The Khan

by Saima Mir

  There were, however, lines that Jia and her men were not willing to cross. Clients demanding weapons were told ‘no’, clients demanding paedophilia were told ‘sure’ – and then their virtual lives were hacked into tiny pieces, evidence handed over to the authorities, and their actual lives destroyed.

  The Company’s reputation for secure and high-performance delivery soon turned it into a world-class organisation. In the beginning, clients brought their legal business with them to mask their illegal purchases, but when the firm began delivering slicker products than its competition, and solving unsolvable tech problems, it found itself with new and lucrative accounts that were only interested in its software development skills. They built niche apps, taking a chance on ideas that mainstream venture capitalists would pass on. From social media to salah, their cultural knowledge gave them insight into the markets of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, countries whose tech users were hungry for relevant content. Living in extended family systems gave these users deep pockets and made them early adopters of technology. Then there was the billion-dollar Muslim market. Jia’s company understood their needs instinctively.

  New business was always carefully scrutinised before being taken on. Users were given unique invite codes to websites only after vetting procedures had been carried out. As the clean money stream flowed in, it laundered the black money that flowed alongside it.

  Clients that were trying to break into emerging markets across South Asia found themselves in a multilingual, highly skilled hub, working with men and women with chameleon-like abilities to switch cultures. Eventually, what had started as a front organisation soon became a lucrative business.

  It was only six months before employees were being headhunted by multinationals, start-ups and Silicon Valley’s biggest exports. Jia was clever. Because dirty money secretly holds hands with clean, she encouraged the men and women to take up the offers, knowing that they were planting the seeds of a powerful network. The Company celebrated their success. The plan to expand the network and make it global in the next ten years was right on track. No one asked questions. The police stayed away; the streets were being cleaned. The unemployment figures were going down. No one knew what was really going on. They were running the country’s biggest drugs delivery operation all from the centre of this city.

  Jia had agreed with Idris that the best place to hide something was in plain sight. ‘The best cons are the biggest ones,’ she told her cousins. ‘The ones that everyone can see but can’t prove. People won’t believe we have the guts to be so brazen. They’ll see it and ignore it. And the ones that won’t, we buy them. Buy enough people and they’ll drown out the voice of dissent.’ By the end of the year they were cleaning money for international syndicates and some of the world’s biggest crime families.

  But she also never lost sight of the endgame. ‘If someone wants to get clean, let them, help them. We’re not in this forever. We’re in this to help our people get clean and get out. That is how empires are built.’

  They built their new empire tall and high and with walls of steel to guard it. Its reach spread from the small-time client to the highest echelons of society, and they worked hard to get there.

  Its success helped relieve the pressure that had been coming from the Jirga to exact badal on Nowak for what he did to Benyamin and for her father’s murder. Jia had not forgotten what was owed, it was just that her priorities were elsewhere. Reshaping the family business was a matter of urgency – it had been left far too long. Revenge, however, was a dish best served cold.

  CHAPTER 34

  As soon as Jia stepped through the door of her London apartment, calm descended and the responsibilities of her new-found life slipped away. It had been her sanctuary for a long time. More than a year had passed since she made Pukhtun House her permanent residence. She had few regrets about it, but as she walked through the hallway and into her bedroom, she realised she missed the freedom of this life.

  She’d kept the apartment as a bolt-hole but hadn’t been able to visit often. Work stole all her time, but this week Maria had forced her to leave. ‘It’s half-term, I can come with you,’ she’d said. ‘We’ll spend a few days together, try the Darjeeling Express Biryani Supper Club and take in a show.’

  ‘Although maybe not on the same day,’ said Jia. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse than turning up to a West End show smelling of salan.’ It wasn’t the offence taken by others that worried her. The lingering aroma of curry on clothes and fingertips, no matter how expensive the hand soap, made her anxious. You only had to have had someone hiss ‘Smelly Paki!’ at you once for it to leave its brand on you forever.

  Maria and Jia had taken the train to King’s Cross, enjoying Northern Rail’s hospitality of English breakfast tea and moreish shortbread. Jia felt the tension leave her shoulders as she lay her burden down in the presence of her sister. They had an unspoken agreement never to discuss the family business, but everything else was on the table. Relationships, the state of the city’s schools, Elyas, Ahad and their mother were all topics they covered in the two hours ten minutes they were on the train.

  ‘Mama seems even quieter than usual,’ said Jia, as the dining-car attendant refilled her teacup and walked away. They were in first class, the carriage busier than Jia had expected. She wasn’t bound to travelling during school holidays, and it crossed her mind that she never had been.

  ‘It’s her age,’ said Maria.

  ‘She leaves the room when I walk in.’

  ‘You know what she’s like.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s like I’m an extension of her, as if she can say and do whatever she likes to me without consequence. She was never like that with Zan.’

  ‘Zan was golden,’ said Maria. ‘The way Mama talks about him, as if he was some saint.’

