The Knives

by Richard T. Kelly

  Both wore intent expressions as they took turns to issue prompts. One was tall and muscular as a basketball player, his eyebrows a black line, mouth set straight as a blade. His dark head swivelled to meet Blaylock’s gaze for a fleeting instant, then faced front again.

  The other – shorter, wirier, more luxuriously bearded – suddenly crouched and raised his hands, and the boys began to step forward in turn to land slapping punches into his palms. His taller colleague’s face broke into a delighted grin, baring uncommonly white teeth.

  ‘Okay, green belts! Bow to me, bow to each other!’

  As the children dispersed the two young men approached Blaylock, and Seema conducted introductions. Sadaqat, it transpired, was the taller, Javed the shorter and more self-contained.

  ‘As-salam-o-alaikum,’ Blaylock recited as he thrust out his hand.

  Sadaqat’s eyes filled with mirth. ‘Wa alaikumu s-salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,’ he replied as they shook. ‘We are, uh, pleased and honoured to welcome you to our centre.’

  ‘Thank you. I like the look of this class.’

  ‘Shotokan? Yeah, it’s one of the most popular things we do. Everybody likes to throw a punch now and then, yeah?’

  Blaylock smiled. ‘I’ve never had the discipline for martial arts.’

  ‘Me neither. My boy Javed here, he’s the proper eighth dan man.’ Blaylock took the cue to shake with Javed, too.

  ‘This is a fine-looking extension you’ve got, Sadaqat.’

  ‘Thank you. We raised the money in the community, and the community helped us build it. So, yeah, we’re proud. May I take you upstairs, show you what else we got?’

  As they threaded back down the corridor Blaylock ear-wigged Sadaqat’s cheery exchanges with Seema.

  ‘Did you sort out that bother you had with the little hisbah patrol?’

  ‘Oh yeah … Nipped that one in the bud.’

  ‘What was that?’ Blaylock enquired.

  ‘Ah, one or two of the boys we get in regular got it in their heads to go around locally like a bit of a gang – giving out to people they knew that their behaviour was, uh, not sufficiently Islamic? Telling their sisters’ friends to dress more modest, knocking cans of beer out of guys’ hands and that.’

  ‘How did you manage?’

  ‘Peer group pressure, innit? It’s amazing how people can be shamed.’ Sadaqat flashed his pearly smile. ‘Nah, we just had a word, told them to grow up and act like men. Not sad little boys trying to get back at girls who don’t fancy them, yeah?’

  Blaylock was amused by the tale and the telling. Back out in the reception they now mingled with a stream of men coming in from the street, clad in down-filled coats, who joined them in climbing the stairs.

  ‘Prayers,’ said Sadaqat. On the upper floor he indicated a good-sized carpeted room into which the human traffic was headed, then took his guests aside to show by turn a ‘quiet room’ (‘for one-to-one counselling?’), a ‘seminar room’ (‘for short courses?’), and what he called ‘the den’ (‘to shoot pool or watch the football’).

  There was, as it turned out, no football showing in the den, its walls painted black but enlivened by spray-paint murals. Rather, the flat screen fixed on high showed a young imam in waistcoat and hat, holding forth in Urdu from behind a desk piled with heavy tomes: the recognisable format of a TV phone-in. A big, pallid, stocky young white man, luxuriously red-bearded under his taqiyah cap, was alone and peering up at the television with notable intensity from a capsized black leather sofa.

  Sadaqat steered Blaylock over to a pool table where two young men stood swinging cues in anticipation. The first – ‘Mohammad Abidi, call me Mo’ – wore a lightning flash razored into his hair, a pair of perilously loose fit jeans, and the general air of one who liked his reflection. The second, one Nasser Jakhrani, was bespectacled, duffel-coated, shy-smiling.

  The TV imam, though, was sounding ever more irate, since the young ginger-haired man on the sofa had suddenly jacked the volume right up. Sadaqat winced and strode over to him; the youth leapt to his feet in a manner Blaylock thought combative, and a sharp if muted exchange ensued before Sadaqat rested a solicitous hand on his shoulder. Then with an imploring mien he beckoned for Blaylock to come over. Blaylock exchanged looks with Andy before obliging.

  ‘You should shake this man’s hand, Finn,’ said Sadaqat, his own calming hand still in place. ‘He is the Home Secretary of the government, yeah?’

