The Study Circle

by Haroun Khan

  The tea arrived, and a glass ramekin of sugar cubes came with it. Simon picked the sugar and held it up, squinting in study. ‘Ooh, not sachets. This part of the world is up-and-coming, hey?’

  Ayub watched-on as Simon played with the brown cubes, using his fingers to push them one way then another. As if he was undertaking a thorough examination of a strange substance.

  ‘Maybe they were better off in packets, without you placing your manky hands all over them.’

  Simon look abashed, stopped playing, and plonked a couple of white cubes into his tea. They made a plop as they hit the hot liquid and caused concentric circles that radiated outwards.

  Simon took a sip, gave out a satisfied sigh and leaned back. ‘Ayub, don’t you get sick of all this bloody moralising. It’s oh so tiring. There are more subtle ways to get your point across.’

  ‘Tiring? I’m disturbing your sense of decorum, am I? Emotion and earnestness too vulgar for you? We live in a time when someone thinks it’s ok to travel from here and cut a head off on YouTube. On the other side, people disappear into a legal black hole, imprisoned. Both are people that look and sound like me. There’s nothing subtle or sophisticated about what’s happening to us…maybe it’s time for a bit of moralising.’

  Ayub’s voice had raised and people were looking at them. Simon shook his head, indicating for Ayub to calm it down.

  ‘I just have a problem with organised religion. The carrot-and-stick approach to it all.’

  Hushed, Ayub said, ‘Well, doesn’t look like it’s even good at that. Anyway, what’s your alternative? Interest rates and CCTV?’

  ‘Ok, ok, enough, Ayub. Enough. We need to tone it down on the preaching. Times have changed and we won’t allow it.’

  ‘Allow it? Be careful, don’t you represent my elected government?’

  ‘Now it’s your turn to stop winding me up, Ayub. Things are different. You need to be more like…’ Simon waved a hand around the cafe ‘…everyone else. Here, I have something that might be helpful.’

  Simon took a book out of his satchel, placed in on the table and slid it towards Ayub. ‘It’s worth a read, it helped me out too.’

  Ayub was worried that Simon had turned Jehovah Witness and was giving him a copy of Watchtower, but then he scanned the front: The English by Jeremy Paxman, and thought, You cheeky bloody bastard.

  Their conversations always came close to having to justify their existence. Ayub didn’t need Simon’s approval for that. He didn’t need to explain his right to be. He would not do that. I’m not the strange one, thought Ayub, you are.

  Ayub smiled. ‘Why thank you Simon. You know, I think people in power truly believe it’s a choice, between Islam, and going to the Opera, quoting Shakespeare and taking high tea. No, it’s a choice between Islam and what you’ve done to the rest of the working class. They have nothing. You’ve taken it all. You use benefits as bribery so they don’t riot, to keep them out of your view and then batter them for it. Reduced to fighting for scraps while their MPs pig-out on expenses.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Ayub. You’re better than that. Come on.’

  Ayub picked up a cube of white sugar between a thumb and forefinger and flicked it away. ‘You think that we landed in Mary Poppins-country, where people sing about a spoonful of sugar, and dance. What we landed in was more like Lord of the Flies. You have to struggle and hustle, and develop an aggression, to survive. An aggression that you guys have made systemic.’

  Simon’s pallor turned a rustic cherry. ‘I’ve had enough. You’re being very unreasonable, today. I admit I’m a very shallow person, Ayub, and I get as pissed-off as the next man, but we have law, tolerance, democracy, free press. A standard of living that the world dreams of. All that, we created. Institutions that are worth defending.’

  ‘All of which are there more for some, than for others.’

  ‘Will you stop?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We get new laws and powers everyday. Someday, to my regret, you might get banged-up for it. I’m trying to help. We’re a bomb away from internment. What do you teach, that’s worth that?’

  ‘Piety, compassion, and duty.’

  Simon let out an immense shredded roar of laughter, tea dripping from his mouth as his body convulsed. He wiped his smeared mouth with a sleeve. This time the rest of the cafe turned their heads to stare at him. ‘That’s the real problem. You’re a bunch of romantics. The mortal world will always disappoint you.’

  Ayub sat impassive, letting Simon’s laughter wash over him.

