A Fistful of Dust

by Nasser Hashmi

  ‘Do you think a jihadi can be cured?’ asked Lawrence, abruptly.

  ‘Cure? Not sure about that: changed maybe…’

  ‘So why did Waz go to Muslim sufferers of asbestos–related conditions first?’

  I shook my head. Lawrence pulled out a piece of paper from his folder and looked down at it. ‘He knocked on more than 60 houses in his door to door campaigning – and 49 of those have been identified as those from the Muslim faith. That’s quite a lot, don’t you think?’

  Nadia looked at me and shifted forward in her seat.

  ‘He might have started knocking in a predominantly Muslim area,’ I said.

  ‘Or maybe he just wasn’t well integrated…’

  ‘Meaning?’ I snapped. ‘I thought you were here to help me…’

  Nadia raised her hand and Lawrence smiled. It had not been clear to me why Lawrence was being so aggressive but now I knew.

  ‘That was a very mild version of what you’ll be facing,’ said Lawrence. ‘Benjamin Lees will probably be defending for us. He’s a good barrister. We tried to form a synth band at Manchester Grammar School. Didn’t quite work.’

  ‘What was the name of the Iraqi man again? Shakeel something?’

  ‘Er yes, Shakeel Ali Hameed. They’re trying to bring him in. It’s why the process is taking so long.’

  I got up and walked towards the window. I touched the leaves on the plant pot resting on the window ledge. The scent from the leaves rocketed right up my nose and made me sneeze repeatedly. The cold, runny mucus dribbled from my nose and turned into a woozy light–headedness. I put my hand down on the window ledge but missed, stumbling, but still managing to retain my balance.

  ‘Shakeel, you say? Got more on him?’

  Nadia got up and raced over to me.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself about that,’ said Lawrence. ‘Your health is delicate so I don’t want you to get in too deep. Just think about your own position and what you’re going to say.’

  I shrugged off Nadia’s help and walked back to the sofa. ‘My health is not delicate, okay? I went to Iraq and back in this state. Have you done anything like that?’

  ‘Not really…’

  ‘Well then,’ I said, sitting back down on the sofa. ‘If it wasn’t for a solicitor we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Bloody Amjad Nazeer. I’d belt him if I ever saw him again.’

  Lawrence closed his laptop and began collecting his papers. He glanced at Nadia and got up. He walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. He then reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out a musty–looking C–60 cassette.

  ‘My music is delicate,’ he said, handing me the cassette. ‘Have a listen some time.’

  He walked out of the room and closed the door.

  Another year of this and Wasim would probably end up on suicide watch. As for me, who cared if I coughed to death one morning and lay motionless on the bathroom floor? Nadia, of course, was still doing her best but, with winter approaching, I shuddered to think how she’d cope with her studies and the three men – including me – who’d let her down. Even the two things that had kept me going since the bout of pneumonia – the thought of a grandstanding trial and the soothing environment of Hollingworth Lake – were fading in the distance. The trial felt like an eternity away and the lake felt so bone–crushingly cold that I was forced back into the seven–day routine of sleeping, eating, drinking, inhaling medication and reading local newspapers; I did try the internet in the front room a few times but it gave me a crushing headache on each occasion. But then Len came up with a surprise: he called to say Bernie Kershaw wanted to meet me. I was quite flattered, at first, as Bernie’s photo (and story) had appeared in the Observer outlining his plans for the town and his new campaign. But as I examined the picture on Page 7 of the paper – his piercing eyes, his bulky frame (surely about 15 stone) and woolly turtleneck jumper – I started to become intimidated. He looked a genial sort from his photo but it was his status as the boss of a firm that gave me pause for thought. They had an uncanny knack of getting their way – and I wasn’t sure I had the stomach for anymore charity do’s or functions.

