I Am Thunder

by Muhammad Khan

  ‘Give that back!’ I yelled, making a grab for it.

  Shizza shoved me back down with enough force to send vibrations rocketing through my tailbone. My scarf was thrown out of the open doors.

  ‘Keep it down, back there!’ called the bus driver, pulling away from a bus stop.

  ‘Excuse me,’ mumbled a man in a Ted Baker suit, brushing past us. Couldn’t get away fast enough.

  My mind filled with hatred for everyone on the goddamned bus. If I hadn’t been a hijabi, I was sure someone would have stood up for me. But no – I deserved everything I got. I must be a frigging terrorist. Arif was right. The kuffar were cruel.

  ‘I’m calling the police!’ I said.

  Shizza slapped my hand, sending my phone skittering down the aisle. ‘Like hell you are! Don’t like it here, go back to Muslamoland!’ she roared in my face.

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said an old man in a trilby.

  Delighted by her newfound fandom, Shizza turned up the heat. ‘Gerroff the bus, rag-head. I don’t feel comfortable with you around my baby.’

  ‘ISIS cow!’ spat her accomplice.

  Cornered and humiliated, tears pilled over my cheeks. I knew I was giving them everything they wanted. The satisfaction of completely destroying me. But I was powerless to stop it.

  The old lady beside me clasped her walking stick and rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘You get off this bus, you vile creatures!’ she told the women. ‘Harassing this poor girl when she didn’t do a thing to you.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s right!’ sneered Shizza, squaring off against the senior. ‘Stick up for a Muzzie instead of one of your own.’

  The woman drew herself up proudly, ‘Young woman, you’re not one of my own.’

  Then something completely unexpected happened. Other passengers gave the old lady a round of applause. ‘Off, off, off!’ they began chanting at Shizza and her friend. Someone handed me a tissue and asked if I was OK. I dabbed at my eyes as someone else handed me my phone.

  ‘OK – show’s over, people!’ the driver said, emerging from his compartment.

  ‘And you, driver,’ the old lady said, pointing her walking stick at him like a rifle, ‘ought to be ashamed of yourself! Allowing the situation to escalate.’

  ‘What the hell was I supposed to do?’ he yelled, cords sticking out of his lobster-pink throat.

  ‘Nuh worry yuhself pickney,’ a man in a rasta-cap told me. ‘Me flim everyt’ing. When me reach a me yard, me a guh sen police everyt’ing fi dem fi deal wid it. Dem dutty criminal a guh get what’s comin’ to dem, fi sure.’

  Bless him.

  Hearing this, Shizza’s friend yanked her arm. ‘Come on. Let’s get the next bus.’

  ‘Yeah, this one’s full of traitors and terrorists!’ Shizza agreed, nearly giving her baby whiplash as she yanked the buggy. Punching the emergency door-release button, she reversed out of the door. ‘You lot are a bunch of wankers. Just wait till there’s a filthy Muzzie down at Number Ten!’

  My heart stayed in my throat long after the nasty women had been and gone. The old lady twittered gently to me, patting my hand and telling me everything would be all right. ‘Thank you,’ I said on loop. ‘Thank you.’

  Britain was my home, and I wasn’t about to leave it. Not for those vicious women. Not for my parents either. I was as British as Big Ben. Somewhere along the line, I’d begun to forget that . . .

  Jameel and Arif had me believing the world was ‘Black and White’, ‘Good and Evil’, ‘Muslim and Kafir’. But it wasn’t that way at all. The brave old lady sitting next to me, who could barely even stand, had reminded me of that. It hadn’t mattered to her how I dressed or what god I worshipped. She’d stood up for me all the same.

  Outside, the rain went torrential. The English summer had been driven back.

  I am Muzna, I thought. I am the cloud who brings the rain.

  CHAPTER 43

  ‘Got a little present for you.’

  I looked at the crystal tumbler in Arif’s outstretched hand. It was decorated in cute crimson hearts. Inside sat a golden bear gripping a red satin cushion with ‘I <3 U’ embroidered in ivory.

  ‘Aw, it’s beautiful!’ I said, fishing the little bear out of the glass and snuggling it.

