Ayub stood watch as the youths walked away, a conjoined trinity in impish delight at each other’s company. Their laughter rippled the air and dissipated, leaving a sleepy lull. A bearish white man, with a large mane of greying hair, came out to join him on the balcony. The man’s beard was unruly and unkempt. Large strands collided and argued as they tried to forge their own fractious path.
‘Subhanallah, what was all that movie nonsense? They talk some real bloody crap, don’t they?’
Ayub smiled. ‘Laughter is a gift, it softens the heart.’
‘But as the prophet, peace be upon him, said, “Laugh not excessively for this deadens the heart.”’
Ayub’s smile receded. ‘Yea…true…nice to see that you have kept your happy-chappy ways, Adam…it’s really good to see you too…honestly.’ They gave each other a quizzical look and started chuckling. They embraced, hugging each other tight.
Letting go, Adam saw a look of concern in Ayub’s face and gave him a warm smile. ‘Well just keeping it real, as the kids say.’
‘They are good boys, just passing the time. I’m pretty sure we used to be like that.’
‘They have it easier now. Islam surrounds them, and practising Muslims and knowledge are everywhere. Circles, Internet, conferences. Not like us growing up. We were freaks.’ Wearing leather Birkenstocks, Adam reached down and rubbed the skin of his feet through holes in his socks. Ayub had seen this plenty of times and once bought clothing for Adam, only for the gift to be indignantly rebuffed. Ayub tried hard not to take Adam’s pride as a personal slight, but he wished his friend would allow him to help, even if it was to allay his own concern.
‘C’mon, if someone runs out of loo roll they blame the ‘Mozzies’. When I was a kid we were ‘Asians’, chucked in with the Indians. We were seen as servile. Loads of jokes about the ‘paki’ shop, and eating curry. Then one day I woke up and suddenly we were all ‘Muslims’, bringing chaos, disorder and a threat to their women. These kids don’t remember a time being anything other than Muslim,’ said Ayub, looking outwards onto stone and a stillness. ‘No jokes anymore; they don’t get messed around on the street like ‘Asians’ did. No, instead they get messed around by the government.’
‘Different situation now, different issues.’
‘Dat is true, bruv,’ Ayub said, mimicking the tones of the street. ‘But I miss those days. The most exciting thing then was when Mr T used to to walk up and down Tooting Broadway.’
Adam did a double take. ‘Is that really true…was Mr T around here?’
‘Nah. It was just some random massive guy with a latex wig and mohawk. He wore some real looking gold chains as well, but it was just some bloke on day release from Springfield,the mental hospital…still, as kids we knew no different. Gutted when I found out.’
They both shuffled sideways towards the wall as a young white girl pulled along two even younger children. They wore tracksuits that looked as if they had seen time up a chimney. As one of them passed he looked Adam up and down. Baffled, seeing a largely-framed white man in a pristine white salwar kameez, with a bald, shaven head and a large bushy beard, he asked Adam: ‘Hey mate, why have you got your head on upside down?’
Ayub started laughing. Adam began to issue words of protestation. ‘You cheeky…’ but was stopped cold as the girl gave the kid a horrendous slap. The sound of the strike resounded so hard that it cannoned off the walls and Ayub touched his own cheek in sympathy.
‘Shut the fuck up. You don’t talk to people that way. Sorry, Luv,’ she said, turning to Adam.
The boy rubbed his flushed face. ‘Just a fuckin’ joke, Mum.’ His mother grabbed the boy by the scruff of his jacket and dragged him along with her as she stamped away.
Adam’s eyes followed the mother and children along the balcony until they disappeared into the stairwell. ‘“Head upside down”…cheeky little git; what were you saying about kids again?’
‘Haha, that was a good one though. He didn’t deserve that slap, I thought his head was going to come off.’ Ayub was happy to see Adam actually join in with a laugh, too.
‘I’ve been called worse…some kid actually called me Gandalf the other day.’ Adam looked at Ayub with such innocent hurt that Ayub started sniggering like a schoolboy.
‘So what have you been up to?’ asked Ayub.
‘I was working down in Cornwall on a site there for a few months. It’s a really beautiful part of the country. But I’m all done there, so now I’ve decided to head back up north. I thought I’d pass through. It’s been too long.’ It was still startling to Ayub that Adam’s considerable presence produced a humble, mellow timbre.
‘It’s been way too long. You’re always welcome. I remember you in my prayers often. Always on the move, Adam. Are you not interested in laying some roots?’
Since his youth Adam had hitchhiked around the country, looking for work like a winged creature, forever migrating to new horizons; a habit that was hard to break. Behind his barrelled figure and bedouin nature, and in his meekness and fragility, there existed a man at odds with the illusory solidity of the world. Someone who sought out temporality as a reassurance.
