Akram's War Read online

  Digging one hand into my pocket, I felt guiltily for the crisp edges of the pound note. The pound note was bad luck and right then I should have got rid of it, thrown it on the fire, but I didn’t. I kept it.

  *

  I watch Grace as she gently stirs. She cracks a benevolent smile. It takes ages for her eyes to fully open.

  ‘Kids think daft things,’ she says. ‘It’s not like that anymore, is it?’

  ‘There’s a flaw. Somewhere inside of me is a deep flaw.’

  ‘It’s just life. Not all white people – what is it you call them?’

  ‘Gora.’

  ‘Not all gora are the same, just like not all Pakistanis are like the lying bastards I meet.’

  ‘The gora is a simple humble being, but you were right – almost the first thing you said was that we Pakis, we’re liars.’

  ‘We all have things we’d rather not. . .’ Grace’s gaze strays towards the baby picture on her bedside cabinet. ‘I didn’t use that word.’

  ‘We don’t fit in,’ I say emphatically. ‘Never will.’

  ‘You,’ she draws back a little and observes how I am comfortably reclined next to her, ‘seem to be making a good fist of it.’

  ‘You don’t get it. We don’t want to fit in.’

  ‘Not even soldier boy?’

  ‘You miss the point. It’s how we think.’

  ‘You’re better than us?’

  I hesitate. ‘Yes.’

  ‘As a kid you were a thieving little bastard, and for what it’s worth I don’t mind that. Admitting to your dishonesty in some way makes you honest.’

  ‘You want me to be really honest?’

  She nods.

  ‘Earlier, I wanted to. . .’ I glance across at her belly and up towards her breasts. ‘When you were asleep. . . I mean—’

  ‘That would spoil it. Don’t stop. It’s like. . . As I said, your voice is familiar. It’s good to fall asleep to.’ Her head sinks into the pillow and she closes her eyes. I watch her breathe, waiting until the rise and fall of her chest is regular and shallow before I resume.

  6

  Being Craig Male was worse than being a Paki. As always, he was dressed in an oversized moss-green vinyl parka. At school I had observed from a safe distance how a gang of boys would wait at the top of the stairs and spit balls of chewed-up paper that slid down his parka as he crossed the foyer several floors below. Between classes they’d run up silently and kick him from behind. Then they’d form a circle and laugh as he tried to keep an eye on all of them at the same time.

  I was eleven and took myself to and back from school. That morning, I tiptoed past, hoping he wouldn’t see me. But he turned abruptly and offered a friendly smile. ‘My mum died last night,’ he said.

  Maley had bad genes and close up he didn’t look the same age as me. He was a younger version of an old man. He was thin, really thin, and short. He had a comb-over, because the hair on his head was too sparse to cover his scalp. The skin on his face hung off his bones, and for a thin person that was unusual. He had spots too – bright pink against his paper-white skin.

  ‘Is it all right if I walk to class with you?’ he asked.

  I shivered at the thought that he might tell other kids about his dead mum. ‘Mate, you really shouldn’t go to school on a day like today.’

  ‘It’s Tuesday.’ His pace quickened. ‘Pasta.’

  ‘It’s not a good idea. Wag it. Go tomorrow.’

  The 247 eased to a stop just ahead of us. In the absence of Maley, I would have caught it; from the upper deck of the bus most days I would see Maley as he walked to school.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If they find out they’ll kill you.’ I stared at his plimsolls. His big toe was just visible through one.

  ‘I never miss Tuesdays.’ Maley gazed up at me. His matted hair sat flat against his scalp, revealing a flaky patch of skin.

  ‘I can’t wag school, Dad will kill me, but I’ll say I have to go home for lunch. Wait for me somewhere. You can come to my house.’

  ‘Your mum won’t mind?’

  ‘No, why should she? Anyway, she’ll be at the shop.’

  He looked unconvinced. ‘The thing about pasta is that it really fills you up.’ He said it slowly, like a challenge.

  I made up my mind. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve never wagged before and if I get caught it’s not worth thinking about, but I’ll join you. We’ll hang out. I hope you like curry?’

  ‘Never tried it.’

  ‘It’s much better than pasta.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘It’s the best food in the world,’ I added in a serious tone.

