by Saima Mir
‘How did you know he was Pathan? I couldn’t help assuming he was white.’
‘I don’t know, Elyas, maybe I don’t make assumptions like you.’
‘It was just a question.’ Her dismissiveness was beginning to grate.
‘Shall we go back to our seats?’ she said. Her voice was distant and detached, and it riled Elyas further. He had kept his emotions in check for the sake of his son, but he couldn’t do it any more.
‘What’s going on with you?’ he burst out.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Ahad. He’s really trying, and you’re not. Why are you being cold with him?’ His voice was loud, his face agitated. A few people turned in their seats to see what was happening, but he didn’t care. ‘He’s upset. Our son is upset. You don’t seem to give a damn. What kind of a woman are you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, stepping out of the stream of concert-goers making their way back to their seats.
Her empty words angered him further. ‘I’m talking about the fact that you left me!’ he said. ‘I’m talking about the fact that you walked out on me and you never even thought to give me an explanation! I’ve been raising him alone. Yes, it made me stronger, and I’m probably a better man for it, but I don’t want to feel like this any more. And Ahad has no choice but to crave your love, yet you dangle it in front of him and then don’t make any effort!’
‘Are you done?’ she said.
‘No!’ he said. ‘I’m pissed off!’ He inhaled and shook his head. ‘I’m done.’
‘Go back to London, Elyas. You’re a nice guy, but this isn’t the place for nice guys.’
‘Listen to me, Jia. He’s a good kid. But he’s not had it easy and that’s led to him making some bad choices. I’m worried that once he crosses the line he won’t be able to find his way back.’
Standing behind them, Ahad heard every word, and he knew that the line had already been crossed.
They sat awkwardly through the second half of the show. Elyas was glad the couple next to them had gone. He wasn’t in the mood to make polite conversation. When it was over, the three of them left the theatre in silence. Orange street lights studded the night sky, and there was a steady backdrop hum of traffic, punctuated only by the distant sound of the odd siren. They set off down the road to the curry house where he had parked his car. Jia was about to cross the street, her foot stepping out on to the tarmac, when she heard a screeching of tyres and felt her chest being crushed as a strong arm hit her full on, pushing her to the ground. She landed heavily, her handbag spilling its contents across the road, and there followed what sounded like a volley of fireworks, so loud that her eardrums felt as if they would burst. Time seemed to slow down and then speed up as people ran towards her and then past her to help someone else. Jia looked across to see a man on the ground, his body heavy and lifeless. Something was seeping into her clothes and on to her hands. She brought her fingers up to her face to see what it was, and was hit by the unmistakeable smell of iron. It was blood. Where was Elyas? She looked around frantically, her head cloudy, her eyes trying to focus on the body. From the angle at which he lay, she couldn’t tell who it was. Then she heard Elyas’s voice, followed by Ahad’s, and relief flooded over her.
The ringing in her ears had subsided by the time Elyas reluctantly left her on the doorstep of Pukhtun House. Everything that had happened since the shooting – the rush to get to safety, dropping Ahad off, the journey home – had gone by in a blur. As soon as Elyas had handed back the things he’d picked up off the road, she thanked him and said goodnight, stuffing them back into her handbag. She didn’t want him to stay. When she got in the house, she rummaged for her phone. Everything was covered in fine powder – her compact must have smashed when it fell to the ground. She brushed off the phone and dialled.
‘What happened? Was it Nowak?’ she said when Idris picked up.
‘No, not as far as we know. We can’t be sure yet who the target was, or if there even was one. The streets are turning rogue without a Khan. They’re trying to fill the void he left, fighting among themselves.’
‘And the man? The one who was shot?’
‘He’s dead. Shot by one of the men on the motorbike. He was just some guy who had stopped to buy milk on his way home from work. Wife, kids, steady job.’
