Guantanamo Boy (5 page)

What? It’s the last thing Tariq always asks before he signs off. And he’s not just being polite either. No, sisters are a subject they never talk about, because of what happened to Radhwa. But still he asks. Maybe to show he’s all right about it now.

Khalid replies in the same way he always does: “Annoying as usual!” But it doesn’t register because the screen fades. Crashes. Leaving Khalid staring at the black square in a temper as he reboots, while Dad smiles at his black, highly polished shoes, which he proudly thrusts at the ceiling light.

“See the shine on that? Look!”

“Can’t miss it, Dad!” Khalid nods, taking out his mobile to text Mikael for the address of the party on Saturday night while the computer boots up.

With Khalid there are two types of friends: those who like football and those who don’t. Mikael is one of the former. Small for his age and quieter than the rest of them, he’s a great defender. Fast on his feet like Khalid, who’s solid at the back, Mikael’s always the first to praise a teammate and never lets unexpected injuries, bad weather or no-shows dampen his enthusiasm. Khalid laughs at the picture in his head of Mikael charging down the field like a rocket in lift-off while the others skid in the mud after him.

Khalid wishes their team was doing better. They’ve had a lot of bad luck this season and now he realizes he’s going to miss a couple of important matches because of the trip to Karachi. The dream of being promoted to a higher league depends on those games.

“48 Mandela hse c u l8r,” Mikael texts back.

Khalid thinks maybe he shouldn’t go to the party. He’d be chancing his arm to stay out past ten thirty. Then he glances up to see Dad staring at him with worried eyes. Obviously a bit put out.

“What’s the matter, Dad?”

“Your school shoes are a disgrace, Khalid. When did they last see a jot of polish?”

“What’s the point in cleaning them? They’ll only get messed up again as soon as I go out.”

By the look on Dad’s face, Khalid knows it’s time to give up and shuts the computer down. Tariq isn’t back online now anyway. Under Dad’s watchful eyes, he cleans his damp, scuffed shoes, hoping it will partly make up for his earlier outburst.

“Point the toe away from you. That’s it!” Dad frowns with concern at the half-hearted job Khalid’s making of it. “Shoe polish has a habit of getting on white shirts,” he says, grinning widely. Their dark eyes meet with a lightness of touch that says past arguments are forgotten for the moment. Dad laughs at himself for once, instead of listing all the things that drive him mad. Things like Khalid’s shirt collar being up on his neck instead of neat and flat like his. Forever pointing out how he slouches all the time and why his eye-rolling and abrupt answers to everything stop him from making the best of himself. The list goes on and on, but for now there’s peace between them and it feels nice.

“They say car-jackings, armed robberies and murders are happening every day in Karachi, Dad.”

“That’s also why we must go, son. To pay respect to my mother and make arrangements for my sisters. You know Fatima, the oldest one? Her husband is very ill, cannot work at all. This might be the last chance we will have to see him. I must bring money and things for them. Perhaps move them to another part of the city. We’ll be safe there, don’t worry. It will be good for you to see Pakistan again and remember where you come from. Gul and Aadab have never met their aunties before, so it’s a treat for them also. Plus I need you to take care of your mother while I see to everything. Do you think you can do that for me?”

Khalid realizes how selfish he’s been. “Course I will, Dad. But how come we can afford the plane tickets? They must cost a fortune.” He blows the last specks of dust from his shoes, then snaps the lid awkwardly on the Kiwi tin.

“All my life I’ve been saving, you know that, son. Every penny I put away for the future. For your future. For your sisters’ future. Every day not to waste anything. But I also save for this moment. This I must do with family in a faraway place like Pakistan.” Dad carefully replaces the brushes and soft cloth in the cardboard box under the sink. Then takes a satisfying last glance at the tidy box before closing the cupboard with a firm, quiet click.

Khalid watches him shuffle off in his gray socks to watch one of the travel programs he likes so much on television. A sunny smile on his face and the smell of shoe polish lingering in the air.

