Honor

  ‘That’s bollocks, Katie Evans.’

  ‘No, it is not,’ she protested. ‘I already feel connected to it . . . him . . . or her, whatever. I’m already three months gone.’

  ‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t know myself,’ she said fiercely. ‘But it doesn’t matter. When our baby is born, I want you to come to live with me and my mother.’

  Iskender arched his brows. ‘You really believe in this crap, don’t you? You’ve gone barmy!’

  Katie pushed back her chair with a loud scrape, and in a shrill voice full of hurt, and almost unrecognizable, she said, ‘I’m not gonna sit here and let you talk to me like that. I’m outta here.’

  ‘Where the hell are you going?’

  ‘Home. To lie down. Mum says I shouldn’t tire myself too much.’

  Iskender slammed the table, the bang so loud a few customers glanced up at them. But Katie didn’t seem intimidated. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you calm down and think of some names? Have a couple ready for boys and girls.’

  Taking a deep breath, Iskender sat still, his head in his hands, his stomach twisting again. He didn’t look up. He could sense the waiter watching this little drama unfold, wondering what he would do now that his girlfriend had stormed out. Right now, he neither wanted to see his friends nor to go home. He bit into what remained of Katie’s scone, brushing off the crumbs that fell on his lap. He wished he could just as easily get Uncle Tariq’s awful insinuation out of his head, leaving no trace of it behind. Feeling self-conscious, he took out one of the booklets that the Orator had given him a while ago, which he had been carrying inside his jacket pocket but never opened. He tried to wade through the verbose sentences, the words sliding by in a jumble of letters. Soon he gave up and called the waiter to order more food than he could possibly eat. After all, he had money.

  Mother

  London, October 1978

  Yunus cycled along Richmond Road, the wind tossing the soft curls in his hair. He wore a starched white shirt, buttoned up so tightly that his neck had turned an alarming pink. He did not undo a single button, for he believed that he looked more handsome like this. Besides, the style went well with his leather jacket, which though big for him was the coolest thing he had ever worn. His cheeks burned with shame as he thought about how he had got hold of it.

  Earlier that morning, Yunus had rolled out of bed with a mission. In the dim light that washed the corridor, he tiptoed to his brother’s room. Iskender had had a boxing match the night before and come home late, tired out. He was snoring lightly, curled up in a ball, his head under his pillow. The jacket his mother had bought him for his last birthday was tossed on a chair, its leather so dark and sleek that it shone like black ice. The walls were covered in posters. Star Wars, Muhammad Ali in the ring, Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon, Superman flying over Manhattan, James Dean riding a motorcycle, a Union Jack, Kenny Burns confronting Frank Stapleton in Arsenal v. Nottingham Forest.

  As Yunus glanced around, he felt a pang of envy he didn’t know he had in him. Iskender had his own world in here, sports gear, trainers and, most of all, freedom. Nobody meddled in his life. He came home at irregular hours, left whenever he pleased, and seemed to owe no one an explanation. It wasn’t fair, and Yunus knew he wasn’t the only one who thought so.

  With a newly found stealth, Yunus put his arms into the leather jacket, feeling both discomfited and thrilled. Discomfited because he was taking something that belonged to his brother, and, even though he would return it that evening, it was still theft. He also felt thrilled, if not actually a few inches taller, as he assured himself that Tobiko would like him better this way. The jacket was cool, all the rage. Tobiko would surely see that he was not a little boy any more.

  Just then Iskender turned in bed, his head sliding from under the pillow. Yunus held his breath, unmoving. He waited until he was sure his brother was sound asleep again. He remembered the days when Daddy would scold and punish Iskender for every little wrongdoing, but those were long past. Now, Iskender seemed to think he was in charge, always hot under the collar and impossible to reach. If only Mum would stand up to him and make him accept that she was the boss, but she was too distracted and distant.

  The secret. Hard as he tried Yunus could not bring himself to hate the man he had seen with Mum. Who was he? How could he make her smile like that when no one else could? Would he try to take her away? But he couldn’t ask. He couldn’t tell. No one.

