The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

of her ability, and to this end she needed to plant a seed of doubt in the mind of the jury. All it took was sullying the reputation of an officer. She would get over it.

The jury listened intently. Nowak watched each one carefully, leaning in again as Jia Khan put forward her closing arguments. He knew each one of them from the photographs his men had taken after the first day of the trial. He was not troubled by defeat and he cared little for the defendant, despite him being family. Family, in his experience, was only ever a burden. He would ordinarily have left by now, but Jia Khan interested him. ‘Who is she?’ he’d asked his men after the first time they’d met.

‘She is the daughter of the man who runs our rival operations: Akbar Khan,’ he was told.

‘So that is what it is,’ he had said, more to himself than to his men. He had recognised something in her; he had seen himself.

The closing arguments done, they waited for the decision. The clock ticked slowly on to lunchtime and recess. When Jia left the courthouse, Nowak followed. She crossed the street and headed towards the parade of restaurants on the other side, walking past shops bathed in orange light and filled with pretty pastries and cakes. She chose the nondescript café at the corner of the terrace of shops, and took a seat in a booth at the back, ignoring the menu and ordering from memory. She removed the multiple layers she was wearing to protect her against the elements. She was scrolling through her emails, when he interrupted:

‘Could I join you?’ he said.

She looked up to see Andrzej Nowak standing beside her booth. The fragrance of bitter almond, lavender and tobacco wafted towards her, and she registered his Penhaligon cologne, the same as the one worn by her most disliked tutor at university. Images of Jimmy Khan’s little girl flashed before her like an Instagram story.

‘Thank you, but no,’ she said.

He didn’t move, but continued to stand and stare, as if the very act of looking would bore into her brain and change her mind. She felt his eyes on her, willing her the way owners will their pets when establishing a hierarchy. The silence remained thick, neither of them needing to fill it or knowing what to do. Jia picked up her fork as her lunch arrived, hoping Nowak would understand the signal and leave. But he didn’t. He stayed there, his gaze never straying from her face. She began to feel porous, as if he could see straight through her. She pushed her salad slowly around her plate.

Eventually, he spoke. ‘What happened to you?’ he said. Despite his slim frame, he was blocking the light, and his presence felt more and more oppressive. ‘What happened to make you this way?’

She looked up, hoping to catch the eye of a waiter, but the café was busy and all the staff dealing with customers.

‘I hope you don’t mind, I’d like to continue with my lunch,’ she said.

‘You are not afraid. Most people are afraid of me. Unless they are stupid. And you are not stupid.’

He was right: she was not afraid. There is not much that frightens a woman who has had to fight to live life on her own terms, but experience had taught her when to save her energy and when to pick her battles. The waiter caught her eye, and she gestured for the bill. He came over with the card machine. She continued to ignore Nowak, paying quickly and asking for her lunch to be packed up. The waiter returned moments later with a cardboard box, which Jia thanked him for. She left Nowak alone in that café pondering what had just happened. It was rare for him to be refused, and rarer for him to fail at lighting a fuse. He was not to know that Jia Khan had had years of practice at not rising to the slights of men. She had cultivated the skill of calm. Years of chaos, watching defendants talk themselves into trouble and out of acquittal, meant the skill of diplomacy was second nature to her. She had learnt to let the silence breathe.

When the verdict came in a few hours later, it was in the defendant’s favour. The evidence had been insufficient. Nowak looked around for Jia, but her colleague informed him that she had left the courthouse earlier to attend to another matter.

She had in fact gone back to her hotel to pack. She was desperate to get away from this city; it held far too many memories. Little did she know that a year later, she would be back for good.

CHAPTER 4

Akbar Khan had raised his eldest daughter like a son, shunning his wife’s advice and ignoring the town talk. She was, after all, both the daughter of a great Pukhtun and a daughter of Great Britain. ‘My child will live on her own terms,’ he had told his wife plainly, repeating it like a daily affirmation, embedding it in his daughter’s bones.

His wife had not agreed easily. ‘But she is a girl, Akbar jaan, what will people say?’ Sanam Khan’s protests fell on deaf ears. Her husband had made up his mind and when Akbar Khan made up his mind only Allah and His angels could change it.

‘We are Muslims,’ he said. ‘Our women were given equality over fourteen centuries ago, yet you want to hold her back? The enemy of women is woman herself.’

Sanam Khan was no fool; she was well acquainted with the world and its ways. ‘You are the Khan of our people,’ she said, ‘but I’m her mother. And as a woman I know that what you are teaching her will make our people turn against her. She will be shunned for having an opinion and looked down upon for speaking her mind. And what if she goes astray and brings dishonour upon herself?’

Akbar Khan tried