The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

‘No worries, I just thought you might be hungry,’ said the officer. He led Ahad out of the cell and down a corridor. ‘You should’ve said you were Jia Khan’s son. If I’d have known… We didn’t treat you too shabbily, did we?’ Ahad didn’t answer.

Jia was in the reception area signing some paperwork.

‘Shall we go?’ she said.

‘Where’s my dad?’ he asked.

‘He doesn’t know about this. Probably thinks you’re tucked up in bed. You want me to tell him?’

‘Not really,’ Ahad replied.

‘He’ll know something happened when he sees you, though. I’m going to send him a message, to let him know you’re with me,’ she said.

‘I’ll handle it,’ he protested. She ignored him, typing a quick text and hitting send before Ahad could stop her. ‘How’d you know I was here?’

Jia picked up her bag. ‘Does it matter?’

He didn’t answer. Jia noticed his eyes were red and he’d been crying. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked. Her words angered him. He hadn’t wanted her to see him like this; he didn’t want her to know how much he cared, how much he resented the power she held over him. They walked out in silence, Ahad a few steps ahead.

‘I’ll find my own way home, thanks,’ he said. The police station was in an isolated spot, high on a hill overlooking the city and beyond. The street lamps extended rivers of artificial light across the county. The air was biting and fog was beginning to descend into the valley. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Ahad looked around for a street sign, a bus stop, anything to help him get home without having to call his father. But there was nothing.

Jia watched him, and understood that he was trying to figure out his next move and save face. ‘Here.’ She held out his keys and mobile phone. He took them from her and turned away again. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, as if she’d picked him up from his mate’s house not the police station, and as though this was any other day.

He pushed his fists into his pockets, the cotton threads digging into his knuckles, hoping that the pain would cut through his anger at her lack of understanding, but it didn’t work. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck you and your uppity white calm ways.’

The abruptness of his words surprised her. She had expected to face his anger at some point but not today. Not when she was finally stepping up to take responsibility for him.

He had looked so small and so innocent when the officer had led him out of the cell; he’d reminded her of herself in the days before things changed. She wanted to tell him this and more but she was proud and she wouldn’t allow anyone to speak to her in that manner, not even her own son. ‘When you hurl abuse at me, we have two problems,’ she said. ‘First, you’re trying to hurt me and I’ve not given you permission to do that. And second, hurting me now may hurt you in the future. Do you understand?’

‘Thanks, Oprah, not quite the “aha moment” I was looking for but thanks. You’re going to lecture me now? Because if you are you’re sixteen fucking years too late.’ He felt the blood rushing to his head, pounding harder, drowning out all external noise. He would never speak to his father like this, but he needed her to understand what she’d done. He wanted to bait her and hurt her the way she had hurt him. It was time to do this.

Words continued to fire out of him like nails, hitting her hard. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he said. ‘You’re picking me up from a police station. The first time you’re picking me up ever, not from school, not from football, but from a police station! Does that not affect you at all? Where were you when all the other kids’ mothers were making them packed lunches and crappy Halloween costumes? Or when I lost my first tooth, spoke at my first assembly, learnt to kick a football? Where were you all those nights I was too scared to sleep in case Dad died and they put him in the ground? Where were you, Jia Khan?’

Jia watched him shouting at her, the vein on his forehead pulsing the way her father’s and brother’s had, when the blood was still flowing through them. Ahad’s words didn’t hurt her in the way he hoped; the pain she had inflicted on herself was far worse than anything he could say. But her heart did break for him. It cracked inside her chest, the pain spreading into her limbs. This was what she had been running from.

She wanted to go to him but she didn’t know how. She hadn’t held him since he was a few days old. And he kept shouting without pause, the angry tears running down his face as he pleaded with her for answers. ‘What kind of woman shuts her husband and kid out of her life? And he, Dad, brings me here to see you, and you have no explanation! Nothing! You talk to me about shitty family crap and history and Khans and Pathans! What about me? How about we talk about me for a fucking second? Remember me, the kid you gave birth to? You fucking waltz around like the queen of fucking everything and you couldn’t even call your own son? Because you know what I think? You’re a liar. It was all bullshit. I think you knew I was alive. Because if you really thought I was dead, why didn’t you call my dad to talk to him about it? To share your grief? Or is that it? You didn’t feel anything? Your old man may have been a crim but at least he was honest about it! You, you’re just a lying cunt of a bitch.’

The word snapped her back to the here and now. She remembered all the things