She gave Michael directions as they drove. Half an hour later, they reached an old council estate. The kind haunted by the smell of fried bacon and the sound of dogs barking, and where Union Jacks hung out of windows. It looked uninviting to people like them, and as Michael pulled up, he worried for their safety and that of the car.
‘Wait here, I’ll only be a few minutes,’ Jia told Michael. His phone rang just as she began walking with Ali to his front door. It was Akbar Khan.
‘Yes, Khan Baba, she is with me. We have made a slight detour.’ Michael watched as Jia waited outside a ground-floor flat, while the parking attendant disappeared inside. He returned a moment later with a tired-looking woman in a crinkled dupatta. She looked grateful to see Jia. A young boy hovered behind her. Ali said something that made the woman take her mobile from her cardigan pocket. She pressed it against Jia’s phone before hugging her tightly, gratitude spreading across her face. From the car, Michael could see Jia’s discomfort, her arms hanging limply as she tolerated the show of emotion. ‘I don’t know, Baba, I think it is a family your daughter helps.’
Jia was subdued when she returned to the car. They sat in silence all the way to her apartment building, where Jia needed to pick up her bags.
Michael waited in the hallway as she unlocked the door to her apartment. It was the first time he’d really looked at her. She’d tied her brown hair up in the car. Her eyes were like rum-soaked almonds, her skin golden and soft. She took off her shoes and stepped barefoot on to the parquet floor of the entrance hall. A crystal chandelier hung in the centre of the room, and stairs curved up one side.
‘Why don’t you wait in there,’ she said, pointing to an open door. ‘I’ll be down shortly.’
He did as she asked, and found himself in a large hexagonal library. Four of the walls were covered in shelves stretching from floor to ceiling. Books by writers as diverse as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chuck Palahniuk, Manto, Byron, Bukowski and Ghalib reached up to the ornate mouldings of the ceiling. A moleskin chesterfield stood to one side of the room. A glass wall adjacent to it looked out over a courtyard garden. Photographs, mainly in sepia and black and white, but the occasional colour image too, hung on the opposite wall.
Michael felt suddenly small, a rare occurrence for a man who stood six foot two. He had retained the lankiness that teenage boys have when their arms outgrow the rest of their body, and found himself awkward as he tried to sit in one of the armchairs. He stood up again and waited.
He wanted Jia Khan to be impressed by him. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because she was so different to him. Privileged and self-assured, she knew her place in the world and how to move through it. He was a mixed-race medical student in his early twenties, and still trying to figure out what that meant.
The Khan’s daughter was infamous among his father’s people, spoken about in hushed tones; the rumours about her were many. She was the only person known to have challenged, confronted and abandoned the Khan and lived to tell the tale.
He was lost in thought when she walked in. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked, startling him. He pulled his eyes into focus, took off his glasses, wiped them on his shirt and put them back on to study the image he’d absentmindedly been staring at. It was a copy of Life magazine, framed, mounted and hanging on the wall. The photograph on the cover – one he’d seen hanging in chai shops across Pakistan – was of an old man with aquiline features wearing a peaked hat of the kind worn by the people of Kabul. The sight of the qaraqul resting on Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s head always left him queasy. What kind of people used aborted sheep foetuses to make headwear?
‘It’s from 1948,’ said Jia. ‘That particular one took quite a lot of effort to track down.’
Michael was surprised. His Pakistani heritage had not se
rved him well and he’d dropped all ties to it, other than his father. It was one less moth-eaten coat in his cupboard. This woman was not like him. She hung her heritage on her wall for everyone to see and judge and question. He didn’t know anyone second-generation who did that.
‘My sister thinks I’m overcompensating for my “polite white lifestyle”.’ She tilted her head slightly as she spoke, and he could see traces of her father in her face. He noticed that she’d changed into a sari blouse and petticoat under the shawl she’d wrapped herself in. She turned back to the picture. ‘Who knows, maybe I am. A little.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t mix with Pakistanis or Pathans much. Not unless I’m defending them in court. You’d be surprised how much one can miss those ways… Shall we go?’
She handed him her case. He nodded.