Jia ended the call with the feeling that Idris blamed her, that on some level this was her fault. That the entire city was on the verge of self-destruction because she hadn’t acted sooner to stop it. And she knew he was right. She’d shunned the old ways of doing business in her pursuit of a shake-up, but if she wanted to keep control, she was going to have to do some of the things she hated her father for.
CHAPTER 40
He pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck and blew into his hands to warm them. The holding cell was cold. He didn’t know how long he’d been there and he didn’t know long it would take for his father to realise he was missing. The police had picked him up at the Cuedos snooker club in Burlington. He’d gone there after the shooting to blow off some steam. After dropping him at home and saying goodnight, his dad had driven off with Jia. Ahad knew he would be more concerned about her than him tonight.
He’d been in a place he shouldn’t be in, doing things he knew he shouldn’t do. The officers had been heavy-handed and he’d mouthed off, tried to resist arrest, and had ended up paying the price. He traced his finger over his eyelid, afraid, hoping he would be able to see once the swelling went down. He wondered how he was going to explain this to his father. His bravado was gone; waiting alone in a police cell took him to dark places. He had never been caught before. He thought of Jia and wondered what he would have felt if she had actually died today. He thought of his dad, and the disappointed look that would flash across his face. When were the police going to call him?
Ahad had always been a clever child, even labelled ‘gifted’ by the child psychologist who had seen him at the age of six on the school’s recommendation. That was when things had changed. He’d begun being disruptive in class, throwing ink on his school bible and using indelible pens to write complicated equations on walls when his teacher’s back was turned. The teachers had been more excited by the possibility of his ability than worried. They’d worked hard with him and he realised ‘gifted’ didn’t mean anything without work. He lacked focus; he didn’t really know what he wanted other than to learn the things that interested him. He didn’t need therapy to know that his ‘no fucks given’ hardwiring for everything other than his father was his mother’s fault. It was all her fault.
His father was the best among bad men. After spending years trying to reach up to the pedestal on which he’d placed Elyas, Ahad had come to the conclusion that it was pointless. Besides, his father did have his flaws, he’d discovered, chief among them his inability to resolve conflict. And so, sitting in that freezing cold cell in a police station, waiting for what was to come, he blamed his mother and his father too.
He heard the cold sound of metal turning in the lock and the heavy door swung slowly open, screeching along the stone floor. A policeman stood on the other side, his smile wide, like a clown in a uniform. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘it’s time for you to leave our premises.’
Ahad stood up as the officer stepped forward, expecting something terrible.
‘Would you like a Hobnob?’ the policeman asked, offering him the packet he held in his hand. Ahad looked visibly confused, unsure of what he was being asked. ‘You know, in case you’re peckish?’ the policeman said.
Ahad looked at the biscuits and the years dropped from his shoulders. ‘I’m OK, but thank you,’ he said.
‘No worries, I just thought you might be hungry,’ said the officer. He led Ahad out of the cell and down a corridor. ‘You should’ve said you were Jia Khan’s son. If I’d have known… We didn’t treat you too shabbily, did we?’ Ahad didn’t answer.
Jia was in the reception area signing some paperwork.
‘Shal
l we go?’ she said.
‘Where’s my dad?’ he asked.
‘He doesn’t know about this. Probably thinks you’re tucked up in bed. You want me to tell him?’
‘Not really,’ Ahad replied.
‘He’ll know something happened when he sees you, though. I’m going to send him a message, to let him know you’re with me,’ she said.
‘I’ll handle it,’ he protested. She ignored him, typing a quick text and hitting send before Ahad could stop her. ‘How’d you know I was here?’
Jia picked up her bag. ‘Does it matter?’
He didn’t answer. Jia noticed his eyes were red and he’d been crying. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked. Her words angered him. He hadn’t wanted her to see him like this; he didn’t want her to know how much he cared, how much he resented the power she held over him. They walked out in silence, Ahad a few steps ahead.
