I Am Thunder

by Muhammad Khan

  ‘Do as you’re bloody told!’ snapped Redman. ‘Jump and your spines shatter the moment you hit the ground. We’ve about two minutes before the stairs start to collapse.’

  Arif’s brows lowered as his shoulders rose like hackles. Redman glared right back. A macho pissing contest at a time like this? Were they insane?

  ‘Let’s try it his way, yeah?’ I said, gently rubbing Arif’s arm.

  ‘Cover your heads!’ repeated Redman, his voice cracking. ‘Eyes’ll get roasted before you even know it.’

  Scared shitless, but buzzing with adrenaline, we followed him to the top of the stairs. Redman swore. Not a good sign, but at least he was keeping it real. He told us to stay put while he ran back to Arif’s room.

  Downstairs had transformed into a blackened pit from Hell. The stench of melting plastic and burning paint clawed at the back of my throat. How had Jameel managed to set fire to the house so quickly? Had he known all along that I was coming with the counter-terror police?

  ‘Stay behind me!’ Redman ordered. He held Arif’s bedroom door like a gigantic shield. ‘Do not get left behind. We only get one shot at this.’

  I reached behind and found Arif’s bleeding hand. Redman glanced over his shoulder and gave the signal. Like a chain gang, we stumbled down the stairs as tongues of flame shot through the gaps in the banisters, snapping at us like angry dragons. A light bulb detonated above our heads, and I think I screamed, but we just kept going. Our lives depended on it.

  We were almost out the door when a masked fireman blasted in, dousing the roaring flames with jets of frothy white water. The sight of us made him falter. He started to speak when the kitchen door exploded, hurling shrapnel and wood and thick plumes of smog into the already acrid air. I heard a male scream, then Redman was carrying me out the door.

  Cool morning air surged over us as we fell to our knees, retching and choking from the burning in our lungs. Then paramedics descended on us, and I was lifted on to a stretcher. I glanced around wildly.

  ‘Arif!’ I cried out, splayed fingers reaching out for him as an oxygen mask was clamped over my mouth.

  A jagged piece of wood was lodged in Arif’s thigh; shorts soaked through with blood. I couldn’t see his face for all the officers, firefighters and paramedics rushing about, until the mayhem cleared, and I saw Arif’s closed eyes above the plastic cup of an oxygen mask. My insides shrivelled.

  I thrashed about, trying to slip free of the forest of hands pinning me down. Voices everywhere telling me to calm down, not to move, fusing with the cacophony of sirens screaming like banshees. Blue lights flashed everywhere in the retreating dawn. How many police cars had arrived? I felt a sharp pain in my arm, then coolness spread swiftly through my body, numbing my nerves. I fought to keep my eyes open as I was lifted into the back of an ambulance. I was rushing towards a sky of deepest azure, passing through lily-white clouds as soft as dreams, looking for a rainbow.

  CHAPTER 47

  Crushing pain. Loud buzzing. Blinding lights.

  I peeled open my eyes and blinked at the alien hospital room. A nurse hovered at my elbow, consulting an LCD display on a machine I was hooked up to. Her hazel eyes met mine and she smiled.

  ‘Just let DI Clarins know you’re awake,’ she said, tearing open the Velcro fastenings on the blood-pressure cuff. My sore arm thanked her for it. ‘Your parents are here too.’

  I watched her leave, feeling dazed. I must have had the worst nightmare ever. My brain throbbed trying to figure it out, clutching at details, which escaped faster than smoke. Eventually I gave up, shifting my bruised body under the pale blue blanket.

  ‘Welcome back!’ Clarins piped as she entered.

  Officer Sealy wasn’t far behind. ‘Hello, Muzna!’ she said, waving.

  I was glad to see her.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’ she asked, squeezing my hand.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said in a raspy voice I didn’t recognize as my own. ‘Everything’s all mixed up in my head.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Clarins said, while Sealy made sympathetic noises. ‘The doctors have checked you over and given you a clean bill of health. Vocal cords are a bit sore, but that should soon settle. You’re being kept in as a precaution. Your parents are eager to see you.’

