Akram's War Read online

  Mustafa and I paused to catch our breath.

  ‘The Prophet Muhammad kept cats,’ I said.

  Exhausted, Mustafa sank to his knees, fine wisps of hair trembling on his pink scalp.

  ‘Get up,’ I urged. ‘We’ll go to heaven if we rescue it.’

  We found the cat in an alley. It lay, perfectly still, on the cobbles and tufts of moss. There was a tear in its belly and its guts spilled out. Rivulets of blood trickled in all directions, sinking into the gaps between the cobbles. The animal’s eyes were wide open as though taking one last look at the sky.

  ‘Have we failed? Will we go to hell?’ asked Mustafa.

  ‘Probably,’ I replied.

  ‘What we going to do?’ His voice was agitated and sharp. He put an arm around me and I him.

  ‘We can make up for it if we do good for the rest of our lives,’ I offered.

  ‘My mum says all children go to heaven,’ he said.

  ‘Cats too. If we keep an eye on it we might see its soul as it slips away.’

  ‘I’ve never seen that before.’ Mustafa shook his head, wiping away a tear.

  ‘I have, lots of times – chickens,’ I lied.

  ‘What’s it look like?’

  A light breeze carried the scent of oil and smoke from the nearby works, and bending a little way towards the cat I could smell something sweet and warm. Drying quickly in the overhead sun, its blood carried the smell of the soil, the mineral-metallic odour that would remain on my fingers for days after rubbing the radishes.

  ‘First we have to say a prayer,’ I said.

  ‘Our Father. . .’ started Mustafa, remembering a prayer we recited at school assembly every morning.

  ‘No, not that. The foreign prayer my dad says when the chickens are about to die.’ I put my hands together and looked up at the sky. ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.’

  ‘Still can’t see the soul,’ said Mustafa mournfully. He stared intently at the cat and nervously shuffled his feet.

  ‘You have to look up to see it fly away,’ I said.

  He scanned the sky, keeping the cat within the lower border of his vision as if he was afraid it might jump up and dart at his legs. ‘Maybe it’s already gone?’ A fresh bout of tears welled up in his eyes.

  ‘You don’t understand. I’ve released its soul with my power. It only goes once I’ve said the Bismillah.’

  Mustafa kicked at a cobblestone, mindful not to stray into an imaginary perimeter about two feet deep around the body of the cat. Finally he spoke. ‘I saw something worse last night.’

  ‘In chickens they’re called giblets,’ I said. ‘The bits coming out of its body, and they’re dirty. My dad pulls them out of their bellies and wraps them in a plastic bag and when no one’s looking he throws it into the canal. He says that gora put them in sausages to eat. Do you eat giblets?’

  At school Mustafa was often mistaken for a gora, and even when he told the white kids that both of his parents were Pakis they couldn’t quite accept it; as a sort of compromise they called him a Paki lover, not a Paki. He was whiter than the gora, so their eyes retreated into their sockets and heads shook in disbelief when he spoke Paki with a proper Paki.

  Mustafa shook his head. ‘Yesterday my aunty came to visit and the day before my dad kicked my mum. Aunty is my dad’s sister and she said I was cursed like a gora but our kid Faisal he was all right because he was brown.’ Tears rolled down his cheeks and he held out a hand and stared at it, one side and then the other. His face grew pink. ‘After that, my aunty looked at me and wailed like I had just suddenly died.’

  ‘They do that a lot, our mums,’ I offered as consolation, giving his waist a squeeze.

  Mustafa shook me off, irritated. He ran his fingers through his hair and raised up on his toes as though he was about to run away. ‘In the night when my aunty had gone, from my bed I could hear my mum crying in the toilet. Afterwards when I went to go to the toilet I saw giblets in the base of the pan. Only then I didn’t know they were called giblets.’

  ‘I heard your mum crying this morning,’ I said. ‘She came over to visit mine and they both cried. After that they were talking about a baby and didn’t even notice when I slipped out of the back.’

  As though my confirmation had doubled his mother’s pain, Mustafa turned from pink to white.