  As he cycled fast and forcefully in his jacket, Yunus decided he would never get married. It was too messy, too painful. Why did so many people get hitched when so few wanted, really wanted, to remain so? Yunus liked living in communes better. The only thing he didn’t like about them was the dirt and the dust. Otherwise, he was convinced that squatting resulted in greater happiness. When he grew up, instead of starting a family, he would start a squat with Tobiko. They would have lots of friends and plenty of food in the fridge, and if they had babies, they would raise them all together.

  Chaining his bike to a wooden fence, Yunus made his way towards the house that belonged to the Captain’s mother. To his surprise he found the door ajar. He checked the rooms on the ground floor, the kitchen and the bathroom. The punks were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had gone out to buy a few things or to scavenge furniture from the local skips. It was quiet except for the sounds of a dripping tap and some creaking pipes. Yunus decided to wait in the living room, flicking through a pile of grubby handouts, comic books and flyers – one with the photo of a youth smashing a shop window. Underneath the picture it said:

  The State is waging social war against its subjects.

  You know why? Because that is its function.

  That’s what it means to be a State.

  Resist the State’s Ideological Apparatuses.

  Resist their compulsory happiness.

  Yunus didn’t know what Ideological Apparatuses were, but he had an idea about what ‘the State’ was: a woman with a large bosom, magnetic personality and impressive bouffant. Whenever Mum wished to praise a woman for her strength and skills, did she not say Devlet gibi kadin?* What he didn’t get was why on earth the punks would be upset with such women and their apparatuses.

  The boy was still inspecting the flyer when he was startled by a blast of music. Almost simultaneously he realized two things: that the noise was coming from upstairs and that it was the sort of catchy pop song the squatters loathed with a vengeance. The punks would never listen to that kind of music. It must be Mrs Powell, he assumed. But that, too, was odd. Remembering how despondent the woman had seemed when they had met, he couldn’t picture the same person listening to such a cheerful song.

  Curious, Yunus climbed the stairs, now detecting a slightly out-of-tune female voice accompanying the lyrics. He stopped in front of the bedroom and knocked on the door. He waited, knocked again. Getting no answer, he peeked in.

  There, in the middle of the room was Tobiko, her eyes half closed, her hands clutching a hairbrush, her entire body twisting and twirling as she sang and danced. She had moved the furniture aside to create more space. The curtains were shut tight against the day, penetrated only by splinters of sunlight. In this dim setting she looked lean and tall, and totally unlike herself.

  Yunus stood rooted to the spot, gawking at the punk priestess he loved. After what felt like an eternity, the song reached the end. Take a chance on me . . . Tobiko chanted into her bristly microphone, falling on her knees, shaking her head while her hand drew spirals in the air, a mixture of Swedish pop with Indian dancing. No sooner had the melody subsided than she opened her eyes, aware of a presence in the room. She turned towards the door and gasped. ‘Oh, Yunus! You scared the hell out of me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Yunus mumbled. ‘Didn’t mean to.’

  Tobiko rose, a little unsteadily, attempted a smile, diffident, almost bashful. She placed the
hairbrush on the dressing table, turned off the cassette player and opened the curtains, blinking at the light. ‘What’re you doin’ here?’

  ‘I came to see you. Found the door open,’ said Yunus. ‘What were you listening to?’

  ‘Oh, I was just killing time. Mrs Powell has lots of this sort of pap,’ she said, tailing off.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Doctor’s appointment. She won’t be back till three.’ Tobiko dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I think she’s seeing a shrink.’

  ‘Really? She was very sad,’ said Yunus pensively, but was immediately distracted by another thought. ‘The music you were playing, it was ABBA, right?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Mum likes it too,’ said Yunus, beaming.

  ‘Well, I don’t, really. Not my cup of tea. It’s too cheesy. Don’t you think?’

  Yunus regarded Tobiko with tender amazement. For the first time since the day they had met, he caught a glimpse of the little girl inside her. He wasn’t the only one, he realized, who was trying to appear older and tougher than he actually was.

