Guantanamo Boy

by Anna Perera

  “What’s the matter, Dad?”

  “Your school shoes are a disgrace, Khalid. When did they last see a jot of polish?”

  “What’s the point in cleaning them? They’ll only get messed up again as soon as I go out.”

  By the look on Dad’s face, Khalid knows it’s time to give up and shuts the computer down. Tariq isn’t back online now anyway. Under Dad’s watchful eyes, he cleans his damp, scuffed shoes, hoping it will partly make up for his earlier outburst.

  “Point the toe away from you. That’s it!” Dad frowns with concern at the half-hearted job Khalid’s making of it. “Shoe polish has a habit of getting on white shirts,” he says, grinning widely. Their dark eyes meet with a lightness of touch that says past arguments are forgotten for the moment. Dad laughs at himself for once, instead of listing all the things that drive him mad. Things like Khalid’s shirt collar being up on his neck instead of neat and flat like his. Forever pointing out how he slouches all the time and why his eye-rolling and abrupt answers to everything stop him from making the best of himself. The list goes on and on, but for now there’s peace between them and it feels nice.

  “They say car-jackings, armed robberies and murders are happening every day in Karachi, Dad.”

  “That’s also why we must go, son. To pay respect to my mother and make arrangements for my sisters. You know Fatima, the oldest one? Her husband is very ill, cannot work at all. This might be the last chance we will have to see him. I must bring money and things for them. Perhaps move them to another part of the city. We’ll be safe there, don’t worry. It will be good for you to see Pakistan again and remember where you come from. Gul and Aadab have never met their aunties before, so it’s a treat for them also. Plus I need you to take care of your mother while I see to everything. Do you think you can do that for me?”

  Khalid realizes how selfish he’s been. “Course I will, Dad. But how come we can afford the plane tickets? They must cost a fortune.” He blows the last specks of dust from his shoes, then snaps the lid awkwardly on the Kiwi tin.

  “All my life I’ve been saving, you know that, son. Every penny I put away for the future. For your future. For your sisters’ future. Every day not to waste anything. But I also save for this moment. This I must do with family in a faraway place like Pakistan.” Dad carefully replaces the brushes and soft cloth in the cardboard box under the sink. Then takes a satisfying last glance at the tidy box before closing the cupboard with a firm, quiet click.

  Khalid watches him shuffle off in his gray socks to watch one of the travel programs he likes so much on television. A sunny smile on his face and the smell of shoe polish lingering in the air.

  3

  KARACHI

  Scrunching balls of waste paper and empty crisp packets into the plane’s seat pocket, Khalid shifts sideways towards the window to take in the sight of the tall buildings of Karachi twinkling brightly below him. The last of the strong black-coffee smells drift from the man to his left, disappearing the instant he pops some chewing gum in his mouth.

  Feeling relaxed and unworried himself, Khalid is excited to be here at last. The man to his right, who looks like someone you’d meet in a church, was the most boring man in the world. A pale creature who read his book the whole way, speaking to no one. While Khalid watched three movies and listened to his MP3 player, trying to ignore the streams of mums, dads and kids going up and down the aisles to the loos.

  Finally Khalid can stretch his arms and legs when the boring man leaves his seat.

  Mum, Gul and Aadab are on the opposite side of the plane, while Dad spends the flight at the back. He swapped his seat at check-in when an elderly man at the next desk began complaining about the lack of sleep he’d suffer in a seat next to the toilets. Khalid thought of offering him his seat to impress Dad, but then Dad swapped his own. Always quick to help anyone old—it’s an important part of his showing-respect thing.

  “I’ll be able to rest all the way without Gul and Aadab bothering me,” Dad said, not entirely unselfishly. “There’re plenty of people who will never afford this journey at all,” he reminded Khalid. Aware his son was slightly miffed that the man didn’t thank him.

  Shifting uncomfortably in the seat, staring at the video screen in front of him, his mind drifts back to Mikael’s party on the weekend and the chat he nearly had with Niamh. Suddenly he remembers the almond scent of her dark wavy hair swishing from her shoulders when she brushed past him.

