by Saima Mir
‘I’m simply stating the facts. And the facts are that, for the three days the fires raged, Bazigh Khan was at my father’s house mourning the loss of his family, as is prescribed under Islamic law. The police suspected him, they even arrested him, but eleven men stepped forward to say he had not left the house in days.’
‘And his children? What happened to them?’ Elyas asked.
Jia pointed at Idris and Nadeem. Elyas looked from the brothers to their father. Bazigh Khan was across the garden, greeting some guests. He thought of his own son and what he would do to anyone who dared to hurt him. He thought of what Jia’s leaving had done to him. And he wondered what damage lay within Bazigh Khan and his sons. He couldn’t even begin to fathom.
In the distance, Bazigh Khan was shaking hands with the men of the Jirga. No one knew exactly how many police officers had tried and failed to bring them to justice, how many lives they had taken to achieve their ends or what it was that drove them. They embraced and laughed raucously, like any other group of greying old uncles at a wedding, making merry and over-indulging.
CHAPTER 13
Jia watched Benyamin from afar. Even from a distance she could tell he was flirting with the young girl in the emerald green. She wondered what Zan would have made of their little brother. Things had been so very different when she and Zan were young.
Zan Khan had been fiercely loyal, with his mother’s charm and his father’s intelligence, but he had been a lot less carefree than Benyamin was. The absence of her eldest sibling was a constant knot in her stomach. She wished he was here, to pick over food and family gossip with, and to help her make peace with her father, because she couldn’t bring herself to do it. But Zan wasn’t here, and he never would be. Akbar Khan had seen to that. Time unrolled and wrapped like a ribbon around her and she could almost feel his presence; there he was taking his mother by the arm, laughing, making her smile in that way only he could. He was eighteen again, captain of the debate team, playing cricket at county level and getting straight As. She remembered how he’d argued with his school when they’d asked a student to remove her hijab. He’d won, and his name appeared in all the national press, making him a celebrity for a while. Girls her age worshipped popstars, but Jia worshipped Zan; in her eyes, he was matchless and fearless. But Zan was not quite fearless enough to tell his father about his own plans. Maybe if he had, things would have been different. She was deep in thought when Benyamin walked by. Caught up in the past, she instinctively reached out to stop him.
But he answered her abruptly. ‘What do you want, Sis?’ He was annoyed, and his gaze kept drifting towards the girl in the emerald green. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ This wasn’t the right time to talk. The right time had been aeons ago. She let him go.
‘I just wanted to make sure you’d be here for the rukhsati.’
‘I’ll be here,’ he said. ‘Some of us have always been here.’ He walked away, his words stinging gently, like antiseptic on a cut. Is this what healing felt like?
Jia turned and walked towards the house, making her way up the stairs to her parents’ bedroom. She remembered how she and her siblings would hide in here when extended family overstayed their welcome. She stopped by her mother’s dressing table: a picture of the Khan children stood beside the perfumes and powders. She ran her fingers over their faces. Zan would never have spoken to her like that.
He was full of practicalities, but he knew about the power of kindness. He had been a budding astrophysicist, drawing constellations and carrying out calculations on scraps of paper, on napkins, notebooks – and then on walls, after his sister asked him to. Tall, tanned and sociable, to Jia’s pale and introverted, everything came easy to Zan, including grades and girls. Nothing came easy to Jia. Except, of course, her father’s love.
Jia opened her mother’s armoire and took out the old photograph albums. She flicked through them slowly. Pictures of holidays, and Eid, Christmas and birthdays. They had travelled so much, mainly to Pakistan and the US. Zan had loved it. He had planned to take a gap year and see Eastern Europe and West Africa and then South Asia. He wanted to see the world before settling down to discover places even more distant, through telescopes and mathematical calculations. But as the time to tell Akbar Khan grew closer, he found he wasn’t as courageous as his little sister.
She had looked down her nose at him and through her rose-tinted glasses. ‘You have to tell him that you hate law, and that medicine is boring!’ she said. Their father wanted what all South Asians wanted back then, for their children to be doctors and lawyers, not stargazers. Dreams did not pay bills. Dreams were for people with white privilege.
