The Khan

by Saima Mir

  ‘We’ve done what we can. It’s time to go,’ Jia said, pulling the damp material away from her mouth to speak.

  ‘I guess we’re leaving the money,’ said Nadeem, as he hurriedly wrung out a cloth and wrapped it around his face.

  ‘We’re leaving the money,’ she said.

  They’d done all they could. They’d started by searching for fire extinguishers. Malik had spotted one near the toilets and had run to fetch it. ‘What now?’ he’d said, picking it up, ready to shoot. ‘One of these is not going to be enough to get us through there.’ They looked towards the screen of fire spreading towards them from the front of the restaurant.

  Jia scoured the room for something else that could help, her eyes landing on a pile of tablecloths. She’d moved swiftly, throwing them to her cousins. ‘Quick, take these to the toilets and soak them in cold water.’

  The sinks were small, so they’d used the toilet bowls too, Malik and Nadeem soaking the cloths, Idris and Jia running back and forth to the dining room with them. Jia wrapped the first one carefully around her face, then ran down the short corridor to the kitchen and placed another at the foot of the doors in attempt to reduce the steady stream of smoke. The paint on the outside was bubbling and she knew it wouldn’t be long before the doors gave way.

  Then she joined Idris, throwing more of the wet tablecloths over the smaller fires bursting up from the sparks of flame burning at the restaurant windows and door. They sizzled as they landed, quenching the flames beneath them and forming a white pathway.

  When they ran out of tablecloths, they pulled more from the tables. Eventually Idris had signalled to Jia that it was time to go. Some of the flames had been doused but they’d soon be back and the smoke was getting thicker and more toxic, the temperature unbearable. If they didn’t hurry, all their efforts would be undone. That was when they’d run back to the toilets to get the others.

  Now they stood at the door, as ready as they’d ever be to face the flames.

  ‘OK?’ she said. Nadeem and Malik nodded. ‘Stay close to the ground and follow us.’

  She pulled the cloth back up over her mouth and nodded at Idris, who opened the door. Then they moved at speed, crouching low and holding on to the back of each other’s shirt as they traversed the dining room, Idris at the front, spraying the extinguisher. The kitchen door was ablaze now and smoke poured down the corridor unimpeded, stinging their eyes and making it impossible to see. They felt for the pathway of damp, steaming tablecloths, following it towards what they hoped was the front door.

  Idris stopped suddenly. Everything was pitch black, the heat coming at them from all sides, the smoke heavy. The wet coverings on their face meant it was impossible to speak. Sensing something was wrong, Jia pushed past him swiftly to discover the way was blocked by the burning door, buckled and blistering in the intense heat. Without flinching, she stood up, placed her hand on the searing metal push plate, and heaved it with all her might. The door shifted, and she fell forward into the light.

  One by one the rioters moved aside, slowly at first and then faster and faster, until the mass split, separating like the sea for Moses. Elyas squinted through the heat, his eyes transfixed, waiting, willing the restaurant door to open, and when it did he felt his heart in his throat. Through the smoke she emerged, her forehead smeared grey, her eyes focused, a cloth around her nose and mouth, calls of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ still reverberating around her. The carcasses of cars burned on either side as she stepped across a river of shattered glass and debris, Idris, Malik and Nadeem stumbling in a line behind her, coughing and spluttering as they came. Paramedics hurried forward with silver blankets to wrap around their shoulders, but Jia walked past them towards Elyas and and collapsed into his arms. Elyas held her tight, and she let him, the fight having left her body. She reached out to her brother standing beside them, grateful for his presence. He held her hand and nodded, then went to check on his cousins. The paramedics moved in to help, checking Jia’s pulse, wrapping her blistered hand, administering oxygen, asking questions. Elyas heard nothing, saw nothing, except Jia Khan.

  CHAPTER 46

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she told the doctor in A&E, then turning to Elyas, added, ‘ten weeks.’

