The Study Circle

by Haroun Khan

  3.

  Ishaq reached the block’s entrance. There was no lighting again, the lamp had been smashed. He swiped his electronic fob over the lock, its buzzing sound taking a chainsaw to the dead stillness. The door, made of thickly cast steel, took a violent tug to heave open. Ishaq found it harder than usual, hearing a high pitched metal scraping as he struggled. He looked down and saw a collapsed can of lager braced at the bottom. Since the door locks had become electronic, the cost of a replacement key was enough to keep a family in take-aways for a couple of days, so the solution of some tenants was to wedge the door open with anything expedient. As a result, errant groups of kids sometimes converged in safety on the stairways. They would huddle, sleeves over their hands, passing around joints. This led to tests of wills, as Ishaq was very guarded about his small block. If you were soft on small incursions, your block could get altogether too hospitable a reputation around the estate and be infested by druggies, and other undesirables squatting. He didn’t want his mother and sister to navigate that. It was supposed to be their refuge, not some safe haven for exiles. Ishaq reached down, picked up the intruder and flung it, not caring to see where the projectile arced and fell.

  Compared to others, his block was in a tolerable state. The rubber flooring on the stairs was tired and eaten, but largely intact. The walls were painted with an off-blue anti-graffiti paint that contained incongruous glittered flecks as if it had been vomited by a lost and hung-over fairy. On the stairs, lamps fizzed and flickered as if inhabited by forlorn spirits striving to communicate through Morse.

  At the foot of the stairs, Ishaq saw a couple of familiar silhouettes trying to climb. Getting nearer, he could see Frankie, an old school friend, giving his partner Rice a hand up. The other hand bidding to cope with both a spliff and a can of lager that washed and slapped the sides of the tin as it was haphazardly cast about. Frankie was tall. He was scrawny where once he was muscular. All the fat had been sucked out of his face, his skin now taut and stretched over his skull like a living, breathing tsantsa from some South American tribe. A walking, talking, shrunken head that served as an admonishment to all.

  Ishaq spotted him every so often with a new woman in tow. Every time, Frankie always looked just that little bit worse. A decline just at the edge of the envelope of perception. Too young yet for his sunset years, more a sunrise in reverse, a thwarted blooming. Frankie’s obsidian eyes were dilated. His skeletal face held a permanent look of desperation, made even worse as the stairwell light alternated, exposing his face to harsh fluorescence and then burying it back into darkness.

  Frankie had shacked up with the older woman, Rice, after her last man had done a runner. As of late, both of them had started to make regular trips to a flat on the other end of Ishaq’s block. Ishaq didn’t care to inquire into what they were doing there as long as they didn’t cause a fuss and left quickly. Hoppy alcohol and weed conveyed their musty essence over all three of them. Having never touched the stuff, they smelt to Ishaq of boundaries violated. Piss, beer and dope. Eau de toilette, eau d’estate. He had faint hopes that they were sticking to the lower end of intoxicants. A better analgesic for coping with reality than many of the other options available. Although, even now, experimenting around had siphoned away their youth and cauterised any chance of perception.

  ‘Hey Issy, long time. Hey, I went to school with this guy,’ Frankie said with pride, letting go of Rice and pointing at Ishaq. Frankie’s speech was slurred but it was more the dimness and lethargy of it that confirmed to Ishaq that something of Frankie had departed permanently. Rice, however, was too busy to look. One hand on the stairs’ metal handrail, both feet looked bound together, pivoting on the edge of the first step. She was struggling to gain traction or put one foot in front of the other, see-sawing away. Seeing her straining, Frankie raised his voice, ‘I TOLD YOU TO STAY DOWNSTAIRS. I said I’ll only be a second. Why do you always need to come up?’

  A plaintive Rice started to wail, ‘I want to come too, help me.’

  Body straight like a plank, Rice looked like she was about to topple. Ishaq motioned to put a hand out to help her, then pulled back, his arm left in stasis as his calculating, guarded brain rebelled against a palpitating heart. One of the first rules of survival was to never get involved. Your business is your business and theirs is theirs. He had learned long ago that the process of enduring meant shutting down. Refuting yourself. Inuring yourself to bad news. Not getting involved. Not getting dragged into the consuming vortex of others, at any cost. Especially those who had a hand in their own downfall. There was no hope there. You couldn’t make things better, but you could make things a lot worse for you. See no evil. Hear no evil. That was more important than surviving by dark wiles. Ishaq hated this. Your God fearing, your moral code, your basic human decency. Suppressing it. You had to. Loathe yourself if need be, for impotence, or your fear, but survive. Meddling was a vanity, a luxury.

