by Saima Mir
A delicious rush of coldness flowed through Jia as she reached for the door. Her mind was clear, calm and focused. The events that had led her to this point aligned and everything made sense. The sound of the riot rose, punctuated by the crack of fireworks, and she gestured to her men: it was time. They moved stealthily into the room. Bang, bang, bang! went the fireworks, coming closer and closer together. The Brotherhood didn’t have time to react. Idris was the first to pull the trigger, the dull thud of the bullet leaving the pistol through the silencer masked by the noise outside. He hit the target square in the back of his head, the man collapsing into a heap, his blood seeping through his blond hair and on to the oak floor.
Akram cowered in a corner of the room. ‘Please, I have small children!’ he begged Malik, who was towering over him. ‘I ask you for mercy.’ Malik froze, the reality of what he was about to do taking hold of him. He stepped back. Seeing him flinch, Jia moved her gun swiftly from Nowak’s head to Akram’s. The sound of a crack followed and his face crumpled like a concertina. Jia’s senses were heightened, the air around her cooler; it was like nothing she had felt before. She soaked it in.
Nadeem’s mark lay dead, his blood running along the grain of the floorboards and dripping through the cracks.
Nowak was the only man left standing. He faced his attackers, his hands in the air, blood spattered across his shirt and in his hair. He looked afraid, until Jia removed her mask, and then he smiled. For a man staring death in the face, he seemed very relaxed. ‘It’s you! How lovely to see you here. For a moment I thought I was about to die. But now I know it’s you, well…that changes things. After all, I already broke one Khan,’ he said.
Idris stepped forward, his arm outstretched, but Jia stopped him.
‘Let him finish,’ she said.
‘Yes, listen to the little Pakistani woman. You know this is a game for men, don’t you? But then again your brother, he couldn’t take it either. He begged me to stop. He cried like a child. Like a little boy. Benyamin Khan, son of the great Khan, begged me to let him die. See? Look, you’re angry, your judgement is clouded. Women think with their hearts and not their heads and that is why you’ll never be any good at this. You know, for me it was only business. It was never personal,’ he said. He waited for her to respond.
Something crashed outside the building and Jia flinched, only for a second, but it was enough for Nowak to make his move. He lunged forward, grabbing for the gun, his hands around hers, shoving her towards Nadeem and Idris. He roared with rage, hammering Jia’s jaw with his head, all the while holding on to the gun. She could feel the trigger cutting into her as he forced her finger on to it. BANG! The recoil propelled them both backwards, hard. Jia clutched for the corner of the desk to steady herself, as Nowak slipped on the blood that had poured out of his men and pooled on the floor. She looked up to see Idris slumped on the ground, Nadeem crouching beside him, Malik standing silent at the back of the room, his back against the wall. The gun was still in her hand.
Time slowed. The air cooled. She looked at Nowak staggering up from the floor. In the coming years, her cousins would recognise the look in her eyes and remember this as the first time they’d witnessed it.
‘Mr Nowak, everything is personal,’ she said, and she pulled the trigger. The bullet erupted square between his eyes and he fell backwards, his body hitting the wall behind him before thudding to the floor.
Bilal looked around for his friend Majid. He’d been getting in his car to go home that morning when his mother had called to complain about his wife again. He was tired of the constant arguing, the accusations and the emotional blackmail. He’d shouted at the old woman. She’d cried. He’d hung up the phone and called Majid to see if he was free for lunch. The crowd of Asian protestors was already heaving by the time Bilal reached the curry house. Someone knocked into him; he ignored it and carried on, trying to spot Majid in the sea of faces. The crowd continued to jostle him and Bilal’s agitation rose. ‘Get the fuck away from me!’ he’d said to the guy behind him. Hatred spewed out of him. Hatred for this street, for this city, for the people – this continuous shit that destroyed any hope of a future. Someone pushed him again. ‘Fucking watch it, mate!’
