by Saima Mir
Ahad’s paternal family were nothing like the people he had seen at the funeral today. The pomp and circumstance of the mourning, the array of expensive cars, the over-groomed women: it was all very different to the world of his buttoned-down grandparents.
He was thinking about all this and more when he felt Jia’s eyes on him. ‘My grandfather says your people are cruel. He said that when they fled Afghanistan, they slaughtered their wives and children.’
Jia had readied herself for difficult questions from her son, but this was not one of them. She considered her words carefully. ‘I am a proud Pukhtun, and you and I have the same blood – are you cruel?’
‘Is it true?’ he asked.
‘Bravery requires difficult decisions. To do good for the many, one must sometimes do questionable things to the few. If your grandfather knew the Pukhtun ways he would understand why the women and their children were killed. Every action has a reason, a measured reason. If you wait long enough, time reveals it. The men believed that their womenfolk would slow them down, allowing the enemy to catch up, and death at their hands was a kinder end than what that enemy would have done to them. Life demands harsh payments and difficult decisions. Those who don’t understand that, don’t understand life,’ she said. The conversation was intense but Jia considered it best to be honest with her son.
She was acutely aware that, despite giving birth to him, she had not had the opportunity to be his mother. She knew that the foundation parenthood is built on, the endless drudgery that proves and causes love to swell and grow, was missing between them. Their absence of history left her feeling stilted.
Ahad reflected on her words. Had his mother just lectured him? He had waited years to meet her. The way his father had described her, she was warm and gentle; but Jia did not seem to have been awaiting him with open arms. He looked across at his father, hoping to find some anchor, and Elyas responded, nodding, nudging him on to say what he had come to say.
But Ahad was frustrated by the situation, by it not being the way he wanted it to be. Years of anger, confusion and unanswered questions bubbled under his skin and stopped him from speaking.
It was Jia who finally broke the silence. ‘I hear you’ve been in trouble with the police,’ she said. ‘What did you do?’
‘Why does everyone think it’s my fault?’ he said, his anger finding an outlet. ‘The bastards were picking on me for no reason!’
She looked into his eyes, eyes she’d last seen on her eldest brother the day he’d died. ‘Well, we’ll have to do something about that,’ she said, leaning forward and touching his arm.
‘You can’t say things like that to him,’ said Elyas.
‘Like what?’
‘He’s a teenager and you were offering to solve his problems the way your father would have done.’
‘I was just talking.’
‘He’s a kid. He believes everything.’
‘He’s nearly legally old enough to leave home or get married. I think you’re being a bit overprotective.’
Elyas realised Jia hadn’t been around children since she was one herself, and as a result she was ill-equipped to speak to anyone who wasn’t an adult. He had expected too much of her. But her words forced him to recognise that, though he disagreed with her method, she might be right about some things. He was overprotective. He had told himself it was because he was doing the work of two parents, but maybe his approach had been wrong, and maybe, despite his best efforts, he had let his son down.
Although the conversation between mother and son was strange, their interaction awkward, Jia knew that there was no other way it could have played out. She knew that the strained circumstances and her reluctant honesty made it difficult for Ahad to like her, but she hoped that her trust in him and her obvious loyalty to her bloodline would go some way to calm the waters.
Her mother asked her about it later that evening, once Elyas and Ahad had left. ‘A woman is incomplete without her child,’ she told Jia.
‘Will I ever forgive myself?’ Jia replied. She thought about the things she couldn’t talk openly about with her mother, the darkness that had once consumed her, and that was again knocking at the door – things they both knew but could never quite bring themselves to admit. She pushed the thoughts aside and shook her head.
‘It is what mothers do, feel guilty,’ said Sanam Khan.