  I wondered if this was a peace-offering for bailing on Latifah’s assembly. I’d read an upbeat version of my poem, had almost cried from the totally unexpected standing ovation I got, but inside I’d felt like a hypocrite. There I was laying down empowerment rhymes, when the truth was I was more messed up than I’d ever been. The assembly would’ve brought the house down if Arif had performed. But the ghost of Jameel had got to him and spoilt that too.

  Guilt blotted out my moment of happiness. I knew I had to do something about Jameel, but fear and confusion had tied me in knots.

  ‘Missed the best part,’ Arif said, chuckling. ‘Take another look.’

  I stared into the empty glass in his palm, before spotting the golden envelope beneath it.

  ‘Thanks, babe,’ I whispered.

  Instead of a card, like I’d expected, two glossy pieces of paper slipped out. One side had an image of the London skyline at dusk; the other, a barcode.

  ‘Tickets to the Shard!’ I gasped. It would have been the perfect half-term gift, just before knuckling down for our finals. But Jameel cast a shadow that seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth. Everything was tainted.

  ‘Only the best for Mrs Arif,’ he said, kissing my temple. ‘Call it a cut-price honeymoon.’ He looked a bit sheepish. ‘Some day – when I get a job, yeah – I’m gonna take you on a proper one to Dubai, insh’Allah.’

  I stared at the tickets.

  ‘’Sup?’ he asked, finally picking up on my inner meltdown.

  It’s time, I told myself.

  ‘You know the stuff on the news, about the failed bombing on the London Underground?’ I said, placing the gifts on the coffee table.

  He nodded, jaw muscles stiffening like elastic. ‘Kuffar giving you a hard time, are they?’

  I began to shake my head, then stopped. ‘Every time there’s another terrorist attack, people strike out at us because they’re angry. I mean, there’s the extremists, like Britain First, right? But then regular people start jumping on the bandwagon too.’

  Arif nodded. ‘It’s full-on war, Muzna. Has been since the Crusades. They’re never gonna rest till Islam gets wiped out.’

  ‘But that’s just it!’ I exploded, struggling with my emotions. ‘It’s becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

  ‘Eh? What’s one of them?’

  ‘Some Muslims think isolation is the answer. So they build walls, and people start thinking Muslims are stuck-up. Then there’s the few whack jobs who believe terrorism is the way to go. But it’s us – the peaceful majority – who end up taking the flak.’

  He knitted his brows. ‘You saying we bring the hate on ourselves?’

  ‘No. Not at all. What I’m saying is there are bad guys – extremists, if you like – on both sides. They’re the ones who keep this stupid war going, while the rest of us suffer.’

  He looked at me like I’d told him a joke. ‘You all right, Muz? Cos you’re starting to sound a bit brainwashed to me.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s brainwashed!’ I exclaimed. ‘I love you, Arif, but you need to know your brother is poison. He’s changed you. The boy I fell for was happy-go-lucky, and now you’re so suspicious. He’s radicalized you. He’s radicalized me. We have to stand up to him, together.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ The betrayal in his eyes was savage.

  ‘Uh, because it’s true?’ I said, swallowing. ‘And I can prove it. I can show you Jameel was involved in that failed bombing.’

  Arif looked at me in disbelief, blinking like he wasn’t even sure how to react. Anger won through. ‘It’s haram to slander a pious man. He’s my brother, and I know he can be a bit extra, but he’s a better Muslim than either one of us.’

  I nodded. ‘I used to believe
that too. Mostly cos of what you said. But everything I’ve seen of him has been judgemental and shady. Besides, I wouldn’t be saying this stuff unless I had concrete evidence, right?’

  Still fuming, he agreed to let me show him what I had. I tried the cellar door. It was locked. ‘Who puts a lock on a cellar?’

  ‘Um, the suspicious old lady we bought the house off?’

  ‘We’ve got to bust it open,’ I instructed. ‘Quick, before he gets back!’

  ‘Or we could just use this,’ he said, grabbing the key off the spice rack.

  Within seconds he had the door open. Anger came off him like radiation. But Arif had to know the truth, had to see his brother was not the hero he thought he was. I owed him that. Even if he hated me for it.

  The cellar stretched before us like a cauldron of shadows. This time, there was no blue glow to navigate by. For one terrible moment, I wondered if Jameel had shut up shop and moved on.

  No, the bastard wasn’t allowed to win.

