Akram's War Read online

  ‘I’m going to make up one-kilo bags of rice,’ I said, staring nervously at a series of open sacks propped up against the counter.

  ‘What for, coward?’

  ‘And packets of lentils: brown, yellow and black.’

  He shook his head. ‘Here it is my system!’ He continued in a softer but condescending tone. ‘When the customer comes in they ask for a pound of this and a pound of that and I make it up in front of them and that way they know I am not cheating them.’ He laughed. ‘No one here asks for kilos.’

  ‘Then I’ll make up pounds,’ I offered.

  ‘Sometimes they ask for a pound’s worth in money, not weight. What will you do then? You will measure it out for them, won’t you? Why don’t you do what you cowards are good for and sweep up instead?’

  I picked up the broom from behind the counter. The radio crackled, and changed to a long slow lament. I could make out the Arabic word jannat (heaven).

  My father peered mistrustfully over his glasses. ‘You were gone a long time.’ I nodded. ‘You left the delivery by the door?’

  I shook my head. ‘Can we tune to the football broadcast?’

  ‘That would be sin,’ he said, leaning his ear towards the radio as though guarding it. ‘Now that it is playing it is sawab to leave it on.’

  I rubbed the hard bristles of the broom against a sticky mess of sugar under the counter. ‘Mice will get to that.’

  My father laughed. ‘Scared of racists and scared of mice!’

  On the back wall behind the counter and on two other walls were floor-to-ceiling shelves, painted white. Decades earlier, my father had put them up. They were not hung straight and the gaps between each shelf varied slightly, giving them a ragged appearance. Boxes and sacks occupied most of the floor space, some piled high, allowing only a narrow path to the counter. The shop was on a corner and had two windows to the street. Except on Saturdays, when the football crowd marched past to and from the ground, it was quiet outside.

  ‘Where were you?’ he asked.

  ‘You sent me to the new mosque, so I went in to take a peek. Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘I sent you on a delivery.’

  I reported the events to my father. I had cycled to a large, warehouse-like building. It was unmarked except for a narrow green door on which had been posted a white paper sign bearing handwritten Arabic script. The door was locked and from within came shouting and muffled noises. A guy let me in. Inside were hundreds of men, squeezed together on a makeshift prayer-room floor, and they all looked like wrestlers, only wrestlers with beards and from many countries of the world, including England. I wanted to provoke my father, and so I added, ‘I didn’t know there were so many gora Muslims in this crappy town!’

  ‘Islam is the fastest-growing religion.’

  I laughed. ‘One day we will all be Muslims.’

  My father slapped his palm hard on the counter top and demanded to know what had happened.

  ‘I think I missed it. There must have been some big event but by the time I was shown in they were just chanting, that’s all, and then I could swear this guy flew in the air.’

  A sea of football supporters drifted past outside the shop window, clad in black and yellow: yellow for the martlet, a mythical bird born without legs to land upon and thus eternally in flight. The supporters wore expectant, hopeful faces.

  I returned my gaze to my father. ‘Oh, and also I nearly got into a fight.’

  My father looked both confused and angry. His face reddened and a bead of sweat dropped off his brow. He wiped it with a small hand towel he kept on a hook behind the counter. He took a long deep breath, shook his head dismissively and ironed out a corner of his newspaper with a fist. I continued with my report in a matter-of-fact tone that I knew would annoy him, my father feigning lack of interest and occasionally pointing to an area my broom had missed.

  Stepping nervously in the few gaps between the densely packed worshippers, I had dispensed grapes, walnuts and dates from the box he had sent me to leave by the door. A lad with a long beard and rippling muscles took offence as I strayed in front of his space, and punched my leg. I nearly dropped the box, and smarting from the pain I stood my ground and glared. The brute force of the blow, and my shock at what he had done, in a mosque of all places, left me bewildered. I noticed a dark circular patch like a third eye in the middle of his forehead. The third eye was acquired by friction between skin and prayer mat. It was a sign of great sawab, and was known to take a lifetime of prostration to obtain, and even then, so it was said, only if Allah chose you. I wanted to say to him that it was a fake, his third eye – faking it was not an unknown phenomenon. Instead, and perhaps because I was indeed a coward, I rudely dropped a sprig of grapes into the guy’s lap and quickly passed on to the next man.