Scrunching balls of waste paper and empty crisp packets into the plane’s seat pocket, Khalid shifts sideways towards the window to take in the sight of the tall buildings of Karachi twinkling brightly below him. The last of the strong black-coffee smells drift from the man to his left, disappearing the instant he pops some chewing gum in his mouth.

Feeling relaxed and unworried himself, Khalid is excited to be here at last. The man to his right, who looks like someone you’d meet in a church, was the most boring man in the world. A pale creature who read his book the whole way, speaking to no one. While Khalid watched three movies and listened to his MP3 player, trying to ignore the streams of mums, dads and kids going up and down the aisles to the loos.

Finally Khalid can stretch his arms and legs when the boring man leaves his seat.

Mum, Gul and Aadab are on the opposite side of the plane, while Dad spends the flight at the back. He swapped his seat at check-in when an elderly man at the next desk began complaining about the lack of sleep he’d suffer in a seat next to the toilets. Khalid thought of offering him his seat to impress Dad, but then Dad swapped his own. Always quick to help anyone old—it’s an important part of his showing-respect thing.

“I’ll be able to rest all the way without Gul and Aadab bothering me,” Dad said, not entirely unselfishly. “There’re plenty of people who will never afford this journey at all,” he reminded Khalid. Aware his son was slightly miffed that the man didn’t thank him.

Shifting uncomfortably in the seat, staring at the video screen in front of him, his mind drifts back to Mikael’s party on the weekend and the chat he nearly had with Niamh. Suddenly he remembers the almond scent of her dark wavy hair swishing from her shoulders when she brushed past him.

“Grand party, eh, Kal?” Niamh winked. “Shame that old gas fire isn’t giving out a bit of heat!”

Khalid nodded, embarrassed. She has the kind of voice you get lost in, so he can’t help being dumbstruck around her. The rest of the girls behave like stars in their own movies, jiggling their hips for an invisible camera, unlike Niamh, who’s real. No cutesy pouts and head-waggling for her. No, just a little shrug and a look that says,
Here we go
.

Plus, she likes art and books. She always comes in the top three in English exams and Khalid is impressed by that. In fact she looks like someone interesting just by the way she dresses. While the other girls were squashed into tiny shorts and stretchy T-shirts that left nothing to the imagination, Niamh was dressed in that nice, white, long skirt that swung around her dainty ankles when she walked. Plus she had a baggy shirt on with a multicolored belt and loads of silver tinkly bracelets.

That’s all she said to him the whole evening. Yet the way she smiled, nodded her head, rolled her big green eyes—they set his heart on fire. To him, she’s the most beautiful girl in the world. Not that he’d ask her out. Well, maybe one day he will.

He watched her crack open another beer and sit on the floor in front of the gas fire, chatting to Nico about his new MP3 player. Then a whole bunch of losers turned up, determined to get blasted, and Khalid walked out in a huff. He didn’t like the way Niamh’s best friend, Gilly, took over the moment she arrived. Linking arms and making her sit with them. Her glittery eye make-up was all over the place when she took the pink band from her claggy hair and glared at Khalid. Wildly blinking and posing as always.

Gilly was wrecked by the time he left. Everyone was, and though he’d had a couple of cans too, he wasn’t prepared to make a fool of himself in front of Niamh, who was sadly going the same way. Anyhow, Khalid doesn’t like the muzzy feeling he gets in his head when he drinks too much beer.

Besides, he has to take great care to hide the fact he’s been drinking or Mum and Dad will go ballistic. Two beers are the limit before his eyes start glazing over and he slurs his words.

Khalid tucks the picture of Niamh curled up on the floor to the back of his mind as the plane descends into Karachi.

Now they are here at last, everyone feeling fine, although the tiredness of the long flight shows clearly in Khalid’s drooping eyelids. In a swarm, they hurry through the small, bustling terminal that looks nothing like the orderly airport in Manchester they left behind.

It’s mayhem here, with men and women in leather sandals and shalwar kameez in every shade of brown, heaving cases, crates and boxes from one of only two carousels. Everyone’s busy rescuing other things too: loads tied with string, some the size of boats, while their young, sweet, smiling children tug at knotted carpets, boxes and baskets, eager to help.

