Ride or Die. Khurrum Rahman
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today! It was harrowing. Followed by a string of suitable sad-face emojis.
I threw a firm middle finger up at the rubberneckers. Take a picture of that, you fuckers.
Tyres crunched on glass. I turned to see a black cab pull into the grounds. The back door opened and a blue Adidas Gazelle hit the ground. A head popped out. His woolly Raiders hat was pulled down and it took me a moment to recognise him.
He recognised me, though. With his hand gripped to the car door, he remained rooted to the spot. I expected him to fall back in and leave. I looked away. The car door closed. I nodded knowingly to myself and sparked up another cigarette.
A moment later I felt Shaz stand beside me.
I looked up at him, trying to figure the right way to acknowledge him, but he was transfixed on the hotel. I let him be, didn’t say a word. He’d had already made it clear that he didn’t want to talk to me.
Shaz had changed. Obviously he’d changed! Shit like this chews you up, spits you out and then tramples on you. He looked like he’d put on weight and lost weight at the same time. I was used to seeing him carrying a quizzical look on his round face, as though he was trying to work something out, and then beam stupidly as if he had just worked it out. Now he just looked gaunt and sad. Yeah, Shaz looked sad.
‘You alright, Jay?’ he said, after a time.
I nodded. ‘Yeah, you know.’
Shaz looked at the waiting cab before sitting down next to me on the bottom step.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know.’
I pushed my cigarette deck towards him and he slipped one out. I sparked him up. He nodded his thanks and we smoked in silence for a bit as we both ran silent conversations in our head.
‘I had to see for myself,’ Shaz said.
‘Me too,’ I replied. ‘I’m sorry. It must have been—’
‘I didn’t go.’ Shaz cut me off. ‘To the wedding, I didn’t go… I went to the funeral.’
I could have addressed it, asked why he hadn’t attended his best friend’s wedding. I was curious enough, but it wasn’t any of my business.
I changed the subject. ‘Where you off to?’ I said, nodding at the cab.
‘Terminal 3. From there I’m catching a coach home.’
‘You’ve moved. How comes?’
He replied with the smallest of shrugs. ‘Just… I had to get away.’
I didn’t push him, sensing that whatever Imy had gone through, Shaz, in his own way was going through, too. I didn’t blame him for moving. He didn’t ask for any of this shit. The person who he considered his closest friend had carried secrets that had devastated those around him. I know a little something about that. The secrets and the life I’d kept from Idris had strained our friendship, at times threatened to break it. I realised then that I couldn’t allow what happened to Shaz and Imy to happen to me and Idris.
We sat in silence, looking across at the Great West Road through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
‘I got to see him,’ I said, before I could stop myself.
‘What?’ he said, his face scrunched up tight.
I didn’t repeat it. He’d heard me. I waited for him to get his head around it. He did so by bouncing to his feet. ‘What is it?’ he said, standing over me. ‘You wanna pay your condolences? Fuck, Jay! Take my advice, stay as far as fuck away from him. He’s… He’s not right. He ain’t thinking right!’
‘I know he’s not.’
‘You don’t know shit! And you don’t know him!’ His outburst had caused his Raiders hat to shift and I clocked the tail end of a deep scar. ‘Fuck!’ he hissed and pulled down his hat and stared at me in defiance, daring me to say something.
I didn’t.
I watched a fat teardrop roll down his cheek followed by another. I stood up and clumsily rubbed his arm.
‘Sorry.’ Shaz apologised when he had no need to.
‘Don’t be.’
He swiped a hand over his face. ‘It’s bad,’ he said. ‘He’s mixed up with some bad people. People that… Shit, Jay, it sounds so…’ Shaz took a ragged breath and then he snorted out a laugh, and there was the tiniest glimpse of the Shaz I knew. ‘These fucking guys!’ He shook his head in disbelief.
‘You and Imy, did you fall out?’
Shaz touched his two fists together. ‘He was my boy, yeah. But he’s got problems, he’s got problems that I can’t even begin to get my head around. I should have stepped up, but no. What do I do? I run. I up and move as far as fuck, don’t even tell him. And now… This! His family! Like that they’ve gone! And here I go again, looking the other way, walking in the opposite fucking direction.’
Shaz closed his eyes tightly and bopped his head a few times as though he was struggling to find his go-to-tune and instead finding nails down a blackboard.
‘He’s got a shooter, Jay.’
Yeah, I knew he had a gun, I knew because he once threatened to put one between my eyes. I nodded my head without committing to anything. ‘Tell me where I can find him.’
Shaz shook his head, and looked at the cabbie. I thought I’d lost him, but really I’d fucking broken him. He met my gaze, held it in his, and slowly he slipped off his beanie hat.
I stared when I wanted to close my eyes. I stared at the word Kafir carved into his forehead.
He placed the hat back on his head. ‘You still wanna see him?’
I returned Kumar’s company Mondeo in the early hours of the morning and I was back home before the day had begun. I gave my phone a cursory glance. Numerous missed calls, texts and voicemails from well-wishers, same words, words of commiseration and finding strength. I deleted them all without regard as I climbed heavily up the stairs.
I stood outside Jack’s room and looked in from a distance. His single bed still carried the small indentation of his small body. Dear Zoo, neatly sitting on the side table, by the lamp, never to be read again. A Buzz Lightyear poster peeling from the top corner, calling to be pressed back against the wall in line with the rest of his Toy Story posters. I still hadn’t stepped into Jack’s room since he was taken from me. And I wasn’t ready yet. I closed the door.
I stripped off in the bathroom, peeling away my suit, which had stuck to me from the rain and the snow and the sweat. Placing the Glock on the edge of the sink I took a shower and scrubbed myself hard, cleansing the murder from me. I picked out an old grey tracksuit from the wash basket, put it on and headed downstairs to the kitchen. From the worktop I swiped a bottle of vodka by the throat and picked up a dirty glass tumbler from the sink.
I stepped into the living room and walked past the sofa that the three of us had spent so much time squeezed together on, and sat down heavily on the armchair that we hardly used. I poured myself the first shot of the day and waited for the police to knock on my door.
The Kabirs and I had one thing in common: we had paid dearly the consequences of siding with Ghurfat-al-Mudarris. For worshipping a man who I had never seen, yet I had betrayed. Abdul Bin Jabbar, known affectionately as Al-Mudarris by his thousands of followers, and known by the world’s authorities as The Teacher. Such was his magnetism, he was able to make each one of his followers feel not like followers