  ‘Who knows what the results are of what we do with our lives. Whatever happens in your life, don’t you want to come to work and feel like you have made a difference? Ultimately, I don’t think you do make a difference. You just stick plasters on wounds – it’s teachers that heal the wounds. That’s why I won’t stop.’

  Simon started tapping the fingers of his right hand, one by one, getting faster, as Ayub talked, until it was a roll. He suddenly stopped and said, ‘That’s all very interesting and all remarkably besides the point. Maybe you should start a political party, Ayub, or better still get yourself up to Speakers’ Corner and rant at the tourists in Hyde Park. I’m only interested in my job, which is to protect the security of this country. That means disrupting networks of groups of potentially violent people.’

  ‘And, like I said, neither me nor anyone I know is, or wants to be, violent. Ultimately, we like being Muslim. And somehow that’s incomprehensible to you. If you think banging-me up is going to change anything then you’re kidding yourself. Whether you go home to your wife and kids, or some bedsit, on a civil service wage, you’re lying to yourself.’

  Ayub looked at Simon’s now humourless face. Simon had previously mentioned a family. Ayub thought it had been made up, his references to them had faded as time went on, but with Simon’s increasingly forlorn attitude, he knew he had hit a raw spot.

  ‘Keep your nose clean, or you’ll be in big trouble. Anything dodgy, like going near that march coming up…’

  ‘Or what? What are you actually going to do, Simon?’

  Simon picked a brown cube of sugar, pinching and crushing it between two digits until it lost shape, crumbling into granular pieces. He then rubbed those two digits together so there was no residue on his hands. Simon lent over and, in a hushed tone, whispered licks of wet spittle into one of Ayub’s ears. ‘What is the biblical equivalent of your name? Job, isn’t it? The most tested one. You know. You’re a good man. A good ‘good man’. An honourable man. And I enjoy our conversations. But know this. When it’s four am and your front door is smashed in, when your mother is crying and your father is wheezing for his heart-medication as he has a panic attack, and any other family is cowering in a corner, when your head is pinned to the floor – when that happens, do not say I did not warn you.’

  Ayub swallowed and bit at his lower lip. ‘You have rules.’

  ‘Of course, I’m not the man from Spectre.’ Simon rearranged his cufflinks and straightened his neck. ‘But Ayub, you’re right about systems. Once a decree, their will, comes from on-high, it spreads throughout and can’t be stopped. There are no rules.’

  Ayub knew that’s why Simon had let him go on, and vent. Because what Ayub said didn’t matter and Simon knew that. He could talk and talk, and express and be impassioned. He could pour out his soul in a neverending stream, and it wouldn’t change a thing. Simon had the privilege of silence, and the assured inviolability of his own thoughts. Simon was a representative of his, Ayub’s, government, yet was not answerable to him. Because of people like Simon you needed a permit to remain kind in this country, to think good thoughts of your neighbour. But, to acquire one, you needed to fill forms in triplicate, navigate through indecipherable legalese, and surmount the use of invisible ink.

  Ayub clenched a remaining fork on the Formica table, looking at the three, sharp, elongated tines. Lives with no consequence, existences without repercussion. And there begins the temptation to reach
out and make them feel, change them so that they understand, impress on them your reality. But Ayub freed his hand and pushed the fork away, as he knew that that was a warping and twisting rabbit’s hole, from which you could never return. That was the beginning of madness.

  ‘Maybe that’s so, but I have rules. Thank you for the book.’

  17.

  Sitting on the steel table, Ishaq placed three fingers on his upper arm to test its throbbing. He placed more relieving compression on the pressure dressing and padded wrap. Once Marwane had helped him into A&E the triaging nurse had rushed him through, more concerned by the fact that he wasn’t responding well to simple questions rather than the sight of blood.

  Once satisfied they sat him in a curtained area, waiting for an hour. Between the gaps of furrowed curtains he saw other patients being wheeled past. An old man was trolleyed-in and placed in the section beside. Ishaq caught a glimpse of blighted, swollen, eyes that started red at the base but ended in fungal mounds of black. Ishaq watched as the man’s white hairs, on an even paler chest, poked up then retracted. An attendant closed his curtain, but the man’s breathing accompanied Ishaq’s thoughts, a syrupy hoarseness that peaked and troughed.

