I have to think, he mutters.
***
I find an extract from a Surah, 113:1-3:
Say: I seek refuge With the Lord of the Dawn, From the mischief Of created things; From the mischief Of Darkness as it overspreads
I am not sure exactly what it means, but it is calming, like a cool cloth placed on my fevered brow.
***
I want to tell Kalil that his mistake is to think that his enemy’s enemy is his friend. There will always be warped men who not only think that violence is the solution to all problems, but who positively thrive on it. They lust after bloodshed and cruelty. Just because they call themselves Muslim and do not like this or that – whether it be American politics or Hindu discrimination or semi-naked pop singers – and you agree with them on some or all of those things, it does not mean you share a common ideology. Even if there was no Islam, no America, no Hindus or pop princesses, those men would still be full of poison, still find a reason to kill and maim, still find a twisted cause.
It is time for my pills.
***
I read Surah 96 Al Alaq. I want to tell Kalil that every Muslim’s true enemy is himself – his own obstinacy, vanity and insolence. That is the real struggle.
***
Kalil sweeps into the cell today. His eyes flash with repressed excitement.
Brother, it has come to me, the true message of the Qur’an. I have found the way. Before, I was a fool, stumbling like a baby in a darkened room, but it is as if a blindfold has been removed.
Mmm, I say half-heartedly. I am loathe to embark on further verbal combat, but can sense that he is not to be put off.
You always tell me that that wrong-doers will end up in Hell. You say the Qur’an teaches us to be patient, that Fire awaits them in the Hereafter, that sinners will eventually join the Companions of the Fire. What if you are wrong? What if Allah is not advocating patience? What if the Fire is not in the Hereafter? What if it is in the here and now? Don’t you see, we are not supposed to wait for sinners to go to the Fire, we are supposed to bring the Fire to the sinners? Read 74:31:
... we have set none But angels as guardians Of the Fire;
Don’t you get it? That’s us, we are the angels, the guardians of the Fire.
His voice has risen, strident with authority.
What are you talking about? I protest. You must be...
No, listen, brother. The Qur’an teaches two key messages. First, the sinner must be punished. Remember 5:45:
Life for life, eye for eye, Nose for nose, ear for ear, Tooth for tooth, and wounds Equal for equal.
Secondly, his punishment is in our hands. Allah calls on us to carry out his vengeance. It is our duty, our responsibility to deal with the sinner. 96:18:
We will call On the angels of punishment To deal with him
That’s us, my friend, he concludes, his tone triumphant. We are the angels of punishment. We are the Companions of the Fire.
I shake my head. I don’t know where to begin, how to counter his barrage of perverted inspiration.
You must learn to interpret His message to reveal the true meaning, he says with calm self-assurance. It is just a question of interpretation.
No, my friend, I answer wearily. It is a question of corruption.
***
I read Surah 94, Al Sharh. My eyes fall on Ayah 94:5. I lie on my bed and chant the Ayah over and over again:
With every difficulty
There is relief
If I say it enough times, perhaps it will come true.
***
There is no more strength in my bones. I have grown fatalistic. I no longer think ‘What should I do?’ not even ‘What will happen to me?’ Now I just bide my time, wait for my fate to be decided. When I pick up the Qur’an now, I read only the passages that deal with Judgement Day. I have surrendered. Retribution?
Reward? I will leave it to Allah, it is easier that way.
Some will be
In the Garden, and some
In the Blazing Fire. 42:7
I have made a list in my notebook of those soothing verses that deal with Judgement: Al Mutaffifin and Al Inshiqaq, Al Buruj and Al Tariq, Al Zalzalah and Al Qari’ah and Al Asr.
If this notebook ever falls into your hands, my love, read these and think of me. They are my food and drink. I need nothing more.
***
I take my pills, read my passages. The future is over. All I have to look forward to is the past.
Nuala 1
The instant she hears the news of the crash, her life divides into a Before and an After. It’s mid-morning and she’s teaching in a third-floor classroom working through a newspaper article on knife crime in Britain when there’s a knock and one of her part-time colleagues, Fran, pushes open the door and enters.
Nuala doesn’t stop speaking at once, finishes her explanation, but then pauses and smiles at her colleague as if to say, ‘OK, over to you.’ She’s expecting Fran to have a message for the students, a reminder of a lunchtime meeting to sign bus pass forms perhaps, or a request for them to bring in their Home Office documentation. But Fran’s still not speaking, and when Nuala looks more closely at her, she can see that she’s in some kind of discomfort, that something is not right.
Can I have a word, Nuala? she says. Outside.
Out in the corridor, Fran seems a little more composed.
What’s the matter? asks Nuala. If you had asked her at that instant what she was expecting to hear, she’d still have said that it was an everyday message to be delivered, perhaps to one particular student and therefore a little more sensitive, not to be repeated in front of the other class members. The worst scenario she could have imagined would have involved Sammy banging his head in the playground or Beth taken ill in class, a phone message to come and collect one or the other from the school secretary’s office. There are two police officers in the staffroom, Nuala.
