by Nadim Safdar
Ali, the owner of Kashmiri’s, stood behind a refrigerated glass counter. The curved glass at the front reflected a distorted image of Mustafa and me, our faces long and curved and Mustafa’s beard spiralling to a thin point. In the chilled compartment were brightly coloured sweetmeats shaped into cubes and spheres and crusted with chopped nuts. One type of milky barfi was covered in gold leaf.
Ali put his right fist over his heart. ‘Salaam to you, Dr Mustafa bhai. I saw you from the window and could not believe my eyes. Had you not come in, I would have come out to greet you. Welcome most humbly to my shop.’
‘Brother,’ said Mustafa, ‘I need to trouble you for fifty boxes of assorted sweetmeats.’
Ali nodded. After fumbling in his pockets, Mustafa pulled out a long thin piece of paper like a till receipt. He handed it to Ali and asked him to deliver the sweetmeats to the addresses written on the chit.
The shopkeeper considered the list and nodded. ‘Yes, bhai, of course, bhai, I will close up shop and do it personally.’
‘May Allah bless you,’ said Mustafa, pulling out a large wad of brand-new banknotes.
Ali shrank back towards the wall behind him, shaking his head. ‘No, bhai, here you will not pay. I will not accept a penny. Please, bhai, give it to the poor.’
‘Brother, you are kind. The poor have never needed it more.’ And as Mustafa smiled, I understood ‘the poor’ to mean a fund for jihad.
Outside the shop we leant against a column of brickwork at the centre of the glass frontage, eating samosas out of a paper bag Ali had insisted we take. Mustafa spoke, flakes of pastry caught on his lower lip. ‘Brother Akram, in our own ways we were both jihadi.’
‘Ali in the shop called you doctor?’ I said.
His milky eyes stared into mine. ‘Ali, mash Allah, is one of the faithful, and although I prefer the honorific mister over the title doctor, people really respect the doctor.’ A smile spread across his lips and he returned his attention to the bag of samosas.
‘Mister?’ I enquired, further confused.
‘I was awarded the honorific by no less an institution than the Dental Faculty at the University of London.’
‘You were placing fillings in Talibs’ teeth?’
Mustafa put a hand on my wrist. ‘My dear brother. If you understood the anatomy of how a tooth is suspended by ligaments into the bones of the skull, you would then understand how the dental complex is possibly the weakest part of the body. Allah, in his graciousness it seems, has designed the system to limit our time on this earth. When the dento-alveolar complex fails – and inevitably sooner or later it does – its sequelae is a potent infection spreading like a sponge soaking up water into the eyes and the brain. I, with nothing more complicated than a pair of forceps,’ he beamed proudly, ‘gave renewed life to our brothers and sheikhs.’
‘You met the sheikhs?’ I asked.
‘I was often taken blindfolded—’ He broke off, clearly deciding he had said enough.
‘So a sheikh bit off your fingers?’ I tried not to laugh.
‘I don’t talk about the sheikhs.’ His eyes stared wistfully into the distance and he nodded before continuing. ‘As part of my training I was taught ethics. Patient confidentiality. But I will tell you this. Even the great sheikh trembled at the sight of my needle.’
‘You met—’
Mustafa interrupted. ‘It was a cause of concern to me that I was unable to sterilize my instruments, and a strange irony that only through the pursuit of a solution to that problem was I introduced to acids and nitrates and chlorides, and there too my medicinal knowledge of chemistry was useful.’
‘You laid IED?’
‘There was always a shortage of mobile phones.’
‘Mobile phones?’
Mustafa laughed before continuing. ‘My preferred detonation method was by text message. A short text message sent to a mobile phone wired to the fuse.’
‘What did the text say?’
‘For luck I used the numbers seven-eight-six.’
‘We in the army, we didn’t do jihad,’ I stated, but no sooner had I spoken than I realized he would make capital out of my alliance with the gora.
‘No. Really? Not jihad? Then what for?’
I shrugged my shoulders, conscious that I now had to support my statement. ‘I was there for my mates and the army, for Queen and country, for England, forever England, green hills and that. It’s the thing they drum into you.’