  Unaware of his thoughts Tobiko said, ‘You’ve got yourself a nice jacket there.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Yunus said, but didn’t let the subject drop. ‘Do you think you could play that song again and teach me what you were doing?’

  Tobiko smiled puckishly. ‘You wanna dance with me, petal?’

  Though he blushed up to his ears Yunus didn’t backtrack. ‘Yeah, why not?’

  ‘All right,’ Tobiko conceded. ‘But since you’ve made such an effort, I’d better put on something nice too.’

  Together they opened the wardrobe and were astonished to find it crammed to overflowing with clothes and accessories, shoes and posh hats.

  ‘This lady must be spending all her money on clothes,’ said Tobiko.

  ‘She has nothing in black,’ Yunus remarked.

  But Tobiko, the woman who wore nothing but punk fashion, didn’t seem to mind. She looked admiringly at a mauve scarf, a champagne-beige skirt, a lilac blouse. There was an evening gown with sparkling sequins, a jacket trimmed with brown fox, a fur coat that would reach down to her ankles, soft to the touch.

  Tobiko took out a hanger with a long vintage dress on it, satin and taffeta, a purple so pale that it was almost white. It had a nipped-in waist and the thinnest amethyst straps, decorated with a hundred gems.

  ‘You’d look pretty in that,’ Yunus said.

  Tobiko shook her head as if she found the idea preposterous. Yet when she spoke, she said, ‘Can you leave me alone for a few minutes? Don’t come back till I call you.’

  Yunus waited in the corridor for an eternity. When he was invited back into the room, there was another woman there, someone who had Tobiko’s eyes and her tattoos, but other than that nothing in common with her. She had let down her hair and got rid of her make-up. The black lipstick was replaced by pink and the smoky eyeshadow was gone. Instead of torn fishnet stockings she wore flesh-coloured tights. Gold platform shoes, diamond drop earrings, a bashful smile on her face, a whiff of perfume in the air, enchanting.

  Yunus let out a whistle in the way Iskender had taught him. ‘You look . . .’ He dithered, realizing no word was powerful enough to describe what he was seeing. So he ventured, ‘You look like the State.’

  Tobiko laughed. ‘I am the State,’ she said, opening her arms wide.

  Then she grabbed two hairbrushes, one for herself, one for Yunus. She turned on the cassette player and, as the music began, they sashayed on stage, hand in hand, all smiles. Thousands had come to listen to them tonight. All tickets had been sold out weeks before; many more were waiting outside the concert hall. Light as a feather, cool in his leather jacket, Yunus played the piano, the guitar, the drums, the saxophone. She sang and danced, flapping her skirts. At each refrain they stood back to back, leaning against each other. The audience went crazy.

  When the music was over and they were both panting on the floor, Tobiko put her arms around Yunus. ‘The other day you were asking me about secrets. Well, our love for ABBA will be our secret. Promise me you can keep it.’

  That afternoon Yunus learned things about Tobiko he had never imagined could be true. Still clad in her ABBA dress, she smoked a joint and confessed to him that she hadn’t ditched Toby, her ex-boyfriend. It had been the other way round. He had left her, just like that, shattering her heart to pieces. Then she had met the Captain, but she didn’t love him, though she couldn’t let him go either. She had been bolder in the past, but with every passing day she was becoming more dependent, clingy. She said it was all because she had an incurable Electra complex. She equated the men she loved with her father, and still competed with her mother. Then she showed Yunus a short poem entitled ‘Mother’. But, just as Yunus had begun to read it, they heard footsteps downstairs. Mrs Powell had returned.

  Tobiko panicked. ‘Oh, no, shit!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Yunus said. ‘I’ll go and distract her while you change.’ Then he put the poem in the pocket of his jacket and scrambled downstairs.

  *

  In the evening, at the dinner table, Iskender shot one menacing glance after another at Yunus, but refused to ask where his jacket had been all day. After supper he announced he was going out for a walk. He would go to see the boys, and play snooker for a while. He needed that – to collect his thoughts. Despite his mother’s objection, he left, paying her no attention. Since the talk he had had with his uncle, he had been treating his mother frostily, though he had still not confronted her.