‘I’ll find my own way home, thanks,’ he said. The police station was in an isolated spot, high on a hill overlooking the city and beyond. The street lamps extended rivers of artificial light across the county. The air was biting and fog was beginning to descend into the valley. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Ahad looked around for a street sign, a bus stop, anything to help him get home without having to call his father. But there was nothing.
Jia watched him, and understood that he was trying to figure out his next move and save face. ‘Here.’ She held out his keys and mobile phone. He took them from her and turned away again. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, as if she’d picked him up from his mate’s house not the police station, and as though this was any other day.
He pushed his fists into his pockets, the cotton threads digging into his knuckles, hoping that the pain would cut through his anger at her lack of understanding, but it didn’t work. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck you and your uppity white calm ways.’
The abruptness of his words surprised her. She had expected to face his anger at some point but not today. Not when she was finally stepping up to take responsibility for him.
He had looked so small and so innocent when the officer had led him out of the cell; he’d reminded her of herself in the days before things changed. She wanted to tell him this and more but she was proud and she wouldn’t allow anyone to speak to her in that manner, not even her own son. ‘When you hurl abuse at me, we have two problems,’ she said. ‘First, you’re trying to hurt me and I’ve not given you permission to do that. And second, hurting me now may hurt you in the future. Do you understand?’
‘Thanks, Oprah, not quite the “aha moment” I was looking for but thanks. You’re going to lecture me now? Because if you are you’re sixteen fucking years too late.’ He felt the blood rushing to his head, pounding harder, drowning out all external noise. He would never speak to his father like this, but he needed her to understand what she’d done. He wanted to bait her and hurt her the way she had hurt him. It was time to do this.
Words continued to fire out of him like nails, hitting her hard. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he said. ‘You’re picking me up from a police station. The first time you’re picking me up ever, not from school, not from football, but from a police station! Does that not affect you at all? Where were you when all the other kids’ mothers were making them packed lunches and crappy Halloween costumes? Or when I lost my first tooth, spoke at my first assembly, learnt to kick a football? Where were you all those nights I was too scared to sleep in case Dad died and they put him in the ground? Where were you, Jia Khan?’
Jia watched him shouting at her, the vein on his forehead pulsing the way her father’s and brother’s had, when the blood was still flowing through them. Ahad’s words didn’t hurt her in the way he hoped; the pain she had inflicted on herself was far worse than anything he could say. But her heart did break for him. It cracked inside her chest, the pain spreading into her limbs. This was what she had been running from.
She wanted to go to him but she didn’t know how. She hadn’t held him since he was a few days old. And he kept shouting without pause, the angry tears running down his face as he pleaded with her for answers. ‘What kind of woman shuts her husband and kid out of her life? And he, Dad, brings me here to see you, and you have no explanation! Nothing! You talk to me about shitty family crap and history and Khans and Pathans! What about me? How about we talk about me for a fucking second? Remember me, the kid you gave birth to? You fucking waltz around like the queen of fucking everything and you couldn’t even call your own son? Because you know what I think? You’re a liar. It was all bullshit. I think you knew I was alive. Because if you really thought I was dead, why didn’t you call my dad to talk to him about it? To share your grief? Or is that it? You didn’t feel anything? Your old man may have been a crim but at least he was honest about it! You, you’re just a lying cunt of a bitch.’
The word snapped her back to the here and now. She remembered all the things she had done and all the things she was about to do for family, and the emotion in her drained away. ‘Yes. I am,’ she said. ‘And that makes you a son of a bitch.’
He stopped, shock spreading across his face. He had expected her to argue, not accept his accusations. He had wanted to hate her so much but she hadn’t let him. He had wanted her to say so much more but she wasn’t prepared to. And now he was exhausted and he didn’t have any fight left in him to make her see what she had done.
