I didn’t post as much as I’d planned last week, so I’ll try to make up for it with a couple more tales.
This first one continues on from the asylum seekers theme I ranted about previously. It was a final piece for a creative writing course I took in 2005, and has never been seen anywhere else. You lucky people.
“Freedom”
And here comes Marek, a shard of darkness in the golden, foggy haze, shouldering his way through the crowd. Sleeveless muscle top, tattoos aflame in the heat, his bulky, shaven head thrust forward on its wide neck, impassive in his knock-off Oakley wraparounds, all intent, all threat.
“The package, Islam.” A statement, not a question. Husayin flinches involuntarily, as he reaches into the jacket of his windbreaker for the thin manila envelope that everything today depends upon. He tries to stop his hand shaking as he passes it over.
There is a stillness for a moment, intensely localised around the two men. Amidst the roar and rush and tear of the Holloway Road on a Monday morning in May, they stand quietly, the giant and the slight, dark Muslim, focussed entirely on the envelope in Marek’s fist.
“This is everything.” Marek’s voice is a grinding of stones. “You’re not holding anything back, Islam. This is all of it.”
Husayin nods mutely. He’s usually a garrulous man. Normally, people will pay him to shut up. But here, now, confronted with this, silent deference seems to be the safe option.
Marek relaxes a little, steps back.
“OK, Islam. Don’t forget, the meet’s at noon. Yusuf will expect an answer. I’ll see you then.”
Then he turns and is gone, lost to the murk and the traffic noise. Husayin Canal, journalist, illegal immigrant, lost soul, watches him go, and wonders what he has done that Allah should feel that he should need to consort with giants.
§§§§§§
Dawn prayers, as the sky over North London took on a watery blue wash over a burnt orange ground, were said hastily and without enthusiasm. It had been cold. His knees hurt from kneeling on concrete through the thin layer of protection his prayer mat afforded. Husayin’s mind had not been on his devotional responsibilities. Instead, there on the roof of the squat at Campdale Road, while his compatriots slumbered in a ten-foot square room two floors down, he had concerned himself with more worldly matters. His wife. His son. His country.
Now, on the Holloway Road, with clouds wearing holes in the fine blue sky, and dhuhr two hours away, Husayin once again found his mind wandering. At home, he had known his position in life. He had been important, and people had listened to his opinions. No, people had paid to read them.
He had been the lead reporter on the one independent newspaper in Kajistan after the Russians had gone. He had striven for truth and integrity in all things, taking as his example the new democratic government. He winces to think of it now, the naivety. That he was not alone in his foolishness was no consolation. It was like a drunkenness, an intoxication. The very thought of freedom made his head spin, even now, being so close to it and yet so far away.
Better not to think of it. Better to concentrate on the job at hand, on selling knock-off cigarettes to schoolchildren and the elderly. Better to stand outside a dilapidated McDonalds on the Holloway Road, thousands of miles from all he holds dear. Better that than to remember the things that can happen when freedom is openly discussed in Kajistan.
§§§§§§
As the sun cloaks itself in cloud for the third time that morning, Husayin decides to stop for the day. Business had been slow, and would remain so until the schools finished for lunch. Besides, after noon, whatever else happened, he would not be selling cigarettes any more.
It is time, he decides, to see what was happening in the real world.
Sharmia’s place is cool, dim and quiet after the blast of noise and heat out on the Holloway Road. Past the cash desk, two rows of shabby cubicles rack back into the gloom, each with a stained old PC casting blue pools of light into the shadows. It’s still early, well before noon, and yet already more than half the booths are occupied. Intense young men with beards, pretty girls in burkhas, bent into the electric glow. The only sounds are the rattle of the keyboards, the hum of the mainframe. Sharmia’s is a café in name only. This is not a place for relaxation.
Husayin grabs a 30-minute slot from the stern matriarch at the cash desk, and finds a seat at the back. He logs in, and maps a circuitous path through Kajistani weblogs and message boards, using five different passwords, three different user names.