  The evening was crisp, nippy. Iskender pulled up the collar of his jacket and thrust his hands in his pockets. There was something in his pocket, a piece of paper. He took it out and read it by the next streetlamp.

  With a simple swoop of his hand, Iskender crumpled the paper and tossed it into a rubbish bin. Somebody was playing games with him. All night long he tried to figure out who it could be, and, when he couldn’t, returned to the last two lines of the message, which went round and round in his head:

  Mother lies, Mother deceives,

  She is not who she says she is.

  ***

  Shrewsbury Prison, 1991

  Slow day. Painfully sluggish. Work in the laundry until 11.30. Return for lunch. Read a book in the afternoon, listen to Zeeshan blabber on about love and harmony. At four o’clock we are all locked up. Half an hour later Officer McLaughlin appears.

  ‘It seems like you’re gonna have a visitor soon,’ he says.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Why don’t you see “it” for yourself.’

  I’ve only ever had visits from Esma, and even she stopped coming this year. But I’m surprised that Officer McLaughlin has approved this. Given my recent track record he could have vetoed it straight away. I spend the rest of the evening brooding like a bird on a nest. Then it finally dawns on me. Officer McLaughlin knows that whoever it is that’s coming to see me could throw me off balance. He’s relying on that. I have a protective shell round myself no one gets through, but there are a few people who can shatter my nerves. Only a few. They can get through my armour the way a ghost walks through walls.

  ‘You worried,’ says Zeeshan.

  Regardless of whether it’s a question or a statement, I don’t deny it.

  ‘Yeah, it’s bloody stressful not knowing who’s gonna come to see me tomorrow.’

  Zeeshan says, ‘We never know what comes tomorrow but we always start new day, hopeful.’

  I’m not in the mood to listen to his nonsense. So I lie on my bunk and shut myself off from the outside world. It feels like another bad day. I’ve had many of those in my life. But there is one day that was worse than them all: the morning after.

  The morning after committing a crime you awake from a bottomless night. Somewhere in your brain there is a signal, a red light flashing. You try to ignor
e it. There is a chance, however slight, that it was all a dream. You hold on to that chance, like a falling man who grabs at the first rope he sees. A minute goes by. An hour. You lose count of time. Until, suddenly, it hits you. The rope is not tied to anything, and its end is loose. You tumble into reality head first.

  There I was on Lavender Grove, a knife in my hand. I heard the screams. Shrill, unending. Somebody was howling. Oddly, it sounded like my mother. But it couldn’t have been her, for she was lying on the ground, bleeding. Echoes growing inside my brain. I looked at my left hand. My stronger hand. But it had gone slack, as if it had been attached to my body only temporarily and now belonged to someone else. I tossed the knife under a parked car. If I could, I would have thrown away my hand.

  I began to run. My jacket was splattered with blood. I can’t explain why nobody stopped me, but they didn’t. I darted down alleyways, through back gardens, without the slightest idea where I was going. I must have crossed streets, bumped into people, frightened dogs. I don’t remember. The next half-hour is blank. But I remember finding a phonebox.

  I rang Uncle Tariq. I told him what I had done. There was an awkward silence. I thought he hadn’t heard me. So I repeated myself. I told him I had punished Mum for her illicit affair. From now on she’d never do such a thing again. I said her wound wasn’t too bad but it would take some time to heal. I had stabbed her once on the right side of her chest. That would show her how grave her sin was. It would give her time to think about her mistake, to repent. And the man would be scared out of his wits. He would leave us alone. Our family’s honour was cleansed.

  ‘What have you done, son?’ His voice sounded strangled. ‘This is terrible.’

  I was taken aback. ‘Bb . . . but . . . wee . . . ttt . . . alk . . . ed ab . . . ab . . . ou . . . ttt . . . this.’

  ‘Surely we did not,’ my uncle said.