They want to see you.
Her words are so unexpected that Nuala opens her mouth and stands there gaping for some seconds. Her brain’s working frantically, processing the words, trying to make sense of their meaning. When she finally grasps the situation, she takes a few steps forward, remembers her abandoned class, stops and teeters there uncertainly.
It’s OK, I’ll sit in with your class, says Fran.
Even as she descends the staircase, taking the steps three at a time, the irreversible Before/After process has begun. She feels a little giddy, the beginnings of the sensation that she’ll experience in the coming weeks, time out of joint, neither here nor there, an otherworldly dislocation. Her mouth is dry, she experiences a fluttering of panic in her stomach, as if she is about to be tested.
***
In the weeks that follow, Nuala experiences a recurring dream, the same knock on the door of her third-floor classroom, but this time she’s partially forewarned. She knows that the person outside the door is the bearer of cataclysmic news, that she must avoid allowing the person to enter, must break the chain of events. So she carries on her teaching and pays no attention to the knocking that grows ever more insistent. The students in the class begin to call out, they’re pointing at the door, but she knows that to acknowledge the intruder would be fatal, so she raises her voice, ignores their signals, the unrelenting tapping. The scene grows ever more frantic, the students shouting and screaming, some seem greatly alarmed, others highly amused. The hammering at the door is unremitting, part of her knows she’ll have to open up, another part would rather die than yield, and she wakes in a cold sweat, feeling the coiled fist of dread in her stomach, a tightness in her chest and throat.
***
How much of the next two hours can Nuala remember? As she steps into the staffroom, she glances out of the window and notices first that there is a policewoman out in the courtyard holding a walkie talk
ie to her ear. She turns back and finds herself face to face with a uniformed constable, middle-aged and burly. She remembers the stubble on the back of his neck, his nasal hair, his soft Oxford intonation. He’s understanding, has plenty of experience of dealing with the confusing effects of shock on ordinary folk. He explains what he’s been told, repeats it all twice more, patient and calm, as she struggles to take in the news. Little by little the key concepts filter through: plane crash... your husband’s name on the passenger list ... uncertain of exact location... no confirmation of casualties... emergency phone number... wait for more news...
Nuala sits down at her desk. The policeman, practised in such situations, leaves her to absorb this information and busies himself with the kettle. Soon Nuala finds a cup of sugary tea on the desk in front of her.
The policeman is considering his next step. He’d like his female colleague to get Nuala home – always best to have a woman on hand in these delicate situations – but they are both due to give evidence at the magistrate’s court at twelve, a case of domestic violence. He’s done his bit, given the lady the news and she seems to be taking it quite calmly. Ideally, one of her colleagues could take her home and sit with her for a bit while she composes herself, phones her family or sets in motion whatever coping mechanism she chooses. But there are no colleagues around, they all seem to be teaching in their classrooms.
Just then, a solution. There’s a growing commotion outside the staffroom as classes stop for the morning coffee break and students make their way out of the building, head for the canteen or the smoking area. First one colleague enters the staffroom, then a second and third. They have not been warned about the policeman’s presence and know nothing of the reason for his appearance.
Nuala is holding her cup of tea in her hand absentmindedly, still trying to process the information she’s been handed. The police officer takes the opportunity to draw the other teachers aside, to tell them the news and appeal for a volunteer to take Nuala home. There’s no shortage of willing helpers, and after some discussion they decide that Teri will bring Nuala back. She has a car and is probably Nuala’s closest work friend.
Nuala is unaware of all of this, still struggling to digest, to formulate a coherent response. As she’s led out to Teri’s hatchback, her first reaction is to head straight for her children’s school, to haul Beth and Sammy out and gather them close to her. But she knows this is silly, that they will have their own Before/After moments to face and that the longer they postpone that experience, the better.
It’s only when Nuala gets through her own door that she feels a little more galvanised. At Teri’s suggestion, she makes a list of people to contact. At the top of the list are her own parents in Wexford, her sisters in Dublin, the brother in Cork, Greg’s father in Leeds, his sister in Bristol and brother in Huddersfield. Teri gets her settled in an armchair, produces another cup of tea and hands her the phone. The next sixty minutes are spent repeating to these people what little information she’s been given. She finds it easier to talk about the news than to think about it, and each time she repeats the details they seem more distanced. Everyone’s reaction is similar – initial shock, then expressions of hope.
One after the other, her relatives and friends offer to come straight to Oxford, to stay with her, and each time she politely refuses. You’re at the end of a phone line, she tells each of them. If I need anything, I’ll be sure to ask. In the meantime, she has her children to look after, she explains. She’ll have her hands full helping them over the coming days.
