by Anna Perera
Why is Nico talking about Niamh? Does he like her too?
The thought worries him for a second before the sounds of Karachi waking up and of prayers fading away bring him back to the tiny, dark computer room.
He starts googling the latest information on various computer games and after a while glances at Nico’s e-mail again: “Hiya, Kal. Niamh says hello. I saw her at the shops last night and she says to tell you you should have stayed at the party, it was so way better later on, man.”
Wondering what to say back, Khalid wants to ask Nico if Niamh’s seeing anyone. She didn’t get off with anyone at the party as far as he knows. But if he does ask, everyone will know he likes her. And if Nico likes her too, then there’s nothing he can do, because everyone knows he’s nearly 4,000 miles away in Pakistan. In the end, he decides to keep it cool by not replying.
He quickly closes the computer down when he hears Mum’s footsteps clattering on the stairs. Running from room to room.
“What is it, Mum?” Khalid hurries to find out.
“Dad. Where is he?” Mum’s in a state, her hair spread out over her shoulders and still in her blue nightie.
“What do you mean?”
“Dad! He’s missing, that’s what. He went to see a flat yesterday evening after dinner and he hasn’t come back.”
“Mum, he probably fell asleep.”
“Fell asleep? Where? In the street? Sometimes you know what’s happened in your heart, Khalid. I’m telling you it’s bad.”
“Sit down, Mum. I’ll get some coffee. We’ll sort it.”
Mum’s eyes suddenly narrow at the flickering computer screen in the corner. “I hope you haven’t been on that stupid thing all night,” she says crossly.
“I haven’t, honest,” Khalid protests. “I just couldn’t sleep.”
This time she shakes her head with disbelief. “Don’t try that rubbish on me!”
“I’m on holiday. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“Not now, you. I’m too worried for nonsense. You must go to find it, this place. The address, he wrote it down somewhere. Go wash your face. Brush your hair.”
After two cups of strong, evil-smelling coffee and a quick shower, Khalid grabs a pinch of yesterday’s naan bread to eat while Mum works out where exactly in the city Dad went. This takes some time as she doesn’t know the city and most of the street names are unfamiliar. Plus, she’s in such a panic she has to sit back every now and then to pat her chest and calm herself.
“Perhaps we should wait until one of the aunties gets up? Or one of the neighbors comes?” she says at last.
“Then we’ll still be sitting here at nine. It’s gone seven now. I’ll find it, don’t worry, Mum.” Khalid folds the tourist street map of Karachi away in his pocket. Knowing if he turns to his right outside the house and keeps going left he should arrive in the right area eventually and hopefully someone can direct him from there. He checks the address scrawled in pencil on a scrap of paper again and heads towards the door.
It’s hot now. There’s a feeling of promise in the lightening sky as the sun peeps through the spaces between the tall buildings in the distance. Khalid takes a deep breath. He hasn’t been out of the house much, and never on his own, and he feels scared stiff of being mugged or beaten up or getting lost in a city he doesn’t know and hasn’t explored. Chickens squawk from a nearby yard. The street is empty apart from several bags of rubbish propped up in a doorway, an old Coca-Cola bottle and dented can of turpentine beside a rusting car.
A huge truck trundles past crammed with men huddled together like sacks of flour and wrapped in scarves that give little protection from the dust the tires are blowing down the street. Their faces are miserably thin. Hands folded in front. Heads down.
Workers, Khalid thinks. His heart is beating faster than his hurrying steps.
Turning the first corner, Khalid sees a crowd gathering up ahead. A crowd he wishes he could avoid, but the narrow side alleys are also filling with men coming this way, running to catch up. There’s a feeling of fear in the air. Or is it just him?
Then the shouting starts. Some man on a platform begins yelling with his arms in the air. Others join in. Fisting the air violently. Young men push past dressed in exactly the same brown shalwar kameez that Aunt Fatima gave him. One of them shouts something that Khalid doesn’t understand.