  ‘Oh crap,’ I said. ‘Am I in trouble?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ she said. ‘I explained it all to them. I’m sure they’re very proud of you, as are we all.’

  Proud? That had to be an exaggeration.

  A sudden vision of a wooden stake punching through Arif’s thigh winded me. ‘Arif!’ I cried in alarm. ‘Is he . . .’ I trailed off, unable to finish that sentence.

  ‘He’s in surgery right now. Easy! The doctors have assured me he’s going to be OK.’

  ‘Why didn’t you get us out before the fire started?’ I asked, too weak to be angry.

  ‘There was trouble with the mic,’ Clarins explained. ‘We believe Jameel disrupted the signal. Our best techies rerouted it as quickly as they could, but unfortunately it caused a delay. I am truly sorry.’

  I remembered how my phone had lost reception too. I started to cry then.

  ‘He wanted out,’ I said, choking back tears. ‘He didn’t want to be part of Jameel’s terror cell.’

  ‘I know,’ Clarins said in a softer tone. ‘We heard that bit.’

  ‘Don’t judge him. Cancer took his mum; his own uncle raped him. Then he was stuck with Jameel preaching hate, day in, day out, every day of his life. What chance did he have? Why didn’t you guys prevent that?’

  Neither woman met my eyes.

  ‘God, I hope Jameel suffered!’

  It was a vicious thing to say, but Jameel had ruined so many lives and had intended to destroy thousands more.

  ‘What?’ I said, picking up on the awkwardness.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ advised Sealy, as she exchanged a look with Clarins.

  ‘Jameel Malik is not dead,’ DI Clarins said, face as stiff as a slice of burned toast.

  ‘You what?’ I said, sure I must have misheard her.

  ‘We hadn’t considered the presence of an armed guard.’

  ‘Armed guard?’ The tendons in my neck pinged painfully like elastic.

  ‘Militants willing to die to help Jameel escape. We exchanged gunfire as he slipped through the chaos.’ Clarins had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Somehow Malik knew we were coming. Maybe his suspicions arose when Arif hacked into his cloud drive.’

  My brain hurt, trying to understand how a man could sacrifice his younger brother for an ideology. ‘You are going to catch him though, yeah?’ I asked with a hopefulness that bordered on the insane.

  ‘That’s the plan,’ Clarins promised, jowls trembling with defiance. ‘Scotland Yard and MI5 are cooperating with Interpol. We’re trying to gain access to all the files on the memory stick you found.’

  More promises.

  ‘I need to be alone for a bit,’ I whispered.

  ‘Certainly,’ Clarins said, getting up. ‘But remember, there are people here you can talk to. Strictly off the record, of course. They’re here if you need them.’

  I stared out of the window, at the miserable British sky. Storm clouds were gathering in the west, bringing shades of grey and blustery winds that pushed against the windows.

  My reunion with my parents was intense. Ami threw herself at me, blubbing and swearing oaths in Punjabi for Allah to take her life in exchange for mine.

  ‘I’m OK, Ami,’ I said, afraid of how I was going to be treated once they got over the fact I was still alive. After all, I’d been in a boy’s bedroom when the fire broke out.

  ‘Parveen, don’t smother her,’ my father chided. ‘The poor child has been through enough.’

  DI Clarins had claimed my parents were proud of me. If that was true, they couldn’t possibly know about Arif. So how much had she told them?

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, beyta,’ Dad said, his eyes miserable and raw. ‘Tonight I th
ought I’d lost you.’ He looked like he was going to cry, then suddenly he was scowling. ‘How could you lie to us? How could you put us through this?’

  I met my dad’s angry eyes and a tear rolled out of my eye. ‘I didn’t ask to be born in this country.’

  Dad was silent then, his moustache twitching as if he was having some kind of internal debate. ‘We tried our best to raise you right,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It’s why I went to the police when I did.’

  He blinked in surprise.

  ‘You are British and you are Pakistani,’ he said breaking his own contemplative silence. ‘But before both of these, you are Muzna Saleem. And the world has never had one of those. Maybe you will make us proud, if we give you space?’ His eyes searched mine. ‘Can we trust you, beyta?’

  It was the one question I had waited my whole life to hear.

  ‘Everything OK, Muzna?’ Officer Sealy asked from the door.

