Take It Back

by Kia Abdullah

  ‘Have you searched their room?’

  Hassan rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, Sherlock, I’ve searched their room, but she’s really gone and done it.’

  Amir whistled. ‘No offence, mate, but your mum’s loopy.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Hassan kicked the ball with force and it shot past Amir into a ditch beyond. Rocky yelped and chased it.

  Mo watched from a brown brick wall on the sidelines, scuffing his knock-off Nikes against the gravel. He took a swig of ginger beer, winced and handed it to Farid. The older boy took a sip and placed the bottle between them. They never normally ventured as far west as Shadwell Park but people in their neighbourhood had started whispering stories and spreading gleeful rumours. None believed that pathetic white girl of course, but few would publicly support the boys. Trouble in East London was contagious; just breathe near it and you’d find yourself infected.

  Mo picked up the bottle and watched his friends, now in the middle of the gravel concourse, mock-wrestling over the football. Their shouts were loud and joyful, almost musical with laughter.

  Farid cast his eyes away. ‘It’s like they don’t have a clue what’s happening.’

  Mo turned and studied his friend, noting the bags beneath his eyes and the sallowness of his skin. ‘Are you worried?’

  Farid nodded softly. ‘Yeah, course I’m worried.’

  Mo felt a jab of anxiety. If Farid – smart, prudent, pragmatic Farid – was worried, then shouldn’t he be too? ‘Why?’ he asked his friend.

  ‘Look at us, Mo. Even if we could prove that we didn’t touch Jodie, we’d still be four darkies in the dock. You think we’d get a fair chance?’

  Mo gripped the neck of the bottle, tethered by its cool thick glass. ‘It’s not going to go that far. And even if it does, they’re not going to send us down just ’cause we’re brown. That doesn’t happen in real life.’

  Farid stared at the horizon. ‘I read that, in America, there aren’t many rich people on death row. There are many levels of justice, Mo. You get one level if you’re rich and white, you get the next if you’re rich, you get the next if you’re poor and white, and you get the shittiest if you’re poor and dark – and you best believe it’s the same here in Britain.’

  Mo bobbed his heels in the gravel, a nervous flutter of denial. ‘Nah, man. That’s not true, not here. Besides,’ he cocked his head towards their friends, ‘they’re not worried.’

  ‘Yeah but they’re different.’ Farid gestured outward. ‘If things went south, they could move somewhere else, somewhere no one knows their names or their history. Amir’s old man is loaded and Hassan’s uncle has the restaurant in Birmingham. We’d be stuck here as the boys who raped a disabled white girl. I’d lose my place in college and we can forget university.’

  Mo fell silent, doubting for the first time that it would all work out. Was Farid right? Could they be sent down on word alone? He felt a queasy roiling in the base of his gut and imagined his family without him. He, while not naturally clever, was their great white hope, the only son who would pull them from poverty, from bloodstained fingers that were never quite clean, and endless hours at the sewing machine. Secretly, he wanted a shop on Savile Row, but had decided years ago that he would follow Farid’s footsteps. Where his friend got As, Mo got Bs, but that didn’t stop him from trying. Farid was the sort of boy who would make something of his life and if Mo shadowed him – picked the same courses, had the same friends – then maybe he would be something too. There would be no branching of their destinies where one boy ends up rich and the other, sad and destitute. Mo would choose the same degree, university, job and company, and with Farid’s ultimate success, Mo’s would be secured too. The idea that he might follow him to a jail cell seemed so bizarre, so thoroughly outlandish, that he refused to entertain it. Mo turned instead to watch their friends. Amir had Hassan in a headlock and the younger, scrappier boy was writhing to get away. Their laughter rang high in the sky, then melted into the fading light.

  The Dalston din was loud and lively despite the fact that it was Tuesday evening. Homeless men gathered outside Şükran Turkish deli, waiting for the day’s leftovers; Spanish expats stood outside restaurant doors loudly discussing their evening plans; and bearded men in skinny jeans pretended they didn’t care for attention.

