Orphan of Islam

‘Don’t worry, child,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘You will be fine. You will be looked after. God has willed it.’

In the far corner of the room Jasmine was getting an equal amount of attention. She was being passed from one aunty to another like a precious china doll. Our step-sisters and brother were around, and just as upset as we were, but getting nowhere near the amount of fuss.

‘Oh, Mohammed, God bless you, I’m so sorry about your father. He was a good man.’ A tubby aunty stood in front of me, her hand flat on the top of my head. She smiled sympathetically and wiped away a tear. ‘God bless you both,’ she said, ‘you poor little orphans.’

I stepped back, shocked. Orphans? How could we be? I’d heard the word in school, but had taken no notice of it. It seemed to be something that happened to people a hundred years ago. Then I realized: our Dad was dead and our Mum was … well, where was she? She certainly wasn’t here, and we hadn’t seen her for seven years. Did that mean she was dead too? Was it something they all knew about, but weren’t telling us?

Suddenly I felt very sick, and for the first time that day, my resistance crumbled and I began to cry. This had a chain reaction and soon the tiny back room was filled with women lifting their arms up to God and keening loudly with grief.

Not long after, the front-room door was opened and the men left the house. That room was also full to bursting and they’d decided to find a quieter place. Their way of mourning was to tell old stories about the deceased and make arrangements for the funeral. Under Islamic law the body must be washed, dressed in a shroud and buried as soon as possible, usually within hours of the death. As Dad’s body was to be flown back to Pakistan, however, this wasn’t possible. His funeral would be in two days, followed by immediate repatriation. In Muslim communities, individuals pay into a fund that covers funeral and travel expenses. One family looks after this money and makes all the arrangements when a person dies. The men were obviously going away to discuss this.

Later that day, Rafiq came back to Hamilton Terrace. This was the signal for the women to leave. With final hugs and kisses, plus pats on the head for us, the aunties went home and another chapter in the life of the Muslim community of Hawesmill was closed. Everything would return to normal once Dad had made his final journey to Pakistan. If only that could be true for me …

A worn-out looking Abida began to wash up all the cups and plates, assisted by Rabida. When the last cup was dried, she turned to us, her eyes puffy and cheeks blotched from crying. ‘Go to bed now,’ she said. ‘Today is a very sad day, but tomorrow will be better. Go on – upstairs.’

She kissed us all one by one and ushered us out of the kitchen. The younger ones clung to her, but she firmly but kindly brushed them off and sent them on their way. She probably wanted time alone to reflect. At 10, I had no concept of that and just wanted someone to hold.

‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ I said. ‘I’m frightened. Can I stay down for a bit?’

‘No, Moham,’ she said, ‘not now. It’s getting late. Tomorrow we will talk if you want.’

‘But Ami, I’m scared. Please.’

‘No!’ Rafiq glared at me. ‘Upstairs – now!’

I stood for a second or two, not knowing whether to stay or go. I could feel him staring at me, waiting for me to make a move. When I did turn towards the stairs it was with deliberately slow movements. I didn’t want to disobey him, but neither did I want him to tell me what to do.

I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my face. Outside, people were still knocking on the door to offer their condolences. Rafiq’s deep voice boomed through the thin walls as he thanked people for their thoughts and advised them to come back tomorrow. I thought about the aunty and her ‘orphan’ reference. Dad wouldn’t want me to cry, but I couldn’t stop the tears from coming. To know that I wouldn’t see his face again was hard enough, but at least he hadn’t made the choice to leave us, it had just happened. What about Mum? Had she had a choice? And if she had, why hadn’t she chosen to keep us? The same questions went round and round until my mind was playing games with itself and my eyes began to droop …

I woke, or at least I thought I did. Dad was in a corner of the room, looking at me. He seemed to be smiling, reaching out his hand. I stared, blinked … Then he was gone.

I screamed, jumped out of bed and ran downstairs.

‘Dad’s in my room! Ami, Daddy’s in my room!’

Abida was sitting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea and talking to Rafiq.

‘Ami, please!’ I pulled at her sleeve, wanting her to come upstairs and take away the nightmare I’d just had.

Rafiq was having none of it. He grabbed me by the neck before Abida could stop him and hauled me up the purple-carpeted stairs.

‘I’ve told you once,’ he hissed, ‘and I won’t tell you again. Into bed, go to sleep – or else …’

He pushed me into the bedroom and slammed the door.

