Akram's War Read online

  I feel a knot in my throat; my heart races and a surge of adrenaline makes my whole body shiver. Despite the coldness of the bathroom, strangely I feel warm. It takes all my control not to cry out loud.

  And suddenly an ugly pain works my knee. A familiar antagonist that is worse between the hours of sunset and sunrise. The doctor assured me that all pain increases at night-time, but its eagerness surprises me. Sweating, I rest on the edge of the toilet seat and clutch at my artificial knee and hope that might banish the sensation that grips, like the branches of an electrical tree, the nerves above and below the wound.

  When finally it eases, I pull down my pyjamas, letting them drop to my ankles. My cock I shield with one hand and, with the other, first trim the hair, snip and deposit. I adjust my position, but very carefully in case I reignite the pain, bending low to my task. I rub in a very thin layer of shaving foam and carefully guide the razor around the curves, pulling and tweaking at my anatomy, stretching the skin flat.

  The razor, sealed into the Ziploc bag, I dispose of in a pedal bin under the sink. The shaving foam and scissors are replaced in the cupboard. It is better to return things to where they came from, always better.

  Quietly I unlock the bathroom door, turn off the light and step into the hallway. It wasn’t as satisfying as I would have had it. I had imagined an overwhelming serenity, but it was more practical than that, and at times, shivering in the cold bathroom, I had wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. I have to admit, the martyr’s penultimate scene would, to an infidel, seem a strange one. But that is the point, the very point that only true believers in the one true God understand. It is the very thing that separates the martyr from the infidel. It is about faith – a compulsion elevated above all others. About doing what Allah wills. And belief, belief is faith, believing in His justice. Like any soldier in war, orders must be followed. Not satisfying nor serene, but successful. No razor cuts. Not a drop of blood.

  I turn one last time and see a patch of sky through the window. Bismillah.

  I smile. Not a drop, not yet.

  2

  Briefly I look in on my parents sleeping. I am not yet dead and cold and devoid of feeling, and I regard them with pity. Pity for their worn ageing bodies and pity that there will be no one to care for them. Azra I do not wish ever again to gaze upon. Instead, as I pick up my number two dress uniform from a wardrobe on the landing and descend the stairs, I imagine her body twisted into the sheets and feel a bitter resentment in the knowledge that she will stop only long enough to collect her inheritance, my army compensation money. Again I am leaving my parents, and this time forever, or at least forever in this world. If they are heaven-worthy then I will see them, and if they are not, I as a heaven dweller may have it in my power to summon them. Or I may not. There are many contradictions. Many unknowns.

  Downstairs, before a tinsel-garlanded picture of Mecca above the mantel, I dress quickly. My father’s snores reverberate through the ceiling above, and in the loneliness of the night every sound grows, its significance amplified.

  I leave the house, creeping out like a soldier on manoeuvre. The clouds are dense and the air dewy grey; absent is the crescent moon of my imagination. Part way down the street a fox slinks nervously across the tarmac, its beady eyes caught by the light of a street lamp, momentarily glowing a bold yellow. It stops briefly to consider me leaning on my stick and then skulks on. My best army boots clink on the pavement, their polished toecaps twinkling beneath the same street lamp under which the fox paused moments earlier.

  On my head I wear a peaked sergeant’s cap. It is black and across it runs a red sash. In its centre, like a third eye, is a brass cap badge bearing the emblem I once earned, a double-headed eagle. My tunic is olive green, with many utilitarian pockets, all of them empty save for a little money and another cap badge that I have, since my return, kept in an inside pocket next to my heart. The tunic is tight over my bulging waist, yet still I feel strong in it, as though the chest is padded with plates of steel. It was hand cut precisely to fit my body, my body in its prime, and wearing it for the first time on parade was my proudest moment. I stood a good inch taller than I actually was. Squinting into the sun, I saluted Her Majesty, our Colonel-in-Chief, and swore I would defend Great Britain, her territories and dominions, with my life.