She’s made six or seven calls and now she stops to take stock. In her trouser pocket she has the card with the emergency number that the policeman gave her. She takes it out. She has a sudden urge to fly out to Africa, to be close to where Greg has gone missing. She dials the number. The female voice that answers is mellifluous, the lilting Geordie tones reassuring. Nuala is asked a number of security questions – names, dates of birth, postcode – before she satisfies the speaker that she is who she claims to be. There’s some new information, she’s told. They’ve managed to pinpoint the position of impact using the plane’s emergency locator transmitter. The woman tells Nuala the name of the country, of the area too. Nuala scrabbles around for a pen, writes down this detail. Meanwhile the woman is telling her that the story has already broken on national news, so she may be contacted by journalists once they get hold of the passenger list. The speaker advises Nuala to say nothing to the media, then takes Nuala’s contact details, promises to call as soon as they learn anything new. It’s only when she hangs up that Nuala realises she doesn’t even know who she’s been talking to.
Nuala checks the time, suddenly panicking that the children will need picking up from school. It’s not yet two o’clock. Teri’s trying hard to conceal the fact that she needs to be somewhere else, and Nuala feels an abrupt desire to be alone so she puts her out of her misery. She tells her she’d like to lie down, that she’ll be fine. Teri promises to call in the evening, then makes her exit.
The phone rings. It’s her line manager, Feroza. She’d been away at a meeting when the police had visited the staffroom, is phoning to find out if Nuala has had any further news. She isn’t expecting Nuala back at work in the foreseeable future, she tells her, and has already organised cover for her classes. She should, of course, take as much time off as she needs. Nuala thanks her and hangs up.
No sooner has she replaced the phone than it begins chirruping again. This time it’s a representative from the airline, a man’s voice, a slight drawl, a long-exiled Aussie or Kiwi, she guesses. She tries to take in what he’s saying but a paralysing shock is creeping in, it’s information overload, and besides, it soon becomes clear that this man knows nothing that she doesn’t. He is merely making contact, a supposed reassurance that the company will do all it can to assist the families of all those involved in the accident.
The standard procedure, he tells her, is for all close relatives of the passengers to be brought to a central location in London where they can be fed the news directly by the authorities, shielded from media intrusion. She is invited to join the others.
The thought of imminent travel helps pull Nuala’s mind back from paralysis. She considers this offer. She’s torn between a desire to protect Beth and Sammy and the urge to fly straight out to the crash site. This proposal seems to satisfy neither of these demands.
She can hear the man’s breathing at the other end of the line.
For the first time that day she feels a needling twinge of frustration, a need to rebel. She tells him she wants to stay at home for the time being, asks him to arrange a flight out, that she will ask a relative to take care of the children at her own home. He seems momentarily flummoxed, uncertain how to respond. He promises to talk to his superiors and get back to her as soon as he gets a response. In the meantime, if she is unwilling to come to the central London rendezvous, he asks her to remain at her house and promises that they will contact her as soon as they receive any further news.
This time, when she puts the phone down the silence that descends is prolonged, and Nuala is forced for the first time to face up to the calamity that is unfolding.
She tries to conjure up the last time she saw Greg, her last conversation with him on the phone. He has been gone a week, but she’s picked up snippets of his news through texting and hurried calls on his mobile. He’s given her a brief description of Robbie’s funeral and they’ve talked about how Farai and Rose are coping.
But now her mind is muddled and she can’t even remember for sure where exactly he was flying to from, Cape Town or Johannesburg or one of the other airports. She decides she needs to find out this detail, that her ignorance is a sign of neglect. She logs onto the web, finds a record of his flight on an email sent by the site he’d used to book the ticket. It was to and from Johannesburg that he’d flown. She’s still not satisfied, feels the need for more physical evidence of where Greg’s journey
has taken him. She stumbles over to the bookcase, hunts for an atlas. With a large map of Africa open in front of her, she finds Johannesburg and traces a line due north: Botswana, Zambia, Congo, Central African Republic, Sudan, Chad, Libya. It is comforting to sit there, the atlas on her lap, her finger marking out the flight path. It somehow brings her closer to Greg, and makes her even more determined to fly out there, to be nearby.
She recalls the last time she’d seen Greg. His departure time had been at an unseemly hour and he’d been packed and ready the night before. He’d set his alarm for half four in the morning and had left the house just after five, planning to catch the half past coach to Heathrow. She’d stirred as he carried his bag out of the bedroom and had forced herself awake just long enough for a sleepy goodbye kiss.
Safe journey, she’d said. Take care.
I’ll phone you when I arrive, he’d answered, anxious to get on the road.
And that had been it. They might as well have been business associates. Pathetic, she thinks, and feels the first cracks in her heart.
And now her last phone call. Again it had been all too brief, early evening, catching Nuala as she spread the mashed potato topping onto a shepherd’s pie.
The flight’s not ‘til tomorrow evening, he’d said. I get in before seven. Should be home for a late breakfast.
I’ll be at work, she’d answered, matter-of-fact. I’ll see you when I get in.
A few seconds of silence, the gentle purr of long-distance phone line in the background. Then,
The kids OK?
Sure. They’re upstairs. Want to say hi?
No, I’d better not. My mobile’s playing up so I’m using Farai’s. Must be costing him a packet. Just tell them I love them.
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