  Frankie caught Rice just in time. ‘I SAID STAY!…So Issy, how are you? Things going good? You safe, yea? Sorry about the spliff, yea?’

  Glad to see that Rice didn’t crack her head open, Ishaq replied, ‘Alright. Nothing to report really. Just surviving as usual.’

  Frankie looked vaguely like the pasty ginger guy whom he had known when younger. Ishaq remembered that he had been a mouthy gobshite, but a massive laugh. Feisty, full of beans, he had been a great baller in the local youth league whenever his manager hadn’t banned him for turning up late or skipping training. Now, his rapid ageing made him look like a badly maintained thirty something, when he was around twenty just like Ishaq. None of the old sparkle. Ishaq tried not to pity him, he could try and give him that at least that, but he did. The funny thing was that back in the day when Frankie was whole, he would never have apologised for the spliff. He wouldn’t have given a crap what Ishaq thought, or deferred in any way. There was always some beef back then. Ishaq felt it wasn’t even politeness, now, but Frankie’s knowledge of his own fall. He detested Frankie for that. It made him uncomfortable. Yet another old friend. But still. He felt. Something. That these two were of his tribe. More than the money-changers of his local mosque, or the ya-yas he went to university with. Here, in this occulted space, even through the haze, they saw each other. They were his and he was theirs.

  It was hard to tell Rice’s age, her pock marked face had gone the other way of Frankie’s and bloated, giving her the look of a confused puffer fish. Her varicose legs were exposed by her half-leggings. She wore a red beanie, with the embellishment of a soiled Hello Kitty that gave a mocking look. It was pressed down so tight that it partially covered her eyes. Rice gave up hope of climbing and initiated full sobs, inhaling and exhaling loudly. ‘I want to go! I never get to go!’

  Ishaq had seen enough, he looked at Frankie. ‘Alright bruv, good seeing you. I’ll see you about, yea.’ Frankie looked disappointed, his lips wavered as if he wanted to talk on, but he took a glancing look at Rice, ‘Alright safe yea, yea, you too, I’ll see you around. Keep safe, yea.’

  Ishaq thought about what they would do if…not if, when, one of them moved on and made a new friend. How do they survive? When they go in to collect their money from the job centre or wherever, do they get stopped and asked if they needed help? Where was their family? As brief as this empathy was, the thought was crushed, his mind pushed it out.

  He left the duo behind, walked up to the second floor and to the fourth door. He passed the smell of fish that the quiet Sri Lankan family was making. A welcome change. He thought he could detect cinnamon and saffron. Tentative, he put his key into the lock and twisted it slowly. Once in, he made himself small and crept up the stairs, clinging to the walls. He took care to avoid the third step from the top. It held the threat of a loud creak that could alert the house. And as usual, this didn’t work. ‘Issy,’ his mother called, ‘why are you back so late? Have you eaten, baita?’

  Ishaq followed the trail of sound to the largest bedroom and saw his mother sitting on the floor
with a copy of the Quran, giving dhikr using green tasbih. Only a side-table lamp was lit, enveloping his mother with light, glancing off the golden calligraphy on the holy book.

  The Tabrizis lived in a maisonette. Three bedrooms upstairs, with a kitchen and small lounge downstairs. His parents had thought that they would only be in the UK a few years. This transitory feeling, along with constant remittances home, meant that they had never felt secure enough to buy a place outside the estate. Ishaq resented that drag of relatives on his mum and dad. Some amorphous face, a second-cousin twice removed that they were obliged to give a hand. They were lucky to have gotten on the council list, and here they had been ever since. Not sitting on a paper fortune like some of peers who had purchased their Edwardian terraced houses, and ridden the ridiculous London housing bubble ever since. But still able to purchase the property at tuppence when Thatcher allowed right-to-buy. It was a good home. A constant. Something to be thankful for.

  ‘Assalmu alaikum, I was with the brothers at the study circle, I got a shwarma from the Lebanese place before,’ he said.

