by Saima Mir
‘I can’t go to a shrink. This isn’t The Sopranos,’ he’d said. The two of them had laughed at that. He hadn’t laughed in a long time. She was clever and funny, and she knew how dark life was. Mina hadn’t understood. She’d wanted things to revert back to how they used to be almost instantly, but he couldn’t do that. She’d been lucky, managing to escape in the chaos that followed him getting caught that night. He hadn’t been so lucky, and Nowak had changed him.
‘Funny, the culture we come from. It’s fine for you to pay for sex, but tell someone you’re struggling emotionally and they lose all respect for you.’ Sakina could say things like that and he wouldn’t mind. When Jia said words like that they would trigger something in him that made him want to distance himself from her. But he still hoped she would take over Akbar Khan’s duties. She was the only one who could.
CHAPTER 31
The day after the explosion, Jia and Idris set to work. They began by strengthening their network. Their first port of call was an old school friend who ran a business close by. Jia wanted to explore options for the Jirga and its various operations.
Through an internal glass window in the reception area, she watched workers draping deep-red chiffon scarves across high ropes that stretched from one side of a room to the other. The lobby was empty, except for a young man in a grey suit, who sat on a sofa behind them. Clipboard in hand, he was filling in some paperwork. Idris checked his watch and then looked across at Jia. They were waiting for the owner of the business; he was running late.
Bespectacled and dressed in a laboratory coat, he arrived a few minutes later and greeted them warmly before leading them down a narrow corridor. ‘Apologies for my tardiness,’ he said. He opened a door and led them on to the factory floor. It looked like an illegal version of Willy Wonka’s factory. To the right of them, vats of red liquid bubbled away like hot blood. Factory workers dressed in boiler suits and hairnets dropped dry fabric into the large pots and stirred them with broom-handle-like wooden sticks. Liquid from several of the vats was being siphoned off, and evaporated through a complicated system of glass pipes to leave behind a solid substance.
‘All these scarves are to be sold in Mumbai Mart,’ the owner said. ‘They’re all pure silk. Take a look.’ He handed Jia the scarf with the flourish of a souk trader.
She passed the fabric through her hands; it felt like an ordinary dupatta.
‘Thank you for showing us around, Safaid Posh.’
‘No problem, and please, no one calls me that any more. Everyone translates it to “White Coat”. It’s a bit naff but it’s easier,’ he said, and then quickly moved on. ‘The scarves are soaked in a solution of the product at our factories by the border of Afghanistan, dried and then imported here as ordinary scarves. This plant is where we reconstitute the product.’
‘The product?’ asked Idris.
‘Monkey water,’ White Coat said. Idris looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to explain. For the son of a dealer, his drug terminology was limited. ‘You know, liquid heroin. We sell it by the syringe or in a dropper bottle. Costs a bit more to us but our contact at the needle exchange helps us keep prices low, and I figured the cleaner we keep our users, the bigger our market.’
Although both had known about this side of the city’s industry for years, they had not seen the operation first-hand until now. They were impressed and told White Coat as much. ‘That means so much to me,’ he said. ‘Please, come into my office. I’ve ordered tea.’
They agreed to his hospitality and took a seat in the sparsely decorated but highly organised office. Filing cabinets lined one side of the room. Planning charts, delivery dates and detailed drawings of operations lay across the desk.
‘Do you worry about keeping so many records?’ asked Idris.
‘No. Everything is encoded. Besides, this is just delivery dates for our halal operation. A large percentage of our business is just ordinary fabric retail,’ said White Coat. A young woman in a white headscarf came in carrying a tray with a cafetière and glass cups. She placed the tray on the desk in front of White Coat. He began pouring kava into small cups. ‘Remember Nighat? The girl you set me up with at school?’ he said to Idris.
Idris laughed aloud. ‘The one with the handlebar moustache who always smelt of stale curry?’ The young woman left the room quickly.
‘Er, yes. That was her. We got married last year,’ said White Coat. He blushed profusely.
