The wing flaps flick up, waking Khalid from a delicious long sleep. His head’s been twisted sideways on his shoulder for what must have been hours and he’s paying for it now that he tries to sit straight, hands on his aching neck. Through the window he catches sight of an astonishing maze of gray clouds. Clouds that go on forever without a hint of blue.
The noises coming from the galley kitchen sound like bones cracking until someone laughs instead of screams and Khalid breathes in the pleasant smell of warm bread rolls.
“Feel any better?” Harry smiles.
“Yeah, just starving,” Khalid says.
“Well, that didn’t take long.” Harry nods at the steel trolley making its way towards them and before long the trays soon slot into place. One fresh bread roll, a golden square of butter, curly omelette and a portion of baked beans. The best meal of his whole life. He swallows everything so quickly, Harry pushes his tray towards him.
“Have mine too. I’m not in the least bit hungry.”
“Thanks, mate.” Aware that Harry is totally enjoying watching him eat with his elbows in the air, grunting happily after each mouthful and licking his lips at another small chocolate croissant, which he saves until last, Khalid scoffs the lot and sits back to rub his stomach.
“What now?”
“Well, I’m afraid you won’t be going directly home. We land at RAF Northolt.” Harry pauses for a moment to scratch his chin. “There are a few formalities to be dealt with first. More interviews, that sort of thing. Plus someone will talk to you about adapting to real life after your ordeal. It will take a few days and then you’ll be going home.”
“How many days?” Khalid had imagined the plane was going to land in Manchester, not RAF Northolt—somewhere else in England.
“Three or four days. A week at the most,” Harry says. “Nothing to worry about. You’ll be given a comfortable room this time—with a bathroom.”
“What about my family?” he asks. Aadab and Gul? How tall are they now? Khalid suddenly wonders. Do they want him back? Aren’t their lives better without him? He wasn’t that nice to them before. Would they be pleased to see him again?
“They’ll have to wait until you’re brought home, Khalid. But they know you’re on your way. Everyone does. You can use my phone to talk to them when we land.”
“I was looking forward to seeing my mates and that,” Khalid says as the seat-belt sign flashes on and the plane begins its descent.
“It won’t be long, I promise,” Harry reassures him.
Home. England. This is England. As he looks out of the window to watch the plane coming in, endless gray clouds burst with hard, cold rain and Khalid feels an overpowering sense of peace just gazing at the lush green fields, busy roads and small houses below. But the moment they land a plain-clothed policeman in a navy suit boards the plane and walks towards him.
“Just a formality,” Harry whispers as the man bends over Khalid to quietly tell him, “I am placing you under arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.” A policeman quickly handcuffs him before they move on to do the same to the other man who has been released.
“This happened with the last three men who came back. Nothing to worry about,” Harry says. “I’ll see you later.” But Khalid’s stomach turns over—what with all the food, the sight of England after two years away and being so close to home, and now this.
Within minutes, he’s led to the doors of a black van that’s driven on to the plane through the open back. A driving wind forces heavy rain up the cold tunnel, chilling Khalid to the bone. The other prisoner begins shivering uncontrollably as they’re ushered on to the van’s hard seats and the doors slam shut.
“What a pisser, eh? After all that shite we’ve been through, we end up freezing to death in the back of a bloody police van. My name’s Ashwin Al-Asmari and I’m from Birmingham. The guy on the plane said we have to go through this because the Americans are watching us. So what? Let ’em have an eyeful, I say.”
“Quiet in the back, please!” one of the policemen shouts.
Ashwin pulls a face and starts coughing.
“You were that guy—the one who was coughing all night in Camp Delta,” Khalid whispers.
“They wouldn’t give me my right medication. Said I was pretending to have asthma. I practically died in there.”
“Quiet down!” the policeman demands.
It’s the last Khalid sees of Ashwin after they are led quickly from the van through pouring rain into a long, gray building. A drooping cobweb catches Khalid’s eye as it swings from the door in a cold draught of English spring air that smells crisp and fresh and suddenly full of hope.
Ashwin’s taken to one room, Khalid to another one farther down the corridor. A room larger than his living room at home, with a proper-size single bed in the corner. A pile of new old-man clothes and a new Qur’an, newspapers, crisps, water. Not quite as good as a hotel room but a hundred times more comfortable than the cell he’s been used to. The police escort smiles.
“You might want to dry off—take a shower and get changed,” he says. “Your lawyer will be here soon. Would you like a hot drink? We have everything.”
“Yeah, tea. No, wait, hot chocolate please, with two sugars.”
Khalid’s relieved to see the back of him. Two minutes later, he’s staring at his face from all sides in the bathroom mirror. Eyeing his body from all angles. Surprised to see he doesn’t look anything like he thought he did. His face seems gentler than he remembers it. Sadder. His chin is bigger than it was, he’s sure of that. And his shoulders are rounder than they were. His neck seems to poke forward and definitely isn’t as straight as it used to be either. But apart from that he decides he’s still basically good-looking, even though he’s grown so much taller. Standing with his back to the door, he tries to measure his height with a hand over his head, then looks back with surprise at the distance it is from the floor.
“Yeah, that’s way over six feet,” Khalid says out loud. “Probably six feet three.”
