‘If I could only get to the end of the street to a phone box I could call the police.’
I could smell the oil on the stove in the kitchen heating up. Although no potatoes had yet been put into it, the fat gave off the aroma of frying chips.
‘Police!’ Mum cackled. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added unconvincingly, ‘they’ll be gone in a minute or two.’
‘We can’t show them we are weak.’ Dad’s voice trailed off as he went into the kitchen.
The door to the backyard opened and then slammed shut. I heard the latch being bolted. My father reappeared in the kitchen doorway, holding a long broom handle. Mum put down the potato she was peeling and sprang to her feet. She grabbed the broom and stared at my father. ‘No, not in front of the boy,’ she said.
‘You’re wrong, missus: especially in front of the boy.’
Mum shot me a panicked glance. ‘Go upstairs!’ she cried.
I didn’t move.
‘There’s no hiding it from him,’ said Dad.
‘You can’t fight them all.’
My father let go of the broom, leaving it dangling loosely in Mum’s hand. He stooped slightly so that his face was level with hers and did something I had never before seen him do, nor have I seen him do it since: he kissed her. Then he turned to me, his face suffused with a violent, incomprehensible anger. ‘Get your coat!’ he shouted.
Before I could obey, Mum moved to block the front door, the broom handle across her body. She looked back and forth between us, her expression gradually charging to one of fixed determination. ‘I won’t tell you again,’ she said fiercely to me.
I got quickly to my feet. Putting one hand on the banister, as though to climb the stairs, I lingered on the bottom step.
She turned to my father. ‘Do you see anyone else going out there? Think for a minute. What would we do if we lost you? What would happen to me as a widow? And the boy, what would become of him? You want him to grow up into some sort of hoodlum without a father?’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Dad softly.
‘Upstairs!’ she screamed, without glancing in my direction.
I scrambled up to my room and peered out the window. Across the road, four men stood before Mustafa’s front door. Even in the poorly lit street, I could tell they wore bomber jackets, tight jeans and long boots. One had a spiky Mohican and another swung a thick chain at his hips. The headlights of a car passing slowly at the other end of the street caught the men, frozen for a split second, like startled burglars. In that moment, I recognized the man with the chain as Adrian’s father. He shook the chain, opening it out to double its length, and swung it. I watched it spin, glinting as it caught the grim overhead streetlight at its maximum height, and winced each time it cracked against the pavement.
The end of the chain met the windowpane. The glass fractured but held together for a moment; just as the men ran away, the entire pane collapsed into the front room.
Inside the house a light was switched on, the brightness of the interior contrasting sharply with the dark night. Mustafa’s mother came up to the window, clutching his little brother Faisal. Faisal was swaddled in a white blanket. She bent to the floor and picked up a shard of glass. She looked at it, shaking her head in resignation. Faisal, too young to know better, cocked his head up towards the broken window and smiled. His mother shivered and pulled her headscarf over her brow. Mustafa came into the room, rubbing the smoke from his eyes. He wore proper pyjamas like English people. Mustafa pulled his mother away from the window and the light went out.
Our windows were closed but I could taste black smoke. I coughed, and rubbed my stinging eyes. There were no lights on in any of the houses, and the widely spaced street lamps glowed discreetly in yellow orbs high above the deserted road. The factory hammer broke the silence every ten seconds: bong. I listened intently, expecting to hear glass breaking further along the street.
I could make out my father’s angry voice. ‘We must defend ourselves.’
‘Inshallah we will, but not like this,’ screamed Mum. It was as though by shouting louder she would get her own way. She muttered a Bismillah; I heard her footsteps going into the kitchen and then a hot bubbly sizzle as she cast the freshly cut potato sticks into the oil.
Noticing a glow from the street below, I pressed my nose to my bedroom window and looked down. Flames leapt off the sofa. I heard my mother scream, ‘Allah!’ The front door was flung open, letting in thick black smoke that curled up the stairs and into my room.
From the window I saw my father kick at the fire. He ran indoors, picked up his coat and returned to the sofa, draping the garment over it. It was a stupid thing to do, I thought. The fire licked around the edges of the coat and quickly through it. From my elevation it felt like I was watching television. Then I saw my dad drag the sofa into the middle of the road, away from the house.
I heard jubilant jeering from the other end of the street. My father cried out, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Raising the broom in his hand, he marched down the road. Fearing for him, I said a Bismillah. Then I saw my mother staggering after him down the street, pulling her headscarf tightly down on her head. I hurried downstairs and stood, with one foot outside, at the open front door. The wind had turned, blowing the rain and thick black smoke high above my head, and the warmth of the burning sofa cast me in a pleasing orange glow. Halfway down the street, Mum and Dad stood guard like ancient sentries.
Suddenly, I loathed the idea of being brown, a Paki, with Paki-bashers out on the streets and Adrian’s dad ready to pounce. I hated too the weakness of my parents. Of what my parents had become.
Digging one hand into my pocket, I felt guiltily for the crisp edges of the pound note. The pound note was bad luck and right then I should have got rid of it, thrown it on the fire, but I didn’t. I kept it.
*
I watch Grace as she gently stirs. She cracks a benevolent smile. It takes ages for her eyes to fully open.
‘Kids think daft things,’ she says. ‘It’s not like that anymore, is it?’
‘There’s a flaw. Somewhere inside of me is a deep flaw.’
‘It’s just life. Not all white people — what is it you call them?’
‘Gora.’
‘Not all gora are the same, just like not all Pakistanis are like the lying bastards I meet.’
‘The gora is a simple humble being, but you were right — almost the first thing you said was that we Pakis, we’re liars.’
‘We all have things we’d rather not. ’ Grace’s gaze strays towards the baby picture on her bedside cabinet. ‘I didn’t use that word.’
‘We don’t fit in,’ I say emphatically. ‘Never will.’
‘You,’ she draws back a little and observes how I am comfortably reclined next to her, ‘seem to be making a good fist of it.’
‘You don’t get it. We don’t want to fit in.’
‘Not even soldier boy?’
‘You miss the point. It’s how we think.’
‘You’re better than us?’
I hesitate. ‘Yes.’
‘As a kid you were a thieving little bastard, and for what it’s worth I don’t mind that. Admitting to your dishonesty in some way makes you honest.’
‘You want me to be really honest?’
She nods.
‘Earlier, I wanted to. ’ I glance across at her belly and up towards her breasts. ‘When you were asleep. I mean—’
‘That would spoil it. Don’t stop. It’s like. As I said, your voice is familiar. It’s good to fall asleep to.’ Her head sinks into the pillow and she closes her eyes. I watch her breathe, waiting until the rise and fall of her chest is regular and shallow before I resume.