Mustafa didn’t reply immediately. With a loose tail of turban he wiped the sweat off his brow, and as he pushed up his turban it revealed his third eye, a callused circle of brown skin that stood out against his white forehead. Proof, if it were needed, that his real Pakistani colour could be beaten to the surface.
I was afraid of what he might say and looked away when he finally spoke. ‘Are you really stupid enough to believe all that? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? When you were drinking with your mates in the NAAFI did you not look down at your brown arms and little black hairs poking out of your skin and think what the fuck am I doing here?’ He inspected me closely, running his eyes over every contour of my face. ‘You’re a cripple, and where are your mates now, and where is this green Eng-a-land?’
‘I got compo. I have a pension. You’re in England now too, so where are your jihadi?’
A pink blush spread rapidly across Mustafa’s face, and he spoke angrily. ‘Have you not seen them? Are you blind? That man who stopped me outside Ali’s, the one with the shopping bag, he might look like a nobody to you but he works as a specialist surgeon. The fellow at the phone card kiosk is an Afghan veteran. And, and. . .’ In his fury, Mustafa struggled for words. ‘Did you not witness how Ali would not take my money? If I stood here and called, a hundred men would come to my aid. Here, my foolish brother, my dear brother Akram,’ he spread out his arms as though he spoke for all of Cradley, ‘here, everywhere are my jihadi.’ He spoke loudly, almost shouting, panting for breath between words. ‘We cannot all fight, but we each do our bit.’
Suddenly, Mustafa stooped over and struggled for air. Letting my stick take my weight, I nudged a shoulder into his to offer support. A thick red tracked up from his neck and quickly engulfed his cheeks. He put his maimed hand to his face, clearly in pain. I could feel heat coming off him. A number of brothers who were out shopping, some a few feet away and others across the street, stopped and stared. Some pointed Mustafa out to their wives or companions, but each stood at a reverent, almost fearful distance, as though primed to help and waiting for a signal.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘When the fuse blew off my fingers,’ he gasped, ‘I had a minor heart attack. They could seal the ends of my fingers with a branding iron but my heart they could only monitor. I have not been the same since. At first I thought my confidence had gone, but doctors say it is worse. They say we albinos have weak hearts.’
‘Serves you right for messing around with fuses.’
Mustafa’s laughter seemed valiant amid his short, panicked intakes of breath. He grappled for my shoulder and straightened. Like a bottle slowly drained, the redness gradually disappeared below the collar of his combat tunic. Seeing the brothers staring at him, Mustafa simultaneously bowed and put his right fist to his heart. The brothers across the road, and others surrounding us from a distance of only a few feet, slunk off.
‘I should have been martyred like our kid.’
‘Our kid?’ My mouth was suddenly dry. ‘Faisal was martyred?’
‘You don’t know? Didn’t you see Ali offer his respects by not taking my money? Or the surgeon brother say he awaits my call? What did you think that was about? Our Faisal even made the TV news.’
I shook my head, feeling the hair on the nape of my neck stand on end. ‘I remember him best as a kid – as a baby smiling out of a broken window.’
‘He was strong, like you, Brother Akram. And proud. He is with Allah.’
‘What exactly happened?’
‘
Exactly, I cannot tell you, for security reasons you will understand.’ He stared at me but I offered nothing in return. ‘I took our kid out laying ordnance. What your people fear the most. An IED.’
I shook my head.
‘He wasn’t a natural,’ continued Mustafa. ‘Mine went off and blew a hole in a Mastiff. Our kid, his didn’t go, did it? We were watching from a dugout, and despite what I had taught him, like a brave fool he rushed out to reset it. Just as he got there this ISAF sniper spots him. One round to the head.’
I said without thinking, ‘Those snipers are shit hot.’
‘He was a British citizen. I took his body by Land Cruiser back to Peshawar. The police affidavit cost five English pounds and the official report read that Faisal was shot by a dacoit. I flew him home to our mother. It was her wish.’
‘Allah’s will,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Allah’s will,’ repeated Mustafa. He shook his head but in his voice there was no sense of mourning. ‘Only British soldiers talk about sorry. Faisal’s martyrdom was the happiest day of his life. It is an occasion to celebrate and to distribute sweetmeats. Our kid is in Paradise.’
