Ibrahim & Reenie (21 page)

It was only when they were in the car park, and he was back behind the wheel of a car that was now empty, that his father showed any kind of emotion at all, and his eyes grew bloodshot and rheumy with the promise of tears. He urged Ibrahim to ‘take care', and on any other day, in any other circumstance, it might have been a throwaway sentiment, but on that afternoon, in a city one hundred and sixty miles from London, those two words were heavy with meaning.

The moment his father's car turned a corner and was gone Ibrahim felt a strange rush; part terror, part elation. For the first time in almost a year he felt he was free, that he'd finally escaped; from London, from his friends, from what he'd done. He walked back into the halls, through waves of music coming from each open door – indie, reggae, hip-hop – and he saw a girl leaving the room opposite his. In a single moment he took in everything about her – almond-shaped, green-blue eyes; pale skin; tightly curled black hair. Firm but generous breasts, clad in the thin, revealing fabric of a tight, grey t-shirt. Was he blushing?

‘Hey, we're neighbours!' she said, and pointed at the name card slotted into a tiny frame next to her door. ‘I'm Amanda.'

They shook hands.

Later, he'd replay their first meeting over and over, marvelling at the small events that brought them to the moment when they met; the student welfare officer making them neighbours, the timing of his arrival in Cardiff and Amanda leaving her room. Was it possible he gave their introduction more significance than it deserved? Were her pleasant smile and the lingering softness of her touch more than just a greeting? He'd wanted her from the moment he saw her, as if his father's farewell was his licence to want her, but it took months for him to muster the courage to so much as speak to her again, and before then he found himself wrenched out of this new life and drawn back to London.

That year, in the second week of November, his mother died. She'd been admitted to the hospital three days earlier, but, when telling him this, his father softened the news, saying it was ‘just for tests'. There was no talk of death, or goodbyes. Ibrahim had spoken to her the Friday before, and as usual she'd ‘never felt better', was ‘right as rain'.

He travelled back to London by train, and as they rolled in to Paddington he felt the overwhelming density of the city crowd in on him. The blocks of flats grew bigger, blotting out more and more sky; the landscape became one of rail yards and sleeper carriages, flyovers and office blocks. Since his father's call the night before, he hadn't cried. A part of him wanted to, and raged against what he saw as his inhumanity. What kind of son doesn't cry at the news of his mother's death? Even when back on familiar turf – the Bakerloo Line to Embankment; the District Line to Upton Park – he felt nothing. It was only as he entered the house on Harold Road and saw the flowers and the cards crowded together on their dining-room table that the tears came, but there was little comfort from his family. His sister was paralysed by grief, and sat pale and silent in the living room. His father too could barely speak, and when he walked from room to room it was with a shuffling, old man's gait. Worst of all was the absence of his mother, the emptiness of the house without her. The staircase and hallways seemed longer, the shadows darker. Though there were Tupperware boxes filled with food – donations from neighbours – stacked up in the kitchen, there was no longer the smell of cooking or the sound of her singing tunelessly along with the radio.

‘Ko Ko Koreena… Ko Ko Koreena…'

As a boy her singing had embarrassed him, especially when school friends were there, but in a dark and empty house he'd have given anything to hear it again. Instead, the house was monstrously quiet; the only sound the hourly chiming of the clock in their hallway. His mother had been the centre of gravity in that house, and without her they were weightless and drifting.

The funeral happened, and though he had little time to prepare for it, the day passed quickly enough. He hoped the prayers, the
Janãzah Salãh,
might help him focus on the infinite, on everything beyond the mortal, and that these thoughts might provide some sort of comfort, but they didn't. He mouthed the words of the
niyyah
and
takbeers
silently, but he could have said anything, mouthed any words. The foreignness of those words was suddenly and painfully acute to him; his attempt to draw meaning from them so desperately futile.

On leaving the mosque they followed the hearse out to a cemetery in Ilford, and there, at the graveside, his father recited
Surah Ikhlass
and
Surah Ya-Seen
, speaking softly and without hesitation. Ibrahim had spent so long thinking his father was not a true Muslim, that his was a family of apostates. To witness this act of devotion, his father's perfect recitation, in flawless Arabic, left him speechless and more heartbroken than anything else that day.

As they drove back to East London the distance between the cemetery and his father's house – and already he thought of it as his
father's
house – felt greater than before, as if they'd abandoned his mother, casting her out beyond the edges of the city. The distance between his mother and him was drawn out now in miles and minutes, her body and his memory of her becoming ever more remote. He wondered if he would ever go back to the cemetery and, if he did, whether he would know through instinct alone where she was buried.

There followed two weeks of wandering aimlessly from one room to the next. Conversations with family. Visits from neighbours. More Tupperware and more food. Friday prayers with his father. People telling him what a good, brave woman his mother was. Imran, at the corner shop, asking after his family, and always in Punjabi:

‘Kee tuhadaa parvaar theek hai?'

Ibrahim replying in English.

After two weeks of this he returned to Cardiff. Some of his friends knew what had happened, offered their sympathies, but he never chose to talk about it. There were too many words, so he said nothing. He chose to stay there, in Cardiff, during the holidays, and found himself one of only two students still in halls when Christmas Day arrived. The other was Amanda. He told his father and sister there were other things keeping him from coming home to them – his studies, and the fortnight of work he had yet to catch up on – but by the New Year he'd found another reason to stay, to never want to leave.

He never found out why Amanda almost spent that Christmas alone, and sensing it was not through choice he never asked. Later, he suspected there was a mutual sadness they had sensed in one another, that this was what drew them together, and he wondered then if anything built on a foundation of sadness and loss can ever last.

