The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

before letting her fingers fall loose. ‘Sabar and salaat,’ her father had said. Patience and prayer. The time for both was done.

‘We will make them pay,’ she whispered, her voice ice cold. ‘I am going to do this,’ she said. ‘And you’re going to help me. There will be no more corner-shop crime. There will be a new Jirga, and it will be run the way I say.’

Benyamin had been a few streets away when the explosion happened, Sakina in his car once again. She’d unbuttoned her burqa, and the scent of her perfume filled the car. He was pleased. She’d liked his gift. ‘The usual?’ she said. He nodded. His face was red but the tension in his head was beginning to subside.

‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘Just try and relax.’

He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. The deliciousness of drifting into sleep swept over him as her hand moved down his arm. And that’s when the blast happened, reverberating through the car and all around. Sakina gasped. ‘What the hell was that?’ But suddenly, Benyamin couldn’t breathe. His airways constricted, the oxygen trapped and unable to pass into his lungs. His chest felt tight, his stomach heavy. He reached up to his throat; he was frightened and fighting to breathe.

Sakina rooted around in the glove compartment and pulled something out. She reached over. ‘Breathe into this,’ she said, giving him a brown paper bag. He put his face to the bag and began to take deep breaths. As the panic attack subsided, he leaned back in his seat and checked his phone. There was a message. ‘It’s an explosion on Durban Street,’ he said. ‘Jia is there. She’s fine.’

‘You don’t have to help,’ said Sakina. ‘They don’t know you’re nearby.’

Shame flooded through Benyamin. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘for being like this.’

He was grateful for her presence, but conflicted. He’d never needed anyone before, and now, when he did, it was a prostitute. They’d been doing this for weeks. Him coming here, just to sleep. Her watching over him, soothing him.

His family thought he was collecting the milk money. Jia had suggested it might be good for him to keep a hand in the business as he recovered. But what did Jia know? She wasn’t the one having the nightmares. She wasn’t waking up in a cold sweat, or being triggered into panic mode by the flash of car headlights.

He’d caught sight of Sakina on the milk round and had recognised her, the way souls recognise each other. He’d watched as car after car came to take her away.

He found it hard to be around family now. He felt embarrassed, afraid, conflicted, all things he thought men weren’t supposed to feel. He needed to talk to someone and not feel ashamed. ‘Being around you calms me,’ he’d said to Sakina. ‘I know that sounds stupid.’

‘There’s a hadith that says, “Souls are like conscripted soldiers,”’ she’d replied. ‘Some of us were together before we were born, and recognise each other when we meet in this life.’ Benyamin didn’t know about that, but he knew he needed to talk to someone about what happened to him.

‘I can’t go to a shrink. This isn’t The Sopranos,’ he’d said. The two of them had laughed at that. He hadn’t laughed in a long time. She was clever and funny, and she knew how dark life was. Mina hadn’t understood. She’d wanted things to revert back to how they used to be almost instantly, but he couldn’t do that. She’d been lucky, managing to escape in the chaos that followed him getting caught that night. He hadn’t been so lucky, and Nowak had changed him.

‘Funny, the culture we come from. It’s fine for you to pay for sex, but tell someone you’re struggling emotionally and they lose all respect for you.’ Sakina could say things like that and he wouldn’t mind. When Jia said words like that they would trigger something in him that made him want to distance himself from her. But he still hoped she would take over Akbar Khan’s duties. She was the only one who could.

CHAPTER 31

The day after the explosion, Jia and Idris set to work. They began by strengthening their network. Their first port of call was an old school friend who ran a business close by. Jia wanted to explore options for the Jirga and its various operations.

Through an internal glass window in the reception area, she watched workers draping deep-red chiffon scarves across high ropes that stretched from one side of a room to the other. The lobby was empty, except for a young man in a grey suit, who sat on a sofa behind them. Clipboard in hand, he was filling in some paperwork. Idris checked his watch and then looked across at Jia. They were waiting for the owner of the business; he was running late.

Bespectacled and dressed in a laboratory coat, he arrived a few minutes later and greeted them warmly before leading them down a narrow corridor. ‘Apologies for my tardiness,’ he said. He opened a door and led them on to the factory floor. It looked like an illegal version of Willy Wonka’s factory. To the right of them, vats of red liquid bubbled away like hot blood. Factory workers dressed in boiler suits and hairnets dropped dry fabric into the large pots and stirred them with broom-handle-like wooden sticks. Liquid from several of the vats was being siphoned off, and evaporated through a complicated system of glass pipes to leave behind a solid substance.

‘All these scarves are to be sold in Mumbai Mart,’ the owner said. ‘They’re all pure silk. Take a look.’ He handed Jia the scarf with the flourish of a souk trader.

She passed the fabric through her hands; it felt like an ordinary dupatta.

‘Thank you for showing us around, Safaid Posh.’

‘No problem, and please, no one calls me that any more. Everyone translates it to “White Coat”. It’s a bit naff but it’s easier,’