***
On the other side of the city, Benyamin waited in his car, hiding behind its tinted windows, the night drawing in around him. The funeral had been even harder than he had anticipated. The morphine Malik had prescribed was wearing off and he knocked back a couple more tablets, followed by a glug of water. Thanks to Malik’s contacts, he’d been seen last night by medics at the private hospital nearby, and received the best ‘off the books’ medical treatment possible. The scans had shown he’d been lucky: there was no internal damage to his organs. His face was still swollen, and his body badly bruised, but by some trick of fate, he hadn’t broken any bones. He couldn’t stand for long periods of time, but he’d managed the drive OK – he was glad his Beamer was an automatic.
This had always been his favourite time, sitting in the warmth of his car, encased in the velvet night. That feeling of comfort had been marred now, but he still preferred it to being at home, especially with so many people around, so much fussing and high emotion. Here he could watch the world go by from the shadows, like a film, the orange street lamps spotlighting the actors: working girls, junkies, pimps and punters. It was a place for the lonely, for the strung out, the desperate. It felt like escape.
CHAPTER 30
Two months later Nowak made his next move. ‘Why would he target that building?’ said Idris. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Jia, Idris and Nadeem were sitting in a shisha bar across from where the bomb had exploded. The large plasma screen on the wall opposite was tuned to News 24, showing the rubble that was once a refugee centre. Plumes of smoke poured out of the old warehouse, as young and old ran out on to the street.
Jia had been nearby when it happened. The explosion had shattered glass, pulled roofs off buildings and taken walls apart brick by brick. It had cracked the road wide open. Jia and her cousins had spent hours fielding the injured. Exhausted and broken, they had retired to Pasha’s shisha bar.
The images on the news kept coming. ‘I know her,’ said Jia, pointing at the screen. The woman from Akbar Khan’s funeral, the one who had accompanied her elderly father, was standing behind the reporter. The side of her face looked raw; she was hysterical, paramedics patiently helping her into an ambulance. The chaos was a message from Nowak, a sign that there was no line he would not cross. He wanted the city and he would take it as a corpse if he had to. He’d sent Jia a text just before it happened, like an attention-seeking child, she thought, her blood boiling; he wanted everyone to look at him, talk about him, be afraid of him.
‘If it wasn’t for the proceeds of crime, this city would have nothing,’ Idris went on angrily. ‘No one cares what happens in this place. And no one’s going to care about these people who come here, the refugees, people who have escaped war and persecution! So why target them?’
‘I care,’ said Jia. ‘We care. And his fight is with us. I’ve seen men like him before. They don’t care about anything. They don’t love anything. He’s targeted the most vulnerable people he can to get to us. Because he knows we do care.’
For too long, Jia had hidden herself away in her ivory tower. She had closed her eyes to the silent injustices of society, to the ease with which her white counterparts, from their own towers, passed judgement on enclaves and ghettos, a symptom of their arrogance and luck. For too long she had lived apart in a society of indifference. Now Nowak was dragging her out.
‘Is Ben joining us?’ asked Nadeem.
‘I think he’s at home,’ Jia said.
‘I hear he’s got a new lady friend,’ said Nadeem. The TV volume ramped up out of the blue and they turned to find someone had flicked to a music
channel. Nadeem’s words were lost in the mix.
‘Any news of Malik?’ said Jia.
‘He’s at the hospital. Says he’ll join us when he can,’ said Idris.
It felt good to be with the strong foundations of family. Pasha’s chalky walls were built on community, and recalled those found in the generational and palatial homes of Lahore’s old quarters. The smoking ban had brought Prohibition-style speakeasies to the city, where the poison on sale was not booze but tobacco. Remixed Arab-English tunes, bubbling hookahs and chatter filled the place. Pretty hijabistas sucked on hubbly-bubbly tubes as plumes of smoke rose up and permeated the air with a variety of shisha fragrances.
The cousins fell into conversation in the way that only those who live closely and share blood can, picking up strands of the past and intricately weaving them with the here and now. Jia began to remember what it felt like to be surrounded by people she’d grown up with, people who shared her values and understood her ways without explanation. The conversation was simple, easy, comfortable. The waiter handed her a glass of juice and she took a long, slow drink. She leaned in to the sugar hit and the warmth of her family, and spoke about the issues confronting them, about Nowak, the Jirga’s request and the police.
