There was blood running from his nose and it covered his hands where he had wiped his face. His trousers were caked in mud, and grass stains like claw marks ran down his shirt. Bent double, he stared at the ground and shivered, stumbling like a blind man inside the circle. They punched and kicked him and pushed him from one assailant to the next. Dax panted like a wounded animal. He put up no further defence, and the quality of the beating seemed to change. Now they hit him in places they wouldn’t have before: a kick between the legs, fingers gouging at his eyes, fists striking the top and back of his head, and when he fell, boots too. He flinched at each blow, doubled up, fell over, but he never cried, and each time he got back up onto wobbly legs. He should have stayed down. ‘I’ll be the one to make him cry,’ one boy loudly boasted. Having had a go, like a boxer venting all his fury on a punchbag, he slunk back into the circle, disappointed. In consolation his girlfriend kissed him on the mouth.
I jumped up and down, trying to keep my eyes on Dax. I thought about running for help but didn’t want to leave him. I scanned the blocks of flats as though that would suffice as an appeal. Curtains twitched, windows closed, briefly a door opened and shut.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours, a pickup truck pulled up. Alighting from it, construction workers barged into the middle of the scrum. They picked up Dax, limp and bloodied, and carefully, as though handling a baby, put him into the cabin of their truck. Fearlessly, the kids banged the side of the truck as the builders drove off at speed.
My head low, I walked away slowly, so as not to attract attention to myself. I heard the odd shout — Paki — and dug the toes of my shoes into the tarmac, wanting to damage something, anything. I slowed down further, abruptly changing my mind and now willing them to come for me, but I knew they wouldn’t. For that day, they had had enough.
Already I would be late home, and I could foretell the beating I would get at my father’s hand. At that moment I resolved that I would defy him, that like Dax I would rise up from the floor and challenge him to hit me again. While my mother as usual tried to mediate between her husband and son, I would tell my father the truth: that I had gone to watch a fight. That would incite his anger: Fight, gora. I’ll give you a fight.
I tried to rehearse the narrative I would recount later to Mum, after the beating. But a simple explanation would not come, my thoughts instead crowded with images of Dax. They seemed to zoom in on his face: the frightened eyes, the trembling lip, the tilt of his mud-caked chin as he again rose from the ground.
I walked, but not by any defined route, as though whatever turns I made, ultimately and disappointingly, they would lead me home. The sky was a thick purple: broiling, darkening, shifting and flattening. It was a cold evening and I clasped my arms around myself, shivering.
The streets were nearly empty. Through front windows I saw gora huddled around their television sets, cooking smells wafting out to the street. Normally I’d stop and sniff the air to determine what was for tea — potatoes, beef, carrots — but that day I strode mindlessly on, without purpose.
The Mash Tun was quiet, its curtains drawn, its patio benches desolate. About a mile on, a fish-shaped neon sign flashed orange in the window of Ivan’s chippy. As always, the door stood ajar and pop music mingled with the reassuring sound of spitting oil. Like an actor spotlit on a stage, Ivan offered me his cheerful salesman’s smile while ladling chips onto a waiting spread of newspaper. I had no mood nor money for chips.
After maybe another hour I was tired and nervous and no longer convinced I would welcome my father’s cane. I paused at the end of our street, resting my back against the tall factory wall, no longer afraid of it; robbed of its mystery, it was now just a wall. The brickwork was warm, as though borrowing heat from the furnace within, and the rhythmic beat of the hammer reverberated through my body. I closed my eyes, a gentle wind stirring across my face.
‘Carry on like that and your bones will shatter.’
I opened my eyes and Mustafa offered me a nervous half-smile. He clutched the handlebars of a bike, its weight balanced against his waist. Perched precariously on the seat was his brother Faisal, a child of about six.
‘That’s what they tell little kids, but it’s not true,’ I said.
‘You look like you’re in trouble,’ said Mustafa.
I nodded.
Unlike his older brother’s, Faisal’s skin was a pleasant brown. He had a small cherubic face and big round eyes that stared intently at me.
‘Cold?’ Mustafa added.
Again I nodded.
‘Come with us.’ He patted his back pocket. ‘I’ve got matches.’
‘Number eleven?’
Faisal giggled and repeated, ‘Number eleven.’
Mustafa and I each took one side of the bicycle with Faisal propped between us. We went a few yards down the street and turned abruptly to our right as though passing through what had once been the front door of number eleven. We found ourselves surrounded by the heaped remains of our neighbour’s house: roof slate, bricks, plaster, shattered windowpanes, and timber studded dangerously with rusty nails. Here and there a scrap of wallpaper or a decorative kitchen tile served as reminders that this had indeed once been a house.
We built a small pyramid of timber and settled down on brick stools around it. There was plenty of paper and kindling left over from previous fires, and Mustafa tucked it expertly into the hollow at the base of the triangle. From his pocket he pulled out a handful of bent kitchen matches. ‘Our lad stole them when Mum wasn’t watching.’ He tapped his brother on the head and the kid beamed. ‘She doesn’t suspect you, does she, lad?’
Faisal put a small pudgy finger to his lips. ‘Shhh.’
Mustafa struck a match against a brick; it flared and he cupped it protectively in both hands, lowering it slowly into the hollow. The light flickered in the gaps between his fingers and the paper caught fire. He knelt low, his head perilously close as he blew air gently onto the tiny flicker of orange. The flames grew and licked at the kindling. Mustafa settled back on his stool, pleased with his work.
I stared as closely as I dared into the fire, the smoke catching my eyes. One by one the faces of each of Dax’s assailants were consumed by the flames, first melting at the edges and then collapsing inwards and vanishing entirely. I rubbed my eyes with a knuckle, grinding in the stinging soot.
Finally, I said, ‘In hell, you burn up only to be given life to burn up all over again.’
Faisal pulled a frightened face and went to sit in his brother’s lap. Mustafa seemed at ease as his brother’s guardian, cradling the small body in his arms.
I continued. ‘You beg Allah for a drink of water and he just laughs in your face.’
Faisal’s head nuzzled his brother’s chest and after a long pause I could hear the faint rhythmic rustle of his sleep.
‘And it’s worse than that,’ I added. ‘Mum says imagine the most terrible thing you can and times it by a thousand.’
‘It’s my fire.’ Mustafa sounded irritated. ‘You’re not welcome talking like that.’
‘He brings you a cup of molten steel spiked with the hair of a pig and says, Drink this.’
‘God don’t talk.’ Mustafa looked up at the sky, orange changing to grey as his head tilted further up. He sighed. ‘Should get our kid to bed.’
‘If you die and you’re not a Muslim, do you burn forever?’