The news from home is grim. Four more mosques closed in Cosja, the capital, and his home. One firebombed, during maghrib. Twenty worshippers killed. He probes for details, a faint sweat starting on his brow. Women? Youths? Asir, his boy, was fourteen. A devout and serious young man. He could have been there, prostrate before God, as the flames rose.
Nothing. Nothing.
Finally, frantic, Husayin risks accessing the email account. A desperate step. He knows how closely the Christian Democrats monitor mail traffic. Just checking the account could compromise him, or worse, Soraya and Asir. But he has to know.
There is nothing in the main mailbox. Instead, he checks the junk mail. And there, under the header for Vigara (the choice of the potent Muslim!), the secret sign, the one he and his wife had laughed so hard over when they had set it up, a scant paragraph.
His heart leaps. They are safe. Finally, Soraya has complied with her husband’s wishes, the one thing he asked her to do as they were frantically throwing clothes into a bag together, their last moments together in ten months. She took Asir and got out of the capital. They are safe, for the moment, with Husayin’s parents fifty miles to the west. For how much longer, no one can tell. And finally she asks, again. The one thing she asked of her husband that frantic evening last August.
“Why are you still silent, Husayin? Why have you not told the world what you have seen? Where are you?”
Where, indeed. There is no answer to that question, because to answer it is to put everything he loves under threat. He is in a place where silence is the only choice. He is in limbo, the gateway to hell.
A hand lands firmly on his shoulder. Without turning round, Husayin knows who is behind him, and what lies ahead.
“It’s time, Islam,” says Marek.
§§§§§§
Yusuf smiles his diseased smile as Marek marches Husayin down the alley. If dental work could reflect personality, then ex-Colonel Petrovian’s seeping gums and crumbling bridgework would be an accurate signifier.
“Good morning, Husayin,” he says, as Marek hauls the smaller man to a rough at-ease in front of him. “I’ll keep this brief.”
“That’s appreciated,” Husayin says. “We’re both busy men.”
“Indeed. I’m not offering you a choice. You have none. You continue to do as I say, or I inform the authorities back home of your whereabouts. You work for me, or I track down and slaughter your wife and son. We understand each other, of course.”
“Of course,” Husayin says. In his pockets, his hands are trembling. Behind him, Marek is still.
“You’re wasted selling cigarettes. I have other merchandising opportunities for you. Much more profitable, for me, of course.”
Husayin is dumb, his world at the tipping point. He can only will for the right thing to happen, hope that what he has done prior to this moment is enough.
He has one chance, and it’s as thin as a single sheet of paper in a manila envelope.
“I’m not hearing agreement,” Yusuf says. “Threatening your family is not enough, perhaps. Maybe Marek can persuade you.”
Marek is a giant, so how can he move so silently? He is no longer behind Husayin. He is behind Yusuf, wrapping one hand almost tenderly round his waist. He moves his huge head close to the ex-Colonel’s avian features, his stinking maw.
“No,” he says. “I think before I do anything more for you, you need to explain to me why exactly you left Kajistan so quickly. Islam gave me something to read about you.”
Husayin starts to back away, towards the mouth of the alley, slowly.
“You forgot that he’s not just a refugee,” Marek says. “You forgot that he knows how to gather proof about the things people like you commit, and how to get them into the right hands.”
“Killing Muslims is one thing,” he whispers, “but using tanks in schoolyards, against children…”
He looks up abruptly, nods at Husayin. “Go, he says. You’re free to tell your stories. You can leave Yusuf here with me to tell his.”
Husayin turns and walks away, keeping his pace steady. Once again, the image of the Muslim school floods his memory. The tanks in a rough semi-circle. The small, bird-like man in front of the children. The girl in the burkha, yelling at him. The flat crack of the gun going off, as she falls in a heap at his feet.
At the head of the alley, he thinks he hears the sound again, behind him, like a car back-firing, the snap of a twig. He keeps walking, not looking back, trying, and ultimately failing, not to run.
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EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 