  I don’t look back, picturing instead how the house diminishes from view. It grows not only smaller, but somehow also less significant. As I cross the road and take a left turn, already it feels as though the house, to which I will not return, is a place I never inhabited. The streets are deserted, yellow where illuminated, and seem to pulse quietly as though resting for the night. On the distant peak of Turner’s Hill flashes an orange beacon mounted on an aerial, a tiny, almost imperceptible dot of light, one I watched as a child looking out of my bedroom window, mesmerized.

  The soles of my boots are plated with steel and my footsteps clatter in the night air. I wore them often on a parade ground where noise mattered, my buddies and I falling into step, rehearsing complex manoeuvres until our legs, arms and eyes were in perfect sync. The boots are solid and hard, and when they were first issued (to one Recruit Akram Khan), several of my toenails bruised so badly during route marches that they fell off. Each night I polished the boots to a mirror shine then stuffed them with newspaper soaked in leather-softening tea and urine, and like a trophy I put them in a closet bearing my rank, name and number. Working them to a shine was competitive, an act akin to pleasing God, and deprived a recruit of sleep. A mixture of spit and boot polish dried to a crust and then, with a clean cloth, rubbed in small circles until the new layer reflected resplendent. To a soldier, looking after kit is a precious and satisfying act akin to worship, and these particular boots that I first trained in I later kept aside for special occasions. They shine again as they catch thin yellow windows of light.

  I turn into Coopers Street. Ahead, perhaps fifty yards, is the figure of a female. Narrowing my eyes, I make out a shortish woman in a red miniskirt and a cropped denim jacket. The volume of her wispy hair catches the light. She walks slowly, her legs balancing on what look like pins, her arms swimming for balance. I slow, adjusting my pace to hers. It would be indecent to catch her up, and I might frighten her. But at the same time I know immediately and without question that, like a chaperone and from a safe distance, I will follow her.

  It is three in the morning and at eleven I must be at the war memorial two point five miles from the house I left minutes earlier. Two and a half miles, even with my bad leg, even with a small detour to pick up ordnance, will take no more than an hour.

  The woman stops below a pub sign. Crouching down, she rubs the back of her ankles, muttering something I cannot make out. I catch up a little and get a clearer view. The miniskirt exposes thick white thigh flesh and her low-cut top squeezes folds of skin at her waist. On her feet are stiletto heels. She stands, struggling in her seemingly drunken state to stay upright, and carries on up the street.

  I can smell her perfume as I reach the pub sign. It is a pub I know. I know everything here. Every bend, every shopfront, every wall and the quality of the brickwork, and I have seen it age, but that is not a comfort. Maley’s dad would drink in this pub, drinking being a preoccupation of all grown white men akin to reading the daily paper. They were men who measured time by when and with whom they last drank, and distances by how far someplace was from the nearest pub. Now the pub is derelict, shuttered with a zigzagging pattern of plywood planks, although its sign is still intact: The Gate Hangs Well. Azra does not wear western perfume; she wears an oud purchased in tiny vials, purportedly from the city of Mecca. This female wears an English perfume blended with alcohol, rose-tinted and volatile, an alluring, ruinous scent.

  She stops again and I do too. Flattening myself against a wall, I watch her intently. I feel my heart thump inside the confines of my chest, a strange thing, as though once again I am watching the enemy. This time she slips off her stilettos and places them to
one side. Squatting, she squeezes each ankle in turn. She is caught under the yellow orb of a street lamp, her only concern the discomfort of her feet. She seems cast free but dangerously alone and trusting, and unlike the fox she appears to be blind to risk. Only English women go out at night – it is a common refrain among us brothers. I first heard it as a child, a saying that is passed down the generations.