  ‘She adored him, but I don’t think she likes me.’ This was the first time it occurred to Jia that it was possible for her mother to love her and not like her. Perhaps Sanam Khan could sense what Jia had become, or knew what she had done, but it was more likely to be something else, something simpler.

  ‘You have lived a completely different life to her. She stayed home and looked after Baba, raised us. She sacrificed everything for her husband, and gave no thought to how people should treat her. You and I, we draw clear lines about how we expect to be treated. She just doesn’t understand that.’

  Jia knew her little sister was right: their mother didn’t understand them and never would. Much of their love was lost in translation. Maybe it was always this way with the children of immigrants, separated by the gap that grew between culture and generation. Her mother had never laughed with them the way she laughed with those from her home country, and although Jia spoke the languages of her mother’s land, they sometimes felt heavy on her tongue.

  Once in London, Maria had dropped her bags at the apartment and headed to New Bond Street with her sister’s credit card. Jia liked nice things but had little interest in shopping; Maria knew what suited her, and what she liked. It was the perfect arrangement. They would head out to dinner later, but for now Jia placed her case down and sat on the edge of the bed, taking off her shoes. Her feet ached a little from being on her feet. She used public transport when in London. Here she could be just another face in the crowd.

  The smell of the apartment took her back to another time, the scent of wood polish and floor cleaner and lilies reminding her of the career she had worked for here and how close she had been to achieving her goal of becoming a judge. She now realised it had been an empty existence, that family was what was needed to feel whole. Losing Zan and Ahad had left her raw, as if the very skin had been taken from her. It meant everything was painful; even innocuous comments about birthdays and anniversaries were like shards sometimes, a painful reminder of what she didn’t have. In order to survive she had armoured up and carried on, numbing herself to the pain. But Akbar Khan’s death had changed all that, forcing her to face up to her responsibilities and to
the island that she had become.

  Now, she was responsible for the happiness and livelihood of scores of families. And she found herself looking for ways to sew up the rift her father had created between her and her son, and make sense of her relationship with Elyas.

  She picked up the letters her assistant had opened and organised ready for her return. Invitations to official luncheons, the Law Society Excellence Awards, a former colleague’s wedding – all reminders of a life once lived. A life distant from the one she was living now.

  She thought of all the letters Elyas had written her. The ones she had sent back, unopened. The ones he had kept and handed to her as she left for London this morning. She’d been afraid to open them on the train, afraid of her reaction to what was in them, to the opening of the floodgates she had locked and barred.

  Alone in her apartment, she took them out and read them one by one.

  CHAPTER 35

  ‘I’m outside,’ said Jia. She’d been knocking on the front door for a while with no answer.

  ‘I was in the bathroom.’ Elyas pulled on a jumper and went to open the door. ‘It’s the middle of the day. What are you doing here?’ he said, letting her in. He found an old tissue in the pocket of his pyjamas and wiped his nose. She was holding a box, and a bag from the pharmacy.

  ‘I’ve brought you soup and painkillers.’

  ‘I don’t drink canned soup.’

  ‘I made it. Is that so hard to believe?’

  ‘When do you have time to make soup?’

  ‘When did you get so mean?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’m not well and my accountant needs some papers for my tax return. I’m just a little stressed.’

  She kissed him on the cheek, accepting his apology. She slipped off her shoes by the door and hung up her mac, before walking to the kitchen with the provisions she’d brought. ‘I’ve got some time before my meeting. Why don’t you finish your work, and I’ll heat this up for you?’ she said.

  He was going to protest, but changed his mind. It was rare for him to be looked after by someone else, and so he accepted the help graciously, taking a seat at the kitchen table. He watched her move around the room, taking out bowls and glasses and warming up food, like this was normal. ‘So, this is how it feels,’ he said. ‘I could get used to this.’

  She put the bowl down in front of him, along with a napkin and spoon. The fragrance of chicken broth, cooked with onion and garlic, cloves, peppercorns and whole coriander wafted towards him. She waited expectantly as he put the spoon to his mouth. His face conveyed the right response: it was delicious. ‘Don’t get used to it,’ she said, and then laughed.

  Little by little Jia began to seep into Elyas and Ahad’s life more and more. Elyas had extended his stay after the previous editor of the paper decided he didn’t want to return from his six-month sabbatical. He was eighteen months into the job now and didn’t know whether to take up the permanent post they had offered him – a lot depended on what happened with Jia. Things had remained steady and secretive and he’d been too busy to ask questions up until now.

  ‘So, are we going to talk about what’s been going on or just pretend that nothing is?’ Elyas said one day, waving at Ahad on the pitch. They were at a rugby match. Ahad was on his college team.

  ‘Where do you want to start?’ she asked.

  The way he felt about her made him uncomfortable. He had built his house on a fault line and was expecting to avoid an earthquake. People always said that there were two sides to every argument but he knew that wasn’t true. There were always three: your side, their side and the truth. In this case the truth was a distant hope and Jia’s side had never been told. They discussed everything around them except her leaving him. And they never talked about her stolen visits to his house in the night.

