The Khan by Saima Mir (read e books online free TXT) 📕

‘Didn’t expect this so soon. Did you hear owt?’ James said, his voice carrying across the road.

‘No,’ said Basharat. ‘I would have told you straight away if I had. Will you be OK getting home? You can come and stay at ours till it’s over if not.’

James lived on the other side of the city. To get home he would have to drive through Hanover. The last time the police had asked local businesses to shut up shop, his drive home had been blocked by rioters. He had no idea what was going to happen today. ‘We can’t go to yours – it’s right near where all the trouble was last time. Come with me, I know where we can go. I’ll call Julie and let her know. You give Shagufta a ring and tell her you’re with me.’

The two men finished closing up and got into James’s car. Basharat’s son Bilal had dropped him at work that morning before heading in to buy last-minute things for the new baby. Basharat prayed Bilal had got home before the trouble kicked off.

Jia entered the private room at the back of the restaurant. It had seen off the last of its lunchtime customers and was closing due to the streets protests; the staff were starting to leave. Sitting cross-legged on thick red carpets, as Pukhtuns had done for generations, Idris, Nadeem and Malik were waiting with the owner, Samad Khan. The men stood up as she entered. Idris stepped forward and pulled the runner from what looked like a small coffee table. Underneath was a large black trunk with a heavy padlock. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. Nadeem pulled up the lid and let it rest on the floor. The men stepped back as Idris reached into the trunk.

He took out a pair of brown leather gloves and a mask for each of them.

Nadeem looked at him. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he said, holding up the rubber face he’d been given.

‘It was all they had at the pound shop,’ said Malik. ‘I thought it was kind of funny and appropriate, considering they’re homeboys.’

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Jia.

‘I’ll tell you what the problem is,’ replied Nadeem, pulling on the mask. ‘It’s bloody One Direction, that’s what! The masks are all of Zayn Malik!’

‘Actually, this one is Dynamo,’ said Malik, handing the rubber face to Jia.

She took it. ‘Thanks. Now stop messing around,’ she said as she pulled the gloves over her slim fingers and took a semi-automatic pistol from her bag. ‘Looks like that summer we spent hunting in Pakistan is finally going to pay off.’

Malik picked up his weapon tentatively. ‘I can’t say I’m looking forward to this,’ he said.

Nadeem laughed nervously. ‘Really? Because the rest of us are so thrilled to be here, right?’

‘You can back out now,’ Jia told Malik gently. Then she turned to Nadeem, her voice harder this time. ‘And so can you,’ she added. ‘There’s no room for nerves on this. We will understand. None of us are looking forward to putting a bullet between a man’s eyes. I need to know you’re in this for the long haul. Once we step through that door there’s no going back.’ She waited for their answer.

Nadeem nodded. Malik straightened up. ‘I’m coming,’ he said. ‘There’s no way I wouldn’t. We’re family and loyalty is all we have.’

Each man took his weapon from the arsenal in the trunk. Samad Khan watched from the sidelines, stepping forward only when the guns were dealt out. He took out a cloth bag.

‘I have a gift for you,’ he said. He gave them each a cloth cap. They recognised it as the kind worn in the North-West Frontier Province and across Pakistan and Afghanistan. ‘These pakol were given to me by my wife,’ he said. ‘Each time she visited her family she brought one back…to remind me where we come from, she said. She had planned to give them to our children, but as you know we were never blessed that way. But I think she would have wanted me to pass them on to you. She believed it important to remember our history. The leaves from an oak tree fade, fall and are replaced, but the roots remain. No one sees what detritus the roots feed on, all they remember is the beauty of the branches and the colour of the leaves. This is a symbol of those roots. Guard its honour well,’ he said. ‘Jia Khan, you must take the red one. It has been waiting for you for quite some time.’

Jia thanked him for the hat. It resembled a small woollen bag with a round base. Rolling up the sides, she placed it on her head as she had seen her father do many times throughout his life. The brown of her eyes deepened. They were better suited to the cover of a magazine, the kind found on the bedside tables of aspirational Pakistanis, than the back of a curry house in a rundown northern city.

Samad Khan knelt on the floor and lifted the Bokhara rug on which the men had been sitting before Jia arrived. He folded it once, twice, and from the middle to the side, affording it the respect a worshipper gives his prayer mat. Beneath it, hidden away, was a door. He took a small key from his pocket and placed it in the lock. It clicked open with ease and lifted like a lid to reveal a set of stairs. ‘There is no light down there, but your eyes will soon adjust,’ he told them.

Jia moved forward to step down into the darkness, but Samad Khan stopped her. ‘We must pray first,’ he said. ‘As with everything in life, it is our way.’ And with that he raised his hands, uttering the Bismillah loud enough for them to know he had begun calling on his Lord. They followed, some not knowing if this was the time to pray, and others