  Blaylock saw a near-comically averse look cross Finn’s face, as one who had been told to pull on the leg of a live tarantula. Yet he took Blaylock’s hand.

  ‘Hi Finn. So, you like this centre here? Find the facilities good?’

  Finn appeared to treat the simple enquiry with high seriousness, looking about him as one whose opinions were insufficiently heeded locally. ‘Gah. Ought to be more rigour in this dawa. Too many brothers know more about … rappers, and footballers, than know the companions of the Almighty Prophet, alayhi as-salam. But, uh, yeah, in my view, on the whole – my brother Sadaqat’s place is a proper reverent place. For a brother seeking the purer life and that. Sanctuary, from the cursed Shaitan, you get what I’m sayin’?’

  But Blaylock did not, and so was relieved when Sadaqat engineered their exit, bidding his visitors adjourn to the quiet room and closing the door behind them. There was a table with six chairs and a whiteboard that reminded Blaylock of his own set-up in Shovell Street. As the party chose seats Andy stationed himself by the door. Blaylock realised Sadaqat was looking at him ruefully.

  ‘I apologise for Finn, he’s, uh – he has problems.’

  ‘Of what sort?’

  ‘Bipolar disorder. Which they thought was just drug psychosis. No one figured ’til he pulled a knife on his foster mum. Said she was possessed by devils. Finn’s big on devils … He did three months in prison for it and when he got out – nobody cared about him, man.’

  ‘He seems to listen to you.’

  ‘I’ve picked up a few techniques, how to talk him down a bit, stop him listening to the other voices he’s got banging round his head.’

  Glancing to a shelving unit rammed full of thick manuals Blaylock noticed a framed photograph: Sadaqat posed with a smiling redheaded woman and a beige-complexioned boy.

  ‘Your family?’

  ‘Yeah. My wife Rosie, we met at college? Our boy is Sacha.’

  ‘Huh,’ Blaylock smiled, liking what he saw.

  Sadaqat smiled back. ‘You thinking to ask me how it is with my wife being English and that?’

  ‘Not at all, I—’

  ‘It’s not a thing. My dad moved us to England in the seventies – he knew it wasn’t rural Pakistan no more. Like, he’s an observant man but he doesn’t live in the dark ages. He said to me, where you grow up, that’s home. England is home, London is home.’

  ‘You’ve no … issue, thinking of yourself as British?’

  ‘British Asian Muslim, is how I’d put it. I tell you this, I’m not interested in race, it’s not meaningful to me, as a divider of men? All I care about is ideals we can share in common.’

  Struck by this answer, Blaylock nonetheless found Sadaqat’s gaze so peculiarly intense that he wished to change the subject. ‘So this centre, it was all set up by the pair of you?’

  Sadaqat glanced at Seema. ‘Yeah, originally I’d got something going at the mosque near me, a place for young people – they offered me their basement room, was meant to be for hang-out and discussion group but … a lot of the boys wanted to get fit, so we got in some gym stuff, then the imam got fed up with all that clanking metal, yeah? Boys shouting out, trying to bench their own body weight? Thing was, we wanted an open-door policy, but not everyone who came had their manners down perfect? And for work like this, in a community, you need somewhere people can come without feeling they’re just upsetting everyone by breathing.’

  ‘The mosque was a bit too rigorous?’

  Sadaqat winced. ‘I’d call it – fussy? Hidebound. At least
here we, me and Javed, we are responsible, we say what goes.’

  Blaylock sought to engage Sadaqat’s taciturn partner. ‘Javed, Seema told me before this you were running your own business, but things got tough?’

  ‘Yeah. I had a corner shop. It was trouble, all the time. Drunks and druggies coming in. I don’t like to talk about it now. Even to think about it. But it made me want to do something, to address that problem. I’m happy now, doing this project, not dealing with all that …’

  ‘Poison,’ Blaylock filled in.

  ‘Poison, yeah. Ignorance. Jahiliyya.’

  Sadaqat appeared eager to ride over Javed’s simmering silence. ‘What we do here is about instilling some discipline, some self-respect, some self-improvement. Of the mind and the body. This neighbourhood, you can see, we got problems. My Islam is about showing a way up and out of those problems. Helping young Muslims make better choices, stronger choices. To believe there’s something better, even if you start from nothing. The guys you just met? Mo, he might have nicked a car or two in his time … But now he runs his own clothes shop. Nasser, he’s in a call centre now, but he’s applying to study medicine.’ Sadaqat sat back, shaking his head. ‘The curse of this generation is nihilism – not seeing the deep meaning in things. What we say to guys who come is, you can live your lives with honour. And that’s not about fussing over whether or not your beard is the right length, you know what I’m saying?’