  ‘You would never have said that ten years ago,’ he said.

  ‘Things change.’

  ‘That they do,’ he agreed. ‘You and I being whatever we are…and me sending Ahad to this poncy school with all these middle-class white boys in blazers and hats. What has happened to us?’

  ‘You always said I was the champagne socialist.’

  ‘It’s true. But you were right. About everything. Public school does give you a great network. Amazing what having a child does to one’s perspective,’ Elyas said. ‘But you always did see things more clearly than I did. I always envied that about you.’

  ‘You mean I had vision and you were wearing bifocals?’ she said.

  Elyas laughed. ‘Like Butch and Sundance? And we both know how that ended.’ She smiled, and for a moment they were an ordinary couple.

  ‘This is not the Wild West,’ she said. ‘And going out in a blaze of gunfire is not on the cards for us.’

  ‘I used to feel as though I was playing snap while all the white kids played poker. I fought hard to get where I am. Up against rich boys who played tennis in the afternoons and went to country clubs on weekends. Guys whose fathers made calls to get them wherever they wanted to be.’

  ‘And now our son is one of those entitled types,’ Jia said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Isn’t that our whole problem? We want things and then when we get them we don’t feel we deserve them? I don’t want Ahad to struggle just because of my principles. The older I get, the more I understand that values and ideals get lost along the path; you lose a few and damage some of the others. We’re all compromising in some way or other. People talk about underachievement and a lack of brown kids at the top – well, you can’t be what you can’t see. People recruit in their own image, or pick someone they know. That’s how the ladder is climbed. At least your company seems to be giving young people a network.’

  ‘My father believed in the network,’ Jia said. ‘He ran his life on it and sent us to the best schools to build it. But networks have their own class system, and when your father is the kind of law lord who’ll have your kneecaps shot off, and NOT the kind that adjudicates British law, it’s not that straightforward. That’s what I want these guys to have, a future without shame of where they came from, you know?’ It was easy to be around Elyas; that was why she was with him. He accepted her for who she was, without judgement. But there were things about her that he didn’t know, and things she didn’t believe he would take well. So she gave him what she could, and kept what she couldn’t locked away.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if my parents had stayed in Pakistan,’ he said.

  ‘I know where I’d be: sporting a Hermès Birkin as I was being driven around by my chauffeur,’ said Jia.

  ‘You do that now,’ Elyas said. She realised she missed her youth and the lightness he had brought to it, that time when she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began. And now she only met him in the darkness of a bedroom or here in the park. The two parts of their relationship were divided; something inside her wanted to find a way to bridge them. But what was that bridge? The mundane daily tasks of shopping lists, lunch and laundry-basket arguments? She had an army of men ready to go to war at her command, on land and online, but she couldn’t navigate a relationship outside that world.

  She looked up and a tall good-looking man waved at her from across the grass. He was waiting by the play area with an old-fashioned pram. His wife, a handsome woman, was keeping an eye on their five-year-old son. The little boy was confidently climbing the steps to the slide. The man looked familiar.

  ‘I know that guy. Who is he?’ Elyas asked.

  ‘That is Marcus Massey. He’s an investment banker,’ she said.

  ‘Why do I know his face?’ Elyas said.

  ‘Maybe you covered the story? Marcus was accused of assaulting – sexually assaulting – a trainee risk analyst. She dropped the charges. Story was, Massey’s father put the screws on her father’s business contacts and paid her off too.’

  ‘I suppose the police couldn’t do anything about it?’

  Jia shook her head. ‘I knew her. She used to wo
rk with me. Power makes men unfit for normal life.’

  Elyas saw that something in her had hardened and it frightened him. But he couldn’t say whether he was afraid for her or of her. ‘Jia, what’s going on?’ he said. ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Let’s get a coffee, the weather is changing.’ Elyas felt the warmth of her against him as she took his arm and led him towards the café. It was the first time she’d touched him in public.

  She waited at a table while he bought the drinks. ‘So, are we going to talk about what happened between us?’ he asked, tearing open a sugar sachet and pouring it into her cup.

  ‘No,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked.

  She sipped her tea slowly. ‘There’s nothing to say. It was all such a long time ago,’ and she turned away from him, caught between wanting to talk and not talk; and then she saw Ahad walking towards them, which settled the matter.

  It began to rain and Elyas went to get the car, leaving Ahad waiting with Jia. The silence was uncomfortable. She took her phone from her pocket and began flicking through emails, more out of habit than obligation. This was how it had been for months, her not speaking, him pretending it was OK. But today would be different. Ahad had decided it so. ‘Why did you hate your father?’ he asked.

  Jia looked up from her phone. ‘What makes you think I hated him?’

  ‘Because I hated you too.’

  She put her phone down. That she was important enough in his life to be hated, that his feelings towards her despite her absence were so strong, surprised her.