Outside, the evening feels strangely muggy to Khalid. He’d expected Karachi to be cool at night.

“Yes, cool at night in winter,” Dad explains. “But from now on it’s hot all the time.”

So hot, Khalid wipes sweat from his forehead as they pile into an old brown taxi, catching sight of a pair of mini boxing gloves made from tiny Pakistani flags that are swinging from the driver’s mirror. At the wheel is a man with striking black eyes. He glances in the mirror at Khalid. A look of kindness on his face.

Dad warns them, “I’m afraid this will be a roundabout journey, because you know I have parcels, letters and money to deliver for my friend from the restaurant who has family in Karachi. But you will see something of the city, anyhow.”

So they set off. Gul and Aadab, who are squashed up in the back, instantly fall asleep on Mum and Khalid. Dad in the front proudly points out the city he grew up in.

“Look, the shop where I bought my first book,” he sighs. “That’s the same furniture shop on Club Road I told you about before.”

Their car quickly overtakes a yellow bus decorated like a birthday present in bright reds and greens with tassels and ribbons. Khalid glimpses a huge market crammed with fruits: tangerines, pomegranates, bananas. Coconuts piled high. Then Agha’s Paradise, the one-stop supermarket selling imported Western foods, which excites Mum for a moment. Then they drive along a very different road, littered with rubbish. Old cans. Open bin bags smelling of rotten fish.

Khalid is disappointed not to see any signs of a car-jacking or gang feud.

“Only the rich have deep enough pockets to eat here,” Dad says as the taxi turns down a posh road filled with a wide choice of restaurants: Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and French. Past streets with low, brown buildings. Then dark streets. Empty of people.

A rare car parked outside.

The lamps inside highlight black metal grilles fixed to windows and doors, giving Khalid the feeling there’s lots of crime here. Two stops later, the parcels safely delivered, the taxi pulls up outside a plain, two-story gray building.

A concrete box with windows.
What a dump
, Khalid thinks, instantly fed up.

The door opens and three elderly ladies, Fatima, Rehana and Roshan, in dark shalwar kameez, rush out as one to greet them. Babbling warmly with toothy grins. Their eyes take in every inch of Khalid, giving him no escape from their loving welcome and out-of-control squeals of joy that seem to go on forever.

“I’m tired, Mum,” Gul says at last, while Aadab crossly rubs a hand over her nose. Both seem confused by all the fuss and noise.

At least modesty stops the aunts from kissing and hugging, or even touching them.

“Well, we got here,” Khalid says, shrugging. Immediately, he wonders how to say no to the glass cups of hot black liquid smelling of sugary cabbage that are thrust in his face the moment he sits on the long, soft sofa with a wooden ceiling fan whirring overhead.

Eventually giving in, Khalid swallows the whole lot in one go and wipes the remains from his mouth with the back of his hand. Only to see his angelic auntie Roshan fill the dainty glass again. Everyone begins talking at once. This time Khalid slides the drink behind a tall fern, hoping for the best. Gul pulls a face as she tips hers into Aadab’s glass. Aadab seems to like the taste, drinking it up as if she can’t wait for more of the disgusting stuff. Dad frowns at Gul to remind her of her manners, while Mum pretends not to notice. Khalid dares his sister Aadab with a long, hard stare to please get rid of his hidden drink when she’s finished hers, but it doesn’t work.

After tea, the fuss dies down a bit. Gifts are given and politely put to one side for unwrapping later. Bored to tears, Khalid stares at the complicated oriental carpet under his feet until Fatima, the oldest aunt, takes pity on him.

“Come. Come.” She points to the door and walks him a few paces down the hall to a small back room done up with red carpet, gold curtains and a big gilded mirror.

In the corner is a wooden bed with an old scarecrow of a man asleep in a pale green Pakistan cricket shirt. Thin black trousers tapering at the ankle. This, Khalid learns, is Fatima’s husband, his uncle Amir. And a sight far harder to digest than the oriental carpet from before.