The Study Circle

by Haroun Khan

  In light of developments, in Europe, the march had been cancelled and coaches from round the country were being turned back. But still they came. Streets were cordoned off, but people managed to find gaps, like mice gnawing at barriers, squeezing their pressed bodies through tiny holes

  Police, irate residents, a broken shopkeeper, Shams didn’t notice any of them. He walked on, away from the troubles, back to the industrial estate. Shams was tired of being scared, tired of being looked down upon, tired of being a victim. He would take the package. He would show Mujahid that he was worthy. Show that racist twat that he shouldn’t be messed with. Show Marwane and Ishaq that he was a man to be reckoned with.

  He waited around a corner, and spied the man with his comrades. He looked on as they loaded a van with placards, and also saw them chuck-in some iron bars in the back. With the skinny one in the drivers seat they drove off, leaving Charlie to himself. Shams peeled himself around the bend and walked to the hut, slightly crouched, tempering his breath as he tried to regulate a pummelled heartbeat. He placed a hand on his waistband to reassure himself of his guaranteed safety. Entering, he saw the man bending down, playing with some signs. The floor creaked and Charlie turned around and looked on Shams like he was seeing the postman.

  ‘You couldn’t have picked a worse fuckin’ day to sort this out. You’re lucky the others didn’t see you, they’re out for blood.’

  Charlie returned to his sifting at the back of the cabin.

  ‘I thought you wanted this sorted quickly? I’m here now,’ insisted Shams.

  Charlie drew an impatient sigh and his gaze turned again but made a lingering stop on Shams’ face. Shams’ face felt taut yet his palsied muscles wanted to twitch independently of his control and betray him.

  ‘Yea, well, come on then. Spit it out, where’s the cash?’

  Shams stepped forward, stiffened in statue form then screwed his rusting neck and looked around.

  Charlie stood. ‘Come on. Chop chop. Are you fuckin’ retarded or somethin’? Don’t stand there like a dumb paki. I’ve got places to be.’

  Shams broke free of his stupor and stared Charlie straight in the eyes ‘Don’t speak like that to me, or this will all kick-off, right? There’ll be problems between your lot and my lot. We can do business but don’t be a cunt about it.’

  ‘Your lot? Your fuckin’ lot?’ The man’s hot-plated head reddened. ‘Your lot is why this country is in such a mess. Just like this; you fuck around and make a mess. Nothing runs smooth.’

  ‘Your lot just enjoy hating things, makes you feel big and powerful.’

  The man started laughing, holding on to his stomach with both hands to stop gelatinous wobbles, afraid they would change his centre of gravity and topple him. Charlie’s mirth came to an abrupt end as he saw Shams lift up his coat and reach for an object in the waistband of his trackie bottoms. He watched Shams raise the paring knife he had bought for his mum. Charlie’s voice dropped an octave, and levelled off. ‘What the fuck are you going to do what that bloody toothpick? Don’t be silly, be a good boy now and go home. You’ve fucked this up.’

  ‘Give me the package.’ Shams’ voice came out in a quiet tremor that issued from deep within but barely had the momentum to exit his throat. His right hand extended forward, with the knife pointed in Charlie’s general direction. The arm was shaking and Shams felt his legs wanting to give way.

  ‘I’m not giving shit.’ Charlie put both hands out in a grappling position. Shams’ shaking, and his mask of thoughtless despair, had unnerved Charlie. He had the instinctual notion that you could not control a man not in mastery of his self. Charlie’s hands waved up and down, pre-empting any charge on Shams’ part. Shams stepped forward, taking arid swallows, trying to introduce moisture to his mouth.

  Charlie’s voice took an uncertain pitch, shorn of its previous confidence. ‘Look, I don’t want any trouble. My mates have seen you – do something stupid and they’ll be after you. I can see that this ain’t you.’

  Shams coughed and cleared a parched throat. His legs felt steadier and his own voice held. ‘They ain’t here now though, are they? They’re too busy causing shit elsewhere. Give me the package.’

  ‘Look around, can’t you see we’re still shifting signs for the protest? They’ll be back. Just put it down and we’ll forget it ever happened.’ His hands still feeling the air looking for holds and gauging no response from Shams. ‘You’re scared shitless, and I’m not liking this, too. That’s why, just now, my mate has managed to park up outside, and you ain’t heard jack. It’s over.’