  ‘Your mum having a baby?’

  He stuttered, but no discernible words came out.

  It started to rain in large warm droplets. The rain diluted the cat’s blood to pinks and light reds. The damp air amplified the crisp, pungent scent of radish, the iron in the blood and the iron in the soil from the nearby allotment.

  ‘Come on, mate, you hungry?’

  Back at the allotment, our feet sinking into the earth, I picked and cleaned each radish before handing it to Mustafa. He ate slowly; watching in contempt as the rain mixed with his tears, suddenly I was impatient to be free of him. I felt agitated and fearful, not of being caught stealing but of something else, of being tainted in some way by Mustafa: by his fear of animals, his knowledge of Bobby, his skin that dirtied so easily, and by giblets in the toilet.

  *

  I pause and look over at Grace. She murmurs and her hands lash about as though seeking something. For a moment, her chest forms a convex arc, the small of her back lifted off the mattress; she breathes heavily until her thrashing hands meet the hard surface of her bedside cabinet, when suddenly her eyelids open and she looks around. She seems momentarily surprised to see me and then smiles. ‘Told you there was a story in you.’

  I reply gently, ‘You didn’t hear a word.’

  The sight of Grace awakening has stirred memories of the house I have deserted. Is Azra still sound asleep, pulling the white sheet ever tighter around her bony limbs? Would she care that soon she’d be widowed? Or are they awake, Azra and my parents, looking out of windows, standing by the front door peering into the dark street, watching for me? Would they believe – this last thought gives me a curious satisfaction – that I lie not far away, in a stranger’s bed? Would the knowledge of that evoke in Azra some kind of passion or only anger, anger and a disdainful curl of her lower lip?

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t mind if I doze off now and then, I’m still listening.’

  I laugh. ‘But you’re not.’

  ‘I like the sound of your voice.’

  ‘It’s a soldier’s voice. To my troops it was the booming voice of a sergeant.’

  ‘It’s familiar.’

  ‘Strange thing to say.’

  ‘It pleases me.’

  Through the window I glimpse the sky, which has lightened from purple to grey, and even without consulting my watch I know less time will have passed than I think. Ahead of me are still many hours of walking the streets, and here it is warm and comfortable. This here is sin but I will be forgiven. That I will be forgiven is a truth beyond doubt, but still out of superstition I quickly whisper a Bismillah.

  5

  After that it rained heavily, the sky darkening suddenly, and the wind blew up. I went home, to be scolded, fed, bathed, and spent the afternoon sitting by the fire. As it spat I dared myself to rub the glowing embers into the carpet, leaving tiny black dots in its fibres.

  The door opened and I smiled at my father as he came in, wet from his walk home from the shop. He draped his huge overcoat over the fireguard, sucking all the heat out of the room. A brewing steam gathered along its woollen surface and started to rise. The flames crackled as though straining underneath it.

  ‘Miss that old thing,’ he said ruefully, referring to the old sofa we had put out that morning for the rag and bone man.

  I nodded. Misty-eyed, my mother had described it as a good sofa, and it was the only one I had ever known. Over time its spindly legs had broken one by one and been replaced by two stacked bricks. The seat was marked with inkblots and long scrawly lines ran along the armrests – my handiwork as a toddler, my father said. The seat part l
ifted up and inside Mum had stored old clothes and shoes. Behind the cushions we found various things – a penny that Dad let me keep, broken crayons, an old set of keys Dad had given up hope of finding – and just before we put it out, leaning it against the front of the house for the rag and bone man to take away, he took a Stanley knife to it, slashing the upholstery from end to end. My mother had not approved of this last act. She said it was vandalism and that he should have let it go as it was, with dignity. He should have thought about all the now dead people who had once sat on it. Embarrassed, my father had reached into it, working loose several pieces of wood for the fire.

  Now he stood warming himself by the grate, staring at a framed picture of Mecca above the mantel. It was the only picture in our house. In the absence of the sofa, Mum had made me a daybed out of pillows covered by a duvet brought down from my bed. The old brown armchair rested in a corner next to a TV on a stand, and one tall thin dresser stood like a sentry by the door. A low table usually placed before the sofa had been pushed against a far wall. I stretched, enjoying the luxury of a relatively empty room.

