Vengeance, page 24
CHAPTER 54
The air was fresh, the sky clear and the sun was shining as they climbed into cars for Eid namaaz the next day.
Elyas was in the driving seat, Jia seated beside him, their sons in the back. Benyamin was bringing Sanam Khan in another car. They could almost pass for a normal family.
As they drove through the familiar streets, making a journey Jia had made countless times, she couldn’t help but think back to her childhood when the mornings of the celebrations were always furiously busy. Arguing over bathroom time with her brother Zan, ironing the new kurta pyjama she’d designed and selected fabric for, then endured countless fittings with the tailor to make sure it was perfect. She could still taste the vermicelli her mother would have made the night before that had been lightly fried in butter and cooked in gallons of milk and spoonfuls of sugar. This had been her father’s favourite dish.
The family were always tired from a Chaand Raat spent on Westminster Road, picking out chappals or khusa shoes. The leather of the flat, domed slippers would cut into her feet – they were rarely as comfortable as they appeared – but beauty, like everything else in life, required sacrifice. With the years, these early memories gave way to high-street heels purchased in the shopping malls of Leeds, and then to Jimmy Choos and Christian Louboutin shoes bought during weekend visits to London. The boys would shine their black brogues, buy Pathani chappals, and Idris would pick whatever trainer was most fashionable at the time, Jordans or Yeezys or some such brand.
They would arrive at the mosque, tumbling out of the car, and Jia would cover her head with an organza, dupioni or silk chiffon dupatta before adding her bejewelled footwear to the rows and rows of shoes already outside the prayer room, and then running to join her friends, her mother telling her to slow down as Akbar and Bazigh Khan adjusted their pakols. Zan, Idris, Malik and Nadeem opted for a mix of skull caps and baseball caps worn back to front.
Then came the sound of all the clinking gold, silver and glass chooriyan, the scent of henna and expensive perfumes, as the women embraced each other, saying ‘Eid Mubarak’.
Old arguments and animosities were supposed to be left behind, but Jia knew this didn’t happen. It was a veiling of the past, the way the see-through chiffon veiled Auntie Fazilat’s heaving bosom, pointless and instead drawing attention to something that needed to be left alone.
As the car pulled up outside the mosque the morning after Henry Paxton died – its Yorkshire flagstones scrubbed to within an inch of their lives, because cleanliness was next to godliness, its countless minarets, paid for by the Jirga, gleaming in the sunshine, its lavish Arabic lettering announcing it as a house of Allah – Jia wondered what deals had been done by her father, what decisions really made, on this auspicious day.
For her children, this was a day of family, gifts and feasting. It was a day when Pukhtun House was filled with loved ones, laughter and joy.
But for Jia Khan, today was also a day of reckoning, when a debt would start to be repaid. Jia’s organisation was now extremely wealthy. She had left a tidy sum for Henry Paxton’s wife to continue her lifestyle, but with the rest she could begin to improve the lives of many of the poorest people in the city, including those who had fallen victim to Meera Shah.
With Henry Paxton gone, Meera was left dangerously exposed. Jia had enjoyed the thought of the sleepless nights her son’s attacker must have had since the failed assassination attempt on Jia, and Paxton’s death would only make her sweat more. But not for too much longer. Another day of reckoning was on its way.
CHAPTER 55
The women’s prayer room was filled with perfume and attar as well as the sound of bangles clinking every time their owners raised their hands to their ears and that of small children gurgling as they sat on the floor in front of their mothers. The women turned their hearts to God as they watched their babies, multitasking even in prayer. The Eid namaaz was different to the daily prayers, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ declared numerous times in repetition.
‘A reminder that God is the greatest of all time,’ Benyamin had told Ahad over breakfast, as he’d asked for a refresher on how many times he’d have to place his hands to his ears before folding them.