As the family lawyer, Idris had known the day would come when they would need to discuss the family business openly; he had just had to bide his time. ‘We’ve lived long enough to know that British law does not offer people who look like us justice. As members of the judiciary, we choose to live by it and implement it, but no one is going to give us our rights. Like Zan said, we have to take them.’
Jia listened, the mention of her brother tightening the knot in her heart. Before Zan had been arrested he had discussed bringing their fathers to justice, showing them the error of their ways, and then using their money and influence to improve the lives of others. They were going to call themselves the Verdict, and they were going to bring down their fathers, whom he described as ‘backward and bent on destroying the fabric of society’.
Sitting here all these years later among the rubble of life, Jia saw his words for what they had been: childish idealism.
‘Before I came here,’ Jia said, ‘I wanted to end this life of our fathers. Now…I’m not so sure.’
Malik appeared behind her. He pulled off his coat and placed it on the back of a chair. He looked exhausted. Jia handed him her juice. He took it gratefully.
‘Are there still injured people coming in?’ said Nadeem.
‘No, we finished up a while ago, but I had another kid come in with stomach pains,’ he said. ‘Like Jimmy Khan’s little girl last year, frightened to death she was… We found a kilo of heroin in her stomach. A kilo! The Brotherhood had her swallow seventy-nine condoms full of heroin before putting her on a flight to Manchester. If even one had burst she would have died.’ He finished the juice. ‘Sorry, did you want that?’
Jia shook her head and ordered another drink.
‘Nothing like that ever happened under the Jirga,’ Malik added. The family had enforced a strict code of honour – no child was to be harmed, the elderly were to be respected and women were allowed to choose their destiny. Decades had passed since anyone had dared cross the line. Nowak’s new wave of criminals was changing all that.
Nadeem shook his head in disgust. ‘Whatever the Jirga did, we knew our children were safe,’ he said. ‘But these new guys, they have no code, no honour. And the police can’t handle them…or won’t. They couldn’t deal with the organised crime of our disorganised fathers, never mind these people. They’re younger, more ruthless and better organised.’
‘The Jirga is getting old,’ said Idris. ‘The last ten years have seen them losing business and getting sentimental about the old ways. They reject change, change that could benefit them and the city. They’ve weakened and that’s what’s allowed Nowak to get his foot in the door.’ He paused, turning to Jia. ‘Your father said he was ready to retire, wanted you to take over. I always said you were too straight, but he disagreed; he said you’d like the new projects.’
‘What projects?’
Idris opened a leather notebook. ‘I wanted to distance the way we do business from the family,’ he said. ‘Modernise it and make it more lucrative. A lot of the younger kids are tech-savvy. There’s a girl called Haines, Chilli Chacha’s granddaughter – she’s brilliant. Tech city would snap her up but her family won’t allow her to leave home until she gets married, and she’s brighter than all the boys they’ve tried to set her up with. She’s got an idea for a website… This is the age of eBay and Shopify, and yet the Jirga is still running things like a cash-and-carry corner shop!’
‘What stopped you implementing any of this?’ asked Jia.
‘You did. I wanted you to be here, to take over. I knew you had it in you, I just didn’t know if you’d follow through,’ he said, watching her face closely, waiting for a reaction, a flicker of resistance. But nothing came. He was right, she had always been her father’s daughter, but it was the cumulative effect of life that had brought her to this place. She could no longer sit back and ignore the equal expectations society put upon people from unequal circumstances. Seeing the blood of her people run in the city had awakened something in her. She was the Khan. She always had been. It had just been a matter of time.
‘Show me,’ said Jia, pointing at Idris’s book. ‘Show me what you think we should do.’
He handed it over and she began leafing through the pages.
‘You’re talking tech but staying old school?’ said Malik, nodding at the pencil and notebook.
‘It’s easier to shred than an iPad,’ Idris answered. ‘And it’s just reminders. Most of it is up here,’ he said, tapping his head. Idris had an eidetic memory; he remembered everything. ‘The old men are tired. It’s time to step up and take charge, Jia. Once we are settled we can convince them to retire and bring our people out of the dark ages.’
