The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

ticket. He had fallen under Akbar Khan’s spell and revealed personal information. Information that had taken him to the verge of a jail term.

Akbar Khan put down his pen. What his daughter did not know was that Elyas’s father had come to him for help. The man was in financial trouble, mortgage repayments long overdue. He had no stomach for business and his start-up company had swallowed up his income and more. Akbar Khan had agreed to help, but reluctantly. He’d considered this the best of a bad deal, and now his daughter blamed him.

‘These honourable men you worry about so much…I know things about them that you do not,’ he said. He turned to Zan, who was standing beside him and gestured for a glass of water. It was bitterly cold outside, and inside the central heating was drying out the air, leaving skin chapped and mouths dry.

Zan placed his hand on his father’s shoulder, to show his allegiance as much as to protect his sister. But Akbar Khan wasn’t annoyed with his daughter. He was proud of the rage that ran through her. It was a sign of her loyalty to those under her care, but she hadn’t yet learnt to win. ‘My child, life is ugly,’ he said. ‘The only people who survive it are those who make themselves its equal.’

‘My father-in-law trusted you and now he is ruined.’

‘Well then, he was a fool,’ said Akbar Khan, his words so matter-of-fact, his manner so calm, that they snatched the fight from Jia’s mouth. Violence was her only option. She lunged at him, her face contorted in anger and heartbreak, and found herself being held back by Zan. He had stepped in between her and his father. Her arms were flailing; she had lost control of herself.

The investigation, the court case, the jury’s deliberation, all of it had chipped away at her. She had held it together until now. She couldn’t do it any more. The shame of what her father had done, the embarrassment before her in-laws, their silence on the matter, had made it all worse. If they had blamed her, she could have fought them and argued for her father, but they hadn’t; they had simply looked broken. And now here she was, her shame leaving her ravenous for blood.

Taking her by the shoulders, Zan forced her out into the hallway. ‘Calm down,’ he said. Stoicism was rare in Pukhtuns, but Zan had mastered it. Controlled, disciplined and intelligent, his mix of British sensibility and Pukhtun courage had brought him respect in his father’s eyes. He had become the kind of son a Khan could be proud of. His sister, however, did not share the sentiment.

‘I hate him,’ she said. She spat the words like hot fat. ‘For what he has done to us and for what he has done to you.’

‘I know,’ he said. The immediacy of his response disarmed her.

She sat down on the floor and cried. The adrenaline that had been coursing through her had dissipated now, and she was exhausted. She wondered what was to become of them. Her head hurt at the thought of Zan in her father’s world. He had embarked on a path of pain, and there was nothing she could do to change that. She cried salty tears, for him and for herself. They dripped down her face and into the crevice of her mouth, their taste reminding her of the grazed knees and minor scrapes that had ended with childhood. There was shame and embarrassment today, but no one was going to prison. She realised that though her anger was justified, it was wasted, and that there were bigger battles to come. So she opened her eyes, wiped her face and got to her feet.

She was considering her next move, when her husband’s voice cut through the silence. It made its way through the thick walls and closed doors of the study and left her cold. He was shouting at her father, his words clear and hurtful, like sharp objects being ground into her wounds.

Zan watched her flinch. ‘Not nice, is it,’ he said, ‘when someone attacks your family?’ Jia remained silent, her confusion evident on her face. ‘Your father-in-law should have known better. No one forced him to sign the papers, and the courts have found him not guilty, but you have given Elyas permission to shout at Baba. It’s not our father’s fault that your husband’s father did what he did.’

He said the words slowly, deliberately, and was ready for retaliation, but she dropped her head into her hands, and by the time she looked up, black lines of mascara and kohl were smudged across her cheeks.

‘I watched an old man standing in the dock and fighting for his life, day after day, knowing that I was partly responsible for putting him there. While we sit safely in our houses, that is what Baba does to people. He doesn’t care who it is or what happens to them. He just keeps on going. It’s business to him, just business. He destroys lives, livelihoods, and all for what? For money. He’s kept it from us, this business of his, but this time I saw it, every last drop of pain. I watched it being wrung out of an innocent man. All because his son had chosen to marry me, and because I am Akbar Khan’s daughter.’

Her father, her hero, the hypocrite, and so was she. She couldn’t forgive him and it was tearing her apart. ‘He’s done all these things, all these awful things and more, and yet I still love him? What can I do?’

‘Why do you need to do anything?’ Zan replied. ‘Why do you care so much what people think?’ His arrest and the years that followed had changed him from the inside out. ‘Making peace with the differences between our birthplace and our parents’ is hard. Making peace with their choices is even harder.’ Jia looked up at her brother: his