I really didn’t want to be back in there and immediately turned the light on. The others began to wake up, their tangled little heads rising up sleepily from warm pillows.

Rafiq flung open the door and pushed me hard up against the wall. ‘Get to sleep, you bastarrd,’ he snarled at me, the ‘r’ of the last word rolling off his tongue.

‘No way!’ I screamed. ‘I want to come downstairs. I’m scared. I want Abida. I want my dad and my mum. I want them!’

Rafiq let me drop to the floor, walked across the room and turned off the light. Then he came back towards me.

‘I warned you, you little bastarrrd,’ he said.

He pulled me up again and slapped me as hard as he could across my cheek. The blow knocked the breath right out of me and I slumped against my bed. Then he left the room.

His violence had worked – I was no longer screaming and crying. I was too shocked to react and I sat against my bed for what felt like hours as the force of the blow seeped into my whole body, filling me with fear, shame, embarrassment and anger. I couldn’t understand why he’d lashed out like that, but from that moment onwards I knew that nothing in my life would ever be the same again.

I slept under the bed that night, terrified that I might see Dad again and scream, making Rafiq come tearing up the stairs again.

Early in the morning I sneaked downstairs and into the kitchen for a glass of water, hoping not to wake anyone.

‘Hey, you … bastarrd,’ a deep, guttural voice called from the front room as I passed.

Rafiq had obviously slept on the settee. I said a quick prayer to God that I’d not woken him up.

‘In here,’ he said, beckoning me to the side of the settee with his index finger.

Terrified, I obeyed him.

‘What was all that howling for last night?’ he said. ‘You better start growing up, boy, and fast. Because I’m in charge now.’

I asked him what he meant.

He laughed. ‘Wait and see, boy,’ he said, ‘wait and see.’

I backed away from him, a nauseous feeling crawling through my stomach. He watched me like a snake watches a mouse. Then he pointed at me.

‘Be very careful, bastarrd,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting for you.’

By 9 a.m. everyone was up, but still dazed from the terrible events of the previous day. Far from being the centre of attention, Jasmine and I were now left to our own devices as more aunties came round to help and the men went to the mosque at the top of Hawesmill to wash Dad’s body, which had just been delivered there by the undertaker. This is an important ritual in Islam. The body must be purified before burial and the male relatives of the deceased will wash it before wrapping it in a shroud. I was told I wasn’t allowed to go with them, because I was too young. I wasn’t sorry; I imagined the men lifting Dad up to wash him at a sink, his head flopping forward and his legs buckling under him as they applied a flannel to his face. The thought horrified me.

Abida spent most of the day in the kitchen, attended by female visitors, while Fatima bustled about, cooking samosas and making tea. Like many Muslim families, we didn’t have an electric kettle. The preferred method was to set a large pan of water to boil on the stove, into which were placed tea bags, plenty of sugar and milk. Once this was ready, it would be transferred to a teapot.

We were sent out to play in the alley behind the house. Jasmine was very subdued and kept going back inside to hang around with the women. I stayed outside, kicking a saggy football against a nearby back gate until the owner of the house came out and gave me a bollocking. When he realized who I was, he stopped shouting and blessed me instead. Then he told me to bugger off.

For hours I wandered around the dusty pothole-riddled backstreets around Hamilton Terrace, trying to picture all the people who’d lived around here before me. We’d done a bit about it in school. Our teacher had showed us old photos of white kids without shoes, their faces all dirty. The men and the women all looked the same: same clothes, same flat caps, same headscarves. They looked tired and fed up. They looked like the people living around Hawesmill now, except a different colour. Nothing nice ever seemed to happen around here. No parties, games, music, fun, laughter. The evening shadows were lengthening across the slated roofs. I couldn’t put off the dreaded moment any longer and lifted the rusty latch that led into the backyard of number 44.

Through the kitchen window I could see Abida and Fatima. The door was slightly open and as I walked up I could hear them talking.

‘Oh, Fatima,’ Abida wailed, ‘what’s to be done? Ahmed had no money, nothing put by for a rainy day. And all these children around. What will I feed them with? I don’t know where to begin, I really don’t.’

I moved closer to the door and saw Fatima touch Abida’s arm.

‘Then you should do what Rafiq suggests,’ she said, ‘and let him move in. It makes sense and it is not unfitting. It is the right thing.’