  Bernie arrived in time for afternoon tea and sat by my bed while Len was downstairs in the front room using Nadia’s computer to check on the construction of the Pride of Our Town website. Bernie didn’t have a biscuit because he had to eat gluten–free products. He spent a good half an hour talking about his trials and tribulations of trying to get a loaf of bread that wouldn’t poison him every morning. Since being diagnosed with Coeliac Disease, he said he’d put on a lot of weight because his tummy was finally working properly again. He was also surprised how quickly he’d felt better after diagnosis, like a magic cure, he said. If only a simple piece of toast could cure all the illnesses of the world, I thought.

  He reached into his pocket for his wallet and pulled out a small, black and white photo. He handed it to me and asked me if I recognised the man standing on the platform at a train station. I looked down at the picture and immediately recognised the round face and thinning hair.

  ‘Blondie…’ I said. ‘You know him?’

  ‘It’s my father Richard. He started at Turners in 67, a couple of months before you, I believe…’

  ‘Long time ago, now. I must have only spoken to him a few times. Came on his bike and always had a camera with him. Did he work in Textiles?’

  ‘For 12 years. Why did you call him ‘Blondie’? He never told us about that. And he had brown hair too.’

  ‘Nobody really called him that. He used to like spaghetti westerns and spouted the odd line of dialogue in the canteen. It’s how I remember him.’

  ‘He liked taking pictures too?’

  ‘Hmm, once he was so exact and precise that we were nearly late clocking in. He wanted four of us in a line with the chimney directly behind us. He even liked taking them in rain. They must have been nice pictures: pity I won’t see any of them.’

  ‘I know the ones you mean. I’ve got them all at home.’

  I coughed and reached over for another sip of cardamom tea. ‘I’d love to see them.’

  ‘It’s why I came really. You’re in about a dozen of these pictures. When I heard about the charity match it got me thinking about all that Turners stuff and I started going through a few of Dad’s things. Then I came down to the match and was amazed when I thought you were the man in the pictures. I knew you were suffering so, really, that was the moment I thought about doing something for people in this town. I was only 15 when he died so I felt a bit helpless. But now I’ve got the clout to do something and I will.’

  After his bout of energy there was a moment of silence as Bernie looked away from me towards the window. He reached over and picked up a handful of cheese and onion crisps (his gluten–free substitute hastily provided for him by Elisha). He looked down at them in his hand and slowly put it into his mouth.

  ‘It took five miserable months for my father to waste away,’ he said. ‘The weight just fell off him. He looked like he’d been vertically chopped in half. Mesothelioma is cruel but he never complained. He was grateful for what he had. He gave us the values I have now.’

  Bernie looked at his watch.

  ‘Shit is that the time? Got a meeting in Bolton in 45 minutes.’ He walked to the door and stopped. ‘Look, I’d love to come back every fortnight and visit but that’s your call. I’ve got a second place in Manchester – and as we’re expanding the business up here, I can pop in at any time, no obligations.’ He swallowed his crisps and decided to walk back in for another handful. He waved goodbye and left the house.

  The trial was so far away but winter was lurking. Dr Howarth, in a fresh appointment, said my condition had stabilised (a legacy of Hollingworth Lake, no doubt) although it didn’t feel like it. The cold was seeping into my lungs and there was no escape: the kitchen was freezing, the living room a little better and my bedroom was the worst of the lot – even with the nice electric heater Nadia had bought for me
. She even put long pieces of cloth under the doors, leaving the curtains drawn, but it didn’t seem to make a difference: the dirty mucus and phlegm were lodged so deep in my chest that I felt I needed a piping hot defibrillator to suck all the decaying stuff out.