  ‘You would have liked it,’ I told Dad, ‘and you could have got sawab if you had gone yourself. Don’t you always say it is sawab to feed the faithful?’

  My father said nothing.

  ‘What do you want to hear?’ I asked. ‘That they preached death to America and death to Britain and death. . . ?’

  ‘Did they?’ He seemed genuinely excited.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘You shouldn’t talk about what you don’t know, it’s dangerous.’

  ‘Truthfully, they were chanting Allahu and working themselves up into some sort of hysteria. . .’ They were clapping as well, everybody, with necks strained and shoulders rolled forward and broad grins exposing various stages of dental decay. Together, as though in a Mexican wave, they swayed from side to side, and the gora spotted within their ranks appeared nervous and comically incongruous. I could tell they didn’t understand the words, and their blond or ginger beards clashed with the long white robes and elaborately bound, mullah-like scarves around their heads.

  ‘Hysteria is what your football yobs get up to.’ My father gazed thoughtfully out of the window at a passing football fan giving our shop the two fingers and mouthing the word Paki. ‘Don’t be so disrespectful,’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘They must have been well fed.’ By the time I got to the front the box was still half full; seeing no easy way back and fearing another confrontation, I placed my box on the floor and, squeezing between two men, lowered myself to the carpet. Facing the assembly and only a few feet from me was the imam, sitting atop a set of triangle steps like a stepladder that had been filled in with wooden tables at the sides. Slim and wearing small round glasses, he was dressed like an English gentleman in a three-piece suit, and a silver pocket watch dangled off his waistcoat. He had thin menacing lips and a loose wiry beard. ‘Allahu,’ he led the chant; his voice was slow and controlled and it seemed to linger, almost stop, at the climax of each phrase. ‘Allahu.’ He smiled as he chanted. His eyes seemed to glisten and retreat into their sockets and his body swayed, reaching a perfect forty-five-degree angle on each side.

  The floor was richly carpeted, but the walls were unadorned painted brick and the lack of windows gave the interior a cold industrial feel. The building must have been newly purchased: people were building mosques all the time, and I knew that soon enough it would acquire the usual pictures of Mecca as well as wall hangings inscribed with words from the Holy Koran. At Christmas-time there would be tinsel too and small colourful lights flashing on and off.

  My father raised his newspaper, hiding his face.

  ‘Don’t you want to know how the man flew?’ I asked.

  The telephone rang. There had been many expensive pre-booked three-minute calls to and from my cousins in Pakistan of late, and my father climbed off his stool and shuffled into the back. I watched him go, and the shop suddenly darkened as a cloud moved across the sun. The radio broke into the azan, calling the faithful to prayer. My thoughts returned to the mosque.

  They continued to clap, the sway of their bodies gathering a determined momentum. Wedged against my left shoulder was a man with long greasy hair. He had no beard, as though he was above ritual, an
d his bony, craggy face was exposed in sharp relief, suggesting someone who seldom ate. He had full swollen lips and hollow orbits ringed by a thick protuberance of bone as though his eyes should have been much bigger. He sat cross-legged, and around his shoulders was a robe of rich red and gold brocade that draped to the floor. One bent leg that had escaped from under his robe twitched. It didn’t jerk up and down; instead the muscles of his leg seemed to contract independently of any visible movement of the limb itself. It was strange and unnatural, as though the muscles were responding to pulses of electricity.

  The imam, visibly exhausted, leant back against the step but continued to clap, and the chanting grew louder and its pace faster. There had been an unannounced change in its metre and while the word Allah was said in a barely controlled whisper, the syllable that followed, the hu, was spat into the room with all the breath the assembly seemed to possess.