  Elyas was speechless. The doctor seemed unconcerned. ‘We’ll do a scan just to make sure everything is as it should be, but you seem fine,’ he said. ‘It sounds as if your quick thinking kept your exposure to smoke to a minimum. Wrapping those wet tablecloths over your face and mouth was a brilliant idea.’ He turned to Elyas. ‘Keep an eye on her. If she has any shortness of breath or chest pain when you get home, you’ll need to bring her back in.’ He left the two of them in the examination room.

  ‘When were you going to tell me?’ Elyas said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I was waiting for the right moment. I haven’t had time to process it myself…but it’s going to be OK.’ She was going to say more but a nurse came in.

  ‘Ms Khan, the police are here for you. I’ve told them that you’ll be a while,’ she said.

  The doctor discharged Jia after the scan. She was ready to answer police questions, but the arrival of Mark Briscoe put her on edge. ‘I know you’ve had a long day,’ he said, ‘but, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to accompany me to the station. There are a few things that need clearing up.’

  Though they were on friendly terms these days, Jia still didn’t fully trust the chief of police. But she agreed to go. The adrenaline rush had worn off, leaving her exhausted, and she wanted to get this over with fast. Elyas walked her to the police car, acutely aware that sirens and ambulances had been involved the last time Jia had been carrying his child, and that he’d lost her then. ‘I’ll call you when I’m done,’ she told him.

  ‘I’ll be waiting,’ he said, as he watched the car drive away.

  It was late evening when she finally rang Elyas from the police station. She knew he’d be waiting by the phone, but that wasn’t why she’d called him. She wanted to tie up loose ends, return life to a kind of simplicity. The gates of Pukhtun House were swarming with news reporters when they arrived, so Elyas suggested they go to his place. She agreed.

  They climbed the stairs of the building in silence, both too tired to speak. And when he brought her a cup of tea he found her asleep on the sofa. So he covered her in a blanket and sat down alongside her, watching her breathe, afraid to touch her in case he broke the spell.

  She awoke to find him snoring, the TV tuned to some late-night shopping programme. His eyes closed, his face emptied of worry, he looked younger, almost like the boy she had married, and she was compelled to lean in. He smelt like stale cigarettes and the aftershave she had bought him for his birthday the first year they were together. She kissed his cheek. He tasted like her youth and the years she could never revisit. She kissed his lips in the hope that time would roll back, that she would open her eyes and find herself innocent again, just shy of three decades of life, that his kisses would somehow cleanse her soul and set her free. Maybe it was the years of separation and the secrecy accompanying the rekindling of their relationship that brought a sense of newness to each time she was with him. Whatever it was, she knew it had to be fleeting; she was surprised by its having lasted this long.

  He reciprocated, tasting her lips as if they were ripe fruit, opening his mouth wider and wider, extending the promise of passion he’d made her years earlier.

  The rhythms of their love-making were slower than they had been in their youth. But in his bedroom, behind closed doors, his arm around her waist, their legs intertwined, his kisses deep and heavy, she received him as hungrily as she had done the first time.

  ‘The thing about sex in your forties is that you take the time to fold your clothes neatly before you begin, because you know from experience that you’re going to need them when you’re done,’ he’d joked afterwards, as he handed her an oversized T-shirt. She’d laughed at his commentary.

  Later, she sat on the edge of the bed, her b
ack to him, thinking of what to say. ‘You wouldn’t want any more than this if you really knew me,’ she said. The darkness hid her face, but the curve of her shoulders, her back, her lips and the slant of her neck were all clearly outlined by the slivers of moonlight that slipped in through the curtains.

  Elyas watched her from the bed, his back against the pillows, knowing that one wrong word could make her bolt. Her fears had pushed her to the edge of the bed; had he put too much pressure on her in his desire to have her back, not just for Ahad’s sake, but for himself? But he owed it to them both to be honest. So he took his time, thinking, weighing up phrases against each other before finally settling upon his response: ‘There is nothing you could tell me that would make me leave. I want this baby and I want you.’