  His eyes brightened. ‘Really?’

  After checking behind me in case Mum was watching from the window, I turned into a street in the opposite direction from school, and Maley followed.

  ‘Pasta is special. It’s what is called a slow-release carbohydrate. It keeps me full for four hours. Six if it’s Mrs Cole – she puts extra on my plate.’

  ‘Why? Do you know her?’

  ‘I think she used to work with my mum.’

  ‘Your mum had a job?’

  ‘Yeah, ’course she did. She worked at Danks’s. Clerical, like. They made boilers for ships. My dad says it’s the boilers what made him go deaf.’

  ‘Clerical?’ I didn’t know what that meant.

  ‘She got sick and my dad finished up too.’ Maley rubbed his hands together for warmth. ‘So he could look after her.’

  ‘Sounds horrible, your dad’s job.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ He shook his head. ‘It was before I remember.’ He stretched out a hand. ‘I’ve seen you around but we’ve never spoke. You’re Akram Khan, aren’t you?’

  I smiled and shook his hand. It was cold and bony with tiny wrinkles criss-crossing the pale skin. ‘And you’re Craig Male.’

  ‘How come you know that?’

  ‘You’re famous.’

  This seemed to please him, and he smiled. The small park nearby was deserted and we took a swing each, even though they were for younger kids. As we swung I noticed he wasn’t wearing socks.

  ‘My dad doesn’t believe in a God,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Mum didn’t either.’

  ‘What will happen to your mum?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘They’re going to cremate her.’ He pulled a marble out of his pocket and held it up to an eye like a pirate looking through a lens. ‘We’re going to keep her ashes.’

  ‘We believe in Allah. When we die we go to heaven.’

  ‘There’s no p-proof of heaven,’ he stammered angrily.

  ‘What will you do with the ashes?’

  ‘Put them in a pot in the cupboard.’ Maley looked down at his feet.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What they good for?’ He shook his head and stamped his feet to the ground; his swing abruptly stopped. He got off. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Where?’

  He glanced up at the sky as though reading the time. ‘We got three hours forty-five minutes until dinner.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Could go up Turner’s Hill?’

  I jumped off my swing and began to walk beside him. ‘Never been.’ I looked at the hill looming about two miles into the distance. It was the tallest point around. On its peak was a huge steel aerial, and at night a beacon flashed from its tip, warning low-flying aircraft. Viewed from my bedroom window and at a certain angle the aerial stood precisely on the rim of the horizon. Once, when I was little, I had been reading a story about giants and just as I looked out of my window I saw the silhouette of an enormous man stride across the top of the hill. Terrified, I dived under my bed, and only emerged when my mother called me down for dinner. And although, at eleven, I no longer believed in giants, the hill still seemed like an alarming, almost mythical place.

  A truck hurtled closely past, scattering tiny stones at our feet.

  ‘It’s best when there’s lightning,’ said Maley. We looked up
at the clouds, greying.

  ‘Doesn’t it scare you?’ I said.

  ‘The lightning conducts through the aerial so you won’t get hit, but you can get real close.’

  We took a path that skirted the Old Hill tower blocks where the poor gora lived. It led to a stretch of canal with pretty ironwork bridges. Further ahead, as the canal curved, was the sharp outline of an abandoned mill.

  ‘That there’ – Maley pointed to a bird idling in the canal – ‘is a Canada goose, and that one, the smaller one with the white bill, that’s a coot.’

  They were names I had not heard before.

  ‘Once I saw a kingfisher diving from that willow up there by the mill,’ he added proudly.

  ‘A kingfisher?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw a flash of blue and I knew in a split second what it was, even before it flew off with a fish in its beak.’

  ‘Must have had a nest somewhere. Maybe along the bank?’

  Maley stepped off the path and scanned the ground along the canal edge. ‘Rains were heavy, probably flooded.’

  ‘Kingfisher dead then?’ I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘It’s just nature.’ He smiled cheerfully before leaping back onto the path.

  ‘How come you know stuff like that?’ I said, catching up.

  ‘Don’t you ever come here?’ Maley wore a face of disbelief.

  ‘Go to mosque after school. Then homework, and when that’s finished it’s telly and bed. Weekends have to help out in the shop.’