  Then the greasy-haired guy next to me uttered a long, high-pitched shriek that pierced my eardrums. I turned towards him and watched transfixed as he swayed violently from side to side. His arms were raised high above his head and while he swayed, slowly he seemed to rise. He repeated his shriek several times, the sound of someone in great pain, and then it was replaced by Allahu chanted so fast it sounded like another language. Behind us the room had grown silent. The man continued to rise and sway in what looked like a physically impossible movement; although the robe obscured his feet, it was as though he was freed of the laws of physics, as though he was levitating. I saw a flash of movement as the imam leapt off his steps and threw himself onto the levitating man, forcing him to the floor.

  The man who had levitated, suddenly I recognized him. He was older now, with teeth that had separated and grown longer and a layer of blood at the crescent line of his gums, but it was his eyes that gave him away, large and wild and rolling in their sockets. It was Bobby. Bobby of the pound note and the bush in Lye Park. Bobby had not aged beyond recognition. I shuddered.

  ‘It’s all show,’ said my father, returning from the back room. ‘These modern imams, they’re all fakes.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said in a deliberate challenge to his authority.

  ‘The coward has no views worth listening to.’

  ‘Then I quit.’

  His coarse laughter issued a challenge. ‘Where will you go?’

  *

  It felt like the right thing to do, leaving the shop. Had I stayed I would have stayed forever. Back home I switched on the TV, leant back on the sofa and kicked off my shoes. My feet hurt from standing and my leg hurt from the punch at the mosque. On the screen, they were racing hamsters through perspex tunnels. It was a straight track about ten feet long and the owners of each of the three hamsters stood at the finish line, screaming encouragement and coaxing the animal with a morsel on a cocktail stick.

  ‘No, I’m not kidding,’ said Mum, striding in from the kitchen with a tray in her hands. She was continuing an earlier conversation between us, one that had been going on for weeks and that I had hoped had expired. ‘She’s a modern girl, she’s called Azra and she’s from Islamabad.’ Mum then repeated what I already knew. ‘In Islamabad they even have a Pizza Hut.’ She seemed proud of that.

  ‘I prefer curry.’

  ‘Azra is from a good family, clean and she fears Allah.’ Mum put my tray gently on the coffee table and took a seat opposite me. She plucked a plastic flower from a vase and examined it closely. ‘Lovely, isn’t it.’ Her eyes glistened. ‘How was your first day at the shop? You mustn’t argue with your father.’

  In the weeks since Mum had started speaking of marriage to Azra, I had gradually formed a picture of my bride. She was a young girl dressed in a pink kurta-pajama. In my mind she had huge almond-shaped eyes cast demurely downwards and her smile was sweet and childlike, exposing perfect square-cut ivory teeth that sparkled as though they had never known use. She shared a dusty street with animals and trucks belching black smoke, and it was remarkable how she kept her white headscarf so clean.

  ‘Your father says he can rent you a small unit at the indoor market and you and your new bride can live with us.’

  I sighed and took a sip of tea. Taking the fake rose off her, I said, ‘Perhaps I could sell pretend flowers?’

  ‘Have a biscuit, it might sweeten your tongue.’

  Instead she offered me a glass of water from the tray. I took a sip and felt something strange in my mouth. Rather than spit it out, I swallowed quickly. I peered into the glass, and saw bits of paper floating in the water. ‘What’s all this stuff?’

  Mum smiled nervously. ‘You have swallowed a spell.’

  I floundered for words. ‘A curse?’

  ‘Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.’ Her voice rose in anger. ‘It has power and you will marry her in the end.’ Satisfied with what she had achieved, she continued in a conciliatory tone. ‘You may think you have nothing in common but, my son, once you lay eyes on her you will find something you like.’

  ‘I’d be at the market stall all day. What would she do?’

  ‘We’ll get along just fine, Azra and I, in this little house.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Although we might have to install central heating. They do fear the cold, do new Pakistanis.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be a bit cramped?’ I picked at the paper on my tongue with a fingernail, then wiped it on my thigh.

