Guantanamo Boy

by Anna Perera

  Khalid quickly nods an answer to the question in his raised eyebrows. “Hardly any milk please.”

  “After an ordeal like yours,” the professor says, “most people experience a number of problems. We’ll talk about them one by one and see how we get on, shall we?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Khalid thinks this will be easy, and hearing he’s likely to be going home tomorrow makes him anxious to please the nice professor and get this over with as soon as possible.

  “Even simple things like the sound of people talking at once might prove hard to deal with at first,” he begins.

  “Yeah, I get that. It might feel weird.” Khalid pulls a face as he sips the mug of almost black coffee, shocked by the bitterness of the taste. Did he really used to drink it like this? Urgh!

  “Not just weird,” the professor says. “You might experience a physical reaction and feel faint. Want to run away from the noise of their voices. Just remember that every reaction you have to anything is absolutely normal and is to be expected in this type of situation.”

  “I don’t think I’ll wanna run away!” Khalid reckons the professor’s overreacting slightly. I mean, he doesn’t look that crazy, does he?

  “You might shrink from ordinary affection from your family simply because you’re not used to it. A hand on a shoulder might feel threatening all of a sudden.”

  “Yeah, I can maybe see that,” Khalid admits. But bit by bit, as Professor Wolfson talks him through a typical day at home and how he might react to ordinary things like going out on his own to the shops for the first time, Khalid realizes he’s going to have a lot to deal with when he gets back. Sparking the sudden memory of his trip to Nasir’s grocery shop all that time ago without a worry in the world. Unaware of passing cars, of people, of anything much but the thoughts inside his head. Remembering cutting through the cul-de-sac on his way to the park.

  “What if I suddenly bump into someone I don’t know? Will it scare me?” Khalid’s suddenly frightened he won’t be able to cope with anything. Not his parents. His friends. Being out on his own.

  “It might do, but you can prepare yourself for that by thinking about it beforehand,” the professor says patiently, and slowly talks him through every eventuality.

  Khalid’s still worrying about things when he’s led out to another exercise yard where two policemen stand waiting on either side of the locked gate. This time the exercise yard is a huge, windswept, rain-drenched field, marked by high metal fences that are impossible to see through.

  It takes Khalid quite a while to walk round the edge with his hands in his pockets; his white sneakers make a squelching sound as he marches as fast as he can. Quickening his step after the first full circuit to include a sudden fast header, then the kick of an imaginary ball. Then a jump and a run to become the speediest footballer on the field, racing down the line faster and faster to score an amazing goal. Followed by a leap in the air, fists punching the sky, head shaking, Khalid lets out a spine-tingling “YES! YES!” He’s going home.

  28

  HOME

  Many things are on Khalid’s mind as Harry’s old Fiat turns into Oswestry Road. For a start, the sound of heavy traffic in the distance is much louder than he remembers.

  A red Mini Cooper races past with four teenagers inside. One of whom he vaguely recognizes. Martin Weeks? Nah, it can’t be him. His curly black hair was never that wild, or was it? The worrying thought bangs into Khalid suddenly that he might not recognize any of his mates. How much have they changed over the last two years? Will they still want to be his friend or will they hate him? Do any of them believe he’s guilty? Or will they pretend everything’s cool but talk about him behind his back as if he’s a terrorist? The thought of them behaving like that makes him feel slightly sick. A tight feeling spreads down his throat at the idea of coping without them.

  As the car pulls up outside his house, Khalid’s surprised to see Mac’s garden next door is full of new orange and yellow flowers that are growing over the adjoining low wall. There’s a new metal gate and his beige curtains are neatly tied back, white nets shaking enough to suggest Mac’s whole family are watching Khalid arrive—which makes him smile. He waves at the window, knowing they can see. Knowing Mac won’t ever treat him differently from the way he’s always done. He’s not that kind of bloke.

  “There’s no side to Mac,” Dad always says.

  Khalid’s house looks exactly the same. The same narrow concrete path with patches of grass growing over it. The same white-painted front door with two empty bottles of milk on the step. A new pink bike left on its side.