  ‘Where’s your mum?’

  ‘Out.’

  Dad considered me as though I was lying.

  ‘She’s at Mustafa’s,’ I added.

  ‘Mustafa?’

  ‘Across the street, the house with the blue door,’ I said.

  ‘Stay here,’ he instructed sternly. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  As he picked up his coat, the fire seemed to leap after it, its warmth instantly enveloping my face. I braced myself for a cold gust of wind as he opened the door to the street. From outside came an acrid smell of burning, as though someone had lit a bonfire.

  They were arguing as the door opened and they came back in. Once again, the breeze through the open door brought in the smell of fire.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out tonight,’ Dad said to Mum.

  ‘She’s all alone with two boys.’

  ‘You have to think about your own family,’ said Dad.

  Mum opened her mouth to say something

  ‘Shh, not now,’ Dad said through clenched teeth.

  He double-locked the front door and draped his coat over the armchair. Lifting the living room curtain at one corner, he looked out into the dark street. He lowered it carefully and wrung his hands, a scowl on his face. Mum went into the kitchen and then joined us in the living room. Sinking to her knees with a sigh, she settled herself onto the duvet next to me. On the carpet in front of her she had placed a bowl of potatoes. She began to peel them. I looked at them and then at her, trying to work out what day of the week it was.

  She smiled, patting me on the head. ‘Yes, it’s chips tonight.’

  There were noises from the street, at first distant and muffled; yet somehow I knew they were linked to the smell of fire. My heart was pounding, all of my attention suddenly focused on the sounds in the street. My parents were listening too, their faces frozen and eyes wide. They glanced at each other and my mother gave a tiny shake of the head. The footsteps outside – boot soles studded with clattering metal – grew louder and then stopped abruptly like a loud slap. They had stopped outside our front door. Bravely, my father returned to the window and put out a hand to draw back the curtain. Mum shrieked and Dad pulled away. Outside someone shouted, ‘Pakis, come out, you Pakis!’

  The warmth of the burning planks in the grate was in direct opposition to the scene I tried to imagine outside and I shuddered, fearful for my parents more than myself. A loud beat started up, something being struck repeatedly against a bin lid. At intervals the crashing stopped, replaced by jeering and monkey noises.

  ‘Put the TV on loud,’ Mum said to Dad.

  ‘We will go one day,’ said Dad, moving to stand by the fire and adjusting a stray corner of glittery tinsel that had been sticky-taped around the edges of the Mecca picture.

  My mother looked up at him and forced out a smile. She patted the space on the carpet next to her. Dad shrugged his shoulders and remained standing.

  Outside I heard the screeching brakes of a car and someone cried out – a noise not dissimilar to the scream of the cat earlier, only louder.

  ‘I have to go,’ said my father.

  Her eyes showing fear, my mother shook her head. ‘Sit down, come on, next to us,’ she said softly.

  ‘If I could only get to the end of the street to a phone box I could call the police.’

  I could smell the oil on the stove in the kitchen heating up. Although no potatoes had yet been put into it, the fat gave off the aroma of frying chips.

  ‘Police!’ Mum cackled. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added unconvincingly, ‘they’ll be gone in a minute or two.’

  ‘We can’t show them we are weak.’ Dad’s voice trailed off as he went into the kitchen.

  The door to the backyard opened and then slammed shut. I heard the latch being bolted. My father reappeared in the kitchen doorway, holding a long broom handle. Mum put down the potato she was peeling and sprang to her feet. She grabbed the broom and stared at my father. ‘No, not in front of the boy,’ she said.

  ‘You’re wrong, missus: especially in front of the boy.’

  Mum shot me a panicked glance. ‘Go upstairs!’ she cried.

  I didn’t move.

  ‘There’s no hiding it from him,’ said Dad.

  ‘You can’t fight them all.’