Jia listened to Idris, his words genuine, grounded in loyalty and sound judgement. She trusted him more than she trusted anyone else. Her mother, the old man at the funeral and now Idris – they were all asking her for the same thing.
‘Nowak will be planning to take out more members of the Jirga. He won’t stop with Akbar Khan,’ said Idris. ‘He wants to throw the city into chaos before taking over the operations and then tearing them apart.’
Jia watched her cousins. They had grown up here. Their father, and hers, had worked hard to make it their own. The blood of Bazigh Khan’s family had been spilled on the streets. Her brothers had offered up their innocence and their lives at the altar of Pukhtunwali. Now Nowak had decided to play with the lives of the city’s children and women, as if they were worthless. Somewhere along the way, Akbar Khan had become the voice in her head: These are not the ways of honourable men. Make them pay.
The surge of rage she had felt when she’d collected Benyamin began to flow again, bringing images flashing through her mind: Ben’s tyre-marked body, young children with heroin pouches in their intestines and Nowak’s smug face. It didn’t consume her, it didn’t overwhelm, it renewed her. It coursed through her veins, spreading to her extremities, making her feel powerful. She formed a fist with her right hand, before letting her fingers fall loose. ‘Sabar and salaat,’ her father had said. Patience and prayer. The time for both was done.
‘We will make them pay,’ she whispered, her voice ice cold. ‘I am going to do this,’ she said. ‘And you’re going to help me. There will be no more corner-shop crime. There will be a new Jirga, and it will be run the way I say.’
Benyamin had been a few streets away when the explosion happened, Sakina in his car once again. She’d unbuttoned her burqa, and the scent of her perfume filled the car. He was pleased. She’d liked his gift. ‘The usual?’ she said. He nodded. His face was red but the tension in his head was beginning to subside.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘Just try and relax.’
He leaned back in his seat and closed his e
yes. The deliciousness of drifting into sleep swept over him as her hand moved down his arm. And that’s when the blast happened, reverberating through the car and all around. Sakina gasped. ‘What the hell was that?’ But suddenly, Benyamin couldn’t breathe. His airways constricted, the oxygen trapped and unable to pass into his lungs. His chest felt tight, his stomach heavy. He reached up to his throat; he was frightened and fighting to breathe.
Sakina rooted around in the glove compartment and pulled something out. She reached over. ‘Breathe into this,’ she said, giving him a brown paper bag. He put his face to the bag and began to take deep breaths. As the panic attack subsided, he leaned back in his seat and checked his phone. There was a message. ‘It’s an explosion on Durban Street,’ he said. ‘Jia is there. She’s fine.’
‘You don’t have to help,’ said Sakina. ‘They don’t know you’re nearby.’
Shame flooded through Benyamin. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘for being like this.’
He was grateful for her presence, but conflicted. He’d never needed anyone before, and now, when he did, it was a prostitute. They’d been doing this for weeks. Him coming here, just to sleep. Her watching over him, soothing him.
His family thought he was collecting the milk money. Jia had suggested it might be good for him to keep a hand in the business as he recovered. But what did Jia know? She wasn’t the one having the nightmares. She wasn’t waking up in a cold sweat, or being triggered into panic mode by the flash of car headlights.
He’d caught sight of Sakina on the milk round and had recognised her, the way souls recognise each other. He’d watched as car after car came to take her away.
He found it hard to be around family now. He felt embarrassed, afraid, conflicted, all things he thought men weren’t supposed to feel. He needed to talk to someone and not feel ashamed. ‘Being around you calms me,’ he’d said to Sakina. ‘I know that sounds stupid.’
‘There’s a hadith that says, “Souls are like conscripted soldiers,”’ she’d replied. ‘Some of us were together before we were born, and recognise each other when we meet in this life.’ Benyamin didn’t know about that, but he knew he needed to talk to someone about what happened to him.