  His homecoming—an event he’s imagined for so long—is here at last. But a weird feeling of remoteness descends on Khalid, a strange detachment from what he knows is about to happen.

  A few of the neighbors rush out to stand at their gates and watch as Khalid and Harry go up the short path. Within seconds the door swings open and Aadab . . . no, an older Gul races up the path first and jumps into Khalid’s arms. Followed by a much taller and lankier Aadab, glossy hair almost down to her waist. Then Mum in a smart navy skirt and long-sleeved white blouse, with her arms open wide, cries unashamedly as she walks towards him, but Aadab and Gul are in the way and she stops when they meet on the path. Mum reaches for his shoulders, weeping, but doesn’t hug Khalid because as a family they don’t do public displays of affection, which is why Dad’s standing awkwardly back. Pretending to keep the door from slamming shut as he proudly watches Khalid walk up the path at last. Everyone begins talking at once. Smiling and nodding with quivering lips and damp eyes. The neighbors avidly watching their every move.

  Lowering his head, hand over his mouth, Harry follows Khalid inside. Everyone chatters at once as the door closes on the whole family, who are crammed together in an emotional heap in the narrow hall.

  Aadab and Gul tug at his jeans for attention.

  “I can’t breathe,” Khalid says, disentangling Mum’s wet face from his neck. Unused to being touched in a way that isn’t violent for the past two years, he feels smothered. Trapped. Claustrophobic all of a sudden.

  “Let him be for a little while.” Dad takes Khalid’s elbow and leads him into the kitchen, brown leather shoes squeaking.

  But even that small gesture feels strange to Khalid, who fights it by saying, “Thanks, Dad. New shoes?”

  “Yes. I bought them especially to welcome you home, but the color isn’t quite right with these trousers. What do you think?”

  “I think they’re the best shoes you’ve ever had, Dad.” Khalid’s eyes well up.

  “They don’t match properly. I should have taken them back. But compared to the state of your muddy sneakers, Khalid, they are very good.”

  Then Khalid does something he hasn’t done for quite a few years. He takes Dad’s round, smiling face in his hands and kisses him right on the nose.

  For a moment Dad looks shocked, but then he laughs. “Always you found my nose funny,” he says.

  “I still do.” Khalid grins.

  Once tea and the big, sugary welcome-home cake have been demolished, Harry prepares to leave.

  “Here, you nearly forgot this, Khalid.” He hands him the white plastic bag he left Guantanamo with and it falls open to reveal the Qur’an, the letter, the postcard and papers, the few things he’d owned in that terrible place. And for a moment he’s back there on the bed, head in his hands, waiting for the dinner trolley to come down the row, and he trembles—the kitchen moves away from him . . .

  “Khalid,” Dad calls. “Khalid.”

  “Eh?” He blinks for a moment, suddenly aware he’s gripping the table. No, he’s here, at home. The ache inside dies and a feeling of hope takes its place.

  They all scrape back their chairs and follow Harry out to see him off. At the door, Khalid shakes Harry’s hand and nods in the same way he does. At that moment the neighbors start running down their paths again to have a good look and everyone waves and waves until Harry’s car disappears from sight
down the long road.

  Khalid is the first to turn back inside to stare at the heap of mail from well-wishers addressed to him that is stacked in neat piles on the hall floor. He’s about to open one of the cards when he’s shocked to hear his name come from the crackling TV in the living room. The news is on and his face is spread large across the screen. The family crowd round to cheer when the newsreader says he’s returned home to Rochdale.

  It’s all a bit much for Khalid, who feels an urgent need to get away from everyone and climbs over the sofa to make his escape.

  “No, leave him,” Dad tells Aadab, who darts to block the door.

  A sulky expression crosses her face. “We’ve been waiting ages for him to come back—he has to talk to us some more.”

  “I said let him go. Khalid’s tired out now, can’t you see?”

