The Study Circle

by Haroun Khan

  Adam’s face turned remonstrative, his hands and arms coming alive. ‘Getting work is harder, people are treating me differently too. I used to go to villages or building sites and people saw me as one of them, and they were always welcoming. You know? The eccentric English convert with a big beard. But with the climate now…nowadays…people I’ve known for years don’t look at me the same. The trust is gone. It hurts. I used to live across different worlds and they didn’t mix. Now they crash and it’s messy…what’s a moderate anyway?’

  Ayub took up Adam’s rhetorical question. ‘It’s childish politics.’

  He paused. Both men went silent for a while, looking out onto the estate. The rest of London was visible through the flashing slits of daylight between the estate’s tall buildings. If you scanned the scene, from left to right, the city looked like it existed in stills, as if within a Kinetoscope.

  Adam broke their interlude. ‘I’ve been reading some of my old school books. Reading newspapers. Thinking about the past. I think it’s time to try settling again, to try and not block everything out…’ Adam paused and then recited.

  ‘“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;”. Man, I loved that stuff as a kid.’

  Ayub looked amused. ‘What’s that, Beowulf?’

  ‘“And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,”…’

  ‘Ah, you must have gone to some posh country school, I bet. We got stuck with war poetry. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” It is sweet and right to die for your country. Heavy stuff, and about all I can remember. Death, country, sacrifice, futility, all there.’

  Both men embraced the silence once again. They listened as gusts of wind hit the building and were forced down the sides by impenetrable walls, creating bursts of air at the bottom. Gusts that plucked up plastic bags to dance in the wind, happily pirouetting and buoyed to new dizzy heights by the estate’s restive breath.

  Adams face turned stern. ‘Do you ever regret going?’

  Ayub looked at two bags that had reached his eye level, whirling around each other as if in a waltz and then thrusting into deep dives in a dogfight. He hated dredging up the past, raking over memories, excoriating them and making new lacerations, never uncovering anything new.

  ‘What…Bosnia? No. Forget everything else, but Muslims should never forget Bosnia; the British mujahedeen who went over should be proud they did their duty. Why do you ask? You regret it?’ said Ayub, his speech mournful.

  Adam replied, almost in a hush but his inflection carrying an edge that cut the air, ‘No, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Especially when I read stuff coming from that conference. Bosnia was three hundred years of living together. They married each other. The Muslims drank like them. They looked exactly the same, talked the same, and yet…the man who was your neighbour, broke bread with you, the man who married your daughter. The next day that man would be at your door stabbing you like a stranger. As if everything was nothing. As if they were seeing each other for the first time.’

  Ayub inhaled deeply. ‘Yea, all that mixing and it still happened. And they were the moderates that these conference types would love us to be. If you can dehumanise someone you can justify anything. Exterminate like vermin. Look Adam, we’re hated and it’s tough, but it’s a good forced-reminder. It compels us to remember our identity and think about the reality of our situation…forgetting is destruction, annihilation at our own hands or others. Always remember. Even if it’s painful.’

  A chainmail blanket of silence came over them, stifling the screams, muffling the battle cries.

  Adam ventured forth, his voice tentative. ‘It encouraged the Jihadis though. We should never have been so soft with them, or allowed them to fight. I remember we were once on a hill overlooking a Serb village and one of them took an old woman in his sights. This bent-over, ancient woman. She was just getting water from a well. I pushed his rifle down and explained to him how this was wrong. So wrong! How it was against the Sharia. He listened on that day but I knew there would be trouble.’

  Ayub closed his eyes and pinched his nose, and placed his other arm on Adam’s shoulder. ‘It was a war. You took help from whoever you could. It wasn’t our call. And what was the option? Fight Muslim versus Muslim while everything else burned. At least we didn’t indulge in that sin. Muslim blood is cheap for the West, and nowadays it’s even cheaper between ourselves. But, yes, they thought they did it by themselves, they don’t remember the American airstrikes.’

  ‘That wasn’t to help us, that was settling a beef with Russia.’