  ‘You own a shop?’ His eyes bulged like the marble he still held in his hand.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You must be rich.’

  I laughed.

  ‘You sell pasta?’

  ‘We only have Pakistani customers.’

  ‘You should ask your dad to stock it. Spaghetti’s my favourite.’

  The mill had thick walls like a castle and one small doorway. Although the lack of roof tiles rendered it open to the elements, from inside the darkening sky had cut off a clear view of its height. Maley paced its four sides, measuring them out with his feet, before declaring it a perfect square – like a prison cell, he added. Craning his neck, he peered up. ‘Strange. No bats today.’

  ‘My dad keeps live chickens and if a customer orders one he kills it in the sink at the back.’

  ‘We are the strongest species on the planet,’ Maley replied.

  ‘He makes me hold the bird while he slits its neck. They’re strong, chickens. It’s not a job for a kid.’

  ‘But not the wisest,’ Maley added ruefully.

  We left the mill and continued upwards along a rough path.

  ‘He says a Bismillah as he presses down the knife. That way it’s halal. Then he tips it upside down so that the blood washes down the sink.’

  ‘Slitting its neck would really hurt a chicken.’ Maley’s face seemed to contort into a frozen mask. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t born you.’

  I stared at him. It was a shock hearing that. I was about to say the same thing to him, but something stopped me. I closed my mouth and considered the view.

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing, ‘I can’t see the top of Turner’s Hill anymore. It’s disappeared into the clouds.’

  ‘If we hurry we might see the edge of the rain.’ Maley’s eyes bulged with excitement.

  ‘The edge of the rain. How come I don’t know that?’ I struggled to keep up with Maley. Having little weight to carry he was sprightly.

  After another hour of climbing circuitous, slippery paths, often having to fight our way through the undergrowth, we got to the top of Turner’s Hill. The rain had stopped, and we didn’t catch the edge of it. The low dark clouds limited our view to the large clumps of manure below our feet.

  ‘It’s fresh,’ said Maley seriously. ‘They have grazing up here, see.’

  ‘What, cows?’

  ‘Mostly horses,’ he said. ‘Scrap iron men. Gypos. Fairground when it comes. Must have gone into some barn on account of the weather. They’re clever, see, horses, can sense a storm.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Rode one once. At Pontins. Used to go every year. Don’t remember it though. Dad keeps a picture in a frame on the wall. Been on a beach as well and sat on a tractor.’

  ‘Thought you said you were poor?’ I looked him over, taking in his trousers that were a few inches too short, the vinyl parka falling like an apron to somewhere around his knees, his lively face painfully dotted with leaking acne.

  ‘I’ve seen pictures of me as a kid when we were rich.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘This bottle of pills she got from the chemist’s was wrongly labelled. She got irreversible liver disease.’

  It made me suddenly angry that he was referring to his dead mother as she. ‘Wrongly labelled?’

  I said it reflexively, and regretted it faster than a kingfisher could catch a fish. Maley didn’t reply. He took a few steps towards the base of the aerial and disappeared into the clouds. I kicked at the sodden earth, the air cold around me. Before I could start to worry about how I would make it back alone, a bush shook as though caught by the wind and Maley reappeared from behind it, his hand outstretched and covered in manure.

  ‘Look, I found a slow-worm. It’s a big one.’ He seemed happier than he had been all morning. Cupping his hands together, he held them out to me. I looked inside them, not putting my head too close. I could see something brown wriggling between a crack in his fingers.

  ‘They break easily.’ He turned away, guarding his hands. Carefully he lowered the worm onto the grass, then collected some foliage to tuck around it. ‘Mum said I should go watch them cremate her,’ he added.

  ‘I wouldn’t go,’ I said.

  ‘People do weird things. It’s just human nature. Animal kingdom, now that’s much better.’

  ‘I find animals boring.’

  ‘You think kingfishers are boring?’ Maley’s neck began to flush red, just like it did after a spitball was dropped on him from the stairwell or he was kicked from behind. ‘Well then, you’re an idiot like the rest of them.’

  ‘Well, I think kingfishers must be okay,’ I allowed.