‘Get in the car, kid,’ she said, her tone cool. ‘Just get in the car and I’ll drive you home. You were caught trying to deal class A drugs, remember that? I’m the one who’s pulled strings and got the charges dropped, so unless you want to spend the next few years in a juvenile detention centre, I suggest you get in the car.’ She pointed towards an Aston Martin DB9.
He looked over at it, and found it hard not to be impressed. It was a beautiful car.
‘You want to try it out?’ she said.
‘What? Really?’
‘Yes, just wipe your nose before you get in. I don’t want your tears and snot all over the interior.’
He did as he was told, all his anger gone in an instant. How had she done that without giving him any answers? He walked to the driver’s side and tried the door.
‘Other side,’ she said. ‘One arrest in twenty-four hours is enough. There’s plenty of private road at Pukhtun House. You can try her out there.’
Ahad stared out of the window for most of the journey; his head hurt from the events and the sound of his own voice.
‘Elyas told me you were a good kid,’ Jia said.
‘I am a good kid.’
‘I think the police would disagree.’
‘What about you?’
She smiled at him, and for the first time in a long time it felt like genuine emotion. ‘No. I don’t think you’re bad. You’re my son after all.’ She had never spoken those words before and something inside him warmed. ‘Sometimes, the best people we know do the worst things just to keep the good people safe. Like my father. And maybe like your mother.’
They reached the gates to the house, swapping seats once safely inside. Ahad clicked the belt buckle into place and put his hands on the wheel, wrapping his fingers around it. He started the engine, pushed his foot on the clutch to move the gearstick but lifted it off too fast: the machine jolted forward and stalled. He tried again and again with the same result. Jia waited patiently, her face stoic, letting him try and fail and try again. She hadn’t been there when he’d learnt to walk, but she was here as he learnt to drive and she planned to stay.
‘It’s harder than it looks,’ he whispered. In the space of a few hours, Ahad had been arrested, and then rescued by the woman who had abandoned him, the woman he hated; he’d let her rile him and had spewed venom at her. He had wanted so desperately for her to be impressed and instead he felt like a fool. ‘I am clearly a loser of gargantuan proportions,’ he said. ‘You can’t even bear to look at me. Can you? Do you still dislike me that much?’
She didn’t answer. Her mind was back at the
police station, running through the things he’d said. The police chief had called to give her a heads-up. ‘I hope now we can be friends, Ms Khan?’ he’d said on the phone. Ahad had been caught up in a routine raid, a small fish in a big net. ‘If my tiddler was mixed up in this kind of thing I’d want a friend looking out for him. Probably just needs his mother to set him straight. Most of these young men do. But then, you know him better than I.’
But she didn’t know Ahad. And sitting next to him, trying to make sense of things, she realised that in protecting herself she had inadvertently damaged her son. Something she had never intended. She reached into her handbag and pulled out her lipstick. There were certain things that simply shouldn’t be said without lipstick, and times where its application gave a woman the space to gather her thoughts.
‘You know…when they handed you to me you were so tiny, so helpless,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to let you go, and I kept you on me, on my chest, all night… Before, when I was pregnant, they told me there was something wrong with you, and I went to have a termination. But I couldn’t do it. By the time I found out I was pregnant, you were kicking…and I was afraid.’
‘You were scared? But nothing scares you.’
‘You don’t think I’m human?’ she said. He doubted her ability to feel, and she knew many thought the same, and while she didn’t care what others thought, she did care about him. He was her son, and though buried, her love for him ran deep. And so she cut open her chest and took out her heart for him to see. The words felt trite and saccharine on her tongue but they were the truth, and she knew that the bitter taste left by their sweetness said more about her than her choice of them. ‘Life is about losing,’ she said, ‘losing time, the people we love, our innocence, our ideals. That is all I know of life. So yes, I was afraid, I was afraid of the pain that comes with love. And so…when they told me you’d died, I was relieved. Relieved because I loved you so much that it hurt me. It’s not something I expected until I felt you within me, growing slowly, listening gently to the things I heard.