Zan had laughed at her naivety and followed his father’s wishes, which was to win a place at Oxford. ‘A lawyer,’ his father said. ‘A lawyer from Oxford!’ and Zan finally felt he’d made Akbar Khan a little proud.
Zan was golden in more than just skin tone. Distanced from their parents by a cultural divide and with that tight sibling bond common to children of immigrants, Jia would listen to her brother the way the believers listen to a scholar. Zan was the font of all knowledge and the team leader. He helped make GCSE selections, advised on homework and fought for his siblings and cousins to take part in extra-curricular activities. As with most first-generation immigrants, the value of these things were lost on their parents. Maths, English and science were surely all that a child needed to succeed in life. Thanks to Akbar’s money and Zan’s tenacity, the Khan children basked in an innocence that was afforded to people of means. Life was good. At least for a while.
Then everything changed. Looking through the pictures now, Jia could almost map the changes, the point at which her brother lost his shine, when his face started to become gaunt, his eyes sunken.
It was incremental. For Zan, it started with simple questions, then pushing, followed by bullying, which turned to out-and-out intimidation. Soon, there was no doubting the fact that Zan was being targeted by the very people who were supposed to protect him.
The first time it happened he was driving home with his school friends. They’d been to play football at the recreation ground. Zan had just got his licence and his father had bought him a car to celebrate. There were other drivers on the road travelling much faster than the new silver Golf GTI. ‘You drive like an old man!’ Zan’s friends laughed.
‘I don’t want to break the law,’ he told them.
There was no reason to stop him. But they did. The flashing blue lights behind him told him to pull over. He waited on the side of the road. He’d not had dealings with the police, but he knew enough to stay polite and to answer any questions. He watched a policeman get out of the car and walk over to the Golf. Something about the way the officer walked betrayed his arrogance. Watching him from the rear-view mirror, Zan could see that he was grinning. Discomfort began to seep into him.
‘Well, aren’t you a good-looking one, eh?’ the policeman said, leaning into the driver’s side. A second officer had got out of the police car and was waiting just a few feet away.
Zan’s response came stammered: ‘Er…is everything OK, officer? We were just going home from football practice.’
‘The tread is worn on your back tyres,’ the policeman said.
‘That’s not possible, it’s a brand-new car!’ said Zan.
‘Are you saying I’m making it up?’ The officer’s voice was sharper.
‘No. No. I’m just… I…’
‘You know you need a driving licence to drive in this country?’ the officer said, waiting for him to take the bait.
But Zan knew better than to answer. Tight-lipped, he waited, acidity rising in his throat. He handed the policeman his licence. The officer looked at it with disinterest. ‘Come and look at the back tyre,’ he said. ‘You’ve been racing hard, haven’t you? The tread is gone. You can’t drive like that in this country, y’know.’ The blood rushed to Zan’s face. He climbed out of the car and walked to the back.
‘Over there,’ the officer
said. He made him spread his arms and legs up against a cold, hard wall. The officer leaned in, his breath on Zan’s neck filled with a sickly nicotine gum smell, mixed with stale beer and stolen cigarette puffs. The policeman moved closer, patting him down, moving his hand deliberately up the boy’s leg and bringing it to rest on his thigh, his heavy belly pressing against his back. Zan felt the sickness rise from his throat to his mouth. It would never leave him.
‘You look a bit like my ex,’ he said. ‘He was Asian too.’ The officer grinned, revealing a gap where one of his top left teeth should have been. He whispered again, his mouth close to Zan’s ears. ‘Give great blow jobs, you Pakistani boys. Especially in handcuffs.’
Zan froze at the officer’s words. He knew his friends would be watching from the back seat of the car but this brought little relief. The smell, the words, the touch of the man, seared themselves on to him. For days afterwards the reek of the officer’s body odour and cheap antiperspirant would linger around him. He was crippled by hot, relentless shame. He prayed for the moment to end, for the officer to step away, his insides twisting and somersaulting. Then suddenly he threw up. The policeman sprang back in disgust, his shiny black shoes covered in vomit.