  “Grand party, eh, Kal?” Niamh winked. “Shame that old gas fire isn’t giving out a bit of heat!”

  Khalid nodded, embarrassed. She has the kind of voice you get lost in, so he can’t help being dumbstruck around her. The rest of the girls behave like stars in their own movies, jiggling their hips for an invisible camera, unlike Niamh, who’s real. No cutesy pouts and head-waggling for her. No, just a little shrug and a look that says, Here we go.

  Plus, she likes art and books. She always comes in the top three in English exams and Khalid is impressed by that. In fact she looks like someone interesting just by the way she dresses. While the other girls were squashed into tiny shorts and stretchy T-shirts that left nothing to the imagination, Niamh was dressed in that nice, white, long skirt that swung around her dainty ankles when she walked. Plus she had a baggy shirt on with a multicolored belt and loads of silver tinkly bracelets.

  That’s all she said to him the whole evening. Yet the way she smiled, nodded her head, rolled her big green eyes—they set his heart on fire. To him, she’s the most beautiful girl in the world. Not that he’d ask her out. Well, maybe one day he will.

  He watched her crack open another beer and sit on the floor in front of the gas fire, chatting to Nico about his new MP3 player. Then a whole bunch of losers turned up, determined to get blasted, and Khalid walked out in a huff. He didn’t like the way Niamh’s best friend, Gilly, took over the moment she arrived. Linking arms and making her sit with them. Her glittery eye make-up was all over the place when she took the pink band from her claggy hair and glared at Khalid. Wildly blinking and posing as always.

  Gilly was wrecked by the time he left. Everyone was, and though he’d had a couple of cans too, he wasn’t prepared to make a fool of himself in front of Niamh, who was sadly going the same way. Anyhow, Khalid doesn’t like the muzzy feeling he gets in his head when he drinks too much beer.

  Besides, he has to take great care to hide the fact he’s been drinking or Mum and Dad will go ballistic. Two beers are the limit before his eyes start glazing over and he slurs his words.

  Khalid tucks the picture of Niamh curled up on the floor to the back of his mind as the plane descends into Karachi.

  Now they are here at last, everyone feeling fine, although the tiredness of the long flight shows clearly in Khalid’s drooping eyelids. In a swarm, they hurry through the small, bustling terminal that looks nothing like the orderly airport in Manchester they left behind.

  It’s mayhem here, with men and women in leather sandals and shalwar kameez in every shade of brown, heaving cases, crates and boxes from one of only two carousels. Everyone’s busy rescuing other things too: loads tied with string, some the size of boats, while their young, sweet, smiling children tug at knotted carpets, boxes and baskets, eager to help.

  Outside, the evening feels strangely muggy to Khalid. He’d expected Karachi to be cool at night.

  “Yes, cool at night in winter,” Dad explains. “But from now on it’s hot all the time.”

  So hot, Khalid wipes sweat from his forehead as they pile into an old brown taxi, catching sight of a pair of mini boxing gloves made from tiny Pakistani flags that are swinging from the driver’s mirror. At the wheel is a man with striking black eyes. He glances in the mirror at Khalid. A look of kindness on his face.

  Dad warns them, “I’m afraid this will be a roundabout journey, because you know I have parcels, letters and money to deliver for my friend from the restaurant who has family in Karachi. But you will see something of the city, an
yhow.”

  So they set off. Gul and Aadab, who are squashed up in the back, instantly fall asleep on Mum and Khalid. Dad in the front proudly points out the city he grew up in.

  “Look, the shop where I bought my first book,” he sighs. “That’s the same furniture shop on Club Road I told you about before.”

  Their car quickly overtakes a yellow bus decorated like a birthday present in bright reds and greens with tassels and ribbons. Khalid glimpses a huge market crammed with fruits: tangerines, pomegranates, bananas. Coconuts piled high. Then Agha’s Paradise, the one-stop supermarket selling imported Western foods, which excites Mum for a moment. Then they drive along a very different road, littered with rubbish. Old cans. Open bin bags smelling of rotten fish.

  Khalid is disappointed not to see any signs of a car-jacking or gang feud.