  Zara hated Hackney with its pop-up art galleries and organic food stalls. It all seemed so contrived. Luka, however, loved his Dalston flat with its dusty floors and rotting beams. She paused outside his building and slid the bag full of his favourite takeaway to the crook of her left arm. With her right, she keyed 1967 into the security panel. The summer of love, he had joked when he first gave her the code.

  She had made two vows this week: the first was to stop taking Diazepam. The little yellow pills now sat in a heap at the bottom of her bedroom bin, only six stashed away in her glove box and half a bottle in her bathroom cabinet in case of emergency. Her second vow was to tell Luka how she felt before he left the country next week. She would set aside her pride and tell him the naked truth: that she was a coward, rearing at the thought of human touch, but that to lose him would signify something irreversible and she didn’t want to grieve that hope. She wanted to clasp it in her hands and put it somewhere safe and trust that one day it would help her find herself again.

  She felt a giddy hope as she paused inside to check her makeup and then climbed the two flights to his flat. Of course it didn’t have a working lift. She slid a key into his door and unlocked it. Luka was in the kitchen with a bottle of wine askew in his hand. He spotted her and froze. His gaze shifted leftward, past Zara and into the living room. She turned to follow it and found a petite blonde curled on the sofa wearing Luka’s T-shirt and nothing else. Her hair was tossed over one shoulder, so thick and long that it swished seductively around her hips. Zara froze in motion, churning with embarrassment. She was stunned, first by a razor pain and then a cutting self-contempt for feeling that way, as if heartbreak were somehow beneath her. She dropped the bag of food – humiliated by this attempt at affection – then spun and started to flee.

  Luka crossed the room in an instant and caught her at the door. ‘Wait,’ he said, his tone hard and urgent.

  She pushed him away. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Zara, don’t go.’

  She shook her head. ‘This,’ she gestured at the blonde, ‘is so fucking boring. So fucking predictable.’ She took a step back. ‘Stay away from me, Luka. Just stay the fuck away.’ She slammed the door behind her and fled back to her car. There, skin hot with fury, she locked the doors and sped away. She took five rapid breaths and then five more, and when she found that she couldn’t calm down, she turned into a side street and stopped. There, she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes to stem her tears. What a fucking mess. The past two years – it had all been a mess. She thought back to the night that her world spun upside down. She rarely let herself think of it but sitting there in the dark, betrayal spidering in her chest, she allowed the bitterness in.

  It began two nights after the dreaded wedding. Her husband, Kasim, had discovered text messages to Safran. Two days in and he was already going through her phone. She had noticed the icy silence in the bedroom straight away.

  ‘Is there a Safran in your life?’ he asked flatly.

  She felt a bolt of alarm. Standing motionless, she said, ‘There is.’

  ‘Why is he texting you?’

  ‘He’s a friend.’

  ‘A friend? You’ve told him intimate details about us, told him you want to get out of this. Who the fuck is he?’

  She bit down her indignation. Why did she have to appease this man she barely knew?

  ‘Have you slept with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ he spat.

  ‘I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘Don’t you lie to me,’ he snapped back.

  And so it went until his sister knocked on the door to query the raised voices. He pulled her inside and poi
nted to Zara, spitting ugly words about her past. In a haze, his one sister called another sister and that sister called a third sister and then a brother-in-law and another until they were crowded around her bed. Snatching her phone, one declared that ‘if she’s slept with one guy, she’s probably slept with two and if she’s slept with two, she’s probably slept with five!’

  And so it went: hours of abuse until one of them took pity and let her place a call. Unable to contain her tears, she pleaded with Salma to bring her home, hopeful that her elder sister would take action where her parents would not.

  ‘How can I do that?’ Salma had said in anguish. ‘I can’t. You’re theirs now.’ The eldest child had powers, yes, but even she couldn’t flout tradition.

  Alone in her room, Zara first felt shame, red and incisive, as it conjured all the people she would have to face: the acid-tongued aunts and inquisitive cousins, the neighbours who barely concealed their spite when Zara got her pupillage. She could picture them now in their gleeful cliques: what a fall from grace, they’d say with a cluck of judgmental tongue. What a crying shame, concealing their rictus grins.

  Then, came a sodden self-pity. She had only tried to please her family. Why must she feel ashamed?