‘Urgh! Who’s going to fucking clean these?’ he shouted at Zan, who was gasping for air. ‘I should get you to do it! Right now, you fucking –’
The second officer appeared, and said something to his colleague. The first policeman’s tone changed. ‘I’m going to let you off this time, little boy. But you won’t be so lucky if I catch you again.’
Zan climbed into his car. He sat there shaking as his friends’ questions came at him hard and fast. He didn’t know how he managed to drive home, and when he got there, he didn’t tell anyone what had happened. He closed the door, climbed into bed and waited for sleep. If he didn’t tell anyone, then it hadn’t happened.
But a few days later, he was stopped again. This time the officer’s partner took the lead. Polite and apologetic, he was quick to let Zan go. ‘Sorry, mate, just doing my job, you understand?’ he said, handing back his driving licence. The fat officer with the body odour and wandering hands watched, his eyes sharp, his shoes clean and firmly planted on the pavement. His partner’s apology restored Zan’s faith and he breathed a sigh of relief. It was always best to do the right thing, he reminded himself, especially in a country where everyone’s rights were safeguarded. Maybe the last time hadn’t been as bad as he remembered. Maybe his brain had played tricks on him. He went home happy and relieved. His mother, who had been worried about her son’s sullenness, put his behaviour down to his teenage years.
But then it happened a third time, the fat policeman leaning over him again, his breath still stale and alcoholic, his hands travelling further, deepening the scars of shame. Zan could not bring himself to tell his family. He tried to talk to a teacher at school. But it turned out that his wife was a police officer, and he took it as an affront. He told Zan he was overreacting.
Zan, like many others, still believed the justice system was essentially fair; he thought his family and wider community would blame him for what had happened. He blamed himself. He was the Khan’s son, but wasn’t man enough to sort out his own problems. He told himself this was all a mistake, a blip, and it would all go away. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t a blip and it didn’t go away.
Things went from bad to worse and on from there. Zan found he couldn’t leave the house without being stopped and searched by the police. He lost weight, dark circles appeared around his eyes, and he became withdrawn, preferring to stay in his room. On days when he did leave, his face was set hard and questions were met with snapped answers and sharp words. It ended only when Jia Khan demanded to know why her father hadn’t stepped in to find out what was going on with Zan.
Akbar knocked on his son’s door, Jia a few steps behind. ‘Not you, beta,’ he said, telling her to wait outside. Akbar Khan came out an hour later, his face dark, his eyes burning with rage.
‘What happened, Baba?’ Jia asked.
‘Nothing for you to concern yourself with,’ he told her. ‘Your baba will fix everything. I will make it right. Get some chai for your brother.’
He’d kissed her and gone to his study to make a phone call. And he had fixed it, in a way. The stop and searches ended after that.
Then the CID arrived, bringing with them the two officers who had terrorised Zan. Seeing them walk in through the front door of his home without permission stripped the boy’s soul.
Those memories of the night they came to take her father and brother hadn’t faded at all. Twenty years on and Jia found that the old monsters hadn’t died, they had simply found new places to hide. The images ran like an 8mm film before her eyes, beginning with the door catching on the rug as Maria pushed it open, unable to speak, the words refusing to leave her mouth. ‘Some men are here…to arrest Baba!’ she’d cried.
Jia had rubbed her eyes, trying to clean them of sleep, and reached for her glasses. Her sister’s frightened face came into focus, signalling the severity of the situation. Jia remembered getting out of bed. It was cold that night, and she had pulled on a hoodie, zipping it high and hiding her hands in the sleeves.
‘It’ll be OK,’ she had said, guiding Maria down the stairs, her arm around her shoulders reassuringly. But her gut told her it wouldn’t.
From the staircase, through the open doors, Jia could see five men rummaging through their cupboards and belongings. There were three of them in her father’s office, and two went past them up into Zan’s bedroom. She followed them. Her brother was sitting on the edge of his bed, his head down. He looked small and scared.