  My father let go of the broom, leaving it dangling loosely in Mum’s hand. He stooped slightly so that his face was level with hers and did something I had never before seen him do, nor have I seen him do it since: he kissed her. Then he turned to me, his face suffused with a violent, incomprehensible anger. ‘Get your coat!’ he shouted.

  Before I could obey, Mum moved to block the front door, the broom handle across her body. She looked back and forth between us, her expression gradually charging to one of fixed determination. ‘I won’t tell you again,’ she said fiercely to me.

  I got quickly to my feet. Putting one hand on the banister, as though to climb the stairs, I lingered on the bottom step.

  She turned to my father. ‘Do you see anyone else going out there? Think for a minute. What would we do if we lost you? What would happen to me as a widow? And the boy, what would become of him? You want him to grow up into some sort of hoodlum without a father?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Dad softly.

  ‘Upstairs!’ she screamed, without glancing in my direction.

  I scrambled up to my room and peered out the window. Across the road, four men stood before Mustafa’s front door. Even in the poorly lit street, I could tell they wore bomber jackets, tight jeans and long boots. One had a spiky Mohican and another swung a thick chain at his hips. The headlights of a car passing slowly at the other end of the street caught the men, frozen for a split second, like startled burglars. In that moment, I recognized the man with the chain as Adrian’s father. He shook the chain, opening it out to double its length, and swung it. I watched it spin, glinting as it caught the grim overhead streetlight at its maximum height, and winced each time it cracked against the pavement.

  The end of the chain met the windowpane. The glass fractured but held together for a moment; just as the men ran away, the entire pane collapsed into the front room.

  Inside the house a light was switched on, the brightness of the interior contrasting sharply with the dark night. Mustafa’s mother came up to the window, clutching his little brother Faisal. Faisal was swaddled in a white blanket. She bent to the floor and picked up a shard of glass. She looked at it, shaking her head in resignation. Faisal, too young to know better, cocked his head up towards the broken window and smiled. His mother shivered and pulled her headscarf over her brow. Mustafa came into the room, rubbing the smoke from his eyes. He wore proper pyjamas like English people. Mustafa pulled his mother away from the window and the light went out.

  Our windows were closed but I could taste black smoke. I coughed, and rubbed my stinging eyes. There were no lights on i
n any of the houses, and the widely spaced street lamps glowed discreetly in yellow orbs high above the deserted road. The factory hammer broke the silence every ten seconds: bong. I listened intently, expecting to hear glass breaking further along the street.

  I could make out my father’s angry voice. ‘We must defend ourselves.’

  ‘Inshallah we will, but not like this,’ screamed Mum. It was as though by shouting louder she would get her own way. She muttered a Bismillah; I heard her footsteps going into the kitchen and then a hot bubbly sizzle as she cast the freshly cut potato sticks into the oil.

  Noticing a glow from the street below, I pressed my nose to my bedroom window and looked down. Flames leapt off the sofa. I heard my mother scream, ‘Allah!’ The front door was flung open, letting in thick black smoke that curled up the stairs and into my room.

  From the window I saw my father kick at the fire. He ran indoors, picked up his coat and returned to the sofa, draping the garment over it. It was a stupid thing to do, I thought. The fire licked around the edges of the coat and quickly through it. From my elevation it felt like I was watching television. Then I saw my dad drag the sofa into the middle of the road, away from the house.

  I heard jubilant jeering from the other end of the street. My father cried out, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Raising the broom in his hand, he marched down the road. Fearing for him, I said a Bismillah. Then I saw my mother staggering after him down the street, pulling her headscarf tightly down on her head. I hurried downstairs and stood, with one foot outside, at the open front door. The wind had turned, blowing the rain and thick black smoke high above my head, and the warmth of the burning sofa cast me in a pleasing orange glow. Halfway down the street, Mum and Dad stood guard like ancient sentries.

  Suddenly, I loathed the idea of being brown, a Paki, with Paki-bashers out on the streets and Adrian’s dad ready to pounce. I hated too the weakness of my parents. Of what my parents had become.