  They moved Ishaq to his current room where they stuck two drips into him, one in each elbow. One took blood, and Ishaq looked on as red essence looped upwards, sucked out as through a straw. The other elbow held a cannula that put fluids back in. He was told that they needed some time to take tests and his blood count.

  Minute by minute he started to feel better, his head and vision was clearing. His breathing was stronger. He caught sight of himself in a full-length mirror. Sallow skin, his eyes drooped and sunken. A pathetic sight. He looked away.

  ‘I’m Doctor Faisal, and I’ll be dealing with you.’ The doctor had a strong accent and friendly eyes. He bore a large wiry beard and a zabiba or ‘raisin’, a darkened patch of hardened skin on his forehead that showed where he prostrated during prayer. ‘You’ve had a bit of a scare tonight.’

  Ishaq was unsure whether this was a statement or an inquiry so just nodded, thinking a silent rebuttal would deflect any further inquest.

  ‘So what exactly happened here?’ insisted the doctor.

  ‘I was messing about with a friend and I tripped over and cut myself on a chucked beer bottle. It was a bit freakish.’ Ishaq hoped that a slightly trenchant tone would convey that he knew how pathetic an answer this was but also that he did not want to engage further.

  The doctor smiled. ‘Must have been a very long, straight, and sharp broken bottle, and you must have landed right on top…’ He stared at Ishaq for a reaction. ‘You know I should report this?’

  ‘It’s all under control, it was just an accident. I’m near my finals at Uni, so I can’t afford any hassle.’

  The doctor appraised Ishaq, looking over his tracksuit and face. ‘Hmm Hmm, well, you’re lucky. The police have their hands full at the moment. As we have, too, with everything that’s happening. Lots of stupid people hurting each other. Where are you from?’

  ‘The Estate.’

  ‘No, I mean where are you originally from?’

  ‘London.’

  Still not satisfied, the doctor consulted his notes.

  ‘The Estate? That’s rough, I heard there were raids there last month. Boys. Your lot.’

  ‘There’s always something going on. And it’s not my lot.’

  ‘The police said that they have evidence of them buying-up chemicals.’

  Seriously give me a break. Ishaq’s shoulders dipped and his body buckled slightly. ‘They are not my lot. I don’t know anything about it.’

  Ishaq heard a sharp scream from outside the door. The tannoy sounded soon after: DOCTOR TO RESUS. The doctor grabbed his stethoscope and rushed out of the door. Ishaq was left alone once again. He still had a pulse oximeter on a finger and leads on his chest. For amusement he studied the monitor beside him. The numbers, high and low, were incomprehensible but the lines and waves of his heart rate were fascinating: red, green, and blue pulses, that pinged up and down like in a video game. Ishaq first held his breath and then, after a moment, panted rapidly, testing to see if he could make the display change, but had to stop after once again feeling faint.

  He thought about Mujahid, still confused by his behaviour. He remembered one of the last circles that Mujahid had attended. Mujahid would always go on and on about Islam’s golden history and how everything was perfect in those halcyon days, snatching random names from history as evidence.

  Mujahid had said, ‘We should be be proud, and respect our heritage. Gain some dignity from the achievements of people with our beliefs who came before us. Our societies. I was reading how we invented the zero, we should be proud.’

  He remembered joking and throwing the arguments back. It seemed so light-hearted but, looking back, it wasn’t. There was something fundamental at stake. Deep-seated ways of looking at the world that were at odds.

  ‘I read too, Mujahid. Indians and Hindus can claim to have invented that too, and people like al-Kindi brought it over. I’m not saying that what happened back then wasn’t amazing, like ibn Hatham creating the scientific method…’

  ‘See, Ayub. The boy is disrespectful,’ Mujahid had said, kissing his teeth.

  Marwane had laughed as usual. ‘Mic drop.Don’t mess with Ishaq, boy.’

  Ayub had tried to make a soft, smiling intervention, ‘Yes, the West would like to believe they invented everything and, yes, we should talk about it and learn this history ourselves, and make sure it’s not forgotten or discarded, but I’m not sure we should link it to anything deeper.’