  I nodded, as the tears flowed freely. Like me, Sealy had probably underestimated my parents. In spite of all the trouble I’d caused, they had never stopped loving me.

  ‘I brought gajar murabba!’ Ami said, opening a Tupperware container and filling a spoon.

  I’m not sure why, but I started to laugh then. That set Dad off, and soon Ami was chuckling along too. Then we were all hugging and cry-laughing.

  CHAPTER 48

  Uncle Tanveer gave Dad the rest of the week off to look after me. Huge relief. Dad might’ve been cool with giving me space to figure things out, but Ami wouldn’t stop asking me questions about who Arif and Jameel were and how I knew them.

  ‘She’ll tell us when she’s ready,’ Dad would say, drawing Ami away from me.

  I had a sneaky feeling he knew more than he was letting on.

  It took a tragedy for me to realize I’d got Dad all wrong. He moved to England because he wanted a better life for his family. And just like every immigrant, he’d suffered abuse along the way. Between the racists who wanted him to leave, and the gossipers in our community with their forked tongues, Dad had become a paranoid livewire. In Pakistan you lived or died by your reputation. So he’d tried to protect me with fear.

  Arif Malik – the boy who’d seduced me for an international terrorist organization – had made a full recovery and was being interrogated by the counter-terrorism unit. In spite of everything, I still loved Arif as much as I ever had. But the obsession part was over. I’d been a headcase, willing to jump off a cliff to prove I was worthy of his love. Some days I’d hate him for getting me mixed up with extremism. Other days I’d hate myself for having gone along with Jameel’s warped ideas for so long. What if I’d come to my senses sooner and got to Arif earlier? It was a question that never failed to bring on long episodes of crying.

  I cried for what he must be going through with the anti-terror police. Not waterboarding or torture, obviously. But whatever it was, couldn’t be fun. And Arif could be stubborn, which probably didn’t help. Would I ever see him again?

  DI Clarins gave me hope that his ‘extenuating circumstances’ would let him off from doing time in a Young Offenders Institute. After all, he’d never fully understood what Jameel was about. Groomed from childhood, he’d come to think everything Jameel said came from God Himself.

  I developed a fear of sleep. Graphic nightmares would haunt me till I woke up screaming, flitting about on the floor, twisted up in sheets. Ami and Dad would be standing over me, worried half to death. If it didn’t stop soon, I feared I might go insane. But then Jameel would have won.

  On the third day, Dad came to fetch me from my room.

  ‘Muchi, DI Clarins is here,’ he said, poking his head round the door.

  I stared at him blankly.

  His lips formed a grim line, but his eyes were sympathetic. ‘Make yourself a bit more presentable, beyta, then come and join us in the sitting room.’

  In the past, a comment like that would’ve had me flying to the mirror, desperate to bury the ugly beneath a ton of cosmetics. But it didn’t matter any more. Nothing did.

  Throwing on a hoody, I joined DI Clarins and my parents on the horseshoe couch. Tea, biscuits and a bowl of Punjabi mix had been served, but no one was touching them.

  DI Clarins made a few polite noises, then got down to business. ‘It goes without saying that this is all strictly confidential.’ She waited for some sign of consent before going on. ‘There’s good news and some bad news.’

  ‘Makes a change,’ I said. ‘Usually it’s just bad.’

  Ami told me off for being so rude. I barely registered her.

  ‘MI5 were able to decode and unlock the third file,’ Clarins explained. ‘You were right. Those men were planning to attack the Shard. The document contained personal details of the would-be suicide bombers and information about vast sums of money to be paid out to each of their families on completion of the job. Yesterday the Home Secretary authorized a take-down. In the biggest raid of its kind, twenty men were taken into custody, and two were shot for resisting.’

  ‘Jameel,’ I said, my nails cutting half-moons into my palms. ‘You got him too, right?’

  The DI played with a bit of fluff on her trousers. ‘No.’

  I fell back in my seat, shocked to the core. Craning my face up to the mini chandelier, I began to laugh. The DI considered my reaction, then sighed.