‘But he’s no good with the children,’ Abida said. ‘They irritate him.’

‘He will learn,’ Fatima replied, ‘and I hope he will be strict. My brother was far too soft. They need bringing into line. Especially you-know-who …’

At that moment I walked in. ‘Hello, aunty,’ I said, as brightly as possible.

Caught in the act, Fatima looked away for a moment. ‘Ah, Mohammed,’ she said, ‘and where’ve you been?’

‘Out playing.’

‘Playing?! And your father’s dead just one day. How irreverent. I hope you’ll be attending mosque for prayers this evening. Go upstairs and wash.’

‘Don’t bother him, Fatima,’ Abida whispered quickly, ‘he’s still in shock. They’re all wandering about like lost lambs.’

‘Oh come on, Abida,’ Fatima snapped, ‘the boy’s 10. He should be acting like the man of the house, not some urchin in the street. Go on, Mohammed, get washed!’

Abida went quiet, deferring to her elder. I slunk past them both and went upstairs to the bathroom. Reluctantly I washed myself and changed my jumper for a clean one. I hardly had any clothes and I was trying to save this top for the funeral. But if I went to mosque in my dirty one, someone would notice and it would get back to Fatima or Abida. Or worse still, Rafiq. I remembered his boast about ‘being in charge’ and Fatima talking about him moving in. I couldn’t think of anything worse.

Ten minutes later I left the house and began the walk round the corner to the mosque in Sebastopol Street. I was still annoyed at Fatima telling me off just for playing football and at Abida for chickening out of standing up for me. It wasn’t fair that I’d been shouted at, especially when my Dad had just died. And I was going to mosque anyway – I didn’t need to be reminded. Since I’d got into double figures I’d been attending regularly, which I was obliged to do, and I hardly ever missed it. Why did Fatima seem to suggest that I was trying to get out of it? In a temper I kicked a stone across the street, narrowly missing the door of a parked Fiesta.

Then I had a thought – why should I bother going tonight? I would be going to Dad’s funeral the next day. No one would miss me, and even if they did, I was sure I wouldn’t be shouted at, not when my Dad was lying in his coffin. Instead of carrying on down Sebastopol Street I turned off into Argyle Street and sneaked into the ‘backs’. By now it was dark. If I hung around here for an hour, I wouldn’t be spotted.

From the dark of the alleyway I could see men and boys going to evening prayers, illuminated by the street lamps. Hundreds of people literally squeezed into the two terrace houses which formed the mosque. In that kind of a crush I surely wouldn’t be missed.

Shivering, I paced up and down the backs until I saw the first trickle of people returning the same way they’d come. Unnoticed, I slipped out of the darkness and mingled with the worshippers going home. I recognized a few faces under topi hats, but no one spoke to me and I was alone again when I turned into Hamilton Terrace.

Abida greeted me as I came through the door and asked me if I wanted something to eat. Standing around in the chill of an autumn evening had made me very hungry, and I eagerly accepted a plate of curry and a rolled-up chapati. I’d almost finished when the lock was turned in the front door. For a moment I thought it was Dad and jumped up to greet him. Then I remembered …

‘Ah, there you are, Mohammed.’

It was Rafiq, standing in the doorway of the living room, staring at me in an odd way and smiling.

‘Did you enjoy mosque tonight?’ he said.

‘It was alright,’ I mumbled through a mouthful of curry.

‘So … did you find what the imam said interesting?’

‘Er, yeah. Did you?’ Nervously I looked away. The feeling I’d had the previous night returned to the pit of my stomach.

‘I did,’ he said. ‘Which part did you find the most interesting?’

He was still smiling. He was enjoying this.

‘Umm, probably the bit about … being good … and going to heaven? I enjoyed that.’

‘Excellent!’ Rafiq leaned over and patted me on the back like an old friend. ‘I’m so pleased to hear you’re paying attention. But … were you at a different mosque tonight, Mohammed?’

‘No. Why?’ I could feel beads of sweat on my forehead, and the back of my neck was hot.

‘Only because Imam Farouk wasn’t very well tonight, as he said, and didn’t deliver the khutbah. So I’m not sure who you were listening to, Mohammed. Or if you were even there at all …?’

Rafiq moved from the doorway and sat uncomfortably close to me on the settee. He put his mouth right up to my ear.