  Arif activated the flashlight on his phone, and we descended the rickety steps. I shot over to the workbenches, desperate for Arif to stop hating me and to finally see the truth for himself.

  ‘No!’ I cried, beating the empty surface with balled fists.

  It was all gone. Nothing remained but a single unplugged laptop.

  ‘Where are the other seven?’

  ‘Downloaded a virus or summat. Sent ’em off to get fixed,’ he said.

  I remembered the laptops displaying blue screens after Jameel caught me down here. Coincidence or engineered crash?

  I booted up the remaining laptop. Dust made me sneeze, adrenaline made me shiver, but determination made me committed. Glowing to life, the laptop prompted for a password.

  ‘What’s his password?’ I asked, tapping my fingers impatiently.

  Arif shrugged. ‘How should I know? Snooping ain’t my style.’

  Ouch. Part of me wanted to say I was sorry, that I’d made a terrible mistake. But that would’ve been lying. Of course he was going to be angry. In his foolish, trusting eyes, Jameel could do no wrong.

  Ultimately, I had to settle for guest status, ignoring the warning telling me several features would be disabled. I double-clicked on the hard drive and scrolled through the files. Nothing but Islamic essays, presentations, and a digital Qur’an with an English translation. Even the browser history had been wiped.

  The crafty scumbag must have transferred everything to a safehold.

  ‘Satisfied?’ Arif asked frostily.

  I looked into his eyes, desperate for him to believe me, even with the lack of physical evidence. I’d never lied to him before. Surely he could see I was telling the truth now?

  ‘Think you better ask Allah for forgiveness,’ he continued, deliberately avoiding eye contact, like the sight of me made him sick. ‘Slandering a pious man is like eating meat off a rotting corpse.’

  Tears of frustration pricked my eyes. If only I’d thought this through, been smart enough to take pictures on my phone the day I’d stumbled on the incriminating evidence.

  ‘Wait!’ I said, going for broke. ‘Remember the Zamzam water I was supposed to deliver to Uncle Abdi-Aziz?’

  He gave me a withering look. ‘Yeah, course.’

  ‘It was hydrogen peroxide!’

  He nodded, like this was boring him. ‘Yeah, I got it wrong. Uncle Abdi-Aziz is a caretaker at some primary school. Uses it to disinfect the floors or summat.’

  It was over. The final nail hammered into my coffin. I’d come in guns blazing, certain I could convince Arif his brother was bad news with tons of evidence. Turned out I had nothing. Jameel had seen to it. Once again I realized how dumb I’d been to think I could go up against an international terrorist. He was a trained professional. I was a nobody.

  For a moment I toyed with the idea of telling Arif about Jameel’s disgusting ‘Kasim Iqbal’ scam. But what was the use? With nothing to back it up, he’d just hate me more – if that was even possible.

  ‘Arif . . .’ I whispered, reaching out to touch his arm.

  He dodged my fingers, and I swallowed, praying I hadn’t destroyed the best thing that had ever happened to me.

  Arif bounded up the stairs, calling to me impatiently from the postage stamp of light at the very top. I imagined the disappointed look on his face. It made me want to cry.

  Despondent, I moved away from the workbench, when I heard a sharp crack. I raised my foot, wondering what I’d stepped on. Thick shadows swirled round my ankles, like mist on a lake.

  ‘Muz. Now!’

  ‘Coming!’ I called back, crouching down for a better look. My fingers swept through an inch of grit and grime. Then I hit pay dirt. Pincering something small and flat between my nails, I lifted it up into the lambent glow of the laptop screen. A USB memory stick. Palming it, I hurried up the stairs.

  I did not sleep well that night. On the one hand, I worried that me and Arif were headed for divorce. On the other, Jameel’s illegal activities had me bricking it. Could he be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself?

  I had to free Arif from Jameel’s influence before it was too late. Whatever it took, whatever the cost to our marriage, it had to happen. Exposing Jameel had become my sacred duty. I was sure of it.

  I pressed my phone to my ear, my hand moist with sweat. Every beep of the dial tone was a threat, ratcheting and ratcheting up the tension till I could take it no more. I slid my finger towards END CALL.

  ‘’Sup, Muz?’ came Arif’s voice out of my phone. He sounded bored. Had he got over our spat in the cellar?

