Ibrahim & Reenie (20 page)

‘When was the last time
you
went to prayers?' Ibrahim snapped, the question erupting out of him, but the moment he said it he stepped back, half expecting his father to strike him across the face.

Instead, dazed by his son's insolence, Nazir asked, ‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘You hardly ever
go
to prayers,' said Ibrahim, with greater confidence. ‘So what do you mean, “When I go to prayers”?'

‘I go when I
can
. And there are no young people there, because they're all in that mosque of yours, and we know what they're telling you.'

‘What? What are they telling us, Dad? Go on. If you're the expert. Tell me.'

His father raised his hand, about to hit him, and there was something almost comical about it; such a short man, small-framed all his life, standing up to his taller son. He'd have to go on tiptoes or, funnier still, leap off the ground to reach his son now. Even so, they'd never come this close to blows, and so Ibrahim flinched, and he didn't laugh.

‘You ungrateful little
bastard
,' his father said, through clenched teeth, and his emphasis on that last word stung Ibrahim more than any slap. ‘Do you know how
hard
we've worked – me, your
mata
, your grandparents – just so you and Aisha could enjoy the life you have? Do you know how much they sacrificed? And your
Dada
. He served in the
British
Army. In the war. And now you and your friends, you sit there and you listen to that
shit
, and why? Why? So you can play at
Mujahideen
in your bedrooms. Oh yes. Big men.
Brave
men. Because that's what this is about, isn't it? That's why they took Jamal tonight, isn't it?'

Ibrahim's puffed up bravado withered, and he felt his spirit deflating by the second. They'd been prepared for these arguments by their mentors, in those post-prayer discussions. They'd been taught to cut off apostate families as they would gangrenous limbs, to face up to them when challenged, to offer
Da'wah
, the chance to submit themselves to the will of Allah, and if they refused to cast them out. They were told that when they turned away from their families, their brothers, their
real
brothers, their
ikhwan,
would be waiting for them and would look after them.

Where were all those arguments now, now that his father was peering up at him, scowling at him, his hand at his side but his fingers still splayed as if ready to strike? Where were the pious sermons he'd rehearsed so many times in his head? Where was the triumphant declaration of his
jihad
? Though he towered over his father, Ibrahim had never felt quite so small.

‘Will this come back to us?' his father asked, after a caustic silence. ‘Can we expect the police tonight? Tomorrow?'

He shook his head, hoping he was right. His father's expression of disapproval and shame was now refracted through Ibrahim's tears, and he had to swallow hard to stop himself from sobbing. ‘I don't know,' he said.

‘You don't know?' The question was asked quietly, his father more worried than angry. ‘You don't
know
?'

Again, Ibrahim shook his head.

‘Ibrahim. Tell me the truth. Is there
anything
here that could get you in trouble? Any books, anything on your computer,
anything
that would bring them here?'

‘No, Dad,' he said, honestly. ‘There's nothing.'

‘And your friends? Will they give the police your name?'

‘I don't know.'

For the first time since closing the kitchen door behind them, Nazir Siddique laughed. ‘You don't know, you don't know. That's the trouble, Ibrahim. You think you have all the answers, you and your friends, but when I ask you any question you
don't know.
I thought you were meant to be bright. Well…
Chiragh taley undhera.
Let's just hope they won't give them your name, shall we? But if you're lying to me…'

‘Dad. I'm not.'

‘But if you
are
. Son. I don't know what I'll do. I have worked so
hard
. I run a business, and that
means
something. It actually
means
something. And now
this
. If they come for you, and they find
anything.
I don't know what I'll do.'

But the police didn't come for him; not the next day, or the day after that. Nothing was said to the rest of the family, not even his mother or sister, at least not while he was present, though his mother must have known. Instead, the subject was preserved in the silences and simmering looks between father and son.

Once they were charged, the faces of Jamal, Ismail and Yusuf were shown in newspapers and on television, and Ibrahim noticed that they used only mugshots, photographs that looked nothing like his friends. In these, they looked tired and sullen, every bit the crazed terrorists demanded by the story.

He was forbidden from going back to their mosque, from going anywhere near it. Instead, the following Friday, he was taken to his father's mosque, named after a Sufi saint, the mosque he'd gone to almost every Friday before meeting his ‘new friends'. There, the older men looked at him askance, but nothing was said. Everyone knew, it seemed, that he was the unmentioned fourth man; that he'd escaped arrest either through slippery self-preservation or unimaginable good luck.

He wanted to write to the newspapers and news channels and tell them they'd got it all wrong, that they were blowing the story out of all proportion, but he knew it would achieve little more than his own arrest. Besides, a part of him still wanted to believe they'd been right, he and his friends, that they could have achieved something, that they could have made a statement and forced the world to sit up and take notice. He wanted to believe that, and whenever the story was mentioned in the papers thought he
could
believe it, but a horrible truth had begun to eat away at this conviction; a truth grown from just a single thing his father had said, the night Jamal and the others were arrested.

‘So you can play at
Mujahideen
in your bedrooms.'

That one sentence stripped away all their talk of
jihad
and the fourteen hundred years of shared history that justified it, and revealed it for what it was: a game. When the case went to court, the newspapers' tone soon became mocking and snide. His friends were made to sound like pathetic daydreamers, schoolboys hatching plots and schemes doomed to failure. By the time of their sentencing, the judge seemed duty bound to describe those plots as ‘sinister and threatening', as if both the jury and the audience at home might have forgotten the seriousness of it all. There were no bombs, no weapons of any kind, just books and websites and plenty of big talk, and the sentences reflected this. Had the police linked Ibrahim and his friends to the only thing they ever actually
did
– as opposed to all the things they talked of doing – it might have given a greater, darker weight to the story. As it was, not one of them was jailed for more than two years.