‘Put down your food, go upstairs and wait for me,’ he hissed.

I dared not disobey him. I left the half-eaten bowl of curry on the arm of the settee and walked upstairs as calmly as I could, though I thought my legs would collapse on me at any moment.

The younger children were already asleep. I sat on the edge of my bed, my hands on my lap and my head bowed. Tomorrow was Dad’s funeral. None of this should be happening.

Rafiq let me sweat for 10 minutes before strolling up the stairs. He seemed to be in no rush.

Again he sat too close to me. ‘You didn’t go to mosque tonight, did you, Mohammed?’

I shook my head in response.

He tutted. ‘That was wrong, very wrong. You know what the Holy Prophet, peace be on him, says about going to mosque?’

‘As a Muslim I am obliged to go to mosque,’ I mumbled.

‘That’s right. So why didn’t you go?’

‘I did! I was … squashed in at the back. I left early because I couldn’t hear very well. I thought Imam Farouk was speaking, but maybe he wasn’t, I think it was someone else, I definitely heard those words, I …’

I was waffling, and he knew it. Suddenly he grabbed me by the neck and shoved me against the wall, just as he’d done the night before.

‘I warned you, you bastarrrrd!’ he said, raising his hand. I knew I was going to get it, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I tried to wrestle out of his grip, kicking and twisting to get away.

‘Get off me!’ I screamed. ‘You’re not my dad!’

Immediately he relaxed his grip. I leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.

‘You’re right, Mohammed,’ he said, his face twisted into a mask of hate, ‘I’m not.’

And with that he raised his shut fist and punched me full in the nose. I heard a delicate bone crack on impact and I went straight down on the carpet. Blood was gushing over my mouth and onto my clean jumper. I tried wiping my nose, but it was too painful, and the sight of thick blood oozing across my palm made me feel sick.

Rafiq stood over me as I squirmed in agony. I looked up at him, my face a mixture of tears, blood and snot. He said nothing, just turned on his heel and left the room as calmly as he’d entered.

Surprisingly, none of the kids sharing the bedroom had been woken up by the violence – or if they had, they’d put their heads under the covers and kept very, very quiet. I don’t know how I got to sleep, with a face that felt as though it had been rammed against a brick wall, but somehow I did.

The pain was still there the following morning, and when Jasmine woke up and saw me, she screamed in horror. I shushed her up, explaining that I’d fallen off a wall while playing out and that I was OK. Today was Dad’s funeral. I didn’t want to give her any reason to be more upset than she already would be.

With hindsight, I should’ve gone straight down and told Abida what Rafiq had done. But I wasn’t sure that she’d believe me over her own brother. After all, I was the son of her rival for Dad’s affections, the spawn of the woman Dad had cheated on her with. She was as nice as she could be to me, but I didn’t know if I could trust her. And when Fatima had spoken about ‘you-know-who’ to her, I’d just known she was referring to me. Maybe Abida also believed I was bad. So I chose to say nothing, and when I came downstairs to breakfast with Abida, Rafiq and the children, nothing was said. It was as if I’d woken up with a slight sniffle.

Dad’s funeral was at the mosque, of course. According to custom, women stayed at home, so I accompanied Rafiq, Yasir and Dilawar to the service. The imam stood at the front and began to recite the funeral prayer, the ‘Salat al-Janazah’. This was accompanied by a lot of hand-raising and touching of the chest and various periods of kneeling and prostrating on the floor of the mosque. I’d never been to a funeral before and could barely understand what was going on, so I just attempted to copy everyone else.

Then the time came to ceremonially walk around the open coffin. I was nervous, as I had no wish to see my dad looking, well, dead, but Yasir steered me forward and I peeped over the top of the open box. Dad looked peaceful; tired, but peaceful. In a way, seeing him dead wasn’t such a bad thing, for now I knew that he had gone and wasn’t coming back.

Uncles and cousins patted me on the head and shook my hand after my walk around Dad’s body, telling me what a brave boy I was for not crying. The truth was somewhat different. I’d desperately wanted to cry, but as soon as I’d started to sniffle the pain in my nose had become unbearable and I’d had to stop. To make matters worse, Rafiq was playing the concerned relative, taking me to people who wanted to offer their condolences and agreeing that I was bearing up remarkably well. I could’ve punched him in the balls for what he’d done to me, but his powers of manipulation were too strong.

