‘I should have been martyred like our kid.’
‘Our kid?’ My mouth was suddenly dry. ‘Faisal was martyred?’
‘You don’t know? Didn’t you see Ali offer his respects by not taking my money? Or the surgeon brother say he awaits my call? What did you think that was about? Our Faisal even made the TV news.’
I shook my head, feeling the hair on the nape of my neck stand on end. ‘I remember him best as a kid — as a baby smiling out of a broken window.’
‘He was strong, like you, Brother Akram. And proud. He is with Allah.’
‘What exactly happened?’
‘Exactly, I cannot tell you, for security reasons you will understand.’ He stared at me but I offered nothing in return. ‘I took our kid out laying ordnance. What your people fear the most. An IED.’
I shook my head.
‘He wasn’t a natural,’ continued Mustafa. ‘Mine went off and blew a hole in a Mastiff. Our kid, his didn’t go, did it? We were watching from a dugout, and despite what I had taught him, like a brave fool he rushed out to reset it. Just as he got there this ISAF sniper spots him. One round to the head.’
I said without thinking, ‘Those snipers are shit hot.’
‘He was a British citizen. I took his body by Land Cruiser back to Peshawar. The police affidavit cost five English pounds and the official report read that Faisal was shot by a dacoit. I flew him home to our mother. It was her wish.’
‘Allah’s will,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Allah’s will,’ repeated Mustafa. He shook his head but in his voice there was no sense of mourning. ‘Only British soldiers talk about sorry. Faisal’s martyrdom was the happiest day of his life. It is an occasion to celebrate and to distribute sweetmeats. Our kid is in Paradise.’
‘How will you ever know that for sure?’
‘Faith, my dear brother Akram. Faith. Justice.’ He stared into the middle distance. ‘My only regret is that I will not join him. I am cursed with a gene that gives me the skin and heart of a gora. I am not long for this world. I don’t let on, but I know it.’
The morning sun lent the air a crisp, yellow quality. The colour of shop signs, of the clothes people wore and passing cars, seemed subdued but at the same time more intense, as though colour alone could spring to life.
‘Brother Mustafa, the doctors, they don’t know everything. They can’t always estimate lifespan.’
‘You’re right,’ he replied in a tone of resignation. ‘But I sense it. Day by day I feel the strength drain from my arms and legs. I will accept my end.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘But in the meantime I will continue to do what I can to please the guardians of the hereafter.’
‘We are from different countries, you and I. I say statistic and you say martyr. I look at death in war as a screw-up and you regard it as noble. I hope you are right and I am wrong. I really hope so.’
Mustafa laughed. ‘You and I, we would have made a good team. You are the left hand and I am the right. Together we are neither one way nor the other but somewhere in the middle. They say middle is the best, no?’
‘I’ve never believed in the middle. In the middle there are lies.’
Mustafa considered me for a long time before replying. ‘Inshallah, in you, brother, I see something special.’ He looked at his watch and added, ‘But right now I have to attend to Faisal, and I cannot attend to him on my own. I need a brother. As you have witnessed, even on this street I could have asked a hundred brothers, but no.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘They are ordinary men, stupid thoughtless men, men whose sole function is to shuffle after their wives and carry the sweetmeats. Let them eat and sweeten their tongues, but you and I, brother, we have seen and understood. We have no fear of death. We have been warriors.’
He swept his hands through the air as though to show the way, then held my gaze. ‘Will you, Brother Akram, will you honour me in doing the ghusl for my brother Faisal?’ It wasn’t really a question.
I followed Mustafa in silence, observing his unsteady gait. His walk made mine look almost normal. He ambled from side to side and his feet slapped hard against the pavement, as though at any moment he would lose his footing. I felt sorry for him. The blast, it seemed, had affected his balance too.
Twenty minutes later we arrived at a newly built mosque, in red brick with a large green dome. Diggers were already excavating an adjacent plot for what I assumed was an extension to the building.
An older Pakistani man, tall and thin with a long beard, and wearing gloves, a surgeon’s cap and a face mask, met us in an anteroom at the back of the building. His eyes looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. ‘Assalamualaikum, I am the duty attendant.’ He took us each by the hand, shaking mine overlong. His gloves were wet.
He showed Mustafa and me into a larger room, tiled from floor to ceiling. It had an industrial feel, with galvanized pipes and vents overhead and the sound of working fans that seemed to suck the air out of the room, leaving it cold and clinical.
‘Only two of you?’ asked the man, taking in my walking stick.
‘We’ll manage,’ said Mustafa cheerfully, his eyes drifting to a large steel door at the end of the room.
‘I would be happy to assist,’ the man replied, his tone mournful.
There followed a silence broken only by the air-conditioning. Without speaking, the man issued both of us with vinyl gloves and a blue plastic apron. He opened the steel door with a flourish like a concierge at a grand hotel and strode with soundless footsteps into the cold smoky white air. He fumbled for a light cord and a ceiling light flickered. An overwhelming dry smell of formaldehyde escaped from the room. It burned the rims of my eyes and deep inside my nostrils, and for a moment I tried to stop myself inhaling. As the light sucked to a constant state of illumination it revealed a stainless-steel trolley beneath which a macabre galvanized pipe led into a drain in the tiled floor. On the trolley lay a white body bag stamped ISAF. I shuddered.
‘You’ll find everything you need.’ The man pointed to a deep square sink and a shelf above it crowded with bottles and vials. ‘There is soap for the body. For our brother, I have prepared a splendid oud mixed with frankincense and myrrh.’
Mustafa began to chant, ‘La ilaha il Allahu la ilaha il Allah.’
The duty attendant pressed a small green bottle into my hand and whispered, ‘I am atoning for my sins.’
Confused, I turned to look at him. Pulling off the face mask and lifting up his surgeon’s cap, he offered a toothy grin. In the centre of his forehead was a deep gnarled burn that had healed badly into a dark keloid brown. I had held him down and Adrian had burned him with a cigarette until we could see the white of his skull bone, until he passed out. ‘Bobby? You?’ I mouthed silently.
He shook his head. ‘Fakir Ahmed Fazal Alam,’ he said. Bowing deeply, he left the room.
Mustafa’s chanting was soft and deeply melodic, and his body swayed.
When I was a small boy my mother would climb into my bed in the evening. Lying next to me, she would sing me to sleep, ‘La ilaha il Allahu’. Although then I could have scarcely known what it meant, it was and still is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. She would often pause for minutes at a time to speak to me about hell, tell me ancient stories passed down through the generations, or sometimes she would read from a pamphlet: about eternal fire that burned you up only for Allah to give you immediate life so that you could be burned up all over again. There were also hammers that beat you into the earth like a wooden peg. In hell, everything was hot, black, spiked, and water for the thirsty inhabitants was molten steel mixed with hair from the pig.