All around him men began to rage. Bottles and bricks, and whatever came to hand, were flung at the police wall. Their collective fury seeped into Bilal. A boy in a hoodie with a scarf wrapped around his mouth shoved him from behind. He fell forward, almost tripping over a bag that someone had left in the middle of the street. The stench of petrol rose up. As he steadied himself he noticed that the bag contained glass bottles and some kind of oil. He watched as five men gathered around a car and began to rock it back and forth before turning it over. Behind him a group of young boys cheered and raised their hands in victory. His anger rose and he considered picking up one of the bottles in the bag. But the police began to move forward in formation in an attempt to herd the men down the street. Bilal backed away.
He spotted Jimmy Khan; the men had been neighbours for years, exchanging pleasantries on the way to work and at Friday prayers. He was standing by the bag, a bottle in one hand, his phone in the other. Bilal watched as Jimmy looked at his phone and then flung the bottle into the window of the travel agency across the road. The glass shattered and as mob mentality kicked in, a volley of other bottles were hurled into the building, creating explosion after explosion. The shop was alight, flames licking up the front to the roof, as though trying to escape into the night sky.
Jia stood motionless, looking down at Nowak, her phone in her hand. She was jolted back by the sound of smashing glass coming from the next room. Nadeem helped Idris to his feet. The bullet had only grazed his arm. The temperature began to rise quickly. It was time to move.
‘Take the money,’ said Jia.
Her cousins grabbed the bags of cash, throwing in the last few wads lying on the floor, and began making their way back to the basement from which they’d come.
Jia stood by the trapdoor and waited until her men were safely underground, flames rising rapidly all around her. From the back of the room, she watched the travel agency burn, the fire devouring everything in its path. She turned off her phone and threw it on the flames before she left. It exploded behind her.
Back in the restaurant, Jia’s cousins pulled off their masks and threw them into the trunk with their gloves and guns. Once Jia had emerged from the basement, Nadeem and Malik closed the trapdoor and pushed the box back into place. They looked at each other, sweat pouring from their faces. The heat was intense, even here. ‘Well –’ said Idris. His words were cut short by the sound of an explosion nearby.
‘What was that?’ said Nadeem. ‘It sounded close. I think we should get out of here.’
But when they entered the dining area they were greeted by thick black smoke coming from the direction of the kitchen. They headed down the corridor towards it, but when they tried to enter they were beaten back by flames. The fire from next door had spread at an alarming speed.
‘Doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to get out the back way,’ said Nadeem.
‘Or the front,’ Idris added, staring hopelessly at a wall of flame blazing across the shopfront.
Malik looked at the others. ‘I don’t think we thought this through properly,’ he said.
Back in the newsroom, Elyas and his reporters watched the drama unfold online. The news helicopter showed plumes of smoke pouring out of the travel agency, the surrounding streets swarming with rioters, like locusts, beyond control and demolishing everything in sight as the police looked on, helpless. All they could do was wait for the violence to subside.
A local TV reporter was interviewing self-styled community leaders, local MPs, councillors and one university expert, who grabbed the microphone: ‘I have a question,’ he said. ‘How long do people endure you riding roughshod over their lives before they no longer have any respect for yours? Violence has an interesting way of changing definition. When it’s used against us,
you call it justice. When we utilise it, you call us criminals. There is no such thing as reverse racism. There is only a response to racism. This is not racist violence, this is violence born from rage of oppression, and it will happen again and again until you stop seeing us as the problem and you as the solution.’
‘Elyas,’ said John, looking up from his screen. ‘Jia… Apparently she’s trapped next door to the travel agency.’
‘What? How? Surely the restaurant was evacuated after the police warning?’
‘I don’t know, mate. I’m really sorry. It’s all over the net,’ said John. ‘She’s developed quite a following over the last few days, become a bit of a local hero. The online chatter is using the hashtag #TheVerdict to describe her and her cousins. Sounds like people on the ground there have been waiting for her to come out, but there’s been no sign.’