‘So, what did the good people of our city tell you about me?’ she asked as he placed the bag in the car. He didn’t answer, instead holding the door behind the driver’s seat open as his father had taught him to do for women of ‘good’ families. Jia ignored the protocol and climbed into the passenger seat.
‘I’m not sitting in silence in the back of the car for three hours,’ she said. ‘This isn’t Pakistan.’ In that moment Michael knew that he liked Jia Khan, but that it mattered little to her either way.
CHAPTER 8
The boy searched the pockets of his red jacket for his car keys as he stood at the front door. He noticed his mother watching him from the kitchen. She was enveloped in the smell of masala, in her hand a powdered rolling pin. The boy stepped into the street to escape the scent.
He wasn’t really a ‘boy’ and when the newspapers would caption his photograph they would describe him as a ‘youth’. It was a legal technicality that mattered little to his mother.
‘No more chapattis, Mum. I’m in training,’ he said, waving her away as she followed him to the door. Her constant need to cook, showing her love through complex carbs, cakes and jalebis, annoyed him and hampered progression towards his muscle-building target. She stepped forward to kiss him but he brushed her off. ‘Acha, acha,’ he said, softening as he saw the look on her face. ‘Don’t wait up watching those Hum dramas.’
She stood by the door whispering prayers as the headlights of his red Ferrari flashed and the boot clicked open. She knew of no other way to keep him safe.
Taking a package from the back of the car, he placed it inside his jacket and pulled the zip up high before looking around. A group of kids were staring at him, one with his mouth wide open. They’d been kicking a football back and forth down the alley that hugged the side of the terraced houses. The flashing lights of the car had interrupted their game.
‘What you looking at?’ he shouted. The shortest of the group gave him the finger, before turning and tearing down the alley, his friends following fast behind. They all wanted to be like the man in the red Ferrari.
He climbed into his car, the sound of loud music exploding through the quiet street. The neighbours were relieved when his car disappeared down the road.
Twenty-three years old, Atif spent daylight hours at the gym trying to make up in muscle what he lacked in height. The evenings were spent making money.
He pulled into another terraced street, where his friend Aslam was waiting on a bench in the low sunlight, playing with his phone.
Atif greeted him warmly and told him to get in. ‘Bro, it’s been time, man!’
Aslam was a student at Manchester. His parents had encouraged him to move away in the hope that he’d leave his old friends behind. ‘Yeah, just, you know, been studying and that.’
‘Right. Right. Good for you, bro. Good for you. Me, I didn’t like it. Uni wasn’t for me. Dropped out.’
‘What were you studying?’
‘Politics and law. Then Abba got sick, I came back to help Mum an’ that… You know how it is, family.’ He stopped under the weight of the conversation, and pulled at his jacket. ‘It’s all good, though. See this?’ he said. ‘Ralph Lauren. Cost me a few hundred quid. There’s no way I could afford this if I was a student. Or even if I was working in an office. I make plenty Gs selling this shit. It’s the milk round that pays for my mum and sisters,’ he said, and winked at Aslam as he pushed the package further down into his jacket. Real men didn’t talk about their feelings in this town; they drove fast and flashed their cash.
He took a left into a narrow one-way road off Stourley Street. There were cars parked on either side, the drivers still in their seats. Aslam was about to mention this when his friend stopped the car. He watched Atif reach out of the window, his fist becoming a handshake as it met the hand of the driver parked alongside him. When he brought his fist back into the car, he was holding a twenty-pound note. He flicked his fingers making a clicking sound.
‘And that’s how it’s done,’ he said. ‘Help a bro out?’ He handed a small package to Aslam and gestured to let him know he was to do the same on the passenger side. Aslam tore open the brown paper of the package and tiny sealed plastic wallets fell all over him. ‘Easy. Easy,’ Atif said firmly.
Gathering himself and his goods, Aslam attempted to copy his friend’s fist to handshake move. It wasn’t as easy as it looked but the customer handed him a few carefully folded banknotes and seemed relieved to have his stash. They continued, driving and exchanging, until there was only one car left on the street.
As they approached the last car, Aslam realised he’d been holding his breath. He moved back into his seat, his sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his back.