An overweight child, his mother hadn’t helped matters by dressing him in short trousers and knitted tank tops, and giving him his lunch in a margarine tub. So, what could the bigger kids do but bully him? Thankfully, the beatings ended when Jia Khan befriended him. Every school kid knew not to mess with the Khan’s children or their friends. Or even friends of their friends. She’d helped him up and handed him his glasses after a particularly nasty encounter, smiling as she told him that his spectacle prescription was similar to hers. That was the day he fell in love for the first time.
White Coat spoke without pausing for breath, as if in a perpetual state of excitement. Today, more so than ever, he was nervous and desperate to impress. ‘It was all my idea, this plant. I came up with it when I was studying for my chemistry degree at Manchester. Where did you go to uni?’ he asked, and then without waiting for an answer continued, ‘You see, I was speaking to Dad about the family business and I told him out and out: smuggling, not something I can do. Dad was disappointed. We didn’t talk for a bit. Then…I came up with my plan!’ White coat’s eyes glistened as he talked. Here was a man who loved his job.
‘The plan being this place?’ asked Idris.
The scientist nodded.
‘We hear Nowak contacted you,’ said Jia. The colour drained from White Coat’s face.
‘I’m a businessman,’ he said. ‘I’m in business to make money.’ Jia smiled at him and nodded, allaying his fears.
‘What did he want from you?’ Idris asked.
‘Their shipment’s already in the system – nothing to do with us. But they were looking for friends to help maintain their supply, clean their money, that kind of thing.’
Jia listened, leaving Idris to ask the questions. ‘What did you tell them?’ he said.
‘I don’t like to turn business away, but I don’t like their methods. It’s dirty. Bad for long-term business. I see myself as a sort of social worker, providing a service of care if you will. Some people need help surviving and if I don’t do it someone else will. But the Brotherhood, they’re dishing out the drug to children, women, no idea of hygiene. Sooner or later these diseases will filter back to our people… So I told them I’m too busy at the moment to take on new work.’
‘Do you know anything about their operations?’
White Coat looked uncomfortable. He possessed information and had not passed it on. If Akbar Khan had been alive this would have gone badly for him; even though he didn’t work for the Jirga, his family, business associates, people he worshipped with, did, and that was how the Khan’s power worked. It was why it was difficult to escape it. He turned to Jia. Hanging out with her had been the best part of school. Not only was she the smartest girl he had ever met, she also always had time to hear about his schemes, ideas others usually thought were crazy. He had tried to stay in touch with her, but after her brother’s death she had stopped responding to his emails.
‘I wanted to work with your father but he didn’t always understand our operation, see?’ he said. ‘But if you’re stepping in…I mean, taking over, I’d like to help. I know the Polskie’s shipments are sold on in bulk, cheap and fast. I gather they’ve been talking to Hajji Taj, you know, the travel agent? I reckon they’re gonna send the money through his place.’
Jia leaned over and took White Coat’s hand. ‘Thank you, Abdul,’ she said. ‘That information means a great deal to me. Keep your ear to the ground and let us us know if you hear anything more? We will be in touch with you very soon.’
White Coat’s brown cheeks redden
ed further.
CHAPTER 32
‘It makes sense,’ said Idris as they left the factory. ‘We’ll need a strong team, and he’s got the experience, and we can trust him. My advice would be to ask him to head up the drugs. Quality control, alternative ways of distribution and bringing the product over.’
The sun was getting low. The light was turning the stone buildings the colour of chamcham, and it made Jia think of the Sweet Centre, where her father used to take them on Sunday mornings for halva and puri. There would be rows and rows of sweetmeats, squares of barfi, round and fat gulab jamun steeped in syrup, and soft milky rasmalai. It seemed like only yesterday. Memories of Akbar Khan had been coming thick and fast over the last two months as she figured out her place and her plan.
She pulled the black collar of her coat up high. The bitter wind bit hard.