  And, finally, there was fury, which consumed her shame like fuel. It bloomed and billowed and swallowed her whole, and from the embers of the docile daughter-in-law rose Zara as she was before: calm, resolute, defiant.

  She packed a suitcase of essentials, leaving behind her sumptuous trousseau of gold jewellery and fine saris. She stepped from her room and was spotted in the hall. The family immediately followed as she marched out to the street. Her husband’s menacing bulk pulled the suitcase from her hands. That’s mine now, he said with a sneer. She pulled it back. No, it’s mine.

  They urged her back to the house, mindful of what the neighbours might say. When she refused to yield, they finally gave up, knowing they couldn’t keep her against her will. However, instead of setting her free, they took her to her parents. You’re our responsibility until we take you back, they said as if she were a purchase to be returned to its vendor.

  Of course, her parents’ home offered no reprieve. For that night and the next day, she hid in her room, engulfed in silent turmoil. In the evening, there was a gentle knock on her door.

  ‘Dad wants to see you,’ said Lena, her voice soft and fearful.

  Zara swallowed her dread and soundlessly followed her sister. She paused outside the living room. ‘Is Mum in there?’

  Lena grimaced. ‘No. Dad wants to talk to you alone.’ She smiled weakly. ‘Maybe that’s for the best?’ They both knew he favoured Zara and therefore may be clement where their mother would only be stern.

  Inside, her father sat on a chair in the corner, already a break in tradition. His preferred seat on the sofa sat empty and his eyes focused straight ahead. With age, the rings around his pupils had lightened from a warm brown to steely grey. They gave him a rheumy look, which belied the man he was inside: strong and dependable, firm but kind.

  Zara sat down and thought of all the ways she had disappointed him. He had lived a hard life, raising four children on minimum wage, but never had he complained. He would come home after work with bags so heavy they seared marks on his skin, then cheerily unpack and peel an apple, popping a piece into Zara’s mouth, telling her the seeds would sprout if swallowed.

  Despite his factory wage, he dressed like a gentleman. His suits, bought in Whitechapel for a fraction of the retail price, were pressed to perfection and his shirts always blinding white. His shoes were polished and his dark hair neatly combed. He looked distinguished, like a reasonable man. He laughed often and, in her memory, cried only once: at her graduation when she became the first and only of his children to get a degree. He was proud of her then. And now? Now he could barely look at her.

  He was matter-of-fact when he finally spoke: ‘You have to go back.’

  Zara stiffened in her seat. ‘I’m not going back.’

  ‘You have to go back. You have to think of the family name.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ he asked evenly.

  ‘I can’t and I won’t.’

  He paused for a beat or two. Then, with unprecedented viciousness, he said, ‘Tomorrow, your brother is going to come and hack you into pieces.’

  Zara almost choked in surprise. She had heard stories of such things – these despicable threats of ‘honour’ killings – but in other families, not in hers and not from her gentle father. Catching her breath, she asked: ‘He’s going to come and do what?’, giving him a chance to soften and retreat.

  ‘He’s going to cut you into pieces.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said calmly. ‘I understand.’ She stood and walked out, the hunch of her shoulders the only outward sign of turmoil. In her room, she locked her door, then crumpled against it, winded by horror and grief. She muffled her sobs with both hands. Even in shock, she tried to keep pain from her father. She had no wish to wound him further. She knew his threat was empty – spoken under the maddening spectre of dishonour – but that he could even speak it was intolerable, unforgivable.

  She sat there for hours, mourning the loss of something fragile: trust perhaps, or faith, or forgiveness. When dawn broke, she slipped from the house with her tiny blue suitcase. As she walked away along the cracked pavement, she felt something shift inside her. The girl she was, the girl that lived to please her father, was to be no longer. With every step she took from that house, she lost a piece of who she was and kept on losing until six months later, her father passed away and he too was gone forever.