  Leaning over to kiss her on the cheek, Ishaq recognised the familiar smell of sandalwood that came from her favourite Pakistani soap. While returning the kiss, his mother brushed a hand over his face. A feather touch that held the assurance of someone’s unbroken concern.

  ‘Always with the ‘brothers’; I hope they are good boys.’

  ‘Of course, you know Marwane. Ayub still gives the talks.’

  ‘Yes, nice boys. Good families, but I don’t know the others. You need to eat healthily Ishaq, you are too skinny.’

  ‘Well, I eat enough, I don’t know where it goes. Do you want me to be a doughboy like some of the other Asian kids? You need a forklift truck to get those guys out of bed.’

  Ishaq’s mother shook her head in admonishment but mixed in a smile that always made him happy. They smoothed her wrinkles and gave her a serenity that he yearned for. Ishaq had the slim profile of his father, who he saw snoring away in bed. They shared thin but aquiline noses that could lend them a haughty look when not careful. His father worked as a bus driver, taking overtime whenever possible, and was generally found here sleeping the previous shift away. Rude boys creating disturbances, swearing passengers, aggressive car drivers cutting him up and honking away, overtly risky or overly timid cyclists close to his blind spot while he was turning, none of this fazed him as long as he could come home and have a nice cup of chai.

  It could…no, it should, have been better. When Ishaq’s parents came from Pakistan in the sixties, his father came proudly armed with a mechanical engineering degree from a college in Rawalpindi. Highly expectant that he would soon be of service to the once famous manufacturing industries of the UK, hope was quashed when he found that his qualifications were of no use. Whatever his knowledge and experience, they were treated with contempt. With a wife in tow, extended family back home expecting financial support, and the desire to raise a family, Ishaq’s father got work wherever he could. This meant taking anything, whether it was unregulated building work, driving taxis or delivering food. It meant constant aggro with tempermental customers and being ripped-off by unscrupulous employers. What stung the most was that he was even exploited by members of his own Asian community, who wanted to rinse out every penny of possible use from needy and desperate newcomers. Living in such a fragile and insecure way, without recourse from the law, meant that getting a job with London Transport on the buses had been a boon. Constant work in a secure structure, and supported by a marvellous entity known as a trade union. It felt like a working man’s nirvana.

  Ishaq sat on the bed, careful not to dislodge his father’s slumbering mass, and took a habitual sniff. He held early recollections of his father smuggling him a slight sip of whisky when he had flu or a sniffle. On occasion, his slightly inebriated father would arrive home supported upright by a colleague. Ishaq would help him up the stairs, take his shoes and belt off, and usher him into bed, overseen by his grim-faced mother. If his father ever caught her gaze, he would say, ‘God will judge me, no point you being angry with me too, woman.’

  The funny thing was that it wasn’t his wife he should have been wary of, it was his kids. Ishaq and his sister had started taking up Islamic practices seriously in their early teens. His father was initially concerned when he saw his offspring become unnecessarily pious. Coming to the UK, he had worries that they would be too Anglicised in culture. Brown sahibs who were lost and alien, foreign to him. He could never have guessed at this other outcome. To Ishaq, it looked like the done thing. Like the rest of his cohort, there was a knock on the door, or a recommendation from a friend, sometimes it started with a dars or reading at a mosque. The religion Ishaq was introduced to seemed strange, so alien from the Islam of his parents. Theirs was a religion of Indic customs, saints and homage to ancestral ways. A servile deference to the past that could not hold in the full glare of western interrogation. The new way brought a broom to that superstition and insouciance. Their parent’s unquestioned Islam was entwined with cultural practices. A Gordian knot, so dense and tight that unravelling it was impossible. The only option was a desperate cut, right through. Other children had come home enflamed with religious zeal. Fearing idolatry or corruption, they prohibited anything not supported by a scholarly text. An Islamic state at home. Year Zero. Forcing a head covering on their mother and inveighing against their fathers if they didn’t pray. The strictest Muslims banned music in their homes. Ishaq remembered a pair of brothers so enraptured that they went home and tried to destroy every old CD, tape and vinyl record of their parents by burning them. A bad idea in the confines of a badly ventilated flat. The whole estate came out to see them carted off to hospital with toxic smoke inhalation.