  “Yeah, tired.” Khalid nods, quickly making his excuses. He only begins to feel more like himself when he sits on the pale blue duvet of his strangely chunky-feeling bed. The Rochdale Football Club league table from 2002 is still stuck to the wall opposite. His football boots are on the red carpet beside the white chest of drawers, blue cap on top where he left it. Feeling weirdly absent from this house, this room, he suddenly thinks of Tariq and the remaining 600 men locked in Guantanamo Bay while he sits here in comfort, the bedroom door wide open for him to walk through whenever he likes. The kitchen’s full of cake, biscuits, Cheddar cheese, crisps and orange juice he can get whenever he wants. Khalid’s mouth waters at the thought of real home-made curry for dinner later and the taste of nicely cooked rice and naan bread, even though his stomach is full to bursting from so much cake.

  A car whizzes past the window. The sun casts a shadow across the neat and tidy room before sinking behind a distant row of houses. It’s not until the smell of boiling rice drifts up from the kitchen that Khalid finally accepts he’s home to stay. A thought both wonderful and unbelievable at the same time.

  Then there’s all the people knocking on the door, day and night. The local imams, Muslim leaders, journalists, friends and neighbors—even the guy who owns the restaurant where Dad works. Their constant voices, welcomes and polite inquiries cause exhaustion and pounding headaches for Khalid.

  “Please, Dad, tell them I’ve had enough! I don’t know what to say to them.” But Dad’s too polite, though sometimes he keeps them on the doorstep for so long they get bored and leave.

  Some days are harder to get through than others, because Khalid’s finding it difficult to sleep. He keeps waking up to pictures of high razor wire and the sound of screaming, and gets up to pace the bedroom. The window and door are always wide open, but he’s afraid to look up in case he’s back there, hurting. And all the time he’s trying to pluck up courage to go and see his mates and he’s desperate to bump into Niamh and see her pretty face again. Khalid’s sad that none of them have come round, until he remembers they always meet at the park or the shops. Not since primary school has anyone knocked for him, and anyway, they usually meet at Nico’s house, because his mum and dad are always out. Deep down he knows they’re waiting for him to make the first move and that’s what scares him the most.

  It takes two more days before Khalid finds the nerve to get up in the middle of the night and go downstairs. He’s been avoiding going downstairs at night and, feeling slightly chilly, he pulls on a black hoodie over the white T-shirt and red boxers he’s slept in, listening for a moment to the sound of Dad snoring in the room next door.

  The only sound in the kitchen is the hum of the fridge and for a long time Khalid stands at the door, staring at the dense, black square on the table in the corner, wondering if he has the nerve to turn the computer on.

  With one click and ping, the screen splutters into action, lighting up faster than Khalid remembers. Hitting the search engine to bring up his e-mails, he’s shocked to find several hundred people have sent him a message.

  But the name he wants to see—Niamh—isn’t there.

  “Come round when you’re up to it, mate,” Nico says. “I tried to see you yesterday but there was a nutter blocking your gate asking me my name, so I scarpered.”

  “Hey, bad man, you’s cool,” Holgy says.

  Glancing down the list, Khalid sees there are a few nasty ones from kids he knows mixed in with the nice messages.

  “You don’t deserve to come home, you terrorist bastard. I hope you rot in hell.”

  Khalid tenses suddenly. His stomach muscles tighten, his throat turns dry and a wave of nausea comes over him. An imaginary mirror rises in his mind to reflect back the picture of a gloomy cupboard, with Khalid jumping up from playing Bomber One to go to the loo. Heading back with a smile on his face, his jeans half zipped, then the sound of someone in the hall . . . the sound he thought might be Dad. But men in black walk him backwards, force him into the kitchen, where they wave a gun at his face.

  “NO!” Khalid yells, falling out of the chair, head in his hands with the sound of feet rushing towards him.

  “Son. Son.” Warm hands clasp his shoulder and bring Khalid into warm arms and the soft cotton smell of Dad. Standing there in his beige pajamas, Dad weeps along with him. Holding him close like a baby.

  “They—those men . . .” Khalid sobs. “They came from nowhere. They beat me up and threw me in a truck. They just took me.”

  “I know, son. I know.”

  After a while, when Khalid quiets down, they talk and talk about the prison, what happened, about football and girls and his hopes and dreams, until the morning light peeps through the kitchen window and the deathly fear that’s been keeping him awake leaves him for a bit.