  His naive confidence saddened her, but she wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that he would still love her if he knew about Ahad, about what she had attempted to do to him in the hospital on the night he was born. She wanted to believe that he would still feel the same if he knew what had happened the night her father was killed, and Benyamin was taken. But she knew that openness, trust and honesty were for other people. People with simpler lives, who carried smaller burdens. Her choices had taken her down a path that few would accept and fewer still understand. A path that had her believe spousal love was the domain of the weak and that familial love was the higher calling. It was the warrior path, the path of self-sacrifice, trodden by few – the qurban, the Pukhtun.

  ‘I can’t give you anything. And there are things about my life that would make it very difficult for you to stand by what you say. You don’t know what you’re asking for,’ she said.

  Her words vexed him. ‘I do, Jia. You think I don’t know that you’re running your father’s business now? What kind of journalist would it make me if I was the only man in town not to know what sort of criminal network your father headed up?’ he said. Then his tone softened. ‘But I love you. Not some vague idea of you. But you. You with the half-finished cups of tea with the tea bag still left in them. I miss the smell of your hair, and finding all my razor blades blunt because you’ve used them, and the weirdly organised crockery cupboard. I want us to be a family. I know what life is about, Jia, I’m not under any illusion. You’re a complete hard-arse, and I’m OK with that.’

  ‘That’s not it,’ she said.

  ‘What else is there? Tell me something that would keep me away, then. Life isn’t black and white, I get it, and you’re trying to clean up your father’s mess and I want to stand by you while you do that. You’re a good person, Jia.’

  His words weighed her down. They were so far from what she was that they left her lonely. The human capacity to lie to oneself, to pretend that the obvious was not so, no longer surprised her, but that Elyas was willing to deny evident truths in order to be with her did.

  But then she thought of the pregnancy… Maybe it was enough, or he was enough, or maybe enough was enough, and rationality returned. The Khan needed a spouse, some semblance of normality. A woman without a husband in this city was a target for talk, and that was something she didn’t need. She remained silent for a time, and when she spoke her response was measured. ‘If we were to be together you would not be able to ask questions about my work. There are things I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about. Things I will never be able to tell you,’ she said. Elyas nodded. ‘It was only recently that I realised how much my father really loved me. He was a good man, a great man, and I misunderstood him. He lived by his own rules and ancient laws, and for a long time I thought that was wrong. I believed in the British justice system. I believed that hard work and honesty was the answer. I know now that although many claim to live that life, few in fact do.

  ‘Maybe in a few decades our people will have become equals in this country. But it’s unlikely. British courts speak of honour but they set up secret courts to judge us. They hold our sons without charge for years, they put our husbands in planes and send them to the US for crimes they say have been committed on British soil, all the while hiding the menfolk of Elizabeth and Mary and Katherine behind their skirts. In the West, justice and mercy is reserved for the light-skinned, the Christian-named.’

  ‘That is what you believe?’ Elyas said.

  Jia’s eyes were dark like coal. ‘This much I know: if your name is Mohammed or Ali or Usman, you are a rapist or a terrorist, you’re a danger to society. You are guilty unless you can prove innocence,’ she said. ‘But those with power will find respect wherever they go. They are a law unto themselves. They belong to every country and to none. My father knew this and he was right.’

  ‘I respect your views,’ he said. He moved forward and took her hand. ‘I know you, Jia Khan,’ he said. ‘I know that whatever you do is for others. And I know that we are better together. Let me help you.’

  Jia considered his words and knew that it was time to tell him the truth. Her eyes locked on to his. ‘There is a bitterness inside me. It comes over me slowly,’ she said. ‘And it makes me want to wipe the happiness right off their privileged faces. I watch people struggle, good people, kind people, struggling through life with bills and poor health and clever children born on the wrong side of the tracks. I pray to God to help us. I recite the Durood over and over, asking Him to help the people of Muhammad, but I cannot tell you who I am praying for any more. Who are these people? Are they the ones who stand in the mosque, who are wealthy enough to give alms to the poor? What about the women who sell their bodies to feed their babies? The men who get high to hide from the shame of their past mistakes? The sinners who pray in the cover of darkness and feed the poor their own blood and soul? All of us having to make sacrifices, over and over again. And sometimes the one you’d take a bullet for is the one holding the gun.’