  No other smell, no sight, no other sounds, he could only hear Charlie’s voice, see that pudgy face, and smell his wrenching sweat. Only the two of them existed, only the package had meaning, and the sole reality was the knife. He perceived a dark void behind him. He felt the sense of falling, plunging in an endless drop. He jerked his head to look back, to stem the panic, to take in the wider picture, to see if there was a larger truth.

  The van was not there. Shams’ coiled head sprung back but, too late, he felt a pain in his right arm that made him lose grip on the knife. Charlie had made a grab at a placard and swung it into Shams’ arm at the elbow. The knife bounced on the hut floor, and the fat man and Shams went head down in a scrum. Tackling each other, trying to knock each other’s hands out of the way, but only succeeding in pushing the knife around. It was bobbing around like a baitfish hooked to some arcane line and lure. Charlie could hardly shift his blubbery anatomy but his sheer weight impeded Shams from pushing any further forward. Shams pulled back, stood, and attempted a penalty kick at Charlie’s orbed head, but the man grabbed his foot and pulled, taking the other leg from beneath him. Sham hit his head, then fell flat on his back with a reverberating thump that made the floorboards judder around them, and dust mushroom-up into the air.

  Tongue out and panting, Charlie got off the floor, propped-up by his hands, and booted Shams in the midriff, winding him and eliciting a hollow lament. Tottering, his legs shaking, Charlie knelt on both knees and crawled towards the knife, putting one hand over another until his right hand felt the chill of the blade under a palm. He pushed to get himself up but, instead, felt pain and pressure on his hand that led to a reflexive roll of the palm, which forced the sharp side of the blade into his hand, at an acute angle. Charlie screamed. Looking up, on his hand he saw a boot with its edged heel cutting into it. Crunching his eyes in pain, he followed the boot up and saw a taller, athletic-looking Asian youth staring at him.

  ‘Try anything stupid and I’ll finish you.’ The man looked at the boy and thought this face was different. This one was all unforgiving lines and cold, still and more certain. He felt more pressure on his hand and cried in pain. Ishaq leant down and prised the knife out from under Charlie’s splayed hand.

  ‘You’re still hurting my hand.’

  Charlie’s vision blurred. He heard the new boy’s voice say, ‘Ok, I’m going to let go of you, and you’re going to stay on the floor. Are we clear?’ Charlie nodded in blind acquiescence.

  In a slow movement Ishaq drew his foot up, and the man pulled a bloodied hand back and sat on his inflated backside. He brought the hand to his chest for nursing, cradling it and yet ashamed of it, like one of his pups.

  ‘Ok, stay on the floor and shuffle back.’ Charlie did as asked, and saw a third guy. Much taller with loud, fuzzy hair.

  Ishaq looked at Charlie and recognised him as being, once, from the estate. From its dark ages. From within the dwindling white population that had become more uncomfortable with each passing day. They fled. To places further out of the city. Ishaq had been to one, once, to see an old friend and had seen many faces like Charlie’s. In some ways those areas were even scarier than the estate. Running from London, a seething human wave with a white crest of resentment, collapsed into suburban housing estates that were low density but drowning in government dependency. The only acceptable integration was one where they had their foot on his neck. Hidden away, from
the spotlight of the big city, they did not even have the media fetishisation of ‘ghetto’ and ‘urban’ life to make them feel special. Ishaq saw the same impulsive hate in this man’s eyes. But still he wanted to say, ‘You don’t know us? You don’t know me? I don’t want this either.’

  Ishaq saw the protest signs. A right grubby mess, this was. He half-expected there to be something about ‘Muslamic law’ or ‘Never submit to Aslan’.

  ‘Where’s this package?’

  Charlie thought Ishaq’s voice was stern and, though juvenile, rigid. Charlie jutted his head in the direction of a large office pedestal at the back of the hut.

  Ishaq looked at Marwane. Marwane walked over and opened the pedestal, taking out a large cardboard box. Within the box he found rectangular cuboids wrapped in brown paper. Marwane picked a package and started unravelling it.

  Ishaq eyed Shams. ‘Let’s see how much trouble you’re…we’re in, shall we?’