The throng of men is growing by the second. Khalid stops. Turns to go back and find another route to avoid this chaos. But he gets caught in a sudden wave of men surging from a side alley. Pulling him forward in a lawless mass of anger that reminds him of getting caught in the rivers of fans coming out of Old Trafford after Manchester United have lost a game. The same feeling of suffocation and frenzy cuts into Khalid. The same fear of falling. Being trodden on. The only difference is the shocking sweet smell of coconut and musk drifting from their hot skin and hair.
With a mad degree of nudging and side-stepping, Khalid manages to work his way from the middle of the crowd to the area just past the yelling man on the wooden platform. The sun beats down on his bare head as he pulls up his sleeves, finding it easier to move through the crowd if he screams and punches the air like the rest of them. Soon Khalid’s jumping backwards to his heart’s content. Drifting across slowly until he arrives at the edge of the road, laughing. Clouds of dust billow around him and he starts to enjoy the ongoing joke of being a newly arrived foreigner and not really one of them, all the way to the end of the road, where he pauses to get his breath before turning down a quiet side street.
No road sign to guide him, Khalid stops to pull the crumpled tourist map from his pocket. Sand everywhere. A corner of his eye flames red from grit, making it impossible for him to read.
He stumbles down the dusty road, pressing hard on his eyelids to remove the dirt caught in his eye, but his sandy fingers are making it worse. He trips down a tunnel-like passage filled with shoppers hurrying with baskets towards the bazaar. Red-eyed, he gradually makes out the blur of a man in a doorway selling carved inscriptions on slabs of stone. Another trader points to turquoise beads and cinnamon sticks on a wooden tray that he lifts to Khalid’s face. Khalid bends his head to tug at several lashes in a final attempt to dislodge the grit and blinks and blinks until he can focus on the old bead-seller standing beside him, too close for comfort.
Khalid shows him the address of the flat, but it’s obvious he can’t read English, leading Khalid to the conclusion that he might have to retrace his steps or get even more lost. Then a broad-shouldered, pasty-faced white man in a white cap appears out of nowhere and says something to the bead-seller in Urdu, nodding to Khalid to show him the address.
“You lost?” he says in a broad Liverpool accent. Khalid is shocked. The man winks. “I know how you feel, mate. This place is a madhouse. Me name’s Jim.”
“Khalid. Hi.” He blinks, surprised. “How come you speak Urdu?”
“I’m studying Eastern languages in London. Plus I’m a genius, like all Liverpudlians. Can’t you tell?” Jim laughs and Khalid immediately warms to his friendly smile.
“Yeah, mate, whatever you say,” Khalid jokes in reply.
Relieved to find someone who can help him, Khalid wanders with him through the bazaar as it fills with people and Jim tells him about his trip to Pakistan with two mates who are also students in London.
“My friend Mohammed invited me here for the holidays and I thought, Why not? At any rate, it gives us a chance to speak the language. Know what I mean? You’re a bit bleary-eyed, mate. You OK?”
“I got some dirt in my eye.” Khalid explains about the demonstration, his dad not coming home, plus the fact he’s never been into the city until now. “That’s why I’ve got this address, although I have no idea where the place is.”
“You’re looking for your dad? What are you going to do if you don’t find him?”
“Dunno.” The same question had occurred to Khalid when he left the house.
“Look, I can take you to thi
s flat. But I suggest if he’s not there you scarper home and wait for news. If you want some good advice, don’t go near the police without a group of male friends and then always cooperate with them fully. Answer any questions. Do ya hear?”
Khalid nods. “Can’t I trust the police, then?”
“Let’s just say there’s loads of backhanders going round this city.” Jim frowns. “Drug-trafficking and the like and plenty of CIA blokes paying out for supposed al-Qaeda suspects.”
“Just like my nearest city, Manchester, then?” Khalid laughs.
Jim grins but his smile quickly fades. “They’re obsessed with finding dirty bombs,” he explains. “Men are disappearing all over the place.”
Khalid thinks back to his conversations with Nasir and Tariq. “Not my dad, though. He’s a Westernized Pakistani. He doesn’t even like it here—only wants to help his sisters move house.”
Jim shakes his head. “Everybody from a Muslim country is seen as a threat to the USA right now.”