  ‘Whatever it was. Who knows? Adam, there is so much that goes on that we have no clue about, or power over. That’s what I try and tell the kids. Don’t get confused with all the hundreds of issues and spread your energy thinly. Try and concentrate on something and be good at it. Do things for the sake of Allah, not because you are angry or hurt. We should act out of nobility, not because we want to lash out.’

  ‘And does it work?’

  ‘Well, I struggle to follow my own advice most of the time.’ Ayub smiled as Adam attempted a sympathetic laugh. ‘Why this serious talk, Adam? Unearthing the past…it’s like opening an old wound again and again. For what end?’

  Adam reappeared every few years, with the same questions, like a ghost from some Dickensian tale. Their shared history brought up feelings of sorrow. Grief and mourning that emanated from another lifetime.

  ‘Just taking stock you know…I was young when I converted. I had just turned twenty. I moved from youth home to youth home, and I’m still used to moving. Sometimes you have to stop and think.’

  Ayub nodded. ‘True, I wish I had that option, but I’m here. In a way I’m jealous of you. You’re as free as a bird. You go where the road takes you. Like the prophet, peace be upon him, said, “Be in this world as a traveller.”’

  ‘Yea, but I have to take my mind everywhere with me. I’m not as free as you think. May Allah bless you, I’ve always wished I could be as strong as you, staying and looking after these people. Everyone looks up to you,’ said Adam, one hand grasping his beard and pulling down, in an effort to calm its erratic strands.

  ‘I don’t do it too well. I’m not sure anyone listens. If they only knew how difficult it is sometimes. I struggle too, Adam. Like for the kids on this estate who go the wrong way, violence is easy. It’s easy to lose yourself to the violence. I see the simplicity and clarity in it. How attractive it is. That’s what I want to tell these kids, stealing from each other or stabbing each other. What I want to tell our idiots, and their idiots, who want to reduce everything to a simple brawl.’

  Ayub continued, ‘The takfiris and men of violence…they are bombing people away from the religion. We can’t allow them to bomb us into taking away the good of Islam. Adam, we have to cling onto our civilised ways. Not let these people denigrate and erode our values. To bring us down. And as for the West. We remember. We remember our histories.’

  Adam had been listening as if it was a sound from afar, distant and disconnected. A faint echo. He looked to Ayub and said, ‘I knew there were some crazies, but the amount of pain and hate you must feel to do some of that stuff…they’ve caused everyone suffering, especially themselves. It’s totally out of control. And as for the West…who remembers anything.’

  In a drowsy lethargy, almost slurring his words, dragging them across the floor, Ayub said, ‘We must remember, though. Remember everything. Just like we remember Srebrenica.’

  Still, Ayub thought going had been the right decision, as near to a righteous war as was possible. A responsibility to stop the slaughter of those within a day’s drive of London. Ayub was born as a Muslim during that war. He never had the cynicism of the youth. Boys like Ishaq, Marwane and Shams. They did not notice how their being had formed in a climate of distrust and harsh realities. Like their bones, their character calcified deeply until it became their essence. At their age, Ayub still believed in systems, h
e had a natural belief that things would improve and get better for all people. Srebrenica changed all that. Besieged by the Serbs on all sides, Bosnian Muslims gave up their guns as asked. They trusted Europe, trusted the United Nations, trusted their ‘safe haven’. A leap of faith that did not seem that wild, that delusory, at the end of the Cold War when everything was changing, when history had ended. But, when the town fell, eight thousand ended, forgotten in mass graves. Their bodies discarded, industrial bulldozers lumping their carcasses on top of each other.

  Bosnia had many lessons. It destroyed the illusion that anything other than might is right, that Europe could be trusted. Ayub remembered. He had a clear vision of talking to one Bosniak in an old ramshackle cafe in Travnik, its roof collapsed like a broken back so that it was now really no more than a lean-to. Its stony faced walls riddled with bullet holes. Slumped and staring, the man had said, ‘Never give up your guns. Mercy is the privilege of the strong. Suffering, the reward of the weak.’ That wizened, striated, face and those absent raisin-eyes had stayed with Ayub.

