‘What you doing up here?’ He had to shout to be heard over the wind. In the absence of a turban his long hair blew across his face and obscured the third eye Adrian and I had branded him with, each grey tendril picked up by the currents, soft and feathery.
‘I’ve come to see the edge of the rain.’ I looked out across to a distant range, counting the peaks to myself.
Bobby turned to command the scene in a full sweep, then sat down next to me. ‘But the sun’s out.’
‘I can wait.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ he leant in closely and raised his eyebrows, ‘only pervs come up here.’
‘You would know.’ I stared straight ahead at the view.
Pushing aside his hair to reveal the scar on his forehead, he said, ‘Thank you, brother, for this. It was Allah’s will and it woke me up to what I had become. I did not seek medical attention; I suffered it, I consumed the pain, hoping for more.’
His scar reminded me of Adrian, and I felt overwhelmed with my love for my dead buddy. ‘If I was superstitious,’ I said, ‘I would think you were there in the pomegranate orchard the day Adrian Hartley died, you were the eye marked on the trees.’
‘You saw for yourself, at the mosque, I am gifted with something. The mark on the trees, it was a warning.’ The wind almost swallowed up his next words. ‘I, brother, I have learnt much through suffering.’
I looked down at the drab landscape and said bitterly, ‘I have learnt nothing through suffering.’
He grinned, his strong teeth like tombstones. ‘You will, Brother Akram — you have only have to look up.’ His hands pointed towards the heavens.
‘You think you can be forgiven?’ I shook my head. ‘Just like that?’
‘You think you can live among us yet fight us,’ he replied.
‘I thought I was done with fighting.’
‘Touch me,’ he said.
I turned away.
He reached for my hand and put it to his chest. I could feel his heart beat fast. ‘Touch me to signal that I am forgiven.’ Caught by the wind, his long hair winnowed behind him, and on his face spread a broad smile.
I shook my head, pulled my hand away and went to grasp my walking stick, fallen just slightly out of reach. Surprisingly strong, Bobby heaved me to my feet and carefully put the stick in my hand. As I found my balance, he dropped to the ground and sat with his legs crossed and hands in the prayer position.
Making my way back down towards canal level, I fell several times, grazing my hands on the gravel and incurring scratches from the thicket that lined the path. When I reached the base of the hill, struggling to catch my breath, the brothers who had been training in the mill passed me without a glance. Now wearing high-visibility orange vests and swinging an iron weight in each hand, they ran short sprints up the hill while their instructor counted down from ten. They ran in formation as though they were military.
I returned to the towpath. A barge, painted bright green and with small round windows cut into its side, motored past. A name was stencilled onto the paintwork: MusicMan. Just after it passed me, the noise of its engine changed into something more laboured, and I watched nervously as it slowly reversed and sidled up to the towpath where I was standing.
Mustafa, wearing broad, mirrored sunglasses and a sailor’s cap with an anchor stitched at its centre, was manning the steering column. ‘Mash Allah. Mash Allah,’ he said, putting his hands together in supplication.
He pushed a plank onto the towpath and helped me aboard. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked.
‘Fell,’ I said, flinching from his touch. He nodded knowingly at my scratched and muddied face.
We motored towards Netherton Tunnel. Mustafa disappeared into the cabin to switch on a CD player. I lowered myself to the wooden deck, rolled up my trousers and took off my shoes and socks. Averting my eyes from the sight of my left leg, I slid to the edge of the barge and lowered both feet into the ice-cold water. Here, like this, I was no longer aware of my defect.
The vessel crept into the tunnel. Mustafa cut the engine and the music rang out clearly, a deep rousing tenor echoing off the arched brickwork. Then a woman’s voice, soft and fluttery like birdsong, straining to be heard over the violins, trumpets and crashing cymbals. I pictured an orchestra playing in a lush garden.
Mustafa’s heavy feet shook the deck as he made his way over to me. His hot breath was startling as he bent over and whispered in my ear, ‘I prayed all night that you’d come.’
The voices alternated, the man’s and the woman’s, singing a naath in Arabic, ‘La ilaha il Allahu la ilaha ila Allah’. The weightlessness of my feet in the water felt, for a moment, like a miracle. Then both voices sang at once, perfectly in sync, the sum of them greater than their individual parts. They sounded like angels calling out to Allah. The boat drifted further into nothingness and the volume of the song slowly rose.
Mustafa lowered himself down onto the deck and placed a bottle of whisky and a pack of cigarettes between us. He put two cigarettes into his mouth and lit them, then offered me one. ‘Drink and smoke,’ he said, unscrewing the bottle top and pushing it towards me. ‘We who have not long must enjoy ourselves.’
He began to chant, ‘Allahu, Allahu,’ his head nodding to the beat. I was enjoying the echo against the walls. ‘They won’t find us here, Brother Akram. Allahu. No wives here. Allahu.’
Leaving me with the bottle, he switched on a flashlight and stepped off the barge onto the towpath. The barge drifted on, as thought its direction were divinely set. The beam of the torch elongated along the tunnel walls. It lit up Mustafa in silhouette as he searched for something among the brickwork. Moments later he jumped back onto the barge, the force of his landing vibrating through the wooden planks. He now carried what looked like a military daysack. Still holding the bag, he clambered onto the low roof.
Mustafa extinguished the flashlight, and deep in the tunnel the darkness was complete. I saw a small spark as if two live electrical wires had been touched together. It was momentary, but as it glowed blue it lit up Mustafa’s face, bent towards the source, a cigarette dangling carelessly from his lips. He appeared ghost-like, whiter than I had ever seen him. The smell of tobacco, cordite and worked steel clouded the air above, familiar like the smell of a live bullet issuing from a chamber; the spark flickered a second time, and I saw Mustafa’s broad pink smile and his fragile blue eyelids bordering unwavering eyes.
Leaving the daysack on the roof, he returned to sit beside me. ‘You like this tunnel? British engineering. Only fifty yards short of two miles.’
‘I’ve always wanted to go through it playing opera music, but this is better.’
‘In here,’ he said, ‘it’s the hereafter.’
‘It’s certainly something,’ I said, my eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness. ‘It’s somewhere between worlds.’
‘This atmosphere is good for my eyes,’ he said. He put an arm around my shoulders. As I picked up the bottle he leant his mouth into it, knocking back a large gulp.
‘Brother, it really burns.’ Violently he shook his head and screwed up his face. ‘How can the gora like whisky?’
‘You start with something weaker, something like cider and blackcurrant.’
‘You have lived with the gora. You know their ways.’
‘Whisky is fine neat but improves with a mixer.’
‘I was never part of their society, therefore I am ignorant of their habits.’
‘It must be a cheap blend,’ I added, unable to inspect the bottle in the darkness. ‘What you want is a pure single malt; that, with a drop of water, is tolerable.’