  “Only the rich have deep enough pockets to eat here,” Dad says as the taxi turns down a posh road filled with a wide choice of restaurants: Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and French. Past streets with low, brown buildings. Then dark streets. Empty of people.

  A rare car parked outside.

  The lamps inside highlight black metal grilles fixed to windows and doors, giving Khalid the feeling there’s lots of crime here. Two stops later, the parcels safely delivered, the taxi pulls up outside a plain, two-story gray building.

  A concrete box with windows. What a dump, Khalid thinks, instantly fed up.

  The door opens and three elderly ladies, Fatima, Rehana and Roshan, in dark shalwar kameez, rush out as one to greet them. Babbling warmly with toothy grins. Their eyes take in every inch of Khalid, giving him no escape from their loving welcome and out-of-control squeals of joy that seem to go on forever.

  “I’m tired, Mum,” Gul says at last, while Aadab crossly rubs a hand over her nose. Both seem confused by all the fuss and noise.

  At least modesty stops the aunts from kissing and hugging, or even touching them.

  “Well, we got here,” Khalid says, shrugging. Immediately, he wonders how to say no to the glass cups of hot black liquid smelling of sugary cabbage that are thrust in his face the moment he sits on the long, soft sofa with a wooden ceiling fan whirring overhead.

  Eventually giving in, Khalid swallows the whole lot in one go and wipes the remains from his mouth with the back of his hand. Only to see his angelic auntie Roshan fill the dainty glass again. Everyone begins talking at once. This time Khalid slides the drink behind a tall fern, hoping for the best. Gul pulls a face as she tips hers into Aadab’s glass. Aadab seems to like the taste, drinking it up as if she can’t wait for more of the disgusting stuff. Dad frowns at Gul to remind her of her manners, while Mum pretends not to notice. Khalid dares his sister Aadab with a long, hard stare to please get rid of his hidden drink when she’s finished hers, but it doesn’t work.

  After tea, the fuss dies down a bit. Gifts are given and politely put to one side for unwrapping later. Bored to tears, Khalid stares at the complicated oriental carpet under his feet until Fatima, the oldest aunt, takes pity on him.

  “Come. Come.” She points to the door and walks him a few paces down the hall to a small back room done up with red carpet, gold curtains and a big gilded mirror.

  In the corner is a wooden bed with an old scarecrow of a man asleep in a pale green Pakistan cricket shirt. Thin black trousers tapering at the ankle. This, Khalid learns, is Fatima’s husband, his uncle Amir. And a sight far harder to digest than the oriental carpet from before.

  Fatima mumbles something to him, then leads Khalid to another door with a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 777 sticker on it. Fatima points to it proudly, as if Khalid might be pleased by the photo of a plane that looks a hundred years old.

  “I have to go to the loo,” Khalid says, thinking this is all getting a bit much.

  “No. No. No.” Fatima seems to be on a mission to bore Khalid to death. Or drive him nuts. Or both. She refuses to let him pass. Insists on opening the sticker door wide. Steps aside to make him peer into a black space slightly bigger than the airing cupboard at home.

  “Wow! You’ve got a computer!” Khalid freezes with surprise, scarcely believing his luck.

  “Have. Have.” Fatima grins and points at the screen, trying hard to tell him he can use it whenever he wants. There’s nothing more he wants to hear. His big smile warms Fatima’s heart, almost bringing tears to her eyes. But before Khalid can begin to enjoy it he races back to the living room to say goodnight to everyone and be polite for a while. Waiting until the house goes quiet before he returns to the cupboard to start the game for the first time.

  After half an hour or so, Khalid gets the hang of how to use the computer without being able to read the language. It gets better when he logs on to his e-mail and discovers that Tariq’s game—Bomber One—is ready. A whizz-kid friend of his in Lahore has helped to finish the program and download it. Tariq’s sent him instructions on how to set up his profile so they can all play together soon. Khalid tests it out several times before getting too jet-lag flaky to carry on.