  We were seated on two identical sofas placed opposite each other. The armrests were covered with a protective layer of transparent plastic and that, coupled with the fact that they were weighty and almost immovable, still gave them a brand-new and almost official appearance. Between us was a coffee table, in the centre of which was a tall bronze vase out of which sprouted the lurid flowers. To one side was a tiled brown mantelpiece on which stood a green plastic carriage clock that could be set to play the azan five times a day. Above that was a picture of Mecca garlanded with tinsel as old and durable as the floral arrangement.

  My mother sighed. ‘It’s our way, but if your generation. . . if you prefer independence, there are always houses coming up in this street. . .’ She paused and looked wistfully out of the window to the backyard. ‘Or we could build an extension? Azra’s very religious, prays five times a day no less. Maybe she can show us all how to live a better life? How to grow closer to our faith?’

  I could see her leaving our house clad from head to toe in black, with thin black gloves and a slit to look through, and I saw myself standing on the doorstep behind her.

  ‘No need to pull a face, she doesn’t smell.’

  Since my mother had first introduced the idea, I had developed a fantasy about the girl Azra. It was a sexual fantasy, and because all I was required to do was to reply in the affirmative to my mother, at times it had felt tangible. However, the sudden insertion of the long black burqa, that precise image, was like a poster from a horror film. I had seen such women in the high street, and despite the Grim Reaper-like invisibility of their cloaks I could tell that, inside them, their bodies were bird-like and tender. Holding each woman’s black-gloved hand was some muscle-strapped, bearded teen smiling broadly as though all he did was fuck her all night. Azra. The fantasy had suddenly grown into a name I could hook to my private lust.

  ‘I’ll find my own wife.’

  The hamster in the left tunnel had won three times in a row. Its owner, a fat bubbly teenage girl, was awarded a pink rosette.

  ‘You’ll learn to love her.’ It took a lot of effort for my mother to use the word love. It was a word that had never been used, not in our house. It was a gora word, a modern word, and articulating it had never been necessary.

  ‘I’ll go back to the shop, and I’ll ask for a pound of grapes and one clean Pakistani wife.’

  ‘What are you planning? Will you take a gori?’

  ‘Only if she cooks a good curry.’

  Mum shook her head. ‘It is no joke. We will never accept a gori.’ She leant forward and gripped me tightly by the arm. ‘Never.’

/>   ‘Is that a new gold bangle?’

  ‘I’ll show you something else as well.’ Mum got up and reached onto the top shelf of the dresser where my father kept his important papers. She selected a brown envelope and returned to her seat. She pulled a passport out of the envelope and smiled broadly. I took it off her and thumbed through it. It was mine, bearing a picture I’d had taken for my recent provisional driving licence. It was strange holding my own passport, and the idea that instead of going to Pakistan with my mother I could use it to run away flashed through my mind.

  ‘So you’re all set?’ I said. For a brief moment we both stared at the gold on her arm.

  ‘It’s just one small bangle.’ Mum giggled like a little girl.

  I reached for her arm, and as she pulled away her shirtsleeve fell back to her elbow, revealing, I counted, six gold bangles.

  ‘I can’t go with empty arms, people would talk.’

  For the first time I noticed that my mother had aged, although she didn’t show it on her face. She was slimmer now than she had ever been, and the years had crept up on her in other ways and were telling on her hands and arms, crisscrossed with thousands of almost imperceptible wrinkles. Now, as she proudly held up her arm with the bangles, her face lit up. In Pakistan she would have had nephews and nieces and by now perhaps even grandchildren. We would have shared a farm and she would be in charge of them all, the grand matriarch. Here she had only my dad and me, and the house, and now that I had replaced her in the shop she would spend endless hours at home waiting for us to close for the night at eleven.

  ‘Next you’ll be telling me you’ve bought the aeroplane tickets?’

  ‘It’s for the best, son,’ she said softly, pulling her shirtsleeve down over her wrist. ‘You were betrothed to Azra the day you were born. You see, we promised our first-born son to Azra’s father, my brother, and as Allah, peace be upon him, blessed me with only one child, I’m afraid the obligation falls to you.’