The policemen finished their search and gathered in the hallway. Akbar Khan gently removed his wife’s hands from his arm when the officer in charge told him he needed to go with them. Zan, who had been staring down at his feet, looked up on hearing his name. For the first time in his life, Akbar Khan put his arm around Zan. ‘It is OK, beta. Just tell them the truth, my son,’ he said. Jia remembered Benyamin clinging to his mother’s leg as the door to Pukhtun House sucked shut behind them, like the closing of a vault.
CHAPTER 14
With the wedding party in full swing, Benyamin decided it was time. He looked around for his girlfriend, Mina. She was waiting patiently by the house. Catching his eye, she turned and began walking to the gate. Something about the way her sari clung to her hips, her waist pinched like a sixties Bollywood heroine, made Benyamin grin. He was one lucky guy, and he couldn’t believe she’d agreed to what they were about to do.
His mind flashed to Jia. She always thought she knew best. Well, she didn’t have a fucking clue. He quickened his stride, flicking her from his mind, and slipped his hand into Mina’s, leading her towards his car. Of course he needed to be there for the rukhsati; he didn’t need reminding. He checked his watch. They would be back in time to give the bride away.
Finding his car blocked in by the other guests’, he shouted to the valet, who threw him a set of keys and pointed to a yellow Ferrari. The doors clicked open and the couple slipped in, the car purring into action. He put his foot to the gas and gunned down the driveway, seamlessly disappearing out of the gates.
Once outside the grounds of Pukhtun House, Mina unbuckled her sandals and began unwrapping her sari. From the corner of her eye she could see Benyamin stealing glances, young lust flooding through him. She played up to the attention. He reached over to rub his hand up her thigh, and she pushed him away. ‘Keep your eyes on the road!’ she said. He laughed loudly, the adrenaline coursing through his veins and making him hard. Before he could try anything else, Mina had pulled on a black dress and was slipping her heels back on.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up outside an exclusive boutique hotel, The Mansion. Owned by Arab money, sitting in acres of rich green fields, the place promised privacy and discretion to its select clientele. Benyamin parked up outside the reception and Mina climbed out. ‘See you in a bit. Good luck,’ he sa
id and drove towards the car park.
Once in the hotel, Mina made her way to the bar and ordered a vodka and lemonade. The bartender, who had been waiting for her, handed her the lemonade minus the alcohol. She took the glass without argument – she knew he’d been paid to keep an eye on her – but she really could’ve used a drink right now. Her mind turned over the delicious idea and then put it aside. Since she’d started seeing Benyamin, falling off the wagon had become impossible.
She scanned the bar and saw Juliet waiting for her, every curve and bump of her friend’s body visible in the red dress that wrapped around her like a badly applied bandage, flashing slithers of bare skin. Juliet had always liked attention, irrespective of whom it came from. And it was usually the wrong kind.
Mina followed her to a deep alcove where two men were sitting on a sumptuous velvet chesterfield. They were deep in discussion. As they approached, Mina noticed that the first was distinguished and tall, and the other was doubled up in pain. Their conversation was over, and the tall man wiped his hand on a white napkin before offering it to Mina. ‘And you are…?’
‘Mina,’ she replied, averting her eyes from the bloodstains on the white cloth.
‘Andrzej Nowak, at your service,’ the man said, this time bowing as he spoke.
He reminded Mina of a stained-glass window saint, the kind she’d seen at the church Benyamin took her to last Christmas. His face was long and slim, his eyes piercing blue. But she’d heard enough about him to know that Andrzej Nowak was no angel. He liked his women, and he liked them like his liquor: cold, old and hardened. This was evident from the ladies at the other end of his table who were enjoying his hospitality and champagne as if at the last-chance saloon. For most of them, it probably was.
Nowak signalled to a passing waiter, who came running, almost tripping over a table as he did so. Service was fast at The Mansion, but the Pole was renowned for his generosity, making staff work harder to win his business. Rumour had it he had paid off one waiter’s student loans and had given his BMW to another. The staff fought over his business and he encouraged the competition. Courtesy had been missing from Nowak’s childhood and had become very important to him as an adult.