  The female stands up, lifts her chin and carries on along the pavement, forgetting the shoes. After fifty short strides I halt and stare at them, abandoned as though something sinister has befallen their owner. Ahead and unburdened, she is walking faster and gaining distance. I wait for her to disappear around a bend in the road. Then I pick up a shoe and stare at it, turning it over in my hand. Tentatively I raise it to my nostrils, smelling her sweat and traces of iron where her ankles had bled. I have a nose for blood. And then, as though I crave ruin, I inhale deeply. The action seems involuntary and surprises me. I thrust my nose into the triangular enclosed part where her toes were. The inner sole feels warm, the satin finish of the shoe gratifying to the touch. Its heel ends with a sharp point. The toe is blunt but perfectly smooth as it sweeps a pleasing curve.

  ‘You a perv or something?’ The female puts a hand on her hip and leans back a little to look up at me. She is even smaller close up, her eyes just level with the sergeant’s emblem on my arm. I haven’t known many girls, and I search her up and down, looking for some flaw that will diminish her to a level I feel more comfortable with. Her hair parts in curled waves from a perfectly straight midline. Her face, not beautiful, is more naive than pleasant, with blunted smooth contours, blue paint smudged under her eyes and red gloss on her lips. She has a brief nose and small circular eyes.

  ‘Could I have my shoes back, please?’ Her thin lower lip, held tight, still trembles. I look down at her feet where two cracks in the pavement run parallel.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out this late on your own. It’s not safe.’

  ‘Fucking minicab driver tried it on. Had to get out.’ She takes in my attire, her face expressing surprise. ‘Grandma always said I’d find my knight in shining armour.’

  Self-consciously, I shrug my shoulders. ‘Paki driver tried it on?’

  ‘Shhh,’ she says, putting a finger to her lips and looking around as though someone might be listening. ‘You can’t say things like that!’

  I say in a mock Pakistani accent, ‘Most trustable minicab, madam.’

  That makes her laugh. She laughs uninhibited like a drunk, the still night extending the sound. When she stops she gathers me in her eyes and with a sharp intake of breath says, ‘What’s your story?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘A good story is as good as it gets, and I know you’ve got one.’

  ‘Got to crack on.’ I extend the shoes towards her but she doesn’t take them.

  ‘Went out with a Pakistani once. Bloody secretive bastard.’ She pauses to think, a thin parting in her smile. ‘Had a nice car.’

  ‘Must have been a Muslim,’ I say.

  ‘He was a lot of things but not much of that.’

  I tut. ‘What type of car?’

  ‘Went back to his wife.’ She laughs again, her mouth wider and more expansive, as though I have gained her trust. Curiously, she has what appears to be a silver tooth in the front of her mouth.

  ‘Was that not expected?’

  She shrugs her shoulders, says ‘It’s just life,’ and turns to go.

  I call after her, ‘You shouldn’t be out alone like this.’

  ‘What you waiting for then? You walking us home or what?’

  For a while we walk in silence save for the clang of my parade boots and the soft yet audible pad of her feet on the tarmac. We are no longer walking in step and I feel an urgent desire to hear the press of her feet in between that of mine, as though that almost imperceptible sound is confirmation that alongside me walks a woman. Not Azra, a figure in a burqa, but a woman with flesh and arms and legs, smeared high-gloss red lips and sweat on her brow.

  As she walks she veers briefly from side to side. I feel an instinctive urge to reach over and steady her but keep my hands to myself. I compare our shadows: hers short and squat, mine upright with a peaked cap.

  She pauses for a moment. ‘I’m Grace.’

  ‘That’s the best name a girl could ever have.’ I shake her hand; soft and small and curiously warm.

  ‘You got cold hands. Warm them in your pockets.’

  ‘Army don’t do that.’

  We walk the length of Forge Row and then cross into Albert Road. During the day, we wouldn’t be doing this. Not Grace and I, not together.