  A horn sounded. Blaylock’s hosts both got to their feet.

  ‘Will you excuse us?’ said Sadaqat. ‘Maghrib, we gotta go next door. But I’d be pleased to talk some more.’

  Blaylock stood and paced the room, aware Seema watched him.

  ‘Are you glad you came, Minister?’

  Blaylock nodded. ‘Yeah, sure. Great guy. He gets it. Uses his initiative. Good for him.’ He studied a handmade poster on the wall that called for volunteers to sign up to an outward-bound excursion, caving on the North York Moors. When Sadaqat re-entered the room with Javed minutes later Blaylock enquired after it.

  ‘Yeah, our guys, they don’t see a lot of fields or cows … It’s good to get them out and about. To stretch themselves, yeah? Their horizons. It can be a spiritual experience down there in them caves, man. But, whether we get enough bodies to go, or the cash, even …’

  ‘Look, it’s a terrific idea. If you can’t get the money let me know, I’ll see what I can do for you.’

  ‘Hey, if you help us out, you gotta come along too, yeah?’

  ‘Deal.’ Amused, Blaylock checked his watch somewhat regretfully and went to Sadaqat with his hand out. ‘Listen, I’ve been pleased to meet you both. Really impressed by your work.’

  Sadaqat shrugged, with the look of someone who knew his own worth. ‘Eh, the day will come when we die, Mr Blaylock. Nothing belongs to us then but our deeds.’

  Blaylock had reflected anew. ‘I hold a big regular meeting at the Home Office, a forum on extremism in the community, how we deal with it? I’d like it very much if you would come along to one if you could.’

  Sadaqat, for once, looked abashed. ‘Uh, I’m not so big on speaking for people that way. You know? Making speeches like I’m telling everyone else how to do it?’

  ‘I’d be interested in your view. Let my office send you the details, please at least consider.’

  While they filed from the room a hubbub was emanating from downstairs and as they descended – Andy moving firmly to the front of the party, Javed at his shoulder – the source of the disturbance became clear. A small throng, two dozen or so bodies, had gathered just outside the centre’s doors; a TV camera was jostling around, backed by lights; and young Sid seemed to be struggling to hold a line and keep calm against protest, assisted by Blaylock’s Met police team. With a sinking heart Blaylock recognised the burly taqiyah-sporting man at the front of the crush – ‘Abou Jabirman’, the former Desmond Ricketts. Clocking Blaylock in turn, Jabirman began to stab his finger over Javed’s shoulder.

  ‘You! Why are you here? What do you think you are doing?’

  ‘I was invited here, Desmond.’

  ‘My name is Abou Jabirman, call me by my name!’

  ‘You’ll always be Desmond to me.’

  ‘Shame on you, to show hospitality to this man!’ Ricketts’s associates aped him in wagging their fingers in unison at Sadaqat, who had resumed the stern mien Blaylock had seen in shotokan class – the brow a black line, the mouth straight as a blade.

  ‘This is not the way to do anything, brother,’ Sadaqat responded.

  ‘Traitors and collaborators! Allah has no time for them, their shame will be immense.’ Jabirman resumed his harangue of Blaylock. ‘Why do you come to a Muslim area, how do you dare, when you persecute Muslims? Muslins you call “extreme”? What is extreme? When you spy on Muslims, arrest them, deny their rights, when your government goes abroad and murders Muslims in Muslim lands?’

  Andy Grieve pressed forward. ‘Sir, you need to get back—’

  ‘Be quiet with your mouth, fool, get your hands off me. Where is democracy and freedom you talk about, you would deny it me?’

  It was Blaylock’s turn to speak over a shoulder, Andy’s. ‘I’m not denying you anything, Desmond, it would be nice if you’d let me pass.’

  A shoe flew over Andy’s head and skimmed Blaylock’s shoulder. But now sufficient bodies were pressing the throng back. As Blaylock moved to the Jaguar he could hear Seema receiving her own dedicated broadside behind him – ‘Go suck the Home Office, qahba!’

  Once Martin had them safely onto the A13 signposted for central London they sat in gloom and relative calm.