Jia Khan stood holding Lirian. Her mother had drilled her in Arabic as a child, and Akbar Khan had helped her understand what the words meant. He’d taught her the Fatihah, the greatest surah in the Quran, and a cure for many ills. ‘Even if you lose everything else, you will still have this. It is the only true jewel – the Koh-i-Noor, bigger than the Grosvenor diamond.’
Jia marvelled at how Akbar Khan had never wavered from his faith, even in a faithless world.
At the mosque, rows of women stretched behind her, soldiers in the army of Allah standing shoulder to shoulder, each with their head covered as they prayed. It was a rare time that they united.
The circus of life continued outside these doors, with arguments over what was best for women, drawing them into discussions about the place of women within society, whether the headscarf oppressed them or emancipated them. Inside here, the veil between them and their Creator did not exist.
Motherhood was opening Jia’s mind and eyes to another world, one that previously only existed in her peripheral vision. In this world she found a maternal mafia that looked after its own. And she felt herself being absorbed into it, knowing that while it contained factions, it was here that she now belonged.
The imam called the salaam, signalling the women’s return to their worldly duties.
Jia thought back to last year, at the same ceremony.
She had picked up Lirian, who had started fussing, and stood up to find herself facing a young woman. The woman smiled and moved to hug Jia as was the custom. They had embraced three times, right, left and then right, as a symbol of love, respect and friendship.
‘You’re Jia Khan, aren’t you?’ she’d said. ‘My mother and I talk about you a lot. She would like to meet you if you have a moment. My name is Fozia.’
Jia nodded, and Fozia went to fetch her mother.
The woman wasn’t much older than Jia, but her hunched shoulders made her appear as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her back.
‘I wanted to thank you for inspiring my daughter, and all the women here. We didn’t have that growing up, did we? Our lives might have been different if we had.’
The words were meant in kindness, but Jia knew that for the Khan to be a role model was a dangerous thing. She believed that if the world ever saw what she had done, knew what she was capable of, it would push her off the pedestal it had placed her on and bludgeon her with it. Leadership, and setting an example, wasn’t part of why she did what she did. She needed it to not be true, but still she thanked the woman, who seemed eager to talk a little more.
‘It was a different world when I was growing up. We got married young and then did what our husbands allowed. I’m married to a good man. But like most of the men, he wasn’t taught to value the work women do in the home. He has tried, but when he supports me, he’s judged by his family, even by his mother and sister.’
Women made their way around the room, hugging and wishing each other well, making plans for Eid chai and gatherings, moving closer to Jia Khan. It occurred to her that it had always been men who came to see her father with bulging boxes of mithai and Eidi for the children – and armed with requests for help. Even after his death, the tradition continued unchanged, and she knew there would be people gathering at Pukhtun House, eager for a meeting with her.
‘I studied business management at college,’ added Fozia’s mother. ‘I was top of my class. That’s why my husband married me. Then, when I had children, I stayed home to look after them. They teach us that mothers are respected in Islam, but it’s only when I dropped the last one at school that I had time to realise the truth. In giving up my financial freedom, I had lost the respect of everyone around me, but by then I had taught my daughter Dimple to do the same. We called her that because whenever she smiled, she had perfect dimples. She doesn’t smile so much now and she doesn’t like to go out.’
‘She’s not here?’
‘She finds it too difficult to come to the mosque, what with the divorce. Her father-in-law, Mubashar Mahroof, is in the men’s section pretending to be the most pious man who ever lived when he’s nothing more than a slaver, and his son is a weak coward. They’re spreading lies about my Fozia now, but what can we do?’
Jia made a throwaway remark that some men deserved all they got, and Fozia’s mother nodded, and then she said, ‘My name is Bano, and I am pleased to meet you.’
The crowd around them began to pool and swell. It was if the women had been waiting for a place to speak. There were professionals, homemakers and women who straddled both. They were young and old, rich and poor. They all had stories to tell and hoped that Jia would listen. The erosion of their rights and freedoms had been incremental, like the wearing down of the great white cliffs that hold back the sea. The younger women were eager for things to be different for them.