  Sometimes, on warm and starry nights, she felt that younger, more hopeful version shifting beneath the surface but to slip back would be weak so here she was instead, alone once again in the dark. Shaking the memories away, she pulled open her glove box and retrieved the brown glass bottle. She tipped two yellow pills into the palm of her hand and clasped her fingers around them. As they pulsed in her fist, she reached desperately for an alternative. After a minute, she loosened her grip and let the pills slide back with a soft tap-tap. She wiped away her tears and retouched her makeup with a hopeless, mechanical resolve. She retrieved the piece of paper she had tucked into her wallet and read the number scrawled across. She recalled the memory of the stranger at the bar, of his arms flexing beneath his suit, of his scent as he leaned in and whispered his name: Michael. She smoothed the paper and dialled the number.

  ‘It’s Zara,’ she said in greeting.

  He took a moment to gather himself. ‘I was hoping you would call.’

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m on my way home.’

  ‘To?’

  ‘To?’ he repeated. ‘To no one.’

  ‘Would you like to see me instead?’ She heard his unsure laugh, a little less cocky than he’d been at Port & Port.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Tell me where and I’ll come.’

  She screwed up the piece of paper in her fist. ‘Meet me at Gordon’s on Villiers Street.’

  His confidence returned. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  ‘Good.’ She hung up, put her car in gear and sped off towards central London.

  The tower blocks of Longcross hulked against the sky: three demons rising above the steamy mulch of Bow. The refurbishment had somehow made things worse. The white cladding dirtied in a way that brick did not and the spare design seemed borrowed from a prison.

  Farid made his way down Rainhill Walk towards the leftmost block. As he approached, he noticed figures shifting in the dark. By instinct, he drew up his chin and pushed back his shoulders, imitating things that he was not: tough, angry, confrontational; traits you needed to survive in this block. He heard his name and stopped mid-stride, momentarily caught off guard. The figures emerged from the shadows in a scuffle and surrounded him all at once.

  A microphone grazed his cheek. ‘Farid, w
hat did you do to Jodie in that warehouse?’ asked a reporter, a grey-haired man with a weak chin. ‘Tell us the truth, mate. We can help you.’ The circle of reporters grew tighter and he felt a hand grab his elbow.

  ‘Is it true that you all planned the attack?’

  Farid pulled back in alarm. ‘No. Look, you’re not allowed to do this.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to rape your classmates either. You know that, don’t you?’ said another reporter, this one blonde and female.

  Farid tried to push through the ring but they held him fast inside.

  ‘Amir said it was your idea.’

  Bodies pressed against his back and their questions grew to a din. Farid held his arms defensively around his head, then pushed through the barrier to the base of his building. The reporters followed, crowding around him as he punched in his numbers and blindly rushed inside. They knocked on the glass of the door, shouting entreaties for him to speak. Afraid to wait for the lift, he bounded up the stairs and kept on running to the eleventh floor where finally he stopped to breathe. He slumped on the stairs, head on his knees, heart drumming a thousand beats. Would this be his life now? Angry questions about ugly things? A lifetime of doubt for a single deed?

  He heard a door open behind him and flinched as he turned, expecting to see reporters. Instead, he found his younger brother, Farhan.

  ‘Mum’s been waiting for you,’ he said. ‘She saw you coming up the road and sent me to see where you were.’ He hesitated. ‘What’s going on?’

  Farid drew himself up and led Farhan back to the flat. Inside, Rana was pacing the corridor, her green sari whispering to the wall. She gathered Farid in her arms, a tight sob catching in her chest.

  ‘They’ve been ringing the bell for hours,’ she said, her voice high and strained. ‘Farhan went and asked them to stop, but they peppered him with questions and just carried on.’ She released Farid and gestured at the door. ‘We tried to take off the bell, but we didn’t know how. They haven’t stopped all evening.’

  Farid saw the anguish on Rana’s face and felt his courage cave in. When did a boy become too old to cry? When could he no longer run to his mother for comfort, but comfort her instead? He held her now to his chest. ‘Don’t worry, Ammi. It will be okay.’ It frightened him to see her like this – Rana who was usually so sturdy and busy, so resourceful when times were tight, and generous when they weren’t, who would smile at you warmly but breathe fire when crossed. Just last month, he had watched her approach a queue jumper with the authority of a judge, tap him on the shoulder and send him brusquely to the back. And now here she was, crying anguished tears for her son.