He reached over to roll the prayer mat up and then stopped, running his fingers over its faded patches. The rug needed replacing, worn away at the place where his forehead touched it in prostration and frayed where his feet rested when he stood; it served as a reminder of all the nights he had spent in prayer. Especially after having someone killed. And there had been many such nights. Akbar Khan’s business interests led and fed the city and most of its people. They would not survive without him. Those who called his dealings ‘illicit’, his associates ‘criminal’ and his methods ‘illegal’, what did they know about hunger? What did they know about survival? About seeing the life leave your sister, tiny in your arms, as you weep and beg the doctor to save her but he coldly turns away because you cannot pay his fees?
He picked up the prayer beads from the table beside him and as he did so he noticed his hands were those of an old man. They had not aged as well as his face. The skin covering his long, slim fingers was almost translucent; a tiny brown liver spot nestled between his thumb and forefinger. The world had pointed fingers at him his entire life, and it had judged him harshly. He knew he had made mistakes and would one day have to answer for them. His own daughter had cursed him, demanded that life extract payment for her loss. How could he expect the rest of the world not to? He wondered how much more he owed on the debt, and how much of his blood others had demanded. He sighed deeply as he considered all this and more. His decisions had been reasoned and measured and coloured by knowledge not held by those who sat in judgement. Prayer bead to prayer bead he read the Ayat-ul-Kursi. The verse had served him well and allowed him to reach old age. He was acutely aware of the ripeness of this time. He knew that it would be over soon, and he would not need to carry the demands of the world alone for much longer. There came a point in every life when another was needed to lean on, someone stronger, younger, one who was ready. Akbar Khan had arrived at that point, and now he waited for the other to join him.
The room was almost in darkness now. The house was silent, the only sounds coming from the storm outside. A loud crash startled him and he turned to see the branches of the heavy apple tree that reached up to the house thrashing against the bedroom window. It had grown fast and become unruly in the last twenty years. The gardener had advised it be chopped down before its roots destroyed the foundation of the house but Akbar Khan had resisted. The sound of its branches tapping on his window helped him sleep, as did the pies his wife made from its fruit every summer, a delicious taste he’d acquired in the early days of his arrival in this country. But now the time had come to heed the gardener’s advice; the tree would be cut down after the wedding. Akbar Khan watched as its boughs bent low, so heavy with fruit that some touched the ground. They bowed lower than all the branches of all the other trees in the garden without damage to themselves, just as the Khan, laden with power and knowing just how to wield it, prostrated himself before his Maker.
He prayed aloud; the sound of his voice brought with it clarity of thought. ‘I have made mistakes, my Allah. I have made them knowingly, willingly, and in the cloak of darkness, but you know why I have done the things I have… The world does not need to witness the birth of another Akbar Khan. Do not let my sacrifice go to waste, my Lord,’ he said.
He brought the beads to his eyes before kissing them and putting them aside. He folded up the prayer mat and moved to the bed. His wife slept soundly, the kind of sleep that is brought on by warm milk, turmeric and blessed ignorance. Her children would be together tomorrow and the preparations for their arrival, the desire to fulfil their every whim, had exhausted her.
How many years had it been since all the children had been under this roof? Akbar Khan could not remember… Fifteen, perhaps? Sixteen? Sixteen years since his daughter Jia had made a necklace of arms around him and discussed her plans? She had called him her ‘Baba jaan’. But the ‘jaan’, the life, was leaving his old bones and he needed to make peace with his strongest-willed child. There were things to discuss and things to reveal. Time had taken too much; it could not be allowed to take any more. Tomorrow, he would start anew. Tomorrow, all his children would be together, all but one.
CHAPTER 2
In the end it wasn’t the drug cartels, the prostitution rings or the money laundering that made Jia Khan leave her father’s home. It wasn’t the various fraud cases, it wasn’t the police raids, and it wasn’t even the fact that her father was head of the city’s biggest organised crime ring, the Jirga. It was simply a matter of a broken heart.
The sound of the podcast helped numb her mind to the day she’d had. Defending guilty men left her devoid of feeling and in need of the