  ‘I love you.’ I sounded like I’d been sucking air out of a helium balloon.

  ‘That it?’ he said, confused. ‘That why you called me?’

  Not by a long shot. I took a deep breath to steady my frazzled nerves. ‘I’ve been thinking about what I saw in Jameel’s cellar . . .’

  The sharp exhalation pierced my eardrum. ‘We talked about this,’

  ‘I can’t!’ I babbled. ‘I can’t keep quiet! We have to tell the police.’

  ‘You crazy?! The feds’ll come round and shoot Jameel. And for what reason? Cos you think you saw some stuff?’

  ‘I did see it! I swear!’

  ‘Fam, my brother is innocent. Look, I’ll ask him about it in the morning, OK? Bet he’s got an explanation that’ll even satisfy you.’

  He hung up.

  I sat on the floor, clasping the dead phone to my ear. If Arif repeated my fears to Jameel, ISIS would come after me – maybe my parents too – and silence us for good.

  The ticking of my wall clock split the darkness like an axe.

  ‘Oh God!’ I cried, letting my phone clatter to the floor. ‘Please, please help me!’

  I reached for the memory stick I’d found in the cellar. Moonlight turned the hairline crack in the plastic to liquid silver. It occurred to me that someone as sketchy as Jameel might have left it behind as a red herring. False information to throw me off the scent. Or worse: a virus to infect my hard drive.

  My mind conjured up the revulsion in Arif’s eyes when I’d called his brother a terrorist. Losing my laptop, I realized, was a risk worth taking.

  Snapping on the lights, I slid the memory stick into the USB port of my laptop, waiting for it to be recognized. I was sweating bullets, and my ankles flapped like fish tails. A window popped up asking what I wanted it to do with the portable drive.

  ‘Don’t kill my laptop,’ I told it. Tensing every muscle in my body, I clicked OPEN.

  There were only three files on the drive.

  The first was a document in a strange language. Not Arabic, nor anything I’d ever seen before. So I tried Google Translate, but that didn’t work either. It had to be some kind of code. Figuring it out was never going to happen. But just before I called time on the window, I spotted a needle in the haystack. A single piece of information I could actually read: 2nd June. What was so special about this date?

  Swallowing thickly, I do
uble-clicked the next document. Nothing happened. The screen just froze, and then the sound of a windstorm came out of my keyboard. I tried to move my cursor but it was jammed. My computer had gone into lockdown. I’d have to wait it out and pray my laptop didn’t die.

  In the end, the processing lasted a full three minutes, then the massive file was opened. It was a huge PDF, thousands of pages long. I scrolled through the contents. Guidance on deleting your ‘digital footprint’ . . . protocols for contacting other cells . . . and a massive section devoted to bomb-making. There was even stuff about military-grade explosives and radioactive payloads.

  My mouth went bone dry. There was an actual terrorist manual on my laptop. I could feel the edges of my brain starting to melt. I closed the file, wiping away tears.

  Psyching myself up for the final reveal, I clicked on the last file.

  Password protected.

  ‘What could possibly be more secret than a flipping terrorist manual?’ I hissed.

  Bad question. I jerked my head, crashing that hideous train of thought and killing the demons that rode it. Sometimes, I realized, having a powerful imagination could be a curse.

  Even without access to the final file, I was pretty sure there was enough evidence here to put Jameel Malik behind bars. But what did that mean for me and Arif? I’d given up my parents, my mates, even my GCSEs for the man I loved. He was my reason for being. But when the cops came for Jameel, I knew Arif would lose it, and attack them. He as good as told me he’d kill a kafir to protect a Muslim, and this was his own flesh and blood we were talking about. The police would likely shoot him too.

  A world without Arif wasn’t one I wanted to live in. I clutched my belly, tears streaming, looking up at the ceiling, appealing to God for help with this impossible choice.

  All the while, the clock continued to tick.

  2nd June.

  Less than a week away.

  Less than a week to break the spell Jameel had cast over Arif’s heart and mind.

  CHAPTER 44

  ‘You all right, Muz?’ Arif asked, as we approached the Shard. ‘Thought you were well into it.’

  ‘Totally!’ I said, trying to sound bubbly and carefree. Given I’d never managed a decent grade in drama, I was about as convincing as a pig in a wig.