  But it was into this draught–a–minute environment that Bernie agreed to return. I was grateful to him because, with Elisha and Nadia generally being gone for most of the daylight hours, he made some of the days go quicker. Len could only visit once because he’d become terribly busy (what was that about bosses and workers?). On some days, Bernie brought his own biscuits and cakes and on other days he had a flask with him – the same one his father had used all those years ago at Turner’s. It reminded me that my own flask and tartan drawstring bag were down in the cellar after being dumped there after my move from Maple Street. Most of the time, we shared intimate memories as the steam from the plastic white cups rose above our heads. After a couple of visits, he showed me his father’s camera and the photos of me and my fellow workers in and around the factory. For a few seconds as I looked down at the photos and absorbed the camaraderie on display, I almost missed the place – but then as I looked beyond my colleagues at the huge, chugging buildings towering over them the aching evidence in my chest resurfaced. There was no escape: we were connected forever. We were like prisoners in a camp. Bernie sensed my unease and we pledged not to dwell on bad experiences because they weren’t helping my recovery. It was the first time I’d heard anyone say the word ‘recovery’ in relation to my condition. It gave me a strange boost that I couldn’t describe.

  Bernie came around less frequently in the late winter months but in early spring he rushed in on one occasion offering to get some better care for me and a set of doctors ‘who knew what they were talking about’. It came a bit out of the blue but I told him I couldn’t deal with the strain of a new doctor or specialist or both: more questions, more investigations and more hassle; I was fine with Dr Howarth. Bernie took it well, and it was on this very same visit that he finally broached the subject I’d expected him to explore many moons before: my errant grandson. It was my only moment of true anxiety in all the time I’d been in Bernie’s company: how would he react to a terrorist suspect lurking and living in this house; in this very bed, in fact? I needn’t have worried: he had his own story to tell.

  ‘My father’s neighbour, Sean Fleming, was an electrician and liked to play five–a–side football at weekends,’ said Bernie. ‘One morning, out of the blue, he was arrested on terrorism charges. They said he was sabotaging people’s houses by dangerous rewiring that may cause explosions or even death. The paranoia spread across the neighbourhood because he’d been in almost every person’s house, including ours. While he was locked up, his wife was spat at and his kids were bullied in school. She eventually left. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear he was released because there was no evidence against him. The charge laid against him was from a man who’d said he’d been electrocuted by a fuse box. Sean never really recovered. He drank a lot – and he’s still alive I believe – but I heard he’d moved down to Hastings.’

  ‘Edward Heath was dead meat…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Edward Heath was dead meat. A couple of men from Turners used to sing that. From Cork, I think.’

  Bernie nodded. ‘They’d have been arrested today, nailed on.’

  There was a long moment of silence as Bernie remained reluctant to go head–on about our troubles, probably out of respect for me.

  ‘I met one of these Labour MPs down in the Midlands,’ said Bernie. ‘Round about the time we were being sold the Iraqi story. I took the piss out of him a bit but he actually believed that all the WMD stuff was true. I couldn’t believe it; he was dead serious.’

  I sat up in bed, picking up my hot–water bottle and placing it under my neck. ‘They’re all the same…’

  ‘Even Cyril Smith. Did you hear that stuff about him backing Turners?’

  ‘I didn’t know about that. I thought he’d look out for our interests a bit more…’

  ‘The big lad only looked after number one…’

  I tried to answer but could only mumble an incoherent word. Another long silence. Bernie got up and walked to the other side of the bed and looked out of the window.

  ‘I’m sorry about your grandson. I heard you were getting him back on the right road: he had dossiers about Turners, that kind of thing. You’ve almost pulled off a miracle there: dragging him from the fire of Iraq and straightening him out.’ He edged closer to the window so his nose was nearly touching the glass. ‘These raids have got a patchy rate of success. He might get off. Most of the jury probably hate the Iraq war anyway.’ He sighed but turned away from the window and looked at me. ‘I know two other people down this very street who are suffering the legacy of Turners…’

  ‘Don’t know them…’

  ‘Precisely. Because no–one works together anymore. When I see them, I see my father – and it’s the same with you. This new group’s going to be for all of you.’

  There was a knock on the bedroom door. Elisha came in after coming home from school. She glanced at Bernie and then at me.

  ‘Oh how I loved school,’ said Bernie, with a smile. ‘Time to go.’ He briskly walked past Elisha and tapped her on the shoulder. He opened the door and left the room.

