Azra shivered inside the burqa. Turning to me, she said, ‘I can’t breathe in that house of yours, it’s so small and cramped.’
‘Are you cold?’ I asked. It was warm out.
‘My father told me it was better here,’ she said, gazing along the terraced street.
‘These houses were built for workers.’
‘My father said that in England the government gives you a house and money.’
‘Here you can earn more in a day than you can in a month in Pakistan.’
‘You earn nothing!’ She spat out the words with contempt. After a moment, she gave a loud, exaggerated sigh.
As she scanned the rooftops one foot absently slipped out from beneath the hem of her burqa. Dark and slender with toenails painted red, it was gracefully encased in a gold strappy sandal, and the malleoli at her ankle jutted out sharply. I watched her foot move about as though it was testing the tarmac. It accidentally struck the base of my stick and quickly retreated back under the black robe.
‘If you earned,’ she added, ‘you wouldn’t live in a house like yours.’
‘This is a civilized country,’ I argued. ‘Everyone who needs it is looked after.’
She didn’t reply.
‘It must be hard for you,’ I continued, changing the subject.
‘Nothing is hard after what I have seen in Pakistan.’
Azra and I arrived at Mustafa’s, a semi-detached new build. There were many like it in the street, and save for a white-plastic imitation Greek porch guarding the door it didn’t stand out. His mother answered our knock. A diminutive woman, she was as wide as she was tall, not fat but square. She had a dark moustache that I couldn’t help but stare at.
‘Assalamualaikum, Aunty,’ I said.
Aunty returned our salaam, kissed us both on the hand and led us into the front room. Two sofas were placed either side of a coffee table. The sofas were covered in transparent plastic and the coffee table had a glass top. Above the mantelpiece was a picture of the Great Mosque in Mecca and below that was a familiar-looking clock, green plastic in the shape of a mosque with a painted golden dome. Like an alarm it could be set to ring the azan five times per day.
‘Allah’s will,’ I said to Aunty.
The women, as though speaking as one, repeated my words. ‘Allah’s will.’
Relieved of formalities, we all sat down. I put my hands before my chest to pray and the women followed. Azra wore slim black gloves with a gold ring on her left middle finger. I whispered a short prayer for the deceased, and finished by swiping my hands down my face from forehead to chin. The women did the same.
‘I’ll fetch tea.’ Her feet found her slippers, and Aunty left the room.
‘This house is better than yours,’ said Azra, looking around at the freshly painted interior.
I whispered, ‘Because we all contribute to jihad they’re loaded.’
I noticed a framed picture on the wall, of Mustafa on the day of his university graduation. He must have blinked as the camera flashed and in his hands he gripped a paper scroll. There were other pictures dotted around, of Mustafa and Faisal, of countless small children side by side on a string charpoi, their little legs dangling off the sides.
‘I wouldn’t want a son,’ Azra said. ‘The war will go on.’
‘Chance would be—’
She interrupted. ‘I couldn’t let him go. Naturally he would want to martyr himself. It’s selfish of me, but that’s how I feel.’
‘What do you want, Azra?’
‘Daughters. Eighty daughters to replace my girls at the madrasa. And I want back the years you took from me.’
My thumb throbbed and I tried to laugh off her words. ‘Who could afford the dowry of eighty daughters?’
‘It would take a rich man.’ She stared straight ahead.
‘Could you really replace your students?’
‘Girls are like mules, owned and transportable,’ she said angrily. ‘You of all people should know that.’
In the silence that then pervaded I could hear Mustafa’s mother in the kitchen. A kettle boiled and porcelain clattered against porcelain. Crinkle wrapping was torn apart. I pictured biscuits tumbling onto a plate.
‘Why are you here, Azra?’ I said finally.
‘Because you sent for me.’
‘I thought that for a wife her husband comes first?’
‘Allah comes first.’
‘Then the husband is next?’
‘The infidel is last,’ she replied sharply.
A waft of brewing tea caught my nostrils. All four walls of the front room were wallpapered with a dark paisley design and as I traced its complicated outlines it hurt my eyes.
There was a knock at the front door, and slowly I raised myself onto the stick and answered. Ali seemed surprised to see me, but quickly recovered, handing me several boxes of sweetmeats. Without a word he returned to his van, the engine still running. I put them on the coffee table and slumped back onto the sofa next to Azra.
‘Take off your burqa so Aunty can see you,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘I have known her all my life and she would want to see my wife. And try to smile.’
Aunty returned to the room with a tray that she placed on the coffee table. On the tray was a plate of assorted biscuits and three steaming mugs of English tea. She saw the boxes of sweetmeats on the coffee table and opened one. Gazing kindly on the newlywed couple, she smiled and implored us to eat. As she settled her ample weight on the sofa opposite, she blamed her cholesterol for her not joining us. ‘My son Mustafa,’ she added, ‘has forbidden me from making desi tea, even for guests — he says I will not be able to resist a cup!’ For a moment she tried to laugh. ‘He is such a thoughtful boy.’ She paused, deep in thought, and then gave a short sharp wail. Tears ran down her face and she blew her nose violently into a handkerchief.
I reached over the coffee table and placed a hand gently on her head. ‘Faisal is with Allah, you must believe that.’
The tears stopped abruptly and she looked up. ‘I am destined to lose both sons.’
‘You don’t know that, Aunty,’ I said.
‘It is sawab,’ said Azra. ‘Your boys are blessed and you are selfish to cry; even a mother must give way to Allah.’
I shot Azra a stern glance. Again I wished she wasn’t wearing a burqa. I wished I could have seen the impression my anger had made on her hypocrisy.
Aunty nodded, holding her hands together in her lap. Her shoulders rolled forward and she stared at her hands, picking at the edge of a fingernail.
Azra spoke again. ‘The boys at the madrasa, upon reaching maturity and with their hearts overflowing with the desire to perform Allah’s work, they would cross the mountains. Not one ever returned. With unseen tears, as we watched them leave, we whispered their funeral prayer.’
‘Thank you,’ said Aunty to me, ‘and thank you for doing Faisal’s ghusl.’ She reached out and took both of my hands in hers. Her hands were warm, the skin yellow. ‘You and Mustafa have been friends since you were infants and to him you are like a brother. Your assisting him with the ghusl is an honour to our family.’
I hadn’t told Azra about the ghusl. She gripped her chin in one hand and cocked her head, staring at me. Even through her burqa I could sense that she now regarded me with at least a little respect.
Still, she continued on her theme. ‘Our job was to fill their hearts with the Holy Book. It would take about seven years to learn it by rote, occasionally a little quicker, though often, for those who resisted their fate, it would take a year or two longer for the imam to beat it into them. We took them in as infants, mostly abandoned on our doorstep, and sent them out as men. As warriors fit and strong and ready for the short walk across the pass and the long war thereafter.’