Elyas was already on the phone, dialling her number, but the call failed. He tried again as he started pulling on his coat.
‘Where are you going?’ John asked.
‘I have to get out there, I can’t stay here,’ said Elyas.
‘Elyas, mate, you don’t want to get mixed up in this. She runs her father’s operations, you must have known that?’ But the door had slammed before he had finished speaking.
Somewhere deep inside, Elyas had always known the truth about Jia, what she had become, what her business really was and the danger that put her in, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself. He didn’t stop running until he reached Morley Street. Pounding the pavement, out of breath, his heart racing, he clawed his way through the crowd towards the blaze, only to be pulled back by a policeman. ‘Sir, you can’t go any further.’
‘But my wife is in that building!’ said Elyas, his voice frantic. He couldn’t lose her, he had come too far. ‘I have to get in there!’ he shouted, his hands shoving the policeman aside. Two other officers stepped in to restrain him but he continued to struggle, knowing that the orange and yellow flames licking the sides of the building were taking Jia further and further away from him. ‘Look, you don’t understand. I have to get in there! Please, let me go, I have to help her!’ On his knees now, head in his hands, he watched helplessly as flames rose upwards, shattering windows and devouring the upper floors of the shop and restaurant.
The policeman he’d struggled to get free from looked at him. ‘If she’s in there, the only one who can help her now is Allah, mate,’ he said.
The police, the shattered glass, the sirens, the concern for Jia, all brought back memories of Zan’s death and Elyas felt nothing but despair. He had let her down again. If only he had been less proud, if only he had told her how he really felt, and if only he had accepted what she offered as enough, then maybe, just maybe, she would still be here. His head hurt and his throat burned from the petrol fumes. He needed to talk to Ahad, to prepare him. He looked back up at the building where his wife was trapped. There was nothing he could do.
The men were destroying their own city – it had given them more than the place they considered their motherland ever had, and whether they knew it or not, they belonged here. Tomorrow they would awake to the damage they had inflicted and wonder what colour of jinn had possessed them to bring down the apocalyptic fire of hashr on this place. And what would follow would be another day of judgement, one that would see them locked up for decades if history was to repeat itself, one brought about by the legal system that his wife had spent her life defending, but never would again.
On the other side of the city, Benyamin was meeting Sakina, waiting for word that everything had gone according to plan, oblivious to the disaster that was unfolding. He was furious that Jia had refused to let him go along. She had made up some bullshit about needing someone she could trust on the outside in case something went wrong, but he knew she was being overprotective again. She didn’t trust him to keep his nerve. She didn’t get that he wasn’t the kid brother she’d abandoned so many years ago.
‘Can I say something?’ said Sakina. Benyamin nodded. ‘This is never going to end for you.’
Smart, unafraid to do what needed to be done, she reminded him of his sister. He respected her, maybe even cared about her a little. He had no idea what this thing between them was, or what it would become, but in among the chaos that was life, she steadied him.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Because you’re fighting with people who don’t exist any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Who are you angry with? Your sister, right? But Jia as she is now, or the Jia who left you behind? Because she’s here now, and she has been for some time. When it matters, she is here.’
Dressed in his favourite leather jacket, Benyamin looked the picture of health. His hair jet black and styled to perfection, his cheekbones chiselled, he could have been an Instagram influencer. Hours of physio and days spent at the athletics track meant he had regained his strength fast. The only physical trace of his ordeal with Nowak was a single scar which cut his left eyebrow in two. The scar ran deeper than anyone knew, down into the recesses of his mind where it had begun to fester. The truth was, he had been carrying all this anger around with him even before Nowak, and he was tired. It was time to put this burden down, to pour out the contents of his head in front of Jia, but he didn’t know how. He was hoping Sakina could offer advice.