‘There is no place for us,’ said one fresh-faced woman. ‘The imam tells us purdah emancipates us. Western feminism tells us the hijab oppresses us. Women who cover, and women who don’t, we fight among ourselves. Does any of it really matter?’
And then there had been darker tales, of women who’d been abused, held against their will, deprived of their freedoms and, in many cases, blackmailed.
As her car had pulled away from the masjid, Jia Khan pondered the problems these women faced and what she could do to help.
A year on, at this very Eid prayer, she looked for Fozia and Bano, but they were nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER 56
‘You’ll love it,’ said Maria. ‘It’s an old-fashioned wedding.’
‘No Bollywood dance routines for me. You’ll find me dancing at Shai Guy’s Bollywood club night, not a family mehndi,’ answered Jia.
They’d left their children home and were here to help an old friend mark the last night of her single life. Jia hadn’t been to a mehndi since her sister’s wedding.
Scores of tealights flickered throughout the venue. Women and girls in green and yellow ghagras, saris and ghararas swished around, catching up on family news, work advice and each other’s love lives.
The dance floor was markedly absent, replaced by a group of women singing in the centre of the room.
Jia sat beside them, clapping to the beat of the dholak. A young woman played the ghara, the rings on her fingers hitting high and low notes as they made contact with the clay pot. The thrum and thrap of the drum was powerful, taking older women back to their childhoods and the young girls they had once been.
Everyone knew the rhythmic sound and at least one verse of the traditional tappay tales, even if they didn’t know what it meant. The women split into two camps, one group calling out a verse and the other responding. It was a conversation between a woman and her lover, sometimes teasing, sometimes romantic, always the man at the receiving end. It was one of the few places they got to be this honest about their lives without fear of repercussions.
Jia had reasons other than celebrating the wedding for attending. Sakina had brought a message a few days earlier from the people she’d told Jia about, the women who had saved her son’s life.
They wanted to speak, and Sakina brokered the meet.
She was proving to be the asset Jia had known she would be, bringing fresh vision to the table. Her way of doing business, her advice, her insight, were different to the men of the Jirga. There was something holistic about Sakina’s method, and it came with foresight.
As the division between legitimate and illegal interests was widening, Jia wanted more and more distance between the two. Sakina was getting to be very good with the shadier side of the empire, and Jia was beginning to trust her judgement greatly and rely on her to tell her like it was.
Servings of pulpy mango juice, iced lime and red pomegranate crush filled the drinks table where Sakina was waiting for Jia. She offered Jia a glass before leading her through a large, carved wooden door and into a low-lit room where a group of women was waiting.
They were gathered around a circular table, lit candles at its centre and in the alcoves all around.
Jia recognised them.
They were women she’d seen in places of business, in homes, those of friends and in her own. The face that surprised her the most was Hamsa’s, the young woman who worked in the kitchen at Pukhtun House.
‘Salaam, Jia Khan,’ Hamsa said, holding out her hands and taking Jia’s in them.
‘My mother said you don’t speak,’ said Jia.
‘In a world where I’m not heard, I choose to stay silent.’ She kissed the Khan on both cheeks, before introducing her to the other women in the room. ‘There are more of us – we change with time and days. You have already met Bano and Fozia, although not for a while. This is Mahboobeh – she’s a medical examiner – and here is Iram, a psychotherapist and friend of Sakina’s.’
Iram nodded her head. ‘I reached out to Sakina after what happened with your son, as we were keen to find the most respectful way to connect with you. We should have sought her advice much earlier, before your son was taken, but we didn’t want to implicate either of you in what we were doing.’
Jia glanced at Sakina, who’d remained silent during these introductions. She had come far since the days of walking the streets, and Jia could see that she was stepping into her power and owning it.