  ‘That went well, I think,’ Blaylock offered.

  He insisted Martin drop Seema at her door in Bethnal Green, and since they were parked up he changed into his tuxedo in the backseat, Andy assisting him with his bow tie. Martin, meanwhile, took a call warning him of some disturbance on Pall Mall, where a student demonstration of sorts had been dispersed. But by the time the Jaguar pulled up before the Carlton Club there was nothing to see but for a trampled banner on the pavement, and a girl with a painted face remonstrating with a police officer. By now, just a shade before 9 p.m., Blaylock was light-headed with fatigue.

  *

  As applause from the gathering attended the end of a suitably Churchillian passage in Patrick Vaughan’s speech Blaylock endeavoured to slither unseen through the Churchill Room and seek his seat with minimum fuss. A brisket of beef with savoy cabbage materialised before him, via a deft young waiter. Casting an eye across the two dozen tables, however, he knew he was the last Cabinet member to have presented himself, and that he had not evaded the Captain’s eye.

  Vaughan, nonetheless, rolled on, relaxed and fluent in the absence of journalists, at ease before the fundraisers and donors who were his meat and drink, and who appeared to want much the same things as he wanted for Britain – less red tape in Whitehall, fewer wind turbines in the countryside, and a proper respect for the blessed energy of private enterprise throughout the land.

  If the public could see us up close and unbuttoned like this, Blaylock wondered, would they think better of us? Or worse? Given the rich fare on offer, dog-tired as he was, Blaylock filled his wine glass and drank. It was an elite experience, for sure, and the disparity with the place whence he had come could not have been more glaring to him; yet in the face of such glares he had learned to be phlegmatic.

  Upon the serving of coffee and cognac Blaylock got to his feet and exchanged glad hands and polite remarks with bankers and hedge funders, grocers and MDs of car firms, a witty milliner and a restaurateur with a svelte Bosnian Muslim wife. He had only just been introduced to ‘Duncan Scarth, from your part of the world, Home Secretary’ and felt his hand grasped by a tougher-looking customer than the crowd usually contained, when Al Ramsay stalked over and beckoned him aside, clutching a printed schedule for the next day’s showpiece immigration raid.

  ‘It’ll be good for you and Paddy to spend more time, David
. I know he’d be pleased if you’d show up once in a while for the 4 p.m. daily meeting. The whole team would like to see you there more.’

  ‘Come on – that’s a polls and media meeting, Al, I’ve got sod all to contribute.’

  ‘With respect, David, why is that?’

  Left alone again, Blaylock accepted a brandy, glanced around the room and gradually grew conscious that his eye was falling on young women: a leggy but stationary waitress idly tossing her ponytail, a blonde in a fitted blue dress unabashedly retouching her lipstick, a pale-skinned belle engaging in conversation with her copper-haired head tilted lazily aside as if awaiting a portrait painter.

  He shook his head in self-wonderment. How long, after all, had this been going on? How many months had he spent in abstinent get-behind-me mode, self-drilled to resist the slightest carnal urge, doggedly faithful to something he couldn’t quite stand to admit?

  ‘Decent show on the pulchritude front, eh?’

  Chas Finlayson was at his side, more bloodhound-like even than usual and seeming to have put away a couple of Courvoisiers himself. He thrust a letter upon Blaylock. It was from the office of Martin Pallister, subject: ‘NATIONAL SERVICE’.

  ‘I applaud your sensible and progressive proposition,’ Blaylock read. ‘I see the good it may do for disadvantaged young people, and you have my support. I hope the seeming opposition of the Prime Minister, Chancellor and Education Secretary will not be allowed to prevail.’

  ‘That’s the thing fucked, isn’t it?’ said Finlayson sadly.

  ‘If the only way it can be won is with Labour support then – yeah, the Captain won’t be having that. Politics, eh?’

  ‘You and I know what it was for, David – for the young people with nothing going for them, no hope of a half-decent job – get them out of their deadbeat homes, give them a chance to use the body and mind they were given.’

  ‘I know, Chas, I’d have happily seen my own boy do it.’

  ‘Right. The point being that it be led by the armed forces. But, somehow, once my department got their fucking mitts on it, it became all about … charity work. Like some gap year. They said, “It has to lose the army angle, it puts young people off.” And the thing of it is, David, the whole fucking reason I wanted to do it was the fucking “army angle” …’