Finally, the imam said the words ‘Assalaamu ‘alaykum wa rahmatu-Allah wa barakatoh’ (‘Accept my thanks and gratitude, and may Allah bless you and direct your path’) and we left the mosque. Dad’s body would be taken by hearse to Heathrow airport then depart for Pakistan in a few hours. Two of his older relatives went with it.

I was escorted home and arrived to find, once again, a kitchen full of wailing women. It was all too much, so I sat in the backyard, scratching patterns on the moss-covered flag-stones with a broken piece of slate. In the living room Rafiq was making himself comfortable on Dad’s favourite side of the settee, settling down with a newspaper and looking extremely pleased with himself.

Chapter Five

In Dad’s absence Rafiq appeared to make himself useful, at least in the first few months. He brought in some money – though never quite enough – as a taxi driver and would regularly do the shopping, arriving home with meat and vegetables for that evening’s tea. He even spent time talking to us children about our day and playing a little cricket or football with us in the backstreet. But his new-found parenting skills did not extend my way. He rarely spoke to me, and when he did, it was to interrogate me on what I was doing.

Abida seemed happy with her brother being around and chose to ignore his brutality on the night before Dad’s funeral. I think she was just pleased not to be alone; in her eyes Rafiq was providing for her and looking after the children. That was more than enough from a Pakistani man.

From an early age I’d worn mainly Western clothes, a mixture of hand-me-down or jumble-sale jeans, jumpers, shirts and cheap trainers thrown together with bits and pieces from traditional Muslim dress – salwar kameez tops and topi hats. Most kids my age were the same, and very few people thought it wrong or ‘un-Islamic’. We were all poor, and what we wore was a reflection of how much our parents had in their pockets. But Rafiq was different. Although he was personally happy to wear shirts, jeans and trainers while out working, he decided that I would be forbidden from wearing the gora, a term used to refer to white people. In this case he meant the English way of dressing. Even though I usually wore my jeans underneath my salwar kameez, they had to go, along with all my T-shirts. Rafiq gave no reason for this, except that he didn’t like seeing me in English clothes. I was allowed to keep my trainers only because they were black, and proper leather shoes were expensive.

Then there was the ongoing mosque issue. Rafiq pinned a calendar on the kitchen wall which gave the five different prayer times each day. There would be no more excuses; I would go to mosque five times a day, each and every day, and he would monitor my movements very closely.

After the beating I’d had from him I dared not disobey. It was a struggle getting up for dawn prayers, but I made sure I stuck to the timetable. Gradually I learned the ways of the mosque, like how to carry out the wudu ablutions, or purification rituals, before prayer. The Hawesmill mosque, like all mosques large or small, was fitted with a long metal trough with cold-water taps above it. Every time you go to pray, you have to wash yourself in a certain sequence – usually hands, mouth, nostrils, face, right and left arms, ears, neck and feet. After this you go into the prayer hall and line up in rows facing Mecca. There are prayers and readings from the Qur’an, plus religious or cultural speeches on being a good Muslim. The mosque has a strict hierarchy: elders at the front, their sons behind and boys at the back. Of course, all the prayers and readings from the Qur’an are in Arabic. Some Muslims pick this up very easily; I always struggled and although I was eventually able to repeat phrases parrot-fashion, it was almost impossible for me to understand what they meant. Having no one to guide me, I fell far behind in this respect.

All the time the beady eye of Rafiq was on me. I would carefully watch for the signal to kneel down or stand up again, knowing that he was waiting for me to slip up. Sometimes I did, and the result would be a blow to the back of the head as we walked home or, later on, a hammering in the confines of the bedroom. As he was doing it, he would mutter to himself. I heard him repeating the same words around the house during the day and realized he was reciting verses from the Qur’an. I assume he was justifying to himself the beatings he was handing out.

I remained as dutiful as I could, but sometimes it wasn’t easy. One night, just after I’d turned 11, I was coming home from evening prayers alone. To reach the mosque you had to go through a subway which went under the main road that cut Hawesmill in two. I’d never liked this tunnel. Rainwater, waste oil and urine mixed to form grim pools across its concrete floor and most of its orange lights had long since gone out. It was full of graffiti and a magnet for glue-sniffers from across the area. That night, as I picked my way carefully through the puddles in my cheap trainers, I noticed a couple of kids lurking near the exit.