‘How will you ever know that for sure?’
‘Faith, my dear brother Akram. Faith. Justice.’ He stared into the middle distance. ‘My only regret is that I will not join him. I am cursed with a gene that gives me the skin and heart of a gora. I am not long for this world. I don’t let on, but I know it.’
The morning sun lent the air a crisp, yellow quality. The colour of shop signs, of the clothes people wore and passing cars, seemed subdued but at the same time more intense, as though colour alone could spring to life.
‘Brother Mustafa, the doctors, they don’t know everything. They can’t always estimate lifespan.’
‘You’re right,’ he replied in a tone of resignation. ‘But I sense it. Day by day I feel the strength drain from my arms and legs. I will accept my end.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘But in the meantime I will continue to do what I can to please the guardians of the hereafter.’
‘We are from different countries, you and I. I say statistic and you say martyr. I look at death in war as a screw-up and you regard it as noble. I hope you are right and I am wrong. I really hope so.’
Mustafa laughed. ‘You and I, we would have made a good team. You are the left hand and I am the right. Together we are neither one way nor the other but somewhere in the middle. They say middle is the best, no?’
‘I’ve never believed in the middle. In the middle there are lies.’
Mustafa considered me for a long time before replying. ‘Inshallah, in you, brother, I see something special.’ He looked at his watch and added, ‘But right now I have to attend to Faisal, and I cannot attend to him on my own. I need a brother. As you have witnessed, even on this street I could have asked a hundred brothers, but no.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘They are ordinary men, stupid thoughtless men, men whose sole function is to shuffle after their wives and carry the sweetmeats. Let them eat and sweeten their tongues, but you and I, brother, we have seen and understood. We have no fear of death. We have been warriors.’
He swept his hands through the air as though to show the way, then held my gaze. ‘Will you, Brother Akram, will you honour me in doing the ghusl for my brother Faisal?’ It wasn’t really a question.
I followed Mustafa in silence, observing his unsteady gait. His walk made mine look almost normal. He ambled from side to side and his feet slapped hard against the pavement, as though at any moment he would lose his footing. I felt sorry for him. The blast, it seemed, had affected his balance too.
Twenty minutes later we arrived at a newly built mosque, in red brick with a large green dome. Diggers were already excavating an adjacent plot for what I assumed was an extension to the building.
An older Pakistani man, tall and thin with a long beard, and wearing gloves, a surgeon’s cap and a face mask, met us in an anteroom at the back of the building. His eyes looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. ‘Assalamualaikum, I am the duty attendant.’ He took us each by the hand, shaking mine overlong. His gloves were wet.
He showed Mustafa and me into a larger room, tiled from floor to ceiling. It had an industrial feel, with galvanized pipes and vents overhead and the sound of working fans that seemed to suck the air out of the room, leaving it cold and clinical.
‘Only two of you?’ asked the man, taking in my walking stick.
‘We’ll manage,’ said Mustafa cheerfully, his eyes drifting to a large steel door at the end of the room.
‘I would be happy to assist,’ the man replied, his tone mournful.
There followed a silence broken only by the air-conditioning. Without speaking, the man issued both of us with vinyl gloves and a blue plastic apron. He opened the steel door with a flourish like a concierge at a grand hotel and strode with soundless footsteps into the cold smoky white air. He fumbled for a light cord and a ceiling light flickered. An overwhelming dry smell of formaldehyde escaped from the room. It burned the rims of my eyes and deep inside my nostrils, and for a moment I tried to stop myself inhaling. As the light sucked to a constant state of illumination it revealed a stainless-steel trolley beneath which a macabre galvanized pipe led into a drain in the tiled floor. On the trolley lay a white body bag stamped ISAF. I shuddered.
‘You’ll find everything you need.’ The man pointed to a deep square sink and a shelf above it crowded with bottles and vials. ‘There is soap for the body. For our brother, I have prepared a splendid oud mixed with frankincense and myrrh.’
Mustafa began to chant, ‘La ilaha il Allahu la ilaha il Allah.’