‘And while we’re talking, I have some more advice for you,’ said Idris. ‘Buy some warmer clothes now that you’re sticking around. You look like you’re fucking freezing in that southerner get-up!’ Jia laughed at his outburst and he joined her. Idris so rarely said anything unmeasured it eased the tension. Things were about to get harder, and without a sense of humour they’d lose themselves to the darkness they were stepping into. Idris had her back and she had his. Jia was glad he was here, especially now that they were going to war.
‘You would have made your mother proud, you know,’ she told him, when they stopped laughing.
‘Let’s go home,’ he said.
They crossed the road to their car, where a group of young men were deep in laughter and conversation.
The man in the grey suit, who had been waiting in reception earlier, was with them. He asked for a light. ‘You should quit,’ Idris said, handing over his silver Zippo. ‘And so should I. But not today. Today we smoke.’
‘I know, you’re right,’ said the man in the suit. ‘But there’s not much else to do round here. Unless you want to deal drugs.’ He lit his cigarette and took a long drag, then handed the lighter back to Idris, who lit his own. Jia took a step back from the smoke.
‘What kind of work are you looking for?’ Idris asked.
‘Anything. Most of us are trained developers,’ the man replied, nodding towards his friends. ‘UX, apps, software, you name it and one of us can do it. But there’s no jobs around here and some of us have got family – we’ve tried applying everywhere. It’s all a bit shit. I probably shouldn’t complain. I’m sure something will come up.’
The men weren’t much older than Zan was when he died. They weren’t much older than Ahad. They were eager, intelligent, streetwise and smart, but living in a city that was dying had placed them on the bottom rung of life. Even those who’d moved away found themselves judged when they told people where they had grown up and gone to school. No matter where they went, others stepped on their knuckles to rise to the top. So in the end they came home. They were somebody’s brothers and somebody’s sons, but the rest of the world didn’t see it that way. Jia did. She understood. She understood that they lived in a restricted world, and that it was the world, not their abilities, which held them back.
The smell of Jia’s own son as he had been lowered into her arms still lived in her memory, as did the overwhelming need to protect him, and with that, of course, the overwhelming fear that she would somehow fail to. ‘He will teach you what love is in its purest form,’ her mother had said. Jia had held on to him tightly, tormented by the fear that she would lose him the way she had lost Zan, that he would disappoint her the way her father had disappointed her, petrified at the thought that love like this was fleeting. She was convinced that love was no longer something she did well.
So when they told her he’d died, she’d been oddly relieved. The doctors had blamed MRSA. She knew it to be a lie – that wasn’t how he had died, or how she thought he’d died – but she had stayed silent, worried they might blame her. Then, of course, years later her father told her Ahad had survived and that he had taken him, as he had taken all that was good in her life.
She wondered what kind of man Ahad was becoming. Was he kind, like Elyas, able to forgive? Was he whole, intact, or had the world damaged him the way it had her? She felt a pang of regret, wishing she’d held on to the letters Elyas had sent. She wished she’d opened them, had a taste of her son’s life, experienced his childhood. But she hadn’t. She’d sent them back, one by one. She’d blamed Elyas for Zan’s death as much as her father, and she had wanted him to suffer as much as she did. But meeting Ahad now, seeing how much he reminded her of her brother, she wished she hadn’t. He would have helped fill the void Zan had left. What kind of a mother was she? How cold? How disinterested must she have seemed to him?
He was waiting for answers but she didn’t have any to give, not yet. As she stood under the street lights with these young men, contemplating her takeover of Akbar Khan’s world, she realised her father had done the right thing. Elyas was a better parent than she could ever have been.
Idris, on the other hand, was like her. Broken, unflinching and unforgiving. His past had stolen away the privilege of forgetting; that was for other people. He believed in little, but he believed in Jia Khan, and he made her want to be the mother the city needed.
