The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

up on the bonnet. The air, heavy with the smell of engine oil and metal, made it difficult to breathe, and she felt her head becoming opaque. The men continued to count. From the corner of her eye Jia could see her brother. The blood pounded in her ears and a metallic taste filled her mouth. She just needed to hold on a little longer.

She was grateful when the screeching of tyres on the ramp broke the silence, signalling Michael’s return. But the sound sent Benyamin crumpling to the floor, whimpering, his arms covering his head as he lay there in a heap. It took all the self-control she had not to rush forward and gather him up in her arms. But she knew she could not show Nowak any sign of weakness, and this made the rage in her rise further. She called it forth from deep inside her soul and held on to it, feeding off it, one eye on her brother and the other on the men slowly counting the money.

When the men gave Nowak the nod, Jia went over to Benyamin and pulled his arm around her. With Michael’s help, she led him to their car and lowered him into the back seat, closing the door firmly after him. With her brother safe, she took a deep breath and glanced down at the apple twig in her hand.

‘You’ve got this,’ Maria had told her on the doorstep of Pukhtun House.

‘I know.’

‘Remember that gruesome book of Pukhtun tales we smuggled in from the One World Bookshop?’

Jia had cast her mind back and remembered a yellow hardback book with strange pictures. Maria went on to remind her what they’d read in it, of wartime executions, prisoners pegged out, their jaws forced wide open as wronged women urinated in their mouths repeatedly until death overcame them. And of the women who carried out castrations, beheadings and ‘death by a thousand cuts’. Maria’s words were matter-of-fact, as though relaying an oft-used recipe passed down through generations.

‘They would slice the man open,’ she’d reminded Jia, ‘and then push grass and thorns into his wounds. And they were no kinder to their own men, punishing a cheating husband by forcing thick and thorned twigs down his penis. Why do you think our father never strayed? Sometimes they would just tear a man’s tongue out by the roots after gang-raping him. I’m not trying to say we are barbarians; the British were no better. They flayed and filleted our people. But war for us is an honourable pursuit. We nurture it within us, and each generation proves its worth through it. And, of course, our wars are ruthless. No mercy is shown and none is expected. We don’t take prisoners. If this man Nowak was to be captured by the Jirga, he could expect not only to be killed, but to be carved up and quartered before having his cock cut off and stuffed in his mouth for good measure.’

Jia didn’t know if it was Maria Khan’s stories or her support that had strengthened her. But she’d left for the meeting filled with a confidence that made her care little about proving her worth to Andrzej Nowak.

Now, though, with her brother safely in the back of the car, Jia couldn’t resist, the way a cat can’t resist a mouse. Drawing herself up, she turned and looked at Nowak, her eyes as cold and steeled as his, and she said to him, ‘Have you heard of execution by golden shower?’ He flinched, and she pounced. ‘It was carried out by Pathan women on prisoners of war. I hadn’t thought about it until this morning when my people reminded me. But there’s no need for you to worry. These are civilised times, and as you mentioned earlier, in today’s world our women are controlled by men – and by that token I have no power and can do nothing other than take my brother and leave. If, however, by some chance I did have power and the might of my people behind me, you should know that you have shown my brother more mercy than I would show you. There is also the matter of my father’s death.’

Nowak was suddenly unsure of his course of action. Something in Jia’s voice unnerved him. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with your father’s death,’ he began, but he stopped himself. He knew she wasn’t interested in his denial.

Nowak was a man who had seen conflict of many kinds; he had sought it out and studied it and buried himself in it to the point where he had become practically fearless. But even he knew there were men and women in the world against whom you could never win. And there was something in Jia’s voice that day that reminded him of that. He had heard it before in men with no will to live, in kamikazes and jihadis.

CHAPTER 25

Her face unflinching, Jia buckled her seatbelt. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Michael. He drove out of the dark basement and turned into the street, the soft hum of the car’s heating system tempering the silence. It was only when they reached the edge of the city that Jia exhaled. She leaned across the back seat and gently wiped her brother’s brow. She tasted iron on her lips when she kissed his forehead. He whimpered, his eyes closed, and she took him in her arms, pressing him into her, trying to absorb his pain, as she had done when they were children. ‘I’ve got you,’ she said. A myriad of thoughts ran through her head; she pushed them down. Leaning forward she put her hand on Michael’s shoulder. ‘Drive for a few streets and then stop the car somewhere quiet,’ she told him.

He did as she asked. Turning into a small backstreet, he stopped outside the Ali Baba Fabric Shop. The metal shutters were coming down, evening was falling and the owner, Wasim, was closing up for the