  Her eyes flashed. She let go of his hand and stood up.

  ‘I’m sick of patronising eyes and pursed lips,’ she said, turning to face him. ‘Our blood is the same colour as the pale but that doesn’t matter because our skin is brown and our Prophet is a man not a god. Nowak could acquire that last mantle of privilege and respectability that you and I will never have, that our son can never have, because he was a white Christian man. That is why I killed him. Not because of business – fuck business. Business does not keep you warm at night; business does not bring back the dead. It does not bring you a respect that goes beyond cold, hard cash. No, this was not business, this was personal. He came here thinking he could take what was ours. His privilege brought him here; his arrogance got him killed.

  ‘I’ve seen who I am and it’s something I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life. But I don’t see why anyone else should.’

  She looked away now, waiting for his response, thinking he would be shocked, that he would stand in judgement. But he didn’t. Instead, he got up and kissed her. And she knew that he hadn’t heard a word she had said.

  CHAPTER 47

  ‘We have identified the three other men as members of a crime family from Eastern Europe, known as the Brotherhood,’ the chief of police said. ‘We understand they hired men from outside the city to create tensions and bring disorder to this great city so that they might take advantage of the disruption to conduct illegal drug activities.’

  He was speaking at a press conference outside the steps of City Hall. He looked tired as he spoke. The last seven days had been difficult and he was looking forward to going home to his wife tonight. Tomorrow they would take the dogs and head to the moors, without having to worry about what was to come. Jia had made sure of that, and he was relieved. The clean-up operation would begin on Monday. Right now, the press must be dealt with. He wasn’t sure how they would react, but was hoping the questions would be few. He spoke clearly and firmly as he had been trained to do.

  ‘It is proving to be a difficult investigation,’ he said, ‘since most of the evidence was destroyed in the fire. But we believe the owner of the travel agency was their money launderer and the shooting was the resul
t of an altercation between him and the Brotherhood.’

  A week had passed since the day of the riots and Ahad and Elyas no longer felt like guests at Pukhtun House. Jia had also been asked to give a press statement outside the gates of the family home. Father and son watched the events on television from inside. Idris was with them.

  The news moved away from the press conference and a mugshot of a man flashed up on the television screen. ‘Dad, wasn’t he sitting next to us at that concert we went to with Jia?’ said Ahad.

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said Elyas, remembering how he’d seen Jia talking to him in the interval, before they’d had that argument. He turned the television volume up.

  ‘Police announced today that they have arrested a man in relation to the killing of local businessman Akbar Khan. Waleed Karzai is due in the magistrates’ court tomorrow charged with his murder,’ the news presenter said. ‘Karzai denies the charges.’

  ‘Why would he kill Akbar Khan?’ said Elyas.

  ‘He wouldn’t kill anyone,’ said Idris, ‘unless someone paid him to. He’s a finisher.’

  ‘A what?’ said Elyas.

  ‘He’s the man you call when you need to close the books on someone important. My father told me once that this guy was the best. Said that if anyone wanted to end the Jirga, he’s the man they would have to call. That’s probably why they got him on Akbar Khan’s security detail – he’d have had to have sworn an oath of allegiance to the Khans. Makes you wonder what could have persuaded him to renege on his oath.’

  ‘Money? Like you said?’ said Ahad.

  ‘Yes, but Pukhtuns don’t act out of greed alone. Karzai’s bloodline is sworn to protect ours – his allegiance is not to the individual but to the bloodline and its succession. He would need to be persuaded that breaking that oath was in the service of the bloodline and for its own preservation. But even then he would be honour bound to inform his Khan – which means, if Karzai had been asked to make an attempt on your grandfather’s life, Akbar Khan would have known about it, he would have told us, and we’d have stopped it. So I’m not sure what’s happened here, unless Karzai went rogue. Or the police have simply got the wrong man.’