Sakina stole a glance at the punter in the Golf as she passed, measuring him up, taking in his cropped black hair, pock-marked cheeks and the blue-green tattoo on the side of his head. There was something menacing about him, something that made her take the black satin of her niqaab and pull it tighter over her painted lips. He turned and looked back at her, his empty eyes burning right through her, as if he could see what she looked like under her purdah. She hurried on.
Realising she was about to lose another customer, the prostitute swore loudly at Sakina. ‘That’s right, why don’t you just fuck off? Bloody ISIS lover.’
Her words backfired and her potential client looked at her in disgust. ‘Ladies shoun’t talk like that,’ he said, peeling her fingers off his car and drawing up the window.
She stood her ground, refusing to leave. ‘Aw, darlin’, don’t be laike that. For some dirty Paki?’
But the driver had made up his mind and he turned the key in the ignition, the car edging forward slowly and hugging the curve of the kerb. When he reached the 620 bus shelter where Sakina was waiting, he switched off the headlights and rolled down the window, the engine still letting its readiness be known. The sun had now buried itself deep into the ground; the only light came from the street lamp next to Sakina, spotlighting her in its orange glow. She tried to look past the man, focusing on something, anything, in the distance. His smile remained fixed. She turned away, but not before catching a glimpse of the purple bank notes he was holding. She turned back, watched as he counted the cash slowly and deliberately. She looked at his face again, making a mental note and itemising his features as she’d been taught to do by the other girls. She eventually stood up, walked to the car and climbed in. The punter leaned across the leather seat and respectfully helped her adjust her seatbelt, breathing her in as he did so.
‘You brown girls are hard work,’ he told her, ‘but your smell alone is worth it.’
Sakina pulled down her niqaab and smiled. She lifted the folds of her black burqa to cross her legs, revealing thin, red leather stilettos and dark olive skin. The man grinned. He loved this city.
CHAPTER 1
His forehead touched the worn patch of his mat as he prayed. Deep in supplication, Akbar Khan whispered the Arabic phrases he’d been taught as a child, invoking blessings on the Prophet, praising Allah and calling on His infinite mercy. The old man moved back to the sitting position, his knees now folded under him, and adjusted the tan-coloured woollen hat covering his black hair. He wore it as a sign of respect and honour to his people. It reminded him of how far he had come; its presence kept them in his prayers. The day he had taken it from the rebel soldier was still fresh in his mind, even though more than half a century had passed since he came across the body as he played in the street.
A single thought flickered through his mind and stole him from his prayers. He scratched his clipped beard and made a note to ask his wife to pick up a box of Bigen from the Pakistani grocery shop nearby. The dusty streets and winding walkways of his homeland may have been decades behind him, but the grey-and-orange packaging of hair dye, like the hat, was another reminder of his birthplace, and one of the few constants in his life. The hair dye, the hat, a beaten brown leather suitcase that used to rest above an old cupboard in his father’s house, and odd memories: these were all that remained of those times. He had heard that suicide bombers had destroyed much of his home town. He had heard that the women cried blood and the children played with Kalashnikovs, and though his Pukhtun blood meant it was not in his nature to take much to heart, he wept for Peshawar.
He slid his hands from his knees to the faded pink of the prayer mat once again and sank into the sajdah. Prostrating before his God, he gave thanks for the cotton kameez of his youth, the only one he’d owned then, and for the row upon row of suits and shalwars and chadors and chappals that were housed in the wardrobe in his home here in England. His wardrobe was larger now than the house he’d been born in, the house where he had watched his parents die.
Akbar Khan knew well the harsh realities of life, realities that had branded him and defined his path. He knew that standing alone in the wilderness of despair, shunned by God, men often found themselves contemplating dangerous things. When children writhed in hunger, their mothers suppressing their screams, when debt collectors knocked on doors, when elderly parents with eyes full of dead dreams turned to you for hope when you yourself had none, you had to find a way to keep standing. Carrying the burden of family, their hopes bearing down, men turned to cigarettes and beedi, and all methods of intoxication, to escape the reality of poverty and despair…even when that intoxicant dried up their veins and ate up their souls. And it was through this deep understanding of man’s struggle that Akbar Khan had found himself supplying substances of all criminal classifications. And as he stood before the God of Abraham and Moses, of Jesus and of Muhammad, Akbar Khan felt his heart to be unblemished, because he knew he was providing for his people and fulfilling their needs.
That battered old suitcase on the shelf above his starched, crisp shirts belonged to another Akbar and another Khan. One that he had long since buried to serve his people.
He turned his head to