  He sends off an excited reply before he shuts down the computer. Going deathly weird with tiredness the moment the screen goes black. Then he wanders into the front room trying to remember where Mum said he’s supposed to sleep. His mind was on the computer at the time. Did she say the room next to the bathroom? Or was that his sisters’ bedroom? Either way, Khalid doesn’t want to disturb anyone by wandering into the wrong room so he wobbles for a bit before kicking off his sneakers and falling on the musty-smelling sofa in a heap. Still wearing the jeans and blue hoodie he’s had on since yesterday morning.

  Within a couple of days, Khalid settles into a pleasant routine. Morning starts with breakfast in the far corner of the dining room, which is marked out by comfy cushions and rugs surrounded by large windows on two sides. Fresh fruits, juice, curry, rice and bread set him up for the two hours he has to spend watching over Uncle Amir until Fatima comes back from doing her marketing and relieves him. Giving him a chance to chat with the visitors who are always calling by, before playing and reading with Gul and Aadab to give Mum a break.

  If it wasn’t for all the news and talk about the earthquake in northern Afghanistan and the pictures of people freezing to death outside flattened houses, Khalid might feel worse about missing his team’s football games back in Rochdale. He knows he can’t complain when homeless people without proper shoes or blankets are shown on TV wandering snow-covered hills in their search for food.

  One of the visitors, a man called Abdullah, who is twenty-six, with a bushy black beard and cloth round his head, strikes Khalid as odd. He never mentions the earthquake, only Islam. A book-keeper with hard staring eyes and a scar on his cheek, he’s in the habit of popping in every day to try to persuade Dad to come to the mosque with him. But Dad doesn’t like him. Says he’s too serious, even for him.

  Abdullah’s staring eyes bother Khalid. But it seems the feeling is mutual and they mostly leave each other alone.

  Although Khalid likes the fact that this house is busier than his house in Rochdale, he’s surprised at how different things are for people in Karachi. For a start everyone’s much more polite and friendly than they are at home. Khalid can’t imagine what happened outside the chip shop happening here. Instead they talk a lot about prices shooting up and about dwindling services and the lack of decent plumbing, complaining most when the taps run dry, which they usually do in the middle of the afternoon. Not that Khalid speaks Urdu. For some reason, Abdullah translates everything without ever being asked.

  In the afternoon, the aunties like taking naps, which suits Khalid just fine. It gives him the opportunity to catch up on lost sleep after a night spent gaming with Tariq.

  Dad’s often out—checking on cheaper houses for the aunties to move to. Then he sometimes helps with the street collections to send stuff to the earthquake region. So on the fourth day after they arrived, Khalid makes a decision to stay up all night playing Bomber One. No one in the house seems to mi
nd what he does later, as long as he’s helpful during the day. Probably thinking he hits his snug bed in the tiny room next to the bathroom some time after midnight. Never guessing it’s nearer five in the morning, depending on what Tariq’s plans are for the next day.

  At the moment, Tariq’s busy studying for some accountancy exams, or so he says. Khalid thinks they sound more like A levels, but anyway Tariq always takes a break from his studies by playing a game or two, whatever the time is.

  Now there are more players: two in Egypt, one in Iraq, one in Australia and another in America. The game is really heating up. A secret group of fighters have to get together to plan the annihilation of an imaginary town called Arch Parkway. All of them enjoy going head to head at the same time and dreaming up mad strategies for winning, but really they’re all on the same side.

  It’s still a bit basic and not as good as Counter Strike or anything, but then this game’s home-made and, who knows, one day Tariq might be able to sell it and make a ton of money and he might even give some to Khalid for helping him out with the names.

  “Could be a bestseller some day, with kids all over the world paying to play,” the American says.

  “It’s far better than anything out there,” Khalid lies, suddenly yawning his head off. Secretly wishing he could play Starcraft instead for a while—as he moves the mouse over the high buildings so the twinkling lights of Bomber One come on again.

  4

  MISSING

  Khalid leans back from the computer when the call to prayer begins echoing around the city, realizing it’s five o’clock. Almost morning.

  For a moment, he wonders if it’s worth going to bed at all. Or maybe he should answer Nico’s e-mail from Rochdale before making coffee to keep himself awake. It’s hardly worth taking a nap because he’ll need to get up for breakfast by nine at the latest.