by Nick Louth
‘That’s rape,’ Zainab said emphatically.
‘But even if I wanted it at first?’
‘You wanted him to stop, and he didn’t. That’s force. It has no place in a loving relationship.’ She watched as the tears began again. ‘Oh, you poor thing.’ She put her arm around Cantara and held her. ‘It’s a bit cold out here. Shove over so I can get in.’
Cantara moved across to let Zainab slide under the covers. In the narrowness of the single bed, cocooned in trust, they entwined hands. In the pale orange glow from the street lamps outside, until the seeping half-light of dawn washed it away, Cantara spilled out her heart. With frequent pauses for tears she told the entire story of how she had first met this married man when she was a child, and then how overawed she was by his power and presence, and what he had done for her shattered family. Then she told of her sorrow that her growing attraction to him didn’t seem reciprocated.
‘So who was this bloke?’ Zainab asked.
Cantara whispered the name.
‘No way! The bloke from the radio? Oh my God. Did you ever go to the police?’
Cantara shook her head. ‘They wouldn’t believe me. Not against him. I still feel it’s half my fault, because I wanted him to stay.’
‘It’s still rape.’
‘The thing I can’t understand is why. Why would he hurt me like that? Even if he didn’t love me. Why did he hate me?’
‘Men are like that. Power through sex, dominance over women, all that stuff. It feeds their inferiority complexes.’
Cantara was silent. She couldn’t match that picture with the Chris who had scrubbed her carpet of another guest’s vomit. The Chris who had come to her and saved her when she was going to kill herself.
‘It’s very hard, Zainab. I think about it all the time. Chris Wyrecliffe is famous for his good works. The Fouad Adwan Foundation is named after my father, and brings Palestinian people like me over from the camps for a British education. No one would believe what I said. Especially now, months and months later.’
‘Castration,’ Zainab eventually said, lighting an illicit cigarette. ‘Has a lot to recommend it.’ She offered the cigarette to Cantara and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You know, you are too beautiful and too sweet to suffer like this. I’m really glad you decided to tell. You’ll feel a lot better now. Besides, we’re sisters in Islam, aren’t we? It’s time for Fajr in ten minutes. Shall we pray together?’
They did so, and in the morning Cantara felt much better, elated to have found someone who she could tell everything to.
* * *
There is no better place for a secure meeting than the top deck of a London bus. Especially at dawn on a Sunday morning, when it’s almost certain to be empty. The first number 182 leaves Uxbridge Road at 5am. On Sunday 7th March, in the chill of a grey dawn, Irfan Tiwana was on it. The only passenger, he had clattered upstairs, and breathlessly splayed his bulk on the left-hand back seat, near the heater. From there he could see anyone who got on or off, and by turning around, anyone who might be following. He was wearing a full length shalwar kameez, thick grey socks, sandals, and a heavy brown dufflecoat. A few stops later, a young woman with a mass of green hair and facial piercings got on to sit two rows in front of him. She wore a short tartan skirt, laddered black tights, and engineer’s boots.
It was Zainab Picho. Her thick eye make-up and pale face made her look like she had been up all night. Reverting to her pre-Muslim conversion appearance was Zainab’s idea, but Tiwana was stunned by the visceral discomfort he felt to see it. Yet it was brilliant. No one would imagine that they would have anything to say to each other. No one would suspect that they shared a religion, yet alone a radical ideology. And no one could even imagine that they would be conspiring together to plan one of the greatest acts of terror that the world had ever seen. When Zainab Picho turned to speak to him, she talked of Cantara. She talked of their growing friendship, how much she had got to know about the Palestinian woman’s neediness and vulnerability, her hopes and aspirations, the dark pain within her. It was enough for Tiwana to be sure that the next phase of the operation could go ahead.
‘She trusts me,’ Zainab said, before she got off the bus. ‘And she believes everything I tell her.’
* * *
It was later in the week when Bram came to Cantara’s room. Zainab was there too. They shared a cup of tea, and then Bram said: ‘There’s something you can do to help Zainab, Cantara.’