  ‘I know it’s difficult, but please have patience, Muzna. The hunt for Jameel has gone global. Everyone’s involved: the Americans, the Pakistanis. It’s only a matter of time before he’s captured.’

  I snorted. ‘You said you knew about him since 2015. Why couldn’t you have arrested him back then and spared us all?’

  ‘You know it doesn’t work like that. Jameel was a puppet master controlling several operations while hiding behind firewalls and fall guys. Which is why it’s so important for people like you to join the fight. Without your help . . . well, I don’t even want to think about what might have happened! The unprecedented loss of life and the damage to our city would have been irreparable.’ For a moment she almost seemed human. ‘Your vital contribution has not gone unnoticed. Which brings me to my final point. The prime minister has invited you to Number Ten this afternoon.’

  I’d been so busy grinding my teeth, cursing each of Jameel’s nine lives, that I now stared at her open-mouthed. It was Dad who put my question into words.

  ‘Did you just say the prime minister wants to see my daughter?’ he asked, poking himself in the chest.

  Clarins served confirmation with a smile. ‘The PM would like to congratulate your daughter in person. No one underestimates the bravery Muzna showed in coming forward. Or the tremendous sacrifices she made.’

  All I could do was stare. Dad patted me on the back and – after he’d explained it to her in Punjabi – Ami hugged and kissed me.

  ‘Congratulations, Muzna,’ DI Clarins said, appraising me like a cadet who’d come good. ‘You’re a national hero.’

  While DI Clarins sketched out the details of the meeting for my parents, I began to realize bailing out would be impossible. Don’t get me wrong, if it’d just been about me, I’d be on the next bus out of town. But whether I liked it or not, I’d become The Face of an entire community. How did you get your head round something like that? If my experiences had taught me anything, it was that being Muslim meant different things to different people. One person couldn’t speak for all of us.

  CHAPTER 49

  I sloshed through puddles, hunched under Ami’s embarrassing brown granny umbrella. The sound of rainwater in the gutter was like a troll gargling. Good things never lasted. The summer had been blink-and-miss short. In under a week it would be September and I’d be back at school, studying for November resits.

  Mr Dunthorpe kept uploading study resources to the school portal, as well as getting all my other subject teachers to do the same. The guy still believed I had it in me to ace my exams. Low-key annoying, but I was totally nominating him for Teacher of the Year.

 
; Back in June, I’d received a giant card from Falstrum.

  Congratulations! We all knew you were ‘Great British bravery at its finest’ long before the PM!

  was emblazoned on the front. Under it was a mosaic girl in a hijab with a fantastic smile on her face. I guessed she was supposed to be me.

  Everybody had signed it, including Mr Dillinger, who had retired to a villa in Monte Carlo. Malachy, Amie and Latifah had all written especially sweet messages, urging me to keep in touch. Even Sade had decided I was ‘all right’. Sarabi might’ve been absent on the day of the card signing, but more likely hadn’t forgiven me. I got it: I’d been through the same drama with Salma and my own parents.

  I stopped outside the newsagent’s, shaking off Ami’s umbrella. The bell jingled above my head as I entered. Like every other teenager in the country, I was shot with a suspicious look before the man behind the counter went back to frowning at his scratch card. I headed straight over to the fridge and grabbed the two-pinter Ami needed to make kheer. I placed it on the counter along with a packet of gum.

  My phone pinged. Another upbeat text from Khadijah, keeping me positive.

  I smiled sadly, thinking about the number of versions of Islam I’d tried on for size before finally coming back to Khadijah’s Allah. It didn’t mean I couldn’t respect Muslims who practised faith differently, like Latifah or even my parents. Neither was it about ‘othering’ non-Muslims. I knew from experience exactly how hurtful that could be. For me, faith was my way of being a better person. It had helped me find a way to fight Jameel’s warped version of Islam.

  As the cashier rang up my total, my eyes were drawn to a surly woman’s face splashed across every newspaper. She’d been charged with running a brothel using refugee kids. Apparently two MPs and a retired children’s TV presenter had also been hit by the sting operation. Stuff like that made you physically sick. But honestly? I was relieved that for once the papers weren’t harping on about Muslims and terrorism.

  ‘I’ll take this too,’ I said, handing the guy a newspaper.