  ‘And how do we do it?’ Adam asked.

  ‘By being better, that’s all there is. Work harder, be more honest, be kinder, persevere. Worship Allah for his sake alone, not for the trappings of the world. There’s no other way. No sensible alternative.’

  Both men watched as the sun disappeared, its coral presence shimmering out of existence. Estate and night fusing, so that there was no horizon.

  Adam said, ‘I’m sorry, Ayub, I’ve brought a proper downer with me.’

  ‘No, no, it’s good. Too much laughter does deaden the soul, like you say. It’s good to think about realities. It’s good to have some grown-up conversation.’

  ‘I don’t know how to say this…but there’s another reason I’m here.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m being hassled again. They’re back.’

  Impassive, Ayub used a soft guiding hand to steward Adam back into the flat. ‘It’s time for prayer.’

  9.

  ‘Who was that guy Ayub was chatting to?’ Shams asked, as he shuffled along, short legs struggling to keep pace.

  Ishaq as ever forged an urgent path. Hands in pockets, his head dipped and his mouth sipping the drawstring of his black hoody, Ishaq offered a smothered reply. ‘Don’t know. Maybe an old friend; I haven’t seen him before. Anyway, what was that ‘it’ thing you couldn’t say?’

  ‘Well…ip dip dog shit fuckin bastard silly git. You are IT,’ said Shams, as he tagged Marwane.

  Marwane looked around at Shams, shook his head and gave a shrug.

  The boys reached the Broadway as radiant tendrils of foaming-pink dragged down a curtain of twilight sky. This was punctuated by neon signs, glowing crimson, that adorned shops. They passed an amusement arcade, filled to its extremities with one-armed bandits, and roulette machines, and pub quiz cabinets. On video screens greyhounds chased digital manifestations of a hare. Simulacra of Arabian stallions and thoroughbred horses jostled to victory.

  Ishaq noted one man sat at the front, torpid and gaping upwards at a display that produced floating colours, like a stained glass window. Without looking, the man took notes, not coins, out of a plastic bag and fed them into the gluttonous machine. Ishaq felt the urge to go in and pinch him hard to see if he would feel, to see if he would flinch.

  The arcade swapped regular traffic with a pub next door. A tapas shop had popped-up and was conspicuous as a rare enclave completely populated by white faces. A new organic deli had elbowed its way in, among halal meat butchers and curry houses dripping with ghee. That clean-eating nirvana hosted economic migrants fleeing the tumult of rising London house prices in Chelsea and Clapham. Now, locals sometimes stopped in their tracks and stared at colourful sightings of the lesser-spotted yummy mummy and men who wore plaid.

  Marwane kissed his teeth and nudged Ishaq in the direction of the pub. ‘See, that’s a proper ghetto.’

  ‘You should go in there and make some friends.’

  As they passed outside they saw one man, drunk, eyelids almost fastened, waving a crutch at a friend as he hobbled round in a circle, incoherent. His equally paralytic pal returned fire, protesting about money or a round. Marwane looked at them and said, ‘No thank you.’

  The smaller, unkempt man with the aid wore an Adidas two-stripe tracksuit rip-off, probably bought from Tooting market. Clouded in fury he swung his crutch in an arc that nearly took Ishaq’s head off, forcing him backwards onto Shams. The swing took in a wide area before its centrifugal force escaped and the man collapsed in a heap on the floor, face planted downwards. The other, with a grey chapped beard, in his forties or fifties, knelt down to try and pick his mate up. ‘Don’t be like that Tommy, it’s just a fuckin’ pint.’

  With his help Tommy got up, bleeding profusely from his nose, effin’ and blindin’. He staggered away, his friend trailing him warily.

  Marwane returned to the middle of the pavement looking after them. ‘It’s sad you know, to only be able to connect to another through alcohol. What kind of life is that?’

  ‘That’s a bit deep for you. Anyway it’s their culture, we don’t have to respect it. We tolerate it.’ Ishaq gave a brief thought to his father.

