The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

out for her son as she stood in the road, her youngest child clinging to her in fear. She clutched her last-born to her chest and screamed out for her firstborn, the anguish in her voice reaching the other side of the city and piercing the night sky. Maria Khan muffled her cries with one hand at the sight of the mangled car. She grabbed her mother with the other.

Collapsing into a heap next to Zan was Akbar Khan. He ran his fingers through his son’s hair, wiping the blood from his forehead – ‘Ya Allah! Ya Allah! YA ALLAH!’ – on his knees, drenched in rain, his supplications getting louder and louder, as though exorcising the devil. The old man’s calls to his Lord were the last thing Elyas heard before the ambulance sirens closed in and drowned out everything else. They arrived from all sides, white against the darkness.

Events unfolded in front of Elyas like a grainy, silent film. Around Jia everything seemed to be in slow motion: a paramedic cajoling her to let go of her broken brother, his words lost in the cold, damp air, her eyes dim. Jia was in another place, another world, one where she could rock Zan back and forth, back and forth, to this place. Streams of whispered words came from her mouth as tears dripped from her face to his. Only Akbar Khan was close enough to hear what she was saying, and it was her madness that forced him to resume control. He raised his head and straightened his back.

His eldest son was gone, a boy who had come to life through him and become a man under his watch, become so much more than he could ever have hoped. Akbar Khan had started to believe in Zan’s plans for the family business. It had been a long time since he had allowed himself to dream, but handing over his empire had begun to seem like a reality. He should have known better; he had developed ideas above his station, and he had forgotten he was not the master of final judgement, although he had dealt it out enough times over the course of his life. He had brought destruction to those he believed deserving, and to others who had simply become collateral damage in the battleground of business. Today that destruction had been visited upon him.

He leaned in and whispered something to his daughter and she immediately loosened her grip. The paramedics moved in swiftly, lifting Zan’s broken body on to the cold stretcher and into the ambulance. In the distance, Elyas watched his wife. Behind her swarmed paramedics, policemen, and other faces, some but not all familiar. But she saw none of it. Her head down and her palms upwards, she looked as if she was praying. She wasn’t, though; she was staring at the blood.

Only Akbar Khan saw Elyas standing alone in the distance. He had lost his son and he would not give up his daughter. He put his arm around her, and like the old-fashioned wooden toy, the kind that stands and collapses, collapses and stands, she clutched her father. She could not watch them take her brother away. Through the sea of people, Akbar Khan led his family – what remained of it – home. The doors of the ambulance slammed shut as they left, and the gates to the house swung closed after them. Elyas knew then that his marriage to Jia Khan was over.

CHAPTER 18

Sanam Khan knocked on the bedroom door and waited. The house was dark, the only light coming from the living room, where she’d left the men waiting.

She blamed herself for their presence. She chided herself for not having given more alms to the poor; she should have offered more of herself, of her time and her money, and now it was too late: the evil eye had them and there was nothing to do but pray. She spoke her daughter’s name into the darkness. She was glad she was here.

Jia sat up. Her mother’s voice was soft, but Jia was a light sleeper. She had been since Zan’s arrest, her senses always on alert. She climbed out of bed and opened the door. ‘Your father’s brother is here,’ Sanam Khan said. ‘I don’t understand what he’s saying.’

‘Where is Baba?’ said Jia.

‘Come, wash your face quickly, they’re waiting.’ Her mother was always practical at times of difficulty, and Jia had come to see the value in her ways. Tasbeeh in hand, the old woman waited, counting prayer bead to prayer bead, as Jia made her way to the bathroom.

She washed the tired out of her eyes before looking at her reflection. Cleansed of the day’s make-up, she ran her hands over her cheeks and neck. Her face was free of lines and yet to wrinkle – the benefits of brown skin – but tiny age spots had begun appearing on her cheeks. Her eyes were worn, her skin not as taut as it once was – she was definitely older, and a lot wiser. She checked her phone for messages, hoping for something from Benyamin, but there was nothing. She wondered if he was home yet, and made a mental note to spend some time with him away from here. She wanted to make things right between them and knew that her mother’s shadow wouldn’t allow the frank conversation they needed to have.

Her mother was waiting for her outside the bathroom, clutching Jia’s shawl. She wrapped the soft material around her daughter’s shoulders and brought it up to her head, covering the loose hair the way she used to do when Jia was a teenager. The duplicitous world of men expected women to be draped in honour. ‘This looks like the kind of thing Akbar Khan would choose,’ she said, her voice faltering at the name of her husband.

‘He sent it to me,’ said Jia. ‘I never understood why he gave us gifts on Father’s Day.’

‘Your father,