  Even in daylight little can be seen through the windows of any of these houses, dirty lace curtains slung across each one. The doors are locked, and five times daily they open as the men escape for prayers at Best Street mosque or any of the five other mosques within a mile (some converted from previous incarnations and others cavernous, purpose-built institutions) that now compete with the original. Behind the lace curtains could be a birth, a wedding, a hundred women mourning a death, but you wouldn’t know it as you pass by outside. It occurs to me that Grace is right: we Pakis are secretive. Brightly coloured cars fitted with extra-wide plastic wheel arches sit quiet and innocuous as their owners sleep, yet during the day these lads are always coming up fast, nodding to a beat, engines revving out of flared exhaust pipes and loud Indian music playing on custom sound systems. They wear a permanent scowl and have hungry, suspicious eyes. Their thin territorial ambitions and short-cropped hair remind me of the skinheads that moved on after the developers levelled the Mash Tun.

  Seeing Grace and me together, the locals would jeer and laugh, shout insults, take off their shoes and show us their soles, lob stones from across the street, chase us out of their territory – and before I got home the scandal would have reached my parents and Azra.

  Grace stops outside a narrow Victorian house part way along the third terrace we come to. She must be one of the few gora inhabitants still here. A poster has been placed in next door’s window – the familiar white face of our first-in-command fills the frame, airbrushed to thin down his rotund cheeks and disguise the easy-blue blemish of the albino. His eyes, normally milky, have been painted the faintest brown – brown for the people – and somehow they appear sincere and kind. Above his bearded, benevolent face are the words ‘Bismillah Events Presents – Live in Conversation with Dr Mustafa Al-Angrezi (the English)’. The event is to be held at a community centre this evening; brothers are instructed to pass through security at the front entrance and sisters at the rear. So my brother Mustafa who mourns his brother Faisal the martyr will at six o’clock mourn another, and he will have a twinkle in his eye and spout propaganda and they will listen; yes, after my shahid at eleven, they will prick up their ears and listen.

  Mustafa is barely recognizable in the altered image. It is also vanity that compels him to take the appellation Al-Angrezi. Of course, he would justify himself in his usual wily way, perhaps squeezing my bicep while whispering, Brother Akram, we each tweak our assets. He is correct, of course. In war each side takes what advantage it can.

  I turn towards Grace. She stands perfectly still outside her house staring back at me, perhaps wondering what I make of the poster. The light from an upstairs window bisects her face, dark and light. She fumbles in her pockets for keys then inserts one into the lock.

  She turns the key and stops. ‘What is your story?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘You can’t be right, walking around at this time of night dressed like you’ve got an appointment with the Queen. I’ll do you a tea.’

  ‘Got to crack on.’

  She adds quickly, ‘There’s toast, if you want it?’

  ‘We Pakis only accept at the third time of asking.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ The door opens and without another word she enters and closes it behind her. I stare at the green paintwork, wet with dew.

  Moments la
ter the door reopens. ‘Shoes?’ she requests.

  I hand them over and smile.

  ‘No story, and by the looks of it, no car,’ she continues in a sterner tone. ‘You had better come in out of the cold.’

  I hesitate. Suddenly I am aware of a hot prickly sensation where I earlier shaved off the beard. I imagine welts spreading across it and self-consciously knead it with my fingertips.

  ‘Come in or we’ll have the Pakistanis talking.’ She stands to one side to let me in.

  To slow the action down I whisper a Bismillah.

  The front door opens directly into a living room. She fumbles for a light switch, races to a corner to turn on a table lamp and turns off the main light. Then she looks at me, clearly pleased with her efforts. There is a small sofa in a blue fabric with an ample scattering of cushions, a wooden coffee table, and a sideboard on which is placed a small television set. Two shelves above the television contain a collection of porcelain dogs. The walls are painted pink. I stand, waiting to be asked to sit.

  ‘You want a story and the only story I can think of is this, but don’t take offence.’ My gaze moves across the dogs. They come in various colours and sizes and some are arranged around a ceramic feeding bowl. ‘A prostitute happens to pass by a dog, its tongue lolling out with thirst. Taking off a shoe, she fills it with water from a nearby well and offers it to the animal. For her act of kindness, Allah forgave her for being a prostitute.’