After luxuriating under waterfalls of steaming-hot water, then changing into clean clothes, Khalid begins to feel almost human. By the time there’s a knock on the door, he’s ready to face the world. But when Harry bursts in grinning, offering him a flash silver mobile, and says, “Your dad’s on the phone!” Khalid freezes in shock.
“Dad! Dad!” Khalid grabs the mobile. Holding it close, he turns away from Harry as Dad’s soft, gentle voice passes through him in a wave of longed-for pure pleasure.
“I’m fine. I’ve just had a lovely shower, Dad.” Sitting on the bed, Khalid sinks into his voice, into the warmth of his home in Rochdale, with the sound of his sisters kicking up a fuss in the background.
“I know, Dad. They didn’t tell me either. It’s a shock for me too. Are you OK? Dad, don’t cry. You’ll make me cry. Yeah, put Mum on. Me too, Mum. Don’t. Now everyone’s crying. Hi, Aadab. No, I know you’re not going to cry. You’re too grown up, yeah, course. You sound a lot older. Hareema’s your new best friend? She sounds nice. Gul, I love you too. What new bike?”
Over the next twenty-four hours, Khalid is fingerprinted and questioned briefly by two men he assumes are the police.
“Name? Address? What date did you travel to Karachi in Pakistan? Where did you go while you were there?” All the usual stuff, but this time there’s no mention of a demonstration, or a computer game, or accomplices, or anything else. Plus they write down the answers. When they ask Khalid to explain his abduction, they act like they are listening and write that down too. The whole thing feels like a conversation to Khalid and not like an interrogation.
Several times Khalid speaks to his family, mostly just saying, “Yes, I’m fine. No honestly, I’m all right. It’ll be OK.” While they do most of the talking, telling him about the efforts made by the people of Rochdale, charities like Reprieve, the Islamic Human Rights Commission, Guantanamo Human Rights Campaign, Amnesty International, and many other groups who have been working hard to get him released.
The next morning a policeman escorts Khalid along the corridor to another room with comfy armchairs, a small kitchen and a gray table.
“Take a seat,” he says, as if it’s a place the soldiers use at break times to read the papers and relax. Khalid glances at the coffee machine bubbling on the worktop beside the sink. For a moment the sight of the beige froth fascinates him and the policeman smiles.
“Would you like some?”
“Er . . .” Khalid hesitates as the door opens and another man rushes in who looks like an office worker in gray trousers and white shirt, a pile of blue folders under his arm.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Professor Wolfson. My job is to help you settle back into normal life as soon as possible.”
“When can I go home?” Khalid asks.
“Tomorrow probably,” says Professor Wolfson, smiling. “Let’s see now. Yes.” He drops the blue folders on the coffee table and looks Khalid straight in the eye. “Good. I think we’ll have one to start.” He gestures to the policeman, who moves towards the kitchen area.
Khalid quickly nods an answer to the question in his raised eyebrows. “Hardly any milk please.”
“After an ordeal like yours,” the professor says, “most people experience a number of problems. We’ll talk about them one by one and see how we get on, shall we?”
“Yeah, sure.” Khalid thinks this will be easy, and hearing he’s likely to be going home tomorrow makes him anxious to please the nice professor and get this over with as soon as possible.
“Even simple things like the sound of people talking at once might prove hard to deal with at first,” he begins.
“Yeah, I get that. It might feel weird.” Khalid pulls a face as he sips the mug of almost black coffee, shocked by the bitterness of the taste. Did he really used to drink it like this? Urgh!
“Not just weird,” the professor says. “You might experience a physical reaction and feel faint. Want to run away from the noise of their voices. Just remember that every reaction you have to anything is absolutely normal and is to be expected in this type of situation.”
“I don’t think I’ll wanna run away!” Khalid reckons the professor’s overreacting slightly. I mean, he doesn’t look that crazy, does he?
“You might shrink from ordinary affection from your family simply because you’re not used to it. A hand on a shoulder might feel threatening all of a sudden.”
“Yeah, I can maybe see that,” Khalid admits. But bit by bit, as Professor Wolfson talks him through a typical day at home and how he might react to ordinary things like going out on his own to the shops for the first time, Khalid realizes he’s going to have a lot to deal with when he gets back. Sparking the sudden memory of his trip to Nasir’s grocery shop all that time ago without a worry in the world. Unaware of passing cars, of people, of anything much but the thoughts inside his head. Remembering cutting through the cul-de-sac on his way to the park.
“What if I suddenly bump into someone I don’t know? Will it scare me?” Khalid’s suddenly frightened he won’t be able to cope with anything. Not his parents. His friends. Being out on his own.
“It might do, but you can prepare yourself for that by thinking about it beforehand,” the professor says patiently, and slowly talks him through every eventuality.
Khalid’s still worrying about things when he’s led out to another exercise yard where two policemen stand waiting on either side of the locked gate. This time the exercise yard is a huge, windswept, rain-drenched field, marked by high metal fences that are impossible to see through.
It takes Khalid quite a while to walk round the edge with his hands in his pockets; his white sneakers make a squelching sound as he marches as fast as he can. Quickening his step after the first full circuit to include a sudden fast header, then the kick of an imaginary ball. Then a jump and a run to become the speediest footballer on the field, racing down the line faster and faster to score an amazing goal. Followed by a leap in the air, fists punching the sky, head shaking, Khalid lets out a spine-tingling “YES! YES!” He’s going home.