The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

She was the only woman in attendance. Muslim men buried their dead, because women were considered too emotional to witness the event. Coming from a race that was hot-headed, whose men were known for holding grudges, and being rash in their actions, the irony of this was not lost on Jia.

Still not strong enough to walk far unassisted, Benyamin was helped to his place by Bazigh Khan. He stood beside his sister as their cousins carried the coffin to its final resting place. Jia reached out to take his hand. Akbar Khan had been the shoulder that others looked to lean upon; today he was on the shoulders of others, and even his son could not help him.

The siblings watched silently as the coffin was lowered into the ground, each outwardly controlled, each aware that they would be leaving their father alone in that pit. Neither had feared for him until this moment. They hadn’t yet found an opportunity to speak properly about the events that had brought them to this point. Standing in a sea of men, still aching from his injuries, Benyamin felt awkward holding his sister’s hand, leaning on a woman for help. He let go of her, and she barely seemed to notice.

One by one, the members of the Jirga stepped forward, deepening Jia’s sense of loss with each handful of soil cast into the grave. Distanced from the hearts and hearths of Pukhtuns for years, the warmth of their love was evident to her now. It enveloped her. Unable to weep, she stared at the ground, and emotions she had long since buried began to rise. The umbrellas did little to stop the rain, and her white kurta and shawl soaked through, clinging to her body. Cold and shivering, she was acutely aware of her every move; every inch of her felt pain, from her skin through to her bone. Mourners filed past, paying their respects, their feet splashing mud from the water-soaked ground, leaving dark stains across her shawl and kameez and her soul, stains that would never be cleansed.

CHAPTER 28

The men stepped back and raised their hands in prayer one last time. The sounds of crying and muffled Arabic seemed to get louder before the imam finally called out: ‘Ameen!’

Jia passed her hands over her face and opened her eyes. The rain made it difficult to see clearly but she knew she was being watched. The boy’s features were familiar, and as he began walking towards her she knew the time for reckoning was here.

‘Ahad, my name is Ahad,’ he said, holding out his broad, olive-skinned hand.

‘I know,’ she whispered as she took it in hers. The last time she had held it, it had fitted snugly in her own palm; now it was large enough to envelope hers.

‘Why didn’t you come and see me?’ the boy asked. They had moved away from the graveside and were standing under a tree, waiting for Elyas. He had left them alone under the pretence of bringing the car closer. The burial was done and the mourners were returning to Pukhtun House.

It was Jia who had asked Elyas to bring Ahad to the funeral and now she wondered why she’d done it. The timing was not perfect, but then when would it ever be? At least the rain had stopped now.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she said. Her voice was empty, her glance anywhere but on her son, as though an anvil had fallen inside her, pushing all feeling deep into the ground.

She felt Ahad’s eyes examining her, hoping, no doubt, for some shred of understanding, remorse, something, anything. He must have wondered why she wouldn’t look at him. She couldn’t; he reminded her too much of her brother. His eyes, the shape of his brow, his expressions: it was a face that conjured up Zan Khan. Ahad had inherited none of his father except his name and his need to ask questions.

‘How could you not know I was alive?’ he said. ‘How does that even happen?’

‘I just didn’t,’ she said. The truth was that simple and that complicated. She wanted to hold him, to soak in his smell, the way one does with a baby, but he was no longer a baby. He was almost a man, with the beginnings of facial hair, and deep-set eyes filled with troubling questions.

Ahad fell silent. He had waited so long for this moment, and here she was, his mother, as cold as the body she had buried. ‘How does that even happen?’ he said again, more to himself than to her.

He hadn’t known his mother was missing from his life until he was four years old. It was only when he noticed his friends’ mums collecting them from school that he realised he should have had a mother too. Wide-eyed and ice-cream-covered, he’d asked his father, ‘Where’s my mummy?’ Elyas’s answer was to pack up their things and move closer to his parents, hoping that his own mother’s presence would make things easier. But the questions kept on coming and became more and more persistent. Elyas muddled through fatherhood, telling Ahad fantastical stories of his mother, in which she was a princess held captive by pirates or by a witch’s spell, but one day they would rescue her and bring her home.

The magic soon wore thin, partly because the lies began to grate on Elyas himself, and in the end he had to promise to explain Jia’s absence when the time was right. The letter from Akbar Khan had been that time. Elyas had told Ahad a little of the night Akbar Khan had arrived at his doorstep with a tiny bundle wrapped in a pale blue blanket. But not everything. So much of it was still a mystery to Elyas himself.

Akbar Khan had handed his grandson over to him. ‘Name him Ahad,’ he had said. ‘And do not let my family, especially my daughter, know he is alive. He is of your bloodline, and by bringing