  Marwane threw a package over to Ishaq, who started ripping at the paper. After a few layers he uncovered a printed box, packaging for the latest hi-tech smartphone. He opened the box and chucked out the manual and cables. He took out the phone and polystyrene, discarding them on the floor. When it was empty he levelled the box with his eye to make sure he had not missed anything. Confused, Ishaq asked Marwane to throw him another, this time from the bottom of the box. More packaging and paraphernalia became trash on the hut floor.

  Both phones in his hand he looked for an opening, tracing edges with a finger. They didn’t have an obvious battery compartment. Ishaq took one and looked at it in silhouette, noted how thin it was, and then twisted it round and round, looking for an opening. Marvels of modernity that had no room for flaws, no obvious entry points, or vulnerability. He looked at Charlie, who remained disinterested, too busy wheezing and catching his breath. Ishaq took one phone and slammed it into the edge of a table. Once. Twice. Then in a countless flurry. At first the casing just warped more and more, until the screen and tiny screws started coming apart and the casing spilled industrial secrets from its innards. Nothing. There was nothing in the phone except for a battery, chips and sensors, and memory. Severed silicon arteries and a spaghetti mass of metal.

  Marwane opened a couple of other boxes and it was the same thing. Ishaq looked at Charlie and demanded, ‘Where are the drugs?’

  Charlie sat on the floor, coughing and heaving. ‘Drugs? Why the fuck would there be drugs?’

  ‘Did you know what was in the box?’

  ‘Of course I know, I’m the one that processed it. I work as a loader and know people in customs.’

  ‘So what’s the deal with Mujahid?’

  ‘He just tells me that he’s getting shipments in at the airport and I look the other way, or get it sorted out. He avoids taxes, like that. Sells them on. I’m a family man just like him, I wouldn’t get involved in anything shady. He cleaned himself up way-back, too.’

  ‘So, no drugs?’ said Ishaq, his manner insisting and trying to force an affirmative, ignoring Charlie’s dubious definition of shady.

  ‘Bloody hell, no. What are you talkin’ about? Who said that? I’d lose my job that way. This is just a bit of money on the side. I live at home with my mum and dad, I’m so skint. This keeps the kids in presents and stuff. Look, there’s a picture of them on my phone in my coat over there. My darlings.’

  Ishaq put a hand up declining the offer. He looked at both Shams and Charlie and realised that the only person who had mentioned drugs was him. He was filled with a flooding shame, but still the situation had to be solved. ‘So you two were about to kill each other over a bunch of mobile phones?’

  ‘Don’t look at me, look at him,’ said Charlie, rubbing his face and then directing flabby arms towards Shams. ‘He had the knife. The dumb shit.’

  ‘Why did you double the money?’ said Shams, in retaliation.

  ‘You looked as green as anything, thought I’d chance my arm.’ Charlie moved to get up but Ishaq shook his head. ‘I would’ve backed down if he had pushed it. It was just a business deal, pure and simple.’

  Ishaq tapped a couple of signs with his boot. ‘You’re like the EDL, are you? Off to that dumb march today? What did you expect to happen?’

  Charlie’s face wobbled, he put his head down between his arms. ‘C’mon, nothing against you lads. Just protesting against extremists. People who don’t adapt to our ways. You know…when in Rome do as the Romans do, and all that.’

  Shams, invigorated by his backup, took a step towards Charlie. ‘He started it all, he kept on calling me a paki. He was being well abusive.’

  Ishaq looked to Charlie for a response. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it…just short for Pakistani, ain’t it?’

  Marwane started laughing. ‘Why don’t you and me go down to Brixton or Harlesden and start calling random black people what your short version of Nigerian is, then?’

  Charlie went silent. Ishaq looked at him dumped on the floor there, bald, teary-eyed, with a misshapen body that had fat spilling out at all sorts of angles. He had no real form at all. He looked like an ugly baby that had been ejected out into the world, confused and dejected. Ishaq walked over and stood over him, watching the man take fright and cringe.

  ‘Do you really think we asked to be here? No, but we are and we’re not going anywhere. We’re here, now, because you lot went out there, then. We’re not the barbarians at the gate, we are the Romans, now.’ Ishaq put out a hand and saw the man scrutinise it, to see whether it was a trick, an open palm that would quickly curl into a fist. The decision was made to take it and Ishaq helped the man up. ‘We’ll pass the phones on.’