‘Of course, what is it?’
‘You know that Jamal, her husband, is being held in Jordan. He has been tortured and abused, and hasn’t been able to speak to his wife and family for years.’
‘She told me. It’s awful.’
Bram looked intently at her. ‘We need to get you to fly to Jordan and take some things for him.’
‘What things?’ Cantara said.
Zainab answered. ‘Some letters from me, a card from my little Harry and pictures of him, stuff like that. They would mean so much. I can’t risk them to the post, especially as they’re unlikely to be given to him.’
‘How would I get them in?’
‘Oh, we have a contact who is going to try to smuggle them in for us. You would meet him there.’
She turned to Zainab. ‘Don’t you want to go yourself?’
‘Of course, if there was any chance of seeing him. I went to Amman myself eighteen months ago, and I was followed when I got there, arrested in my hotel, and then interrogated at the police station. It wasn’t that bad, nothing compared to what Jam suffers, but they were just letting me know that they were on to me. It’s this whole excuse that terrorism brings. Anyone can be accused in secret of anything, because of so-called “security”.’ She indicated the quotation marks with fingers. ‘When I got back the British police interviewed me too. I’m sure I was being watched at home, which is why I came here last year. One day I left Harry with Jam’s Mum, then in the night I slipped over the back wall of our house in Stoke Newington with just a small rucksack. They’ve no idea where I went.’
‘Can’t the police just trace you with your bank card and credit cards?’ Cantara asked.
‘I haven’t used them. I maxed out the credit card the night I escaped and withdrew what little cash I had. The imam here has given me sanctuary.’
Cantara suddenly realised the emerging parallels with her own behaviour. ‘Why would the police be so interested in you? Is Jam accused of being a terrorist?’
‘To be honest we don’t know exactly,’ Zainab said breezily. ‘It could be because he has spoken up about repression in Jordan and the Gulf States, and has membership of some banned organisations. But the fight against so-called terrorism provides the smokescreen to cover up anything that they want to do.’
‘So you wouldn’t go back to Jordan?’
‘Well, I would, if there was even a tiny chance of getting to visit him. But it is better to have someone unknown just taking the stuff he needs. Someone who would fit in a bit better in Jordan than a paleface from Bradford.
‘Well, I’d love to help. I really would, but I have this visa problem too,’ Cantara said. ‘I’m staying on a student visa, as you know, and if I left I might not get back in to the UK. My own passport is Lebanese.’
‘We’ve been thinking about that,’ Bram said. ‘We’ll get you a new passport.’
‘From Lebanon?’ she said incredulously.
‘No, it will be a British passport,’ he said.
Cantara looked bewildered. ‘But I’m not British.’
‘Look,’ said Bram. ‘A British passport would solve all your problems. You could stay here, you could study, you might even be able to work if we can get you a National Insurance number. The UK Border Agency would stop writing you letters.
‘I don’t know,’ Cantara said. ‘Isn’t it illegal, what we’re doing?’
‘There’s nothing illicit about it at all really,’ Bram said. ‘What is definitely illegal is the arrest of our brother on trumped up charges and th
e denial of all justice to him. Obviously the authorities wouldn’t approve of the new passport, but they will never find out. It’s a one-day operation. Heathrow to Amman, by Royal Jordanian. Fly in, fly home. We’ll pay the bill. And we’ll grant you a free term on the course, as a sign of our gratitude. You really don’t have to do anything there. You just take hand luggage, go to the transit lounge and meet our man there. You give him the letters and other personal items, and he will do the rest.
‘Cantara, I’d be very grateful,’ Zainab said. ‘Really I would.’ She showed Cantara the phone with the picture of Harry sucking his thumb. ‘It would mean a lot to Harry too.’
