The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

door – things they both knew but could never quite bring themselves to admit. She pushed the thoughts aside and shook her head.

‘It is what mothers do, feel guilty,’ said Sanam Khan.

***

On the other side of the city, Benyamin waited in his car, hiding behind its tinted windows, the night drawing in around him. The funeral had been even harder than he had anticipated. The morphine Malik had prescribed was wearing off and he knocked back a couple more tablets, followed by a glug of water. Thanks to Malik’s contacts, he’d been seen last night by medics at the private hospital nearby, and received the best ‘off the books’ medical treatment possible. The scans had shown he’d been lucky: there was no internal damage to his organs. His face was still swollen, and his body badly bruised, but by some trick of fate, he hadn’t broken any bones. He couldn’t stand for long periods of time, but he’d managed the drive OK – he was glad his Beamer was an automatic.

This had always been his favourite time, sitting in the warmth of his car, encased in the velvet night. That feeling of comfort had been marred now, but he still preferred it to being at home, especially with so many people around, so much fussing and high emotion. Here he could watch the world go by from the shadows, like a film, the orange street lamps spotlighting the actors: working girls, junkies, pimps and punters. It was a place for the lonely, for the strung out, the desperate. It felt like escape.

CHAPTER 30

Two months later Nowak made his next move. ‘Why would he target that building?’ said Idris. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Jia, Idris and Nadeem were sitting in a shisha bar across from where the bomb had exploded. The large plasma screen on the wall opposite was tuned to News 24, showing the rubble that was once a refugee centre. Plumes of smoke poured out of the old warehouse, as young and old ran out on to the street.

Jia had been nearby when it happened. The explosion had shattered glass, pulled roofs off buildings and taken walls apart brick by brick. It had cracked the road wide open. Jia and her cousins had spent hours fielding the injured. Exhausted and broken, they had retired to Pasha’s shisha bar.

The images on the news kept coming. ‘I know her,’ said Jia, pointing at the screen. The woman from Akbar Khan’s funeral, the one who had accompanied her elderly father, was standing behind the reporter. The side of her face looked raw; she was hysterical, paramedics patiently helping her into an ambulance. The chaos was a message from Nowak, a sign that there was no line he would not cross. He wanted the city and he would take it as a corpse if he had to. He’d sent Jia a text just before it happened, like an attention-seeking child, she thought, her blood boiling; he wanted everyone to look at him, talk about him, be afraid of him.

‘If it wasn’t for the proceeds of crime, this city would have nothing,’ Idris went on angrily. ‘No one cares what happens in this place. And no one’s going to care about these people who come here, the refugees, people who have escaped war and persecution! So why target them?’

‘I care,’ said Jia. ‘We care. And his fight is with us. I’ve seen men like him before. They don’t care about anything. They don’t love anything. He’s targeted the most vulnerable people he can to get to us. Because he knows we do care.’

For too long, Jia had hidden herself away in her ivory tower. She had closed her eyes to the silent injustices of society, to the ease with which her white counterparts, from their own towers, passed judgement on enclaves and ghettos, a symptom of their arrogance and luck. For too long she had lived apart in a society of indifference. Now Nowak was dragging her out.

‘Is Ben joining us?’ asked Nadeem.

‘I think he’s at home,’ Jia said.

‘I hear he’s got a new lady friend,’ said Nadeem. The TV volume ramped up out of the blue and they turned to find someone had flicked to a music channel. Nadeem’s words were lost in the mix.

‘Any news of Malik?’ said Jia.

‘He’s at the hospital. Says he’ll join us when he can,’ said Idris.

It felt good to be with the strong foundations of family. Pasha’s chalky walls were built on community, and recalled those found in the generational and palatial homes of Lahore’s old quarters. The smoking ban had brought Prohibition-style speakeasies to the city, where the poison on sale was not booze but tobacco. Remixed Arab-English tunes, bubbling hookahs and chatter filled the place. Pretty hijabistas sucked on hubbly-bubbly tubes as plumes of smoke rose up and permeated the air with a variety of shisha fragrances.

The cousins fell into conversation in the way that only those who live closely and share blood can, picking up strands of the past and intricately weaving them with the here and now. Jia began to remember what it felt like to be surrounded by people she’d grown up with, people who shared her values and understood her ways without explanation. The conversation was simple, easy, comfortable. The waiter handed her a glass of juice and she took a long, slow drink. She leaned in to the sugar hit and the warmth of her family, and spoke about the issues confronting them, about Nowak, the Jirga’s request and the police.

As the family lawyer, Idris had known the day would come when they would need to discuss the family business openly; he had just had to bide his time. ‘We’ve lived long enough to know that British law does not offer people who look like us justice. As members of the judiciary, we choose to live by it and implement it, but no one is going to give us our rights. Like Zan said, we have to take them.’

Jia