  ‘They’re one of the fastest species on the planet.’

  We meandered back down the hill. Maley stopped frequently, crouching to examine a plant or a bug, and once a wasp, apparently with no fear. He used words I had never heard before – alder, alderfly, ecotone, cowslip, gastropod, mallard, vole, cow parsley – and each time I’d nod and murmur a non-committal Yeah, sure, which seemed to satisfy him, and he’d get up and we’d carry on. Before we got to the road he stopped once again, next to a hedgerow.

  ‘Listen, can you hear it?’ His face was frozen in concentration. I shook my head. He put a finger to his lips and then carefully teased apart the branches of the hedgerow. ‘In here,’ he whispered, beckoning with a slant of his head.

  I was cautious at first, fearing another dirty slow-worm, but when I looked in I saw the most beautiful thing. Deep within the hedgerow was a nest containing four tiny brown birds. They craned their necks and chirped with beaks that seemed paper-thin but far too big for their small heads.

  ‘Best not to disturb them,’ Maley whispered. He carefully replaced the foliage and tiptoed backwards. I couldn’t say anything, still enraptured by the image of those pink beaks, the tiny bodies chirping for all they were worth, short sharp tweets. ‘Their mother must be watching us from somewhere around here.’ Maley scanned the trees above us.

  Once on the road we were both suddenly aware again of the fact that we had wagged school. As much as possible we kept to the side streets, and as the roads got busier we quickened our pace.

  Maley led, lifting his chin and sniffing as though he was following his nose back to my house. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, rubbing his stomach. ‘I can feel it turning over.’

  ‘Mum says that hunger is the very worst thing.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Maley. ‘More than hungry, I’m starving.’r />
  ‘Mum doesn’t allow me to use the word starving. If I use it by accident she says a hundred Bismillahs.’

  Already Turner’s Hill seemed a distant memory as I led Maley into the house. He peered wide-eyed into a large pot on the cooker. The steel sides of the pot were still warm. Mum had cooked the curry before going out to help at the shop. She didn’t serve customers, she worked out the back: plucking chickens, sealing them over a gas ring, gutting them and chopping the meat to order. She soaked chickpeas and lentils in brine so they could be sold soft, and she always had a large cauldron of oil on the go, deep-frying samosas and other battered savouries that were put on a large tray and sold up front. The back room was as much a part of the store as the shop itself. She also collected eggs from hens we kept in a yard to the rear of the shop, and boxed them ready for sale.

  Maley pocketed the marble he had been turning over all day, smiled, and stirred the pot with a large wooden spoon.

  ‘It’s butter chicken, is that okay?’ I said.

  Maley thought for a moment. ‘Well, if I ate a balanced diet I think I would be a vegetarian, but because of the way it is I allow myself some meat protein when I can get it.’

  ‘There’s bread in that cupboard.’ I pointed at it. ‘Can you get us some?’

  I thought he would take two, perhaps three slices for each of us, but he placed the entire loaf on the table. I felt powerless to object and reassured myself that he’d probably eat only a few slices. I put some curry into two bowls and placed them on the table. Maley sat motionless, elbows on the table, his eyes fixed on the steam emanating from his bowl. He sniffed, looked at me and then back at the bowl, a worried expression on his face. He picked up a slice of bread and stopped.

  ‘You dip your bread in the curry,’ I instructed.

  ‘Dip it? What with?’

  ‘With your fingers.’ I broke a corner off a slice of bread, and pinching it into a scoop I gathered up some curry and put it into my mouth.

  ‘Hot,’ Maley observed after his first mouthful, blowing out repeatedly. Again the redness began to creep up his pale, acne-littered neck.

  Despite the apparent hotness of the mild curry, Maley ate eleven slices of bread and two bowls of curry, containing what must have been half a chicken. By the time he had finished he was pinker than I had ever seen him. I managed only two and a half slices and half a bowl of curry. The gora way he ate – taking huge mouthfuls, one after the other in quick succession, the next one going in before he’d swallowed the first, licking his fingers, and also the way he slurped and dropped crumbs and curry drips with almost each bite – put me off my food. Halfway through, as I watched his unwashed fingers grasping the bread, I remembered the grubby slow-worm and turned away.