Cantara stared at the child. His wide-eyed innocent face. His smile. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘Alright. I’ll do it.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Rustam Khan Mohammed had found it easy. So incredibly easy. To get inside a system which was crucial to the security of the United Kingdom, and indeed to what was grandly termed ‘the war against terror.’ But then real wars are often fought on the most mundane of battlefields. Few seem as mundane as this.
Rustam worked in a postroom in an obscure civil service department in a 1960s office building just off the A4042 main road in Newport, South Wales. There is no barbed wire or high fencing, just a token security presence at the front desk. And at night, when the doors are locked, nothing. The main defence of such a place is its bland anonymity. But you can see it clearly on Google Maps, just type in the postcode NP20 1XA, and zoom right in. How did he get this job? It was advertised in the local job centre. It was that simple.
The Post Office van arrives pretty promptly at 8.40am each day. The van comes off Kingsway, turns left into Corn Street and then reverses down Skinner Lane into a secure loading bay just behind Marks & Spencer. There are usually three sacks, though it can be as few as one or as many as four. Three employees, not civil servants as such, but like Rustam employed by a large outsourcing firm, stand ready to unload. Today, as well as Rustam, they are a cheerful fifty-something Pole named Hannah, and a gangly tattooed youth called Ellis. Most weeks there is somebody new. It’s not exactly a career, after all. The pay is minimum wage, and it is boring. Boring as hell. The job is to manhandle the sacks onto a trolley and then steer the trolley into the service lift. The lift goes up one floor, to a large and untidy office in which the post is gradually sorted and opened. Most of the post then goes directly upstairs to the Passport Office, one of the biggest in the country. Hundreds of civil servants there deal with applications for new and renewed passports, queries over applications. All that kind of stuff.
About a third of the post goes down to the basement. A windowless cavern of a room, lit by flickering striplights, and smelling of scorched dust, this basement has hundreds of old filing cabinets in ranks for the surplus paperwork from upstairs. At the back, there are also shelves, groaning under the weight of hundreds of cardboard boxes, the oldest passport records, going back to World War II. It also has just one dusty and outmoded IBM PC and a desk permanently loaded with papers.
This echoing chamber is known as the Hall of the Dead. Part of Britain’s bureaucracy of death. The place where the passports of the hundreds of thousands of British citizens who have died are sent to be cancelled.
Or not. In some cases.
It should be simple. When someone dies a relative is supposed to send in their passport for cancellation. If they don’t, the government frets that someone else could, in theory, assume their identity. Someone could become that person, and use the identity of the passport to gradually open utility and bank accounts. In fact they could do anything that doesn’t require further picture ID. Anything that doesn’t require a physical presence to compare the passport picture with the appearance of the person presenting it.
In these days of online transactions, Rustam knew those possibilities were almost endless. A stolen passport is a key to acquiring a new life for those who want to shed an old one. The authorities don’t want this to happen. They like to keep tabs on us under our real names. So they ask the bereaved to send in the documents for disposal. But the truth is that these ciphers of the departed are far safer in some dusty drawer at home. Far safer shredded and destroyed by a relative. Because the system is flawed. At key points a single member of staff can subvert it entirely.
Rustam found it easy to gain a position of relative trust. By showing enthusiasm on the safety courses, on correct lifting posture and workplace risk assessment, he was quickly offered the defacto position of deputy post room supervisor. No pay rise, obviously. His boss, a chubby and lethargic civil service lifer called Adrian, was often off sick. Back pain, supposedly. So quite often Rustam was unsupervised in his logging of the incoming post. It was child’s play really. The form was just a single page. Details of the deceased, the name and signature of the sender, the number of the death certificate, if available. Then there was the crucial choice. The sender could opt to have the passport cancelled and returned. Or they could allow the state to destroy it for them. They were also asked to cut off a corner from the passport before enclosing it. A good third of them didn’t bother.