It was his mother's illness that finally drew a line under the matter. The diagnosis, and the tearful but restrained way in which the news was broken to Ibrahim and Aisha, became the narrative of their family; the focus shifting from wayward son to unwell mother. She downplayed it at first, relegating a malignant tumour to a minor inconvenience. When her doctors told her to rest, she worked twice as hard, as if her defiance could cure anything. On losing her hair, she simply took to wearing the kind of headscarf so many other women in the community already wore. It became easy for him, for all of them to underestimate the damage the illness was doing to her. If she refused to have her life shaped by it, dictated by it, why should they?

After the arrests and the trial and his wife's diagnosis, Nazir Siddique began attending Friday prayers every week, taking his son with him. In time it seemed that Ibrahim had been forgiven by most, if not all, of the other men there, and after one sermon he was taken to one side by the Pir; a grey-bearded old man who looked – at least, to Ibrahim's teenaged eyes – a hundred years old, and who even smelled ancient and exotic, like heavily spiced cigar smoke and old books.

‘Better here, yes?' said the Pir, and Ibrahim nodded. ‘Yes. Better here. Tell me, Ibrahim, have you read the works of Rumi?'

Ibrahim shook his head. ‘I don't know who that is.'

A disappointed frown. ‘Jalalludin Rumi,' said the Pir. ‘A great mystic. He wrote,
‘Men do not praise that which is not worthy, they only err in mistaking another for Him. Just as when moonlight falls on a wall, it seems they forget the moon and worship the wall.'
He wrote,
‘Because of such idols, mankind is confused, and driven by vain desires they reap sorrow.'
Do you understand?'

He nodded again, though he wasn't sure he did.

‘You have been worshipping the wall, Ibrahim. But that is over now, yes?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good. That is good. You should read Rumi. And Basri. And Attar. “The Conference of the Birds”.
“All things are possible, and you may meet / Despair, forgiveness, certainty, deceit. / The Self ignores the secrets of the Way, / The mysteries no mortal speech can say.”
Read them all. I have copies, but they are in Arabic, many of them, or Farsi. But find copies. Read them. Better than these other things you were reading. Your
Pita
tells me you are studying history.'

‘Yes.'

‘That is good. That is a good thing to study. Work hard at your studies.'

It would be another year before Ibrahim read Rumi, or Basri, or Attar. Despite his shamefaced nods and promises, a part of him still looked at men like the Pir as little better than
kuffar
.

Better than these other things you were reading?

They'd read the Qur'an. Was the old man saying these Sufis, these Sufi
poets
, were better than Allah? He knew what the sheikh, what the imam, would have to say about that. Disingenuous of him, really. He knew that wasn't what the Pir meant. The Pir wasn't talking about the Qur'an. He was talking about
Milestones
and
Knights Under The Prophet's Banner.
Those were the books he meant.

When, eventually, he read Rumi, what struck Ibrahim was how beautiful the poems were, how sensual and full of life. Poems written under caliphates, so much closer in history to the Prophet's life than his own, were filled with joy and pleasure; music, wine, sex, romantic love, and all infused with a spirituality so much more profound than a room full of teenagers shouting in Arabic, or a loudhailered
Adhan
echoing through the streets of East London.

But all that came so much later. First he had to do as the Pir ordered, and study, and so Ibrahim imposed upon himself a kind of curfew, or house arrest, and read his way through a precariously leaning tower of textbooks. He passed each exam, and when it came to choosing a university – and there was little chance of his not going – his parents were eager for him to leave London, as if the city still posed a threat to their son. They, or rather his father, ruled out any of the cities in the north – Manchester, Bradford, Leeds – invariably making some remark about distance or the quality of the university, but Ibrahim knew his father simply wanted him far away from the influence of any ‘
Jihadi haram zada'.
That was how they chose Cardiff.

Ibrahim's mother spent the week before his departure keeping busy, making endless trips to supermarkets and wholesale shops on Green Street, coming back with tinned foods and bags of rice and chilli powder, piling them all up in cardboard boxes.

‘I'm not having you live on Pot Noodles and toast like all the other students,' she said, as the box of provisions began to resemble rations prepared before an impending natural disaster or nuclear war.

His mother would tell the family how
well
she was feeling and how much
better
she was feeling, every opportunity she had, even when no one had asked her. Even so, she wasn't well enough to join them on the drive to Cardiff. Besides, as she was quick to point out, there was hardly any room in the car, what with the boxes full of books and food, the bags of clothes, and the duvet and pillows blotting out the rear window. She remained stoic when she hugged and kissed him on the cheek, and gave a cheerful wave as they drove away, but he saw the way she crumpled as he and his father neared the end of Harold Road, and saw his sister help her back in to the house, one arm around her shoulder.

There was little conversation between father and son in the two-hour journey between cities. The flyover at Chiswick launched them up and out of London, like a runway, and the radio filled the silence between them. They reached the halls of residence in Cardiff in the early afternoon, and it took three trips for them to carry all his things from the car park to his room. Already, music came from several open doors – loud, bombastic music, and the unmistakable scent of cannabis smoke – and Ibrahim saw his father's vague expression of disapproval, of apprehension, but it was too late for second thoughts.