The duty attendant pressed a small green bottle into my hand and whispered, ‘I am atoning for my sins.’
Confused, I turned to look at him. Pulling off the face mask and lifting up his surgeon’s cap, he offered a toothy grin. In the centre of his forehead was a deep gnarled burn that had healed badly into a dark keloid brown. I had held him down and Adrian had burned him with a cigarette until we could see the white of his skull bone, until he passed out. ‘Bobby? You?’ I mouthed silently.
He shook his head. ‘Fakir Ahmed Fazal Alam,’ he said. Bowing deeply, he left the room.
Mustafa’s chanting was soft and deeply melodic, and his body swayed.
When I was a small boy my mother would climb into my bed in the evening. Lying next to me, she would sing me to sleep, ‘La ilaha il Allahu’. Although then I could have scarcely known what it meant, it was and still is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. She would often pause for minutes at a time to speak to me about hell, tell me ancient stories passed down through the generations, or sometimes she would read from a pamphlet: about eternal fire that burned you up only for Allah to give you immediate life so that you could be burned up all over again. There were also hammers that beat you into the earth like a wooden peg. In hell, everything was hot, black, spiked, and water for the thirsty inhabitants was molten steel mixed with hair from the pig.
Standing on opposite sides of the trolley, Mustafa and I draped a black sheet over the body bag. During the preparation of the body, Mustafa explained, the sheet would remain over Faisal, as a mark of respect: it was important that Faisal’s naked body remain concealed from the gaze. Mustafa added that he had done the ghusl many times for martyred brothers – brothers white, black and brown.
By wedging a hip against the side of the trolley I was able to free up both of my hands. Glancing frequently at each other and communicating only with our eyes, Mustafa and I worked carefully to release Faisal from the rubber bag that had carried him from Afghanistan. His skin might tear if he was dragged. When Mustafa grew tired and out of breath from chanting, I picked up where he had left off. We chanted and otherwise communed silently with Allah. We each seemed to know what was required, whether to lift or to pull, and at what moment.
As the body slid out of its bag, a foul-smelling gas escaped. Faisal’s head was heavy, cold and rubbery. His waxy eyelid
s were closed and his mouth fixed into place by a circular bandage. He had a short beard and a full head of densely black hair. As he cradled Faisal’s head in both hands, I examined Mustafa for emotion but did not see any. Using wet cotton wool, he slowly cleansed the body, beginning with the face. Like the ritual ablution before prayer, Mustafa’s hands swept across every inch of his brother three times, his missing fingers seemingly no impediment to the task.
In the middle of Faisal’s forehead was a yellow plaster. I carefully removed it to reveal an entry hole. At the back of his head would have been a dirty jagged exit hole, but I did not look. Mustafa put his gloved hand on mine. Catching my eye, he shook his head as though we both knew that this death was a crime that would require vengeance. There was something special in Mustafa’s eyes, a softness, a glazed-over vacancy; magnified by the lenses of his spectacles, they looked pleadingly into mine.
Putting his hands underneath the black sheet, Mustafa soaped, dried and then rubbed scent into his brother’s skin, and as required we lifted Faisal onto one side and then the other so that Mustafa could reach. The body felt waterlogged and heavy but it did not feel like a human being. No one seemed to exist inside of what lay before us. His soul, that thing that had given life to his body, had long since flown. His soul, the very essence and the only thing that mattered, had left his body for Paradise. I caressed him tenderly as though expecting to feel something, but the overwhelming sense I had was that no one was there – not in that body. It wasn’t a great revelation – it was simply that what lay before us, the sheer mass of putrefying muscle and tendon and organs, barely contained by a sac of waxy, semipermeable skin, could no longer be termed human. Faisal wasn’t with us, and at that moment I was convinced that there was a heaven, and that the earthly body we were cleansing was a mere husk of the man who had once occupied it. For his twenty-two years on earth Faisal had merely lived in it, like a coat, and I was certain that he had no more need of it. I was sure that the body before us was a vessel in which Faisal had been carried and that he wasn’t sorry to leave it. I wasn’t sorry he had left it. I wasn’t afraid for him. Faisal was in a better place.