‘Of course,’ said Chaudhry.
‘Half an hour from now, then, brother. At the Aziziye Halal. You know it?’
‘Of course, brother.’
The Aziziye Halal was a traditional Turkish restaurant on the ground floor of the Aziziye Mosque on Stoke Newington Road, next to a halal butcher where Chaudhry bought most of his meat. The mosque had started life as the Apollo Picture House in 1913 and had shown soft-core sex films during the seventies before being converted into a mosque in 1983. It was much larger than the Dynevor Road mosque, with room for two thousand worshippers, and it was far more salubrious, if for no other reason than the Dynevor Road mosque was underground and the Aziziye was on the upper floor with large windows. It was the Turkish community who had pressed for the cinema to be converted into a mosque, and generally it was only Turks who worshipped there. The Turks were as protective about their mosque as they were about the business they controlled in the area.
Malik was lying on the sofa reading a book on Japanese cooking.
‘Khalid wants to see us,’ Chaudhry said. ‘At the Aziziye.’
‘The mosque?’
‘The restaurant. Get ready.’
‘I hope he’s paying.’
‘If he doesn’t you can ask him for the receipt and get MI5 to pay.’ Chaudhry could see from the look on Malik’s face that he thought he was serious. ‘Don’t you bloody dare,’ laughed Chaudhry.
Twenty-five minutes later they were removing their shoes at the entrance to the restaurant. Khalid was inside, talking to a waiter. Standing with Khalid were two young Asians. Chaudhry recognised them from the mosque, though he had never spoken to them.
The waiter, dressed in a black shirt and black trousers, headed over to a stack of menus as Khalid turned and saw Chaudhry and Malik. He walked towards them and kissed them on both cheeks. He was wearing a blue and white striped dishdash and a white skullcap, holding a chain of wooden prayer beads, and smelled of garlic and cheap cologne. He waved over his two companions. ‘This is Lateef and Faisal,’ said Khalid.
‘It’s an honour, brother,’ said Lateef, shaking hands with Chaudhry then pulling him close into a hug. He patted him on the back with his left hand. ‘A real honour.’ He was an inch or two taller than Chaudhry with the looks of a Bollywood leading man; his hair was gelled and slicked back.
Faisal was short and stocky with darker skin and cheeks mottled with old acne scars. He stepped forward and hugged Malik. ‘Salaam, brother,’ he said.
The waiter returned with the menus and took them along to their cubicle. Most diners in the restaurant ate in small cubicles, divided up with chest-high partitions. They varied in size from small ones that accommodated just two people to family cubicles where more than a dozen could eat in comfort, sprawled on red patterned cushions around low tables.
The waiter held open the door of the cubicle and one by one they filed in and flopped down on the cushions. Khalid sat down at the head of the table. There was an LCD TV screen behind him showing advertisements for the restaurant. Khalid pointed at the TV and nodded at the waiter. The waiter switched it off and handed out menus. Khalid waved the menus away and ordered for them all.
Unlike many of the Turkish-run Muslim restaurants in the area, the Aziziye Halal didn’t serve alcohol. The waiter brought a tray of fruit juices and water, and then disappeared to the kitchen. Khalid poured water into glasses for each of the men.
‘So, Lateef and Faisal will soon be following the glorious path that you both trod,’ said Khalid. ‘I thought it might be a good idea for you to tell them what they can expect.’
‘Was it amazing, brother? Being with the mujahideen?’ asked Lateef.
‘They were not with the mujahideen,’ said Khalid. ‘They are mujahideen. That is what happens over there. You go as men who want to take part in jihad but you return as Islamic warriors, as mujahideen.’
‘The training, was it hard?’ asked Faisal.
‘It has to be hard,’ said Malik. ‘You don’t know how weak you are until they get to work on you.’ He sipped his water. ‘I can play five-a-side all evening and never break a sweat,’ he said. ‘But after half an hour of physical training in the desert I thought I was going to die. We did obstacle courses and route marches; we walked in the hottest part of the day and we walked through the night. We ran, we crawled, we hid in trenches for hours. They teach you discipline like you wouldn’t believe. I lost about five kilos while I was there.’
Chaudhry nodded in agreement. ‘It opens your eyes to what they go through every day,’ he said. ‘Here we’re soft and weak, and without training you wouldn’t last a day out there.’
‘And they teach you to fire guns and stuff?’ asked Faisal.
‘Not just to fire them,’ said Chaudhry. ‘They show you how to strip and clean weapons, how to fix them, how to store them.’
‘AK-47s, right?’ said Lateef.
‘All sorts,’ said Chaudhry. ‘The AK-47 is the workhorse but they taught us about the Uzi and the guns that the Americans use — the M4 carbine and the M9 pistol.’
‘They make you strip and reassemble them blindfolded,’ said Malik. ‘You think you’ll never get the hang of it but eventually you do.’
‘And what’s it like, firing an AK-47?’ asked Lateef.
‘It’s louder than you expect, and you smell the gunpowder for hours afterwards,’ said Chaudhry. ‘It doesn’t kick as much as you’d think.’
‘But the Uzi kicks,’ said Malik. ‘The Uzi kicks like a living thing. It’s like trying to hold on to a struggling cat.’
A man with a long beard moved by their cubicle, followed by two women covered from head to foot in black burkas, their eyes shielded behind black mesh. There was no way of knowing whether they were his wives, his sisters or his elderly aunts.
The men fell silent until the new arrivals had made their way to their cubicle and seated themselves.
‘Did you shoot anyone while you were out there?’ asked Lateef.
‘Brothers, this was a training camp,’ said Khalid softly. ‘You go to train to be mujahideen, not to fight. You are too valuable to risk in a desert gunfight.’
Lateef lowered his voice. ‘We heard that sometimes they kill prisoners in the camps. For practice. Is that true?’
‘I have heard that,’ said Chaudhry. ‘But it did not happen while we were there.’
‘Did you fire missiles, the sort that can bring down helicopters and planes?’
‘We didn’t fire them ourselves but we saw one being fired and we know what to do,’ said Chaudhry.
‘That must have been awesome,’ said Faisal. He looked over at Khalid. ‘They should give us surface-to-air missiles here,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine what we could do? You can see the planes landing at Heathrow from miles away.’ He mimed firing a SAM missile launcher and made a whooshing noise.
Khalid was about to admonish him when the cubicle door opened and the waiter appeared with their food. He knelt down and put dishes on the table: stuffed vine leaves, filo pastry stuffed with feta cheese, fried meatballs served with chopped onions, salad and naan bread. When the waiter had left, Khalid leaned forward. ‘It is not about the weapons, brothers. Weapons are only the means to an end. Becoming a mujahideen is an attitude of mind. That is why you go to Pakistan. You go to become focused so that you can best serve Allah. A true mujahideen doesn’t need a rocket or a gun to kill the infidel. But he needs the mental toughness to commit himself.’
‘They toughen you up over there, that’s for sure,’ said Chaudhry. ‘They explain a lot too. You think you know everything about what it means to be a Muslim, but until you’ve seen what they go through. .’ He shrugged. ‘Our lives here are so easy. We forget that our brothers are being slain all over the world.’
Faisal and Lateef nodded enthusiastically.
‘What else did you learn, brothers?’ asked Faisal.
‘They taught us how to resist interrogation,’ said Malik.
‘What do they do?’ asked Lateef. ‘Do they torture you?’