‘It is time for change,’ she told Idris as they drove back to Pukhtun House. ‘We have to help our own people. Pakistani families only help those who toe the line. If you want to do something different, there’s no one to help. The little girl from Bradford, the boy from Luton, or the teenager in Ilford – who steps up for them when they need a job, or an internship, or money to finish their education? No one. And no one will, except us.’
And she told him her plan, and he listened, nodding at her every word. Things were about to change.
CHAPTER 33
The plan was simple, and was operational in just four weeks. They took the brightest and the best, the youngsters who couldn’t get ahead because of their skin tone or the way they spoke, or because they just didn’t know how to get to the place they wanted. The rude boys, the dropouts and the misunderstoods. The artistic, the creative, the risk-takers and shortcut-makers. The broken men and women the extremist mullahs wanted to lure away with false promises, twisted surahs and skewed images of pop culture, only to abuse them and turn them into instruments of mass destruction.
And they built their empire, a brave new world, alongside the old, a world that stood on the foundations of the past but was slicker and digitised. Jia’s rules were clear. ‘They have to be here because they want to be,’ she said. ‘Not because they have to. That’s the only way they’ll stay loyal. If they’re with us under duress they will succumb to a better offer or be seduced into disloyalty. We can’t take that risk.’
They did what they set out to do. They trained them, gave them a place to go, a place where they were understood, valued and their skills known. They were given a salary, their taxes were paid, and under the table they were handed a cut from the job. Students enrolled in the educational arm and the press loved it: they were ‘helping the disenfranchised’.
‘Who in their right mind would name a drug-dealing business after an illegal substance?’ Malik asked.
‘We would. And we have,’ said Idris. The name was his idea: the Opium Den. ‘They may know what we’re doing, they may eventually gain some understanding of it, but they will never prove anything. We’re smarter than they are, and so are our people. They like to underestimate us, so let them.’
Jia always knew the venture would succeed but the speed at which it did surprised even her. Then there was the sideline business…
Jia had instructed Idris and her team to take the old mills that stood off Canal Road and redevelop them. Situated across from the shopping precinct and the hotel known for its hourly knocking-shop rates, it wasn’t the sort of place you’d expect a successful tech company to build its headquarters. But it worked and it thrived. She put Benyamin in charge of the day-to-day running of the organisation’s buildings. It
meant he had a significant role but very little to do with the illegal operations. She needed him to stay safe and out of harm’s way. At least for now.
After decades of being reminded that they belonged to an underachieving and unemployed community, the people of this city had stopped trying to climb out of the black hole in which they found themselves. Those who did were pulled back in by the weight of others wanting to hide from their misery. But when ‘The Company’ (as those who worked for the Opium Den referred to it) told them they deserved better and gave them better, they grafted. Jia made sure her employees got everything they needed. The Khan’s philosophy of trust and loyalty became the cornerstones of the Opium Den.
There were two sides to the business, legitimate and illegal. The illegal arm disrupted the country’s drugs market. There were few rules other than: ‘Get it done, do it right and don’t tell anyone.’ The young developers devoured the work. They were hungry for opportunity and starved of validation. The Company gave them a place to belong and a sense of achievement. Their cultural background was an asset, not a problem to be managed or a box to be ticked. Their time spent late-night web-surfing for pot and porn was paying off; they had developed an extensive knowledge of the darknet. It allowed them to build a modern drugs marketplace that gave buyers anonymised access to any illegal substance they wanted. It was an eBay-like set-up, and payment was taken using Bitcoin and other virtual currencies through a system similar to Paypal.
Drugs and consensual sex was what they sold. Akbar Khan’s death had turned Jia’s monochrome life various shades of grey. She cast aside her belief in the rule of law, leaving the balance of sin and virtue to God. He could sift and sort and allot after she died. But while she lived she knew that the good she did outweighed the bad. Children were fed, women slept soundly and men had self-esteem, and that was all that life came down to in the end. If heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana helped rich men sleep and poor men exist through another day, then who was she to stop it? Then there was the simple question of economics. Someone was going to supply, so why not them?