Since Ishtiaq’s murder, Jia had been convinced that women were behind the Kismet Killings. But she had kept those thoughts private while she decided what, if anything, to do about it, until Sakina came to her with the same idea. Jia had been impressed by her instincts and that Sakina had been open with her. It was one of the reasons Jia had given her the position she had.
For the Khan to have been oblivious to the workings of her city would have been embarrassing. Sakina provided her with information that her men were not privy to, and this changed everything.
Hamsa offered Jia a seat at the table, pouring her some Kashmiri tea from a floral teapot.
Jia watched the steam rise from the cup as a pale-grey pot of sliced pistachios, and another of sugar cubes, was placed before her.
‘You’re probably wondering what I’ve been doing in your home,’ said Hamsa very quietly to Jia. ‘I’ve been watching you and learning from you, the things you say and do, the things that no one else sees.’ She leaned in closer and dropped her voice again. ‘I want to assure you, Jia Khan, that you have nothing to fear from us.’
‘You women saved my son’s life,’ said Jia. ‘I am in your debt.’
‘There is no ledger between us here,’ said Hamsa, gesturing to those around her. ‘The men turn on us to get better standing. We choose to be better than them.’
‘The men don’t like themselves,’ said Iram. ‘It’s internalised so deeply that they won’t even admit it to themselves, but we see it. We see it in the way they treat us, the lack of value they place on women who share their heritage. But you, they treat better. We want that for us too.’
‘We can’t keep carrying the faith,’ Mahboobeh said, ‘feeding the children and massaging their egos. We want to be seen.’
The sounds of singing outside the room formed a constant backdrop to this most private of conversations. Men were markedly absent by design today. This wasn’t segregation but the exercising of free will.
As the women spoke, the dholak got louder, along with the clapping, and the laughter began rising. Jia knew the women would be on their feet now, encircling each other as they danced together, the way women had done for centuries: the attan dance of the Pashtun and the Baloch, the bhangra and luddi of the Punjabis, the Sindhi dhamal and juhmro. The lines drawn by men to divide were being crossed right now, crossed by women as they connected via the common ground of sisterhood.
Bonds and friendships formed or renewed, a regeneration of the earlier ones that had outlasted time and travel, been carried overseas and passed on to women born on foreign soil, and at their core the same message: the value of togetherness, tenderness, resilience and solidarity of womanhood.
Jia understood what it was all about, what Iram, Hamsa and the other women were trying to tell her.
‘You killed those men,’ said Jia. ‘The victims of the Kismet Killer that the police and the newspapers are hunting.’
‘We did,’ said Hamsa. ‘We didn’t take the decisions lightly, but they were bad men and they deserved to die.’ Her voice was clear, and Jia was impressed that she wasn’t trying to shirk away from the responsibility of what they had done.
Jia looked carefully at each face. There were no regrets in this room. She knew how this felt. These were her sisters in spirit.
‘They were holding our lives hostage on purpose. And so we sent a signal to those who would harm us,’ said Hamsa. ‘We have women working in every part of this city. We come together at mehndis, mother-and-baby groups, the women’s gym, and everyone assumes we are here to gossip. We decided to put our time to better use. They didn’t see us coming. They assumed that only men were capable of doing the things we did. And we had help to cover evidence and throw people off the scent.’ Hamsa nodded at Mahboobeh, who inclined her head to indicate a truth had been said.
‘What about the white man my son told me about?’ Jia pointed out.
‘We decided to hire a professional from outside. He only did what we told him to do. He was our tool, our weapon. But not the day your son was taken, of course – as Sakina has told you. He wasn’t working on our orders then.’
‘When we spoke on Eid last year, Jia Khan,’ said Bano, ‘and I told you about my daughter Dimple, the thing you said in passing about some men deserving all they get, I know you were teasing but the thought stayed with me. As I spoke with my friends and sisters, I realised nothing would change unless we changed it ourselves. And I thought that man who ruined my lovely Dimple deserved nothing short of death.’