‘You want to fight with the sister who left you all that time ago, because maybe if she had stayed you wouldn’t have gone looking for Nowak, and things would be different now.’ But she hadn’t stayed, and then she’d returned and stepped up, and somehow that had made him angrier, because he couldn’t hate her. He loved her, and he wanted her acceptance. ‘This is the great tragedy of your life? That you can’t make peace with someone who doesn’t exist any more, because she changed and got better, all without you getting the chance to tell her how you really felt?’ Up until now, Sakina had been respectful to Benyamin Khan, careful of his position as the son of Akbar Khan, brother to Jia Khan. But now he was just wasting her time.
She could still smell the sweat of her clients on her even after she finished scrubbing her skin in the shower at night. When she looked at herself in the mirror, her face gaunt, her skin having lost its shine, all she could think of were the beer guts and flabby bodies that pressed against her as she made her living, the way they heaved and sighed their way to ejaculation, the smell of booze and fags and body odour lingering long after they had left. No one washed for sex workers. Maybe if they did, they wouldn’t need their services. This was her life and she accepted it, not gratefully, and not forever, but for now. She would make plans once her brother had finished university. For now, her life wasn’t about happiness, it was about circumstances. But Benyamin, his circumstances weren’t the problem. He was. Sitting in the warm leather interior of his prestige vehicle, spending more on a bottle of perfume than a punter paid her to suck him off in the back of a beaten-up Toyota Corolla. His bills paid, his belly full, and here he was afraid to talk to his sister about unimportant things.
‘You’re entitled,’ she said. ‘You’re angry because your big sister rescued you. Because the way she looks at you, the things she says, makes you feel like less of a man. Well, guess what, that is all on you. Real men handle shit. So a woman came to rescue you, so what? No one ever came for me.’ She wanted to add, Get over it, just fucking get over yourself, but a knock on the tinted window interrupted her. They both turned and looked through the passenger-side window. It was Khalid the pimp.
Benyamin climbed out of the car. He didn’t care what Khalid thought if he saw Sakina in the car, but he didn’t want him talking over her. Khalid looked distressed, like he was in a hurry to get somewhere. ‘Bro, it’s your sister,’ he said. ‘She’s in trouble. Down Morley Street.’ Benyamin went to get back in his car but Khalid stopped him. ‘You can’t take your wheels there, man, it’s chocca. You won’t make it.’
Benyamin turned and ran. He ran like he’d never run before, his mind emptied of e
verything except getting to Jia. If she died, his family would not survive the loss. She was their Khan; he knew that now. He smelt the fire before he spotted the smoke, plumes of it rising and spreading across the city, thanks to the strong north wind. The pungent smell of burning plastic, wood and petrol was almost intolerable as he approached Morley Street, but he pushed his way through the crowds.
He spotted Elyas, saw him sink to the ground in front of the blazing buildings, unable to get up, and he knew that Jia must be in there. As he approached, their eyes met, their faces speaking a thousand words, their mouths empty. There was a stillness in that moment, a sickness in the pit of their stomachs. They had lost so much already – how would they survive this? Benyamin reached down and helped Elyas stand, their heads made of stone, their legs of jelly. Elyas tried to speak, but what was there to say?
Around them the men raged. ‘Pray,’ shouted a voice from the crowd. It cut through the testosterone like a hot knife, and a hush fell across the street. It was instantaneous. The men raised their hands to their faces. Then someone shouted ‘Takbir!’ and Elyas turned to see the sea of men ebb like the tide before rising on the crest of ‘Allahu Akbar!’
The call for the Omnipotent rang out again and again, getting louder each time as the crowd’s response became ever more fervent.
‘God is the greatest!’ they shouted, each man putting aside his ego and professing his smallness in the universe of God and all His prophets. There were men who swore blind that in that moment they witnessed armies of angels descending from heaven. Some put it down to the euphoria, others the weed, but when Elyas and Benyamin looked around, there was no denying the power that was reverberating around them. It was huge, like the pull of a giant magnet. Then, something happened. The crowd that had gone from rampage to religious experience began to part in the middle, chanting all the while.