  His father once said to his children, ‘Religious knowledge is like a deep ocean; if you go down too far, you will drown.’ Ishaq had replied, ‘But with time, dedication, and the right training, you can find pearls at the bottom.’ This earnest, meditated answer had made his father arch back in laughter, showing paan-stained molar teeth, while lightly patting his boy on the head. Ishaq was not like the others, he had not tried to change his parents after he became more observant. Along with his sister, he did try to wean them away from what he felt were the more outlandish practices that conflicted with Islam. Those superstitions about protective amulets or special wristbands. His mother used to send money to a so-called holy man in India so that he would pray for them. Ishaq put an end to it. As well as being in conflict with the rules regarding intercessors and God, he saw a shabby scam. A scam that he saw repeated across the estate. Here was fecund soil for all sorts of chancers to capitalise on the downcast. A marketplace of sorts, the hawking of blind hopes disguised as truths. He had seen people use African faith healers, to cure sickness or try and get a disabled child to walk. Spiritual mediums offered succour to the elderly for the right price. Rich outsiders used indigent locals as proxies to sell even more impoverished people their pyramid schemes. Payday loans at extortionate interest rates, once offered by spivs and loan sharks, were now being pushed by large corporations. Ishaq remembered he had to chase one out when he was fourteen. Stumbling in, as his mum was about to sign something more out of politeness than understanding, Ishaq hurled Anglo-Saxon at the salesman. Effing and blinding at the man while his shocked mother admonished him for being so rude to a guest.

  There were many other religious groups as well. Ishaq’s home was always being pamphleted by some zealous new convert to Seventh Day Adventism or a new Christian sect. And of course there were the Mormons. Slickly combed young American missionaries, doing a tour of duty for their army of God. Wandering around the estate, with oiled and well-combed hair, dressed in suits and ties in a way that only a 1950s American could possibly think was refined, they actually came across as sinister within the ragged environs of the estate. Always unerring in their politeness and smiles, they never got mugged or harassed. Their total ignorance of the area seemed to give them
such mental freedom of their surroundings that they came across to residents as totally alien, and stark raving mad, rather than replicable models of civility. His mother always invited them in for tea and cake until, one day, Ishaq was finally at home for a visit. His house must have been blacklisted as a lost cause and they as perished irredeemable souls. In an inversion of the Lamb’s Blood of Moses’ tenth plague, whenever a new tour of Mormons started wandering the estate they now always passed over his place. His mother of course chastised him for once again being so rude. Offering any sort of counter-opinion to any guest was deemed disrespectful by his mother’s standards ‘Just let them talk Ishaq; they seem like good boys.’

  Ishaq felt Islam was above this. Yes, Muslims believed in a great omnipotent being, but not in a man or men. It felt so systematic. It concentrated on deeds as well as faith. It offered the certainties of ritual that inculcated healthy habits of discipline while also focusing on the brotherhood of mankind, and conditioning of the heart. From its inception, it offered a universality that was lacking in other faiths. His view, and that of his generation’s, looked to his parents like a new and exotic way of practising the religion. Theirs was still a localised Islam from the sub-continent, that seemed isolated and superstitious. A return to a more textual way enabled Muslims to reach out to each other across language, race and nation. Ishaq wasn’t pushy though. He had seen how hard his parents had struggled and did not see how he could justify being harsh towards them like some of his peers were with their own. He reassured his parents with his behaviour, and his dad even started to pray. He remembered the saying of the prophet, peace be upon him, ‘Islam began as strange and it will return as strange, so give glad tidings to the stranger.’ The house had settled into a heartening rhythm of prayers interspersed with normal life. When asked questions by his parents, he just provided books in Urdu about Tawhid, the oneness and indivisibility of a God that created and transcended the universe. Maybe this meant that his faith wasn’t as strong as his friends. But his mum was always praying in the night. He didn’t do that and he doubted his friends did, so how could he judge her? He did not stop his mother playing her radio. In fact, he secretly found a lot of the old Urdu and Hindi songs soothing in their reflective melancholy. No one could invoke loss, pain and nostalgia as well as those songwriters and poets. Ishaq would find himself laden with the yearning that his parents must feel for home and loved ones. As well as praying, cooking and fretting, Ishaq’s mother also loved poetry. He would marvel at how she could recall classic verses and couplets written by Ghalib, Faiz, Iqbal and others. Enchanting verse about longing and belonging, that could easily be talking about lost homes as well as loves. His parents were generous people and he wasn’t sure he knew any other genuinely nice people, including himself.