  Elisha came over and sat on the bed by my side. She felt her tie in her hands, picking out a couple of threads and gently dropping them onto the carpet. She looked quite miserable but that wasn’t in any way remarkable.

  ‘Been thinking about it all day, nana jee,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  She looked into my eyes and hesitated. She looked away in frustration and took off her tie quicker than usual. She screwed it into a ball, turned and lobbed it against the window.

  ‘Elisha, what’s the matter?’

  She folded her arms and looked at the bare wall. She scraped the toe of her shoe across the carpet.

  ‘I feel sick about Wasim. I’m having nightmares about him going down.’

  My eyes were about to roll but I managed to keep them in check.

  ‘It’ll all be fine, don’t worry about it.’

  She turned directly to me and jumped onto the bed, sitting cross–legged.

  ‘The court case is in two weeks, nana jee, two weeks. Mummy wanted to keep you protected from all this crap so you wouldn’t have time to get worried about it…’

  My head was spinning and a ball of saliva nearly slipped from my mouth. I shook my head.

  ‘So I haven’t been getting all my mail?’

  ‘Everything, but the court stuff.’

  I sighed and put my hand on Elisha’s shoulder. I lay down and turned onto my side. ‘Sorry, I need a rest,’ I said.

  ‘Nana jee, don’t worry, I’ve got half–term so I can come with you and get you through it. I’ll look the wiggy bastards in the eye.’

  ‘Please, Leesha, got a headache now. Tell your mother I want to see her when she gets home.’

  When Nadia did come home she wasn’t in the mood for listening. After two minutes of disagreement, she slung her shawl over her shoulder and went into the kitchen to make the evening meal. We didn’t talk again until after we’d eaten the courgettes and potato concoction which wasn’t one of her best – and the chapattis too, were out of shape and crackly. The trial date was the first thing she cleared up: it had been brought forward because there were lots of so–called terrorism cases in the London area and simply not enough court space to try them so some of them had to be moved up north. This meant they had examined the cases already up here and concluded that, ours – and a couple of others – had the potential for quick results because there was only one defendant and his alleged crimes (in the main) weren’t on these shores. So what happened to the complex case theory?

  ‘Always been bullshit,’ she said. ‘Code for ‘we better find some evidence and quick’.’

  Nadia was quite snappy, I felt,
even though it was me who had been wronged. If I wanted to escalate this, I could but what was the point? I had to grudgingly accept that she was right. She had been shielding me from the twisted thoughts of barrister interaction and that was no bad thing.

  ‘We’ve ditched the ‘Hijandchips’ thing,’ she said. ‘We thought there was a market for it but the designs weren’t really coming alive. They looked better on the screen than on the actual headwear.’

  ‘Could have told you that.’

  ‘Should have shouted louder then…’

  She got up and cleared the dishes. She walked into the kitchen and I didn’t see her again for about 45 minutes, right on cue for my cardamom tea. When she returned, she had a bowl of pistachio ice cream in her hand and slumped down on the sofa.

  ‘Do you want to do my dissertation?’ she asked.

  ‘Come on, Nadia, be serious. We’ve a court case coming up. We could lose Wasim for a long time.’

  ‘Broke the fucking bank to become a mature student. Good couple of years but now it’s a drag. Might pack it in.’

  ‘But you’ve nearly got the degree in your hands…’

  ‘Feels a lifetime away.’ She glanced at me as she turned the spoon upside down in her mouth. ‘Salim was on the phone again yesterday. Said he definitely wouldn’t talk to the press if Wasim went down. As if I cared…’

  There was a period of silence as Nadia finished her ice cream. She then sat cross–legged and rested the empty bowl on her lap.

  ‘Do you want to go for the prosecution case?’ she asked.

  ‘When’s my turn?’

  ‘A few days after that. I’m going to try and be there for the duration.’

  ‘What about your studies?’

  ‘I was only messing about when I said I wouldn’t finish my degree. Really Daddy, sometimes you really do get taken in. Of course, I’m going to finish it. The only reason I want to be in court as much as possible is to support Wasim.’