18

From the kitchen, the hard knock of a mug touching down on a work surface, the boiling of a kettle, the percussive chime of a teaspoon against the inside of a mug. And music; there was music, too. Something classical. A sad clarinet, the kind of frantically insistent piano that reminded him of silent movies and damsels in distress, then a violin, intertwined with the clarinet, bringing things to a melancholic close.

‘Piece for Clarinet, Viola and Piano by Bruch, composed in 1913,' said the radio.

So it was a viola then, and not a violin, but Ibrahim had never been an expert. He had grown up with the music his parents listened to, songs from films he'd never seen, before graduating to bhangra and hip-hop. At one point, as a teenager, he stopped listening to music altogether. Musical instruments were, as the
Hadith
says, the ‘trappings of ignorance'. But he had missed music the whole time. A car would pass him in the street, bass and drums throbbing from its oversized speakers, and he'd feel something, an envy or longing, that he'd try – and fail – to ignore.

Ibrahim eased himself off the sofa, legs first, the blanket wrapped around his midriff. It took an effort to stand, and as he did the bruises on his legs and torso rang like bells.

‘How you feeling?'

Natalie was in the doorway to her kitchen, holding a mug of tea in both hands; already dressed and looking as if she'd been awake for some time.

‘What time is it?' he asked.

‘Seven thirty. I'm a bit of an early bird, sorry. Did I wake you?'

He shook his head. ‘I think I was dreaming about something.'

‘Do you want a coffee? Or tea?'

‘Coffee, please.'

Natalie went back to the kitchen and the music. Once he had dressed, Ibrahim stretched his limbs and rolled his head, hearing and feeling every click as his body righted itself after a night spent scrunched into a foetal ball. He crossed the room and stood in the kitchen doorway, holding to one side a curtain of plastic beads very much like one his
Bhua
Yasmin and
Phupher
Daljit had in their house in Sparkhill.

‘You like classical music?' he asked, trying to sound neither sarcastic nor condescending.

‘Yes,' said Natalie, as if readying herself for an insult. ‘You don't?'

‘Dunno. Never really listened to much of it, to be honest.'

‘Well, it's this or Radio 4. I don't do TV in the mornings. The people they have on breakfast TV… Christ. I despair. And just the news generally. I don't need to wake up to that shit. Who needs to hear about politics and bloody war when you've got a day in work to look forward to?'

‘Are you working today?'

‘No. Not today. Thank
God
. I'm always up this early. I'm not really a “lie in” person.' She looked at the radio. ‘I can change the station. If you'd like.'

‘No,' said Ibrahim. ‘It's okay. It's nice.'

She was looking at him in that way again, scrutinising him, and again he couldn't tell if it was distrust or diagnosis.

‘We really should get you to a hospital,' she said. ‘Get you checked out.'

His dismissed this with a huff and a wave of his hand. ‘No hospitals. Seriously. I've spent enough time in hospitals.'

‘The police, then. You were
attacked
.'

‘No hospitals, no police. Besides, it was dark. I doubt I'd recognise them if they walked in here right now.'

‘But there might be CCTV, or…'

‘No police.'

‘Christ, you really are a stubborn sod, aren't you?'

He laughed, this time bracing himself for the pain. ‘Yeah, I've been told that before.'

‘I'm not surprised. Anyway. I'm making breakfast. You hungry?'

He nodded.

‘Beans on toast?'

‘Thank you.'

Natalie's kitchen was a jumble of colours and furniture. The walls were a custardy shade of yellow, while the small table and chairs, tucked behind her dark blue fridge, were a washed-out shade of green. Ibrahim pulled out one of the chairs, its feet scraping noisily against the tiled floor, and sat. As Natalie made breakfast he rested his head in his hands, the palms covering his eyes.

Reenie was out there somewhere. She was out there, alone, and he had left her to it. Left her to climb into a van driven by some stranger who only promised to take her as far as Bristol. Unless a second stranger had picked her up and driven her the rest of the way, she was still out there.

He pushed his hands into his eyes, the bruised and swollen tissue around his left eye throbbing with the pressure, and he reminded himself of the reason for his journey. He had to get to London. Anything could have happened since he left Cardiff, and maybe more letters from his sister had arrived in his absence, letters begging him to see sense and get on a bus or a train, because what kind of stubborn idiot would try and walk that distance? And Reenie was still out there, and his sister was still waiting for him, and London wasn't far away, not by train, but he couldn't catch the train, and these thoughts piled up, each crashing into the next, forming one big, tangled mess.

‘How far away is Bristol?' he asked, taking his hands away from his face and looking up at Natalie.

‘Bristol? I don't know. Not far. Half an hour, maybe?'

‘By car?'

‘Yeah. By car. What's in Bristol?'

‘A friend.'

Four slices of toast sprang from the toaster with a creaky, metallic cough, and Natalie dropped them onto a pair of mismatched plates – pastel polka dots and the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer – and covered them with baked beans.

‘Here you go,' she said, putting the polka dot plate in front of him. ‘So… do you want to go to Bristol?'

‘I don't know,' said Ibrahim. ‘I might have to.'

She sat facing him, and shovelled a forkful of beans and soggy toast into her mouth.

‘You know,' she said, a bolus of food tucked in one cheek. ‘I could drive you.'

‘No,' he said. ‘It's no use. Cars.'

‘Oh yes. You're an automobilophobe, or whatever the word is. You should try Valium. That might help. Then you could maybe think about doing the sane thing and catching the bloody train.'