  Late afternoon the next day, Khalid’s out of the house in baggy black jeans with a new mobile in his pocket. Settling the queasy feeling inside with a hand on his stomach, he checks he’s up to it before turning right, then second left. Cutting through the cul-de-sac to the park, he imagines Nico and the rest of them are already there and a few of the steroid heads are beating each other to a pulp beside the tennis courts. Maybe Niamh and her friends are down by the far gate smoking their cigarettes and sharing a couple of those disgusting alcopops that girls seem to like.

  Running as fast as he can past the kids on the swings, Khalid races towards the benches under the oak trees, then stops suddenly to see the bushes have all been cut back. The broken benches have been replaced with brand-new green ones. All the bird poo, flattened Pringles tubes and beer cans have gone. Even some of the oak branches have sadly been lopped off, opening their secret place to the wide sky and noisy road behind.

  A couple of schoolkids he vaguely recognizes, who’ve grown uglier and ruder than Khalid remembers, saunter past smoking cigarettes. It’s not until they’re way past him that one calls out, “Thought you were dead, Kal, mate.”

  “Better not bomb anything round here or yer soon will be,” his mate says, laughing.

  Without answering, Khalid hurries in the opposite direction, out of the park gate towards Nico’s house.

  Finding himself unable to cross the busy road, he stands for a moment, suddenly hypnotized by the sight and sound of cars rumbling past. A whooshing sensation flows through his head as he sees the traffic lights change from red and amber to green, then amber to red again. And the roar of buses and lorries thundering past his face, spitting dirt over his new sneakers, while the sickly smell of deep-frying fish leaks from the chip shop behind him. He can’t breathe. He’s going to faint.

  “Is that you, Kal? Hiya, mate. HIYA!” Wide-eyed and suddenly there in front of him, Holgy pulls him away from the traffic and he’s grinning and grinning. Taller than Khalid now, he’s got a crazy line of hair round his chin, joining up to crazy sideburns.

  “How you doing, Kal? Your face is everywhere. I keep saying, ‘I know him, he’s an old mate of mine.’”

  “I’m a bit all over the place.” Khalid lowers his eyes, shaking. Trying his best not to faint.

  “Well, you would be, wouldn’t you?” Holgy sighs and presse
s the button to cross the road.

  “What you up to, then?” Khalid breathes out.

  “I’m down the sixth-form college. They let you dress how you like,” Holgy says brightly. “You ought to come and scope it out.”

  “But I haven’t got any GCSEs, have I, Holgy?” Khalid says.

  “So what? There’s two old ladies there doing A-levels and they haven’t got any GCSEs either. Anyhows, you’ve got a pretty good excuse, eh, Kal? By the way, me name’s Eshan now. No one, like, calls me Holgy any more. I’m too old for that hologram rubbish now.”

  “Sure, Eshan, no problem.” Khalid nods, feeling a little better. I sometimes felt like a hologram inside that prison, he thinks.

  They cross the road together and Eshan fills him in on everyone.

  “Mikael’s moved to Australia with his family. He got eleven GCSEs, eight As—did best of the lot of us. Like we didn’t know that was gonna happen, eh?”

  “And Tony?” Khalid asks.

  “Tony Banda left school once he were sixteen for his apprenticeship with British Gas. He was made up—it was all he ever wanted, remember?”

  “No.” Khalid doesn’t remember that at all.

  “Well, it’s true. He stopped playing football when he broke his leg, and after you went missing, the team fell apart,” Eshan says. “And, you won’t believe this, he’s still going out with Lexy.”

  “Really? Lucky bloke! How about Nico?” Khalid says, not daring to ask him about Niamh.

  “Nico’s still at school. His mam wouldn’t let him go to sixth-form college, said he’d never do any work if he got there. She’s probably right. He did about as well as me—seven GCSEs, mostly As and Cs—not bad, not brilliant. But then we didn’t exactly push ourselves, did we?”

  Arriving outside Nico’s terraced house, Eshan says, “Good to see you again, Kal. Come over any time. We missed you, mate. It wasn’t the same after you disappeared.”