Something about the way he says this makes Khalid feel suddenly more anxious than ever. If only he can find his dad and get back to Rochdale and their normal lives.
After ten minutes, they come to a small block of flats. Jim leads the way up narrow concrete stairs to the top floor. With a firm hand he bangs on the door of Flat 26, looking round for signs of life. Then he peers into a small window hardly bigger than an envelope while Khalid waits anxiously for his dad to answer the door.
There’s nothing but silence and a moldy apple core on the dusty concrete floor at Khalid’s feet.
“Doesn’t look good,” Jim says before shouting in Urdu at the top of his voice. The door to Flat 25 next door opens in slow motion. Locks and bolts click and slide before an elderly man peers out an inch. He eyes them suspiciously.
“Salaam!” Jim rushes to greet him while he has the chance. Quickly explaining about Khalid’s dad. Pointing to Flat 26.
The watchful old man takes his time to reply, as if not certain that Jim’s telling the truth. A feeling of dread spreads over Khalid as the man looks them up and down, then spits. He stares hard with suspicious eyes, even as Jim speaks to him in the local dialect. Finally he answers quickly, then shuts the door. Bolting and locking it as fast as he can. His footsteps hurry down the creaking floor as if he can’t wait to get away from them.
Jim turns to Khalid and holds up his hands. “Sorry, mate. I tried. He said there’s no one at the flat. Some rich bloke owns it, wants to rent it out. He thinks someone might have banged on the door last night but he’s not sure.”
Khalid closes his eyes and breathes out. Like he’s been holding his breath the whole time. Without saying anything, he peers in the small window of the flat to see nothing but a small hall with red tiles and a pile of unopened mail on the coir mat. “I guess he’s not here, then,” he says eventually.
They walk back together, Khalid in silence with a heavy heart and Jim talking non-stop about a girl he likes called Carla, an archaeology student he’s madly in love with. Trying in his own way to make Khalid feel better by distracting him from the disappointment.
“You know how it is when you like a girl, you can’t get her out of your mind,” Jim says, smiling. He leads Khalid down a side street to avoid the market and the demonstration, which has grown even larger. But the rhythm of men chanting and yelling, and a car screeching to a halt nearby, fire rockets of unimaginable fear and panic through Khalid with every step.
Dad? Dad? Terrified he’ll never see him again, a sudden smell of woodsmoke overwhelms Khalid. His thoughts, his feelings and senses are out of his control. Unless Dad’s at home when he gets there, his life will be turned upside down.
A strange numbness sets in as Khalid walks the dusty road, drifting between noise and silence. Jim’s voice takes him to the edge of a cliff and then back again, the pointless chatter sounding as if it’s coming from the bottom of a deep cave somewhere.
“She’s amazing. Know what I mean?” Jim says.
“Yeah.” Khalid hasn’t got the energy to smile. The words She’s amazing—amazing—Yeah zip past in a circle above his head, while the terrible thought his dad might be dead squeezes a clamp around his heart. They walk in silence for a few moments and for some reason Khalid’s mind shoots back to a day last September, when he and Niamh were sitting together under an oak tree in the park. And even though Holgy was pulling faces at him all the while and Nico was throwing sticks at the bench, Niamh told him about her plans to become a lawyer and live in New York. About how she was going to get out of Rochdale the moment she could, because her mum was driving her crazy after the divorce.
“Will you have to marry a Muslim girl?” Niamh asked.
“I can marry who I like,” he’d said. Not wanting to get into this. Thinking, Should I tell her if she isn’t a Muslim she can convert? Loads do.
“Mum says it’s better if I marry a Catholic. Hah, she had to marry one—and look where that got her. Anyway, we’re past all that now, aren’t we, Kal, us? Thanks for listening.” Jumping up when the ice-cream van sounded its silly tune at the park gates.
“Are you in the mood for an ice cream?”
“Er—no. Yeah, OK!” Khalid remembers how he grinned. Sitting there like a lost puppy until she came back with two double whips. Silently praying she’d sit next to him again, which she never did.
Five days after the party, when he last saw her, he already felt bad. They went to Karachi, and now Dad’s gone missing he feels even worse. Perhaps he should have warned him about the kidnappings and stuff that Nasir, the shopkeeper, had told him about.