  Ishaq said, ‘See, Mujahid, the Greeks made amazing breakthroughs and they worshipped multiple idols. Isaac Newton was an extremist Christian nut, yet that didn’t stop him being a genius, scientifically.’ Ishaq remembered the feeling of showing-off, that he was pushing it too far. ‘Arabs use it for nationalism, which is a joke, too, when half of the famous guys like Al-Khwarizmi, the algebra guy, and ibn Hayyan, the chemistry one, were Persian. Just like they go on about Saladin and forget he was Kurdish.’

  Ishaq had shown him up, but still, he didn’t deserve being here in this disinfected room. He saw that old scene as through a mist, time blurred and replayed. Speech sounded low-pitched and elongated. He remembered Marwane’s chuckles and Mujahid’s abashed look around, before a silent withdrawal. There was still some comfort in harking back to that past.

  The doctor returned.

  ‘I thought you had forgotten about me.’

  ‘Sorry about that. We are really understaffed. I’m a locum myself. They like getting foreigners like me in. We are disposable. You can easily blame us if anything goes wrong. Ha, ha.’

  ‘Was it the old man? What happened?’

  ‘Why do you want to know what happened? What does it matter to you?’ The doctor took off the pressure pad and examined the clotted wound. He took a swab and some iodine and started to cleanse the area. He then relented to Ishaq’s obvious curiosity ‘He died.’

  Ishaq wondered about what kind of life the man had lived and whether he had family. He thought of how little we knew of our end and, in our finality, how death was the absolute equaliser.

  As if reading his thoughts, the doctor said, ‘You shouldn’t be so morbid. It ends for all of us, sometime. But not yet for a young man like you, not tonight.’

  The doctor consulted his notes and checked the monitor. Assured, he took the leads off Ishaq. Talking his way through the procedure, he took a syringe with some local anaesthetic and injected some either side of the wound.

  ‘Ok, we have to wait a few minutes for the anaesthetic to kick in. Ishaq? That’s a strong name. A prophet’s name. Ishaq, Yaqoob, Ibrahim. Do you know where I am from?’

  ‘Egypt.’

  The doctor smiled, tickled and pleased by the correct answer. ‘How do you know?’

  Ishaq looked at the much older man. The dome of his head shining, but cosseted by greying and
white bolsters of hair. ‘Your accent, a guess from the way you look and, I heard in the corridor, you sometimes pronounce ‘j’ as ‘g’.’

  ‘Ah, so you are familiar with Arabs? And your parents are from…?’

  Ishaq was now feeling relaxed, brain-fog lifting, so submitted to the inevitable. He was used to the interest from English people who lived outside London, and co-religionists who were overly-familiar. ‘Pakistan. They’re from Pakistan.’

  ‘Good. Good.’ The doctor’s tone lowered and he peeked around, even though the room was empty. ‘By the way, you’re right not to trust the police, they make things up all the time.’

  The Doctor was warming to this conversation. First the distrust, then a sudden rush into confidence and now he was his co-conspirator in idle discussion. Ishaq nodded timidly, forcing a smile. The Doctor carried on stitching and talking, talking and stitching. Ishaq wanted to ask him to stop the chat and concentrate on the task at hand but thought better of it as he looked at latex-gloved hands sewing the wound,metal forceps in one, to hold his mutilated skin together, and a curved needle with nylon thread in the other.

  ‘Ok…so will I get a scar?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but it’s a pretty clean cut. You might get away with a faint line,’ the doctor said, as he smiled like someone hoping something away in the face of incontrovertible proof.

  The doctor examined the sutures once again, looking at them intently, rubbing his forehead.

  ‘Whoever did this likes jokes, too, I think. Or maybe the cinema.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, look at the cut. It’s marked like a Z. Have you been fighting with Zorro?’

  Ishaq took a look at the railroad of stitches, that turned one way then another. It did look strikingly like a Z. But did he really mean to cut him like that? Ishaq remembered his jokes about the spelling of ‘Muslim Boyz’, but he never told Mujahid. ‘Well, maybe more like a wannabe Robin Hood.’

  The doctor fetched a fresh dressing from a cupboard. ‘Out of interest, those boys on the estate? Do you really believe that they were making and buying stuff to hurt people?’