  Shams, Marwane and Ishaq made their way further down the road. Down the high street they passed by the familiar. An Asian man proudly displayed his fruit and veg on the paving outside his shop, making a haphazard display. Another sold mobile phone accessories, with a side venture in hair extensions for black women. Customers who were oblivious that the hair came from some girl in penury. Someone who’d had their head shaved in some Indian temple far away, as an offering to the local deity. People scurried in and out of money exchanges and international-call shops. The boys rushed on, passing all of this by. They wanted fried chicken.

  KFC wasn’t halal so local entrepreneurs had created their own versions, so you now had chains of ‘Dallas’ and ‘Tennessee’ fried chicken battling it out to be the main source of Islamic coronary heart disease.

  Marwane pointed at Shams’ head. ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Whaddya mean?’ Shams touched his head. He wore a baseball hat that almost resembled a public school cap. Slightly flat, it had a small felt peak with maroon and grey quarters. It made him look like a character straight out of Just William. ‘This? It’s designer from the States. It’s cool, don’t you think?’

  ‘Like you said, Americans make all sorts of crap. Now it’s designer Harry Potter. Give it here.’ Marwane ripped the hat from Shams’ head and ran down the street. Shams gave chase and, after a pause, a begrudging Ishaq ran too. They slowed down before the takeaway, bent over, grabbing air in between gasping laughter. Marwane flung the cap at Shams. ‘Ah, I didn’t want it anyway.’

  Passing the Gurdwara they arrived at the fried chicken shop and noticed a cop car. Ishaq whispered, ‘Five-O.’ A feeling of dread creeping upwards, inverse to the slowing of the patrol.

  The boys stalled their pace to the point where you could hear their feet scraping the ground. They turned their backs, hoping to avoid eye contact and giving them an excuse to make them even more uncomfortable walking their own streets. The driver looked at the other officer, in the passenger seat, who nodded. They parked, turned off the engine, exited, and walked towards the group.

  ‘Alright lads, you from round here? What you up to today?’

  Shams and Marwane looked away while Ishaq said, ‘Nothing Officer, just getting something to eat.’

  The Officer paused, surveying the three. ‘You looked to be in a right rush there. Where were you coming from?’

  ‘Typical bullshit, why don’t you just leave us alone, we weren’t up to nothing,’ blurted out Shams, until he was stopped by a stare from Ishaq.

  In a calm manner, and with empty hands held out wide, Ishaq said, ‘We were just having a laugh on the street.’

  ‘And where are you from?’

  ‘The estate.’

  ‘Ok…the reason why
we’ve stopped you is that we’re looking for a group of lads who have been involved in a fight, and a mobile’s been stolen and you match their description.’

  ‘Ok, what description is that?’

  ‘Two Asian males and one black. In tracksuits. One with a cap. You lads fit that.’

  Marwane’s eyes lifted; he was used to being mistaken for all sorts by the police, once being told that he was ‘ethnically indeterminate.’ ‘Mate, I’m not black for a start…’

  ‘And we’ve got nothing to do with what you said anyway,’ finished Ishaq.

  Both officers looked at Marwane. Unsure, and studying him as if they were trying to ascertain whether he was black, mixed race, or Arab or what. Ishaq shook his head and stifled a laugh at the coppers’ inanity.

  The silent officer whispered into the other’s ear. Police sometimes said that gangs could hand-off to other sets of people as a petty excuse.

  The first officer nodded and turned to the boys. ‘A member of the public witnessed three people. Two were definitely Asian, therefore we have grounds to search.’

  ‘Well that describes just about everyone round here. What race did you say again? Just like us? This is dumb, I’m outta here.’ Shams started to walk away but was blocked by the arm of an officer.

  ‘Look, no one is going anywhere. If this is a mistake, then this will all be cleared up quickly. This has only happened in the last ten minutes and you are the only guys matching the description.’

  ‘Don’t touch me. This is bollocks.’

  Ishaq held Shams’ back to draw him back in case he faced up to the coppers. ‘Shams, just let them get on with it.’

  ‘But Issy, we’re only here minding our ways. It’s not right.’