Jim stops suddenly. “That’s your aunties’ road, yeah? Didn’t you say it was this street?”
“Yeah. Yeah. They live at 74A.” Khalid nods.
Jim stares at him. “Are you OK? Do you want me to come and speak to your family with you?”
Khalid shakes his head, knowing that a stranger in the house will just make things worse when he gets home without Dad.
“OK, well, see you, then. Bet your dad’s already home,” Jim says with little confidence. “Here’s my mobile number if you need anything. Look after yourself, OK?”
“Thanks a lot,” Khalid says finally. He wants to say more, like how he couldn’t have found the flat without him, or spoken to the old man in the next-door flat, but he’s worried if he talks too much he’ll start crying or something. Jim understands and just grins a show of affection as Khalid turns and heads down his street. Raising a hand to wave goodbye in a half-hearted way.
As soon as Jim’s out of sight something snaps inside Khalid and he runs as fast as his legs will carry him, arriving at the house in a gasping, dusty, hot heap. Adrenaline makes his head swim with a thousand awful pictures of Dad hurt, bleeding, kidnapped, shot, and he becomes convinced the instant he opens the door that Dad isn’t back.
When the sound of a passing, rumbling truck dies down, Khalid prepares himself by taking a deep breath of fried garlic and cumin.
5
EASTER
There’s an oasis of silence and peace inside the house as the door closes. The dark wall-hangings create a sense of cave-like gloom. Though his temporary home is familiar, it provides no comfort to Khalid as he pauses to gaze through the open door of the dark back room to see Uncle Amir curled up, asleep as usual, in the far corner.
Everyone else, he can tell, is in the other room, listening hard. Knowing it’s Khalid by the way he kicks off his sandals before he heads towards them with hesitant steps.
Looking round at the sea of questioning faces, Khalid thinks that the whole neighborhood seems to have crammed itself into the living room. There’s barely space on the small tables for another bowl of sugar cubes or cup of half-drunk coffee. He suddenly has no idea where to start. All at once, hundreds of inquiring voices fire questions at him in Urdu and Punjabi, neighbors and distant relatives crowding round him. The aunties wring their hands, sobbing. Mum stands in the corner, wailing. Gul and Aadab, pale and shaken,
are close to screaming.
“I dunno where Dad is,” Khalid says when everyone eventually falls silent. He goes over the chain of events as quickly as possible, not bothering to mention the demonstration and the hordes of angry men he’d come across.
The moment Khalid finishes, leaving people none the wiser, everyone begins sounding off with their own ideas and gesturing to heaven for help. A stream of desperate prayers begins to flow from their downturned mouths. No one notices Khalid slip away to grab a glass of water, wash his dusty face and hands and flop on the kitchen floor. At last, he gets to sit on his own in a state of total disbelief at his useless, wasted search.
He is tired out of his mind, head spinning from too many hours without rest. The wooden ceiling fan seems to loom over him as he builds a nest of red cushions on the floor, their gold tassels swinging as he lies down. Soon falling under the gentle hypnosis of the fan’s whirring and faint clicks, he enjoys a moment’s peace until people begin coming and going, stepping over him. Clattering cups, brewing coffee, whispering, trying not to be noisy, even though they can see he’s not asleep.
In the end their constant interruptions force Khalid to get up again. He pads back to the living room, where Gul and Aadab stare from one sad face to another, wondering if anyone will notice if they eat the rest of the sugar cubes in the green glass bowl. Gul reaches to grab a handful and pass some to Aadab. Both try hard to enjoy the cloying sweetness while pretending not to be eating anything and, along with Khalid, gaze sadly at Mum. Fatima and Roshan stand with their backs to them at the window, looking out. Aunt Rehana listens blank-faced to a neighbor who’s brought a pot of honey and some walnuts to cheer them up.
Everyone is in the same state of lonely grief, only half here in this room, their minds overloaded with stories they’ve read in the papers about people who’ve gone missing and are later found dead from bomb blasts, accidents, murders. It’s easy to think the worst here.