The next customer was dressed in a vest, shalwar and prayer hat. ‘You’re delivering early,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be at mosque praying Maghrib righ’ about now.’
‘Sorry, bro. It’s Akbar Khan’s daughter’s wedding. The Jirga wants to shut up shop early for the weekend. They don’t want’a bring no bad luck or owt,’ said Atif. A look of respect fell across the buyer’s face. He nodded in understanding and pulled away.
Aslam had heard stories surrounding Akbar Khan. He wanted to separate the myth from the reality. ‘How long the Jirga been running things?’ he said to Atif.
‘For time. They’re like the law lords of this city. You know how the twelve of ’em Supreme Court judges run Great Britain, keep everything, you know, running tight. In the same way the Jirga runs this city.’
‘But what exactly does Akbar Khan do?’
‘He owns this town, bro. He and the Jirga make sure the councillors do their jobs, the hookers do theirs and tossers like that dick back there don’t start gettin’ up in our faces and start another riot…’
Atif’s voice trailed off. Distracted, he slowed the Ferrari down to a crawl. Aslam caught sight of a group of pretty girls in the wing mirror. His friend rolled down the window, staring at the girls but addressing Aslam: ‘The Jirga and Akbar Khan run this city.’
Backcombed hair, bright red lips and teetering on heels, the girls had looked older from a distance. They were barely eighteen.
Atif carried on speaking as he reached out of the window: ‘They got their own rules, their own ways, not all people can function in a democracy, see. Tell me, Aslam, why would we groom white girls when we’ve got high-quality arse like this on our doorstep?’ He grabbed the rounded bottom of the girl closest to his car.
The girl calmly turned and looked at him as if he’d asked her for the time or directions or notes to a lecture…and then she spat on his car.
‘What’s a matter?’ said Atif.
‘Fuck off,’ was the girl’s response. Her friends tried to pull her away, giggling as they walked. She refused to go with them, standing her ground and staring at the Ferrari.
‘Where you working? Will you go out with me?’ said Atif. He nodded at the girl in a ‘you know you want to’ kind of way.
The girl narrowed her heavily made-up eyes; green contact lenses gave them a snake-like quality. ‘I wouldn’t go out with you if you were Amir Khan. Anyway, whose car you robbed?’ she said.
Atif broke into
a grin. ‘It’s mine. You wanna ride?’
Shouts echoed across the street and they looked to see what was happening. On the other side of the road, two bouncers outside a bar nightclub were arguing with a couple of well-dressed Asian men. One of the well-dressed men pushed the bouncer: ‘You fuckin’ racist. I’m gonna see you very soon with me shooters.’
The bouncer turned to his colleague. ‘Check out 50 Cent over here.’
Hearing the response, the younger man’s shouts grew louder and more vicious, but his friend dragged him off.
‘I like his style,’ said Atif. ‘You gotta love it. Home of two riots. And we ain’t afraid to start a third. I’ll do it just to get you in my car, girl.’
The girl looked at the car and then at him and then at his car again, but said nothing.
‘Alhamdolilah! God made me Asian, baby, I got skin like Caramac, you know you want to lick it!’ Fireworks began exploding across the sky. ‘See, it’s a sign from Allah. Subhanatallah!’ Atif wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. ‘My last girlfriend said I look like Zayn Malik,’ he added, nodding his head and acting the man. ‘Or was it Dynamo?’ He winked.
The girl’s narrowed eyes widened and then crinkled with laughter. She pointed to the small drum that one of the girls was carrying. The instrument was played at parties in the run-up to Pakistani weddings. ‘We’re singin’ and playing the dholki at Akbar Khan’s house later. Pick me up at the Beauty Spot, I’m getting my hair done first,’ she said, before teetering along the road and climbing into the car where her friends were waiting.
‘What time?’ he called after her.
‘You figure it out.’
The men watched as they drove off.
‘This must be one expensive wedding,’ Aslam said as a second batch of fireworks exploded.
‘Them’s not for the weddin’. That’s the next delivery. Don’t you know nothin’? When the big drugs haul comes in, the fireworks go off. Come on, let’s go to Pasha’s. I need me some shisha.’