  ‘How about my money?’ Charlie took on a look of puppy-innocence, as of the aggrieved party. ‘A deal is a deal. I promise nothing more will come of this. Mate, be reasonable, it was all an obvious misunderstanding.’

  Ishaq took an envelope from his coat and threw it at the man’s feet, making another shake of his head to ward-off any questions arising from Marwane’s startled look at the cash. The man leant over to pick it up and perched his backside on the table, careful to avoid the entrails and guts of the smashed phone. He opened the envelope, licked a finger, and flicked through the notes.

  ‘That’s not enough. The deal was…’ Charlie’s protest was stopped by an unequivocal stare.

  Ishaq looked at Shams, who was standing a bit prouder. The boy who would be king. ‘You give these to Mujahid and it’s all sorted yea? Seriously Shams, what did you think was going to happen? You stab him, no one notices?’

  ‘It was just a threat. I didn’t expect it to go down like that.’ Rubbing the back of his head in acrimony, Shams spat out the final bit of his reply with pestilence. ‘Where did you get all those notes from? I didn’t need your help anyway.’

  Ishaq shouted, the hut echoing with his voice. ‘You didn’t need my help? You didn’t need my help? You were about to stab a man over nothing, just some crap little deal. Of course you needed my help. You, this guy, Mujahid. Brawling over scraps while the rest of society sneers at how pathetic you all are. That guy’s right, you’re a fucking idiot.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me that way.’ Shams threw a punch at Ishaq. His fist impacted in the groove where Ishaq’s nose met his cheek, knocking him down.

  Ishaq stayed on the floor, feeling a swelling in his face. Shams must have caught his upper lip as well, as he could taste his own blood dribbling into his mouth. The tinge of pain was a confirmation of everything. ‘Brave now, Shams, and you haven’t got the shakes like you normally get. Full-on fighter. Scared in front of the non-muslims, but to your own you’re full-on ready to use violence. Brave man. Go on, hit me again.’

  Marwane tried to help Ishaq up, but he pushed Marwane’s hand away and stood up, dropping the knife. Light from the hut’s windows reflected in Shams’ eyes. Ishaq could see the world there and it was on fire.

  ‘You just don’t understand…it’s difficult, so difficult. Ishaq, you’re such a fool, you think it�
�s possible for us to live decent lives and that it will all sort itself out. That people see the difference between you and me, and Mujahid and Ayub. But that’s not what’s happening. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Just damned.’

  Shams took gulps of air, struggling to breathe. He tapped on the side of his head, two straightened fingers like poles, banging into his temple. Like a deranged woodpecker trying to get at his brain. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Shams screamed, primarily at Ishaq but releasing his ire at it all. His friend, the golden-boy. Proper mummy’s-and-daddy’s boy. Oh, Ishaq is good at sports. Ishaq is good at studies. Ishaq is pious, wise, even-tempered. The brothers respect him. The kuffar talk to him nicely. The one who glides along, while all the shit sticks somewhere else.

  ‘And why do you always think you can talk to me like this? Where have you been all this time? What the fuck do you know? You’re always right. You’ve always been the golden-child. You stopped giving a fuck about me and anyone else a long time ago. You’re just selfish, man. Self-centred, self-involved and selfish. Don’t talk to me like you’re helping me out. There’s always a bottom line for you, for Mujahid, for him, everyone.’

  Ishaq felt like his face had been slapped. He didn’t recognize this kid. The one who thought he could prove he wasn’t an animal by acting like one. The screw-up everyone loved. The one who had the freedom to be thoughtless.

  Ishaq hit back in a stuttered shout, ‘That’s not true.’

  Shams said, ‘And where has it got you, Ishaq? You’re going be stuck on the estate just like the rest of us. Study, being good, for what? The only difference between you and me will be some cheap certificate your mum can put up on a wall.’

  Even while being present here the two boys couldn’t bear the memory of each other. Distorted mirrors of who they are, what they might be. They spent time in examination and just increased their unease. The ensuing silence was broken by Charlie. Looking jolly, with his cash stuffed in his pocket, the white man said, ‘Look, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, now. I don’t understand and it’s not my business anymore, so I think it’s best I just go home and leave you to it.’