Rustam had become proficient at looking through the incoming post. He opened all the envelopes and stacked the forms and passports all ready for logging. In a separate tray he set aside those which hadn’t been ‘cornered’ and where the sender didn’t want it returned. Roughly a fifth of the total. The next step, only undertaken when he was alone, was to look through this pile at the photographs. He was very picky, had very strict requirements. No one old. No one white. No freaks of nature. No passport with less than three years to expiry. That instantly eliminated more than ninety-five per cent of the pile. Most days, often for a week at a time, it was just hundreds of deceased white pensioners. What he really wanted, and rarely came across, fell into two categories. First, youngish Asian women wearing a hijab or other religious headcovering, preferably with glasses. Spectacle frames are easy to match, and help mask underlying physical differences. He maybe got one or two a month. And then there were young Asian or black men, also preferably with spectacles. One a week, roughly.
Ideally, he was looking for bad passport photographs too. The worse the photo, the easier to pass someone else off as that person. Washed out images where eye colour isn’t obvious, loss of contrast that eliminates cheek and chin features. There were certainly plenty of those. The photograph rules are very stupid, he thought, because they were twisted to the requirements of computers. The demand for a neutral expression, no smile, no shadows, no teeth showing, was made because such things confuses the programs which use fixed points of eye location and bone structure to sort appearance. But in doing so, they eliminate within those photographs almost every trait that humans use to recognise each other.
For Rustam this was a numbers game. A hundred and fifty thousand passports were sent in for cancellation each year, which worked out at roughly six hundred a day. He accumulated, at most, five per week that looked of interest. These weren’t logged on the system as they should have been. The attached forms weren’t copied and filed as they should have been, nor was the paperwork sent upstairs for the database staff to delete them on the database. Instead Rustam slipped them into his bag and took them home. It was that simple.
For the past two months, Rustam had been looking for some particular likenesses. His contact, someone he had met at an Islamic Light Group meeting, but whose name he was never told, had sent him some passport-sized photographs. Three of men and one of a woman, all of whom needed a British passport and didn’t have one. All of whom would need a reasonable match against a passport likeness. One of the men, a classic moustachioed Pakistani with a luxuriant swatch of hair, had been an easy match with one of the passports he still had at his flat. The three others were more difficult. One, a very coarse-featured North African didn’t match anything he had seen. That was going to be a problem. The next was a young Arab. A week ago he’d found a reasonable passport match for him, except someone had cut a not
ch into the corner, a kind of half-hearted attempt at cornering. That would attract attention. It wouldn’t do. The final candidate was a young woman in a hijab and squarish glasses. She was pretty, and despite instructions to match expressionless passport style, had half a smile. He had put her photograph in his wallet, so he could pretend it was a sister or girlfriend if anyone at work saw him looking. The thought made him happy. He would like to know someone like that.
Once the post was opened, Rustam Khan Mohammed took the photograph out and stared at it. Today would be a good day to find her a matching passport. He was feeling lucky. Adrian was off sick, and he would have the IBM station to himself. There was a pile of possibles about two feet high in the in-tray. As Rustam started to look through them he smiled.
These passports were for the dead. But in the parallel universe of bureaucracy they were still very much alive. And soon, some of them would not only be alive, but kicking. No one had told him who these people were whose pictures he had. The Pakistani man, the North African, the dapper Arab, the pretty girl. But it was a fair assumption they were in training for martyrdom.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cantara’s passport arrived in six weeks. Bram brought it to her room one day when Zainab was downstairs hoovering the prayer room.
‘It might not be quite as you expected,’ he warned.
Cantara looked at the magenta booklet, with its impressive golden United Kingdom crest. It didn’t look quite new, somehow. Then she opened it, and the shock came.
‘This isn’t mine,’ she said. ‘It’s someone called Muysaneh Abbas. They’ve made a mistake.’
‘There is no mistake,’ Bram said. ‘We have built you a new identity. It’s the only way to get you a UK passport.’
‘But who is this person?’ Cantara exclaimed. The photograph showed a young woman in a hijab with dark eyes, squarish spectacles and a prominent nose. ‘I can’t be someone else! What happened to the photographs I had taken?’