‘Not yet, maybe soon, inshallah. The kids are growing up so I’d like to spend more time around them, if their mother allows me.’
‘I wasn’t going to ask about it…but any chance of reconciling?’
‘Allah knows best; I can’t provide as she expects me to. I send pretty much all my money but it’s never enough.’
Ayub nodded. ‘Subhanallah, may Allah make it easy.’
Ayub looked Adam over to see if he was truly in good shape. Adam was the deepest brother that Ayub had ever known; he saw the wonder of God’s creation and magnificence in everything. He had a poet’s soul. From the structure of seashells to the pollination of flowers by bees, from the perfect ecosystem for conditions on life on Earth, Adam saw signs of the Creator in them all. Ayub enjoyed the way he could see wonder outside the constriction of the estate. He loved Adam’s wonderment and articulacy, and had a wistful desire to be able to see the world that way. However, even in other, happier, times, Adam’s continuous stream of profound thoughts could be exhausting. Adam had such intense feelings for the ineffable and transcendent, that Ayub could not immerse in. They instigated a playful need in Ayub, to vitiate and sabotage Adam’s train of thought with more trivial and purposefully doltish suggestions.
‘Jazakallhu khair, may Allah have mercy on us all. Have you read this?’ Adam took out a crumpled newspaper from a brown leather satchel that he wore around his shoulder and opposite hip, courier style. He had turned the pages back at an article and gave it to Ayub:
A delegate to the EU Conference on Muslims has asked for all European Muslims to sign a declaration that they reject violence and support the text of the Quran being changed to align with European values. When asked what happens if they do not sign, he replied that, ‘We are the most welcoming of nations. I cannot see why reasoned and moderate Muslims will not sign it. If they do not they must have something to hide. At least we will know where we stand, and life should be made hard for those people.’ As a member of the European Parliament, he had previously proposed a ban on all mosque building in Europe…
Ayub quickly scanned the rest and decided he had read enough. He clenched the newspaper in a fist, handing it back as if he were discarding a piece of trash. ‘It’s bit like dunking a witch and, if they drown, they’re innocent. I really don’t know what to say anymore. It’s going on every single day. Has he been sacked? Of course not.’
‘No, it’s all gone quiet. The fact that people can say this, with no one saying aught to them, is scary though. It’s pretty much like open season.’
Ayub clenched the balcony handrail, his knuckles turning white like a hot iron. ‘What more is there to say about it?…It’s the way it is, isn’t it. It’s pointless reading this stuff. It inflames the soul, puts us off-balance. Belief is difficult, Adam. The prophet, peace be upon him, said there will be a time when holding onto faith is like holding onto hot coals. In the end, life and Islam is simple. You worship God, work hard, spread the word and goodness as much as possible, and then depart, letting someone else take their turn.’
Adam’s face turned remonstrative, his hands and arms coming alive. ‘Getting work is harder, people are treating me differently too. I used to go to villages or building sites and people saw me as one of them, and they were always welcoming. You know? The eccentric English convert with a big beard. But with the climate now…nowadays…people I’ve known for years don’t look at me the same. The trust is gone. It hurts. I used to live across different worlds and they didn’t mix. Now they crash and it’s messy…what’s a moderate anyway?’
Ayub took up Adam’s rhetorical question. ‘It’s childish politics.’
He paused. Both men went silent for a while, looking out onto the estate. The rest of London was visible through the flashing slits of daylight between the estate’s tall buildings. If you scanned the scene, from left to right, the city looked like it existed in stills, as if within a Kinetoscope.
Adam broke their interlude. ‘I’ve been reading some of my old school books. Reading newspapers. Thinking about the past. I think it’s time to try settling again, to try and not block everything out…’ Adam paused and then recited.
‘“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;”. Man, I loved that stuff as a kid.’
Ayub looked amused. ‘What’s that, Beowulf?’
‘“And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,”…’
‘Ah, you must have gone to some posh country school, I bet. We got stuck with war poetry. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” It is sweet and right to die for your country. Heavy stuff, and about all I can remember. Death, country, sacrifice, futility, all there.’
Both men embraced the silence once again. They listened as gusts of wind hit the building and were forced down the sides by impenetrable walls, creating bursts of air at the bottom. Gusts that plucked up plastic bags to dance in the wind, happily pirouetting and buoyed to new dizzy heights by the estate’s restive breath.
Adams face turned stern. ‘Do you ever regret going?’
Ayub looked at two bags that had reached his eye level, whirling around each other as if in a waltz and then thrusting into deep dives in a dogfight. He hated dredging up the past, raking over memories, excoriating them and making new lacerations, never uncovering anything new.
‘What…Bosnia? No. Forget everything else, but Muslims should never forget Bosnia; the British mujahedeen who went over should be proud they did their duty. Why do you ask? You regret it?’ said Ayub, his speech mournful.
Adam replied, almost in a hush but his inflection carrying an edge that cut the air, ‘No, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Especially when I read stuff coming from that conference. Bosnia was three hundred years of living together. They married each other. The Muslims drank like them. They looked exactly the same, talked the same, and yet…the man who was your neighbour, broke bread with you, the man who married your daughter. The next day that man would be at your door stabbing you like a stranger. As if everything was nothing. As if they were seeing each other for the first time.’
Ayub inhaled deeply. ‘Yea, all that mixing and it still happened. And they were the moderates that these conference types would love us to be. If you can dehumanise someone you can justify anything. Exterminate like vermin. Look Adam, we’re hated and it’s tough, but it’s a good forced-reminder. It compels us to remember our identity and think about the reality of our situation…forgetting is destruction, annihilation at our own hands or others. Always remember. Even if it’s painful.’
A chainmail blanket of silence came over them, stifling the screams, muffling the battle cries.
Adam ventured forth, his voice tentative. ‘It encouraged the Jihadis though. We should never have been so soft with them, or allowed them to fight. I remember we were once on a hill overlooking a Serb village and one of them took an old woman in his sights. This bent-over, ancient woman. She was just getting water from a well. I pushed his rifle down and explained to him how this was wrong. So wrong! How it was against the Sharia. He listened on that day but I knew there would be trouble.’
Ayub closed his eyes and pinched his nose, and placed his other arm on Adam’s shoulder. ‘It was a war. You took help from whoever you could. It wasn’t our call. And what was the option? Fight Muslim versus Muslim while everything else burned. At least we didn’t indulge in that sin. Muslim blood is cheap for the West, and nowadays it’s even cheaper between ourselves. But, yes, they thought they did it by themselves, they don’t remember the American airstrikes.’
‘That wasn’t to help us, that was settling a beef with Russia.’
‘Whatever it was. Who knows? Adam, there is so much that goes on that we have no clue about, or power over. That’s what I try and tell the kids. Don’t get confused with all the hundreds of issues and spread your energy thinly. Try and concentrate on something and be good at it. Do things for the sake of Allah, not because you are angry or hurt. We should act out of nobility, not because we want to lash out.’
‘And does it work?’
‘Well, I struggle to follow my own advice most of the time.’ Ayub smiled as Adam attempted a sympathetic laugh. ‘Why this serious talk, Adam? Unearthing the past…it’s like opening an old wound again and again. For what end?’
Adam reappeared every few years, with the same questions, like a ghost from some Dickensian tale. Their shared history brought up feelings of sorrow. Grief and mourning that emanated from another lifetime.
‘Just taking stock you know…I was young when I converted. I had just turned twenty. I moved from youth home to youth home, and I’m still used to moving. Sometimes you have to stop and think.’
Ayub nodded. ‘True, I wish I had that option, but I’m here. In a way I’m jealous of you. You’re as free as a bird. You go where the road takes you. Like the prophet, peace be upon him, said, “Be in this world as a traveller.”’
‘Yea, but I have to take my mind everywhere with me. I’m not as free as you think. May Allah bless you, I’ve always wished I could be as strong as you, staying and looking after these people. Everyone looks up to you,’ said Adam, one hand grasping his beard and pulling down, in an effort to calm its erratic strands.
‘I don’t do it too well. I’m not sure anyone listens. If they only knew how difficult it is sometimes. I struggle too, Adam. Like for the kids on this estate who go the wrong way, violence is easy. It’s easy to lose yourself to the violence. I see the simplicity and clarity in it. How attractive it is. That’s what I want to tell these kids, stealing from each other or stabbing each other. What I want to tell our idiots, and their idiots, who want to reduce everything to a simple brawl.’
Ayub continued, ‘The takfiris and men of violence…they are bombing people away from the religion. We can’t allow them to bomb us into taking away the good of Islam. Adam, we have to cling onto our civilised ways. Not let these people denigrate and erode our values. To bring us down. And as for the West. We remember. We remember our histories.’
Adam had been listening as if it was a sound from afar, distant and disconnected. A faint echo. He looked to Ayub and said, ‘I knew there were some crazies, but the amount of pain and hate you must feel to do some of that stuff…they’ve caused everyone suffering, especially themselves. It’s totally out of control. And as for the West…who remembers anything.’
In a drowsy lethargy, almost slurring his words, dragging them across the floor, Ayub said, ‘We must remember, though. Remember everything. Just like we remember Srebrenica.’
Still, Ayub thought going had been the right decision, as near to a righteous war as was possible. A responsibility to stop the