I took him by the arm and led him off the tarmac, onto the pavement. We sat on the kerb, kicking our feet into the road.
‘Did you go really far?’ he said between shuddering breaths. His eyes were still narrowed suspiciously.
‘You don’t trust no one.’ I pulled the pound note a little way out of my pocket for him to see.
‘Did Bobby give you that?’ His eyes widened.
‘Didn’t have to do anything,’ I bragged, though I was secretly surprised that he knew the man’s name. ‘Anyway, how come you’re wagging school?’ I asked, changing the subject.
‘Opticians.’
Just then, in a blur, the cat and dog went past us. ‘Come on,’ I cried, tugging at Mustafa’s arm, ‘we’ve got to save the cat!’
We followed the animals back and forth through slim alleys that ran between houses. When we reached an allotment where a neighbour grew radishes, I stopped abruptly, Mustafa colliding with my heels. I gazed intently at the cultivated earth that ran in neat lines across the small plot. Inside the troughs, small leafy shoots marked the position of each radish. It took a lot of rubbing to clean off the dried soil, but the taste of the radish would fizz on my tongue as though stolen food ought to taste bitter. Seeing them reminded me that I was hungry and that my mother would be wondering where I was.
We trailed the animals across a mountain of brick and timber where number eleven had collapsed one night earlier that year. No one had been in it, and the following morning our entire street had come out and watched in awe as a digger with a huge iron ball on a chain rolled in and flattened what remained; somehow, numbers nine and thirteen were still completely intact. Long nails studded the timber planks and Mustafa and I picked our way carefully across the debris. Where the garden had once been, the cat screamed like a baby but the dog made no sound, just the whoosh of air around it and the thud of its paws as they met the ground.
Nobody I knew had a dog, and if one came along the footpath towards us my mother would take my hand and we’d cross the road. Dogs were unclean and if you got too close to one Allah would be angry. But now, as though we were each proving something to the other, Mustafa and I were chasing the animals.
Mustafa was an albino. At first, his mum and dad were convinced it was an English conspiracy, or at the very least a mix-up at the hospital. But then an albino was born into his family in Pakistan, and after that they put it down to something they called Allah’s will. Mustafa lagged behind me and clutched his chest as though he was in pain. He couldn’t run properly, partly on account of his eyes and partly because of his fat little legs. He was prone to stumbling, and when he did he bled and it wouldn’t stop until he got stitches. His eyelids trembled in the breeze, fragile like a butterfly’s wings. His skin was paper white, and all summer long he’d squint, or like a soldier’s salute he would shield his eyes with his hand, and when he looked at you he’d stand real close as though examining a fly on your nose.
Mustafa and I paused to catch our breath.
‘The Prophet Muhammad kept cats,’ I said.
Exhausted, Mustafa sank to his knees, fine wisps of hair trembling on his pink scalp.
‘Get up,’ I urged. ‘We’ll go to heaven if we rescue it.’
We found the cat in an alley. It lay, perfectly still, on the cobbles and tufts of moss. There was a tear in its belly and its guts spilled out. Rivulets of blood trickled in all directions, sinking into the gaps between the cobbles. The animal’s eyes were wide open as though taking one last look at the sky.
‘Have we failed? Will we go to hell?’ asked Mustafa.
‘Probably,’ I replied.
‘What we going to do?’ His voice was agitated and sharp. He put an arm around me and I him.
‘We can make up for it if we do good for the rest of our lives,’ I offered.
‘My mum says all children go to heaven,’ he said.
‘Cats too. If we keep an eye on it we might see its soul as it slips away.’
‘I’ve never seen that before.’ Mustafa shook his head, wiping away a tear.
‘I have, lots of times — chickens,’ I lied.
‘What’s it look like?’
A light breeze carried the scent of oil and smoke from the nearby works, and bending a little way towards the cat I could smell something sweet and warm. Drying quickly in the overhead sun, its blood carried the smell of the soil, the mineral-metallic odour that would remain on my fingers for days after rubbing the radishes.
‘First we have to say a prayer,’ I said.
‘Our Father. ’ started Mustafa, remembering a prayer we recited at school assembly every morning.
‘No, not that. The foreign prayer my dad says when the chickens are about to die.’ I put my hands together and looked up at the sky. ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.’
‘Still can’t see the soul,’ said Mustafa mournfully. He stared intently at the cat and nervously shuffled his feet.
‘You have to look up to see it fly away,’ I said.
He scanned the sky, keeping the cat within the lower border of his vision as if he was afraid it might jump up and dart at his legs. ‘Maybe it’s already gone?’ A fresh bout of tears welled up in his eyes.
‘You don’t understand. I’ve released its soul with my power. It only goes once I’ve said the Bismillah.’
Mustafa kicked at a cobblestone, mindful not to stray into an imaginary perimeter about two feet deep around the body of the cat. Finally he spoke. ‘I saw something worse last night.’
‘In chickens they’re called giblets,’ I said. ‘The bits coming out of its body, and they’re dirty. My dad pulls them out of their bellies and wraps them in a plastic bag and when no one’s looking he throws it into the canal. He says that gora put them in sausages to eat. Do you eat giblets?’
At school Mustafa was often mistaken for a gora, and even when he told the white kids that both of his parents were Pakis they couldn’t quite accept it; as a sort of compromise they called him a Paki lover, not a Paki. He was whiter than the gora, so their eyes retreated into their sockets and heads shook in disbelief when he spoke Paki with a proper Paki.
Mustafa shook his head. ‘Yesterday my aunty came to visit and the day before my dad kicked my mum. Aunty is my dad’s sister and she said I was cursed like a gora but our kid Faisal he was all right because he was brown.’ Tears rolled down his cheeks and he held out a hand and stared at it, one side and then the other. His face grew pink. ‘After that, my aunty looked at me and wailed like I had just suddenly died.’
‘They do that a lot, our mums,’ I offered as consolation, giving his waist a squeeze.
Mustafa shook me off, irritated. He ran his fingers through his hair and raised up on his toes as though he was about to run away. ‘In the night when my aunty had gone, from my bed I could hear my mum crying in the toilet. Afterwards when I went to go to the toilet I saw giblets in the base of the pan. Only then I didn’t know they were called giblets.’
‘I heard your mum crying this morning,’ I said. ‘She came over to visit mine and they both cried. After that they were talking about a baby and didn’t even notice when I slipped out of the back.’
As though my confirmation had doubled his mother’s pain, Mustafa turned from pink to white.
‘Your mum having a baby?’
He stuttered, but no discernible words came out.
It started to rain in large warm droplets. The rain diluted the cat’s blood to pinks and light reds. The damp air amplified the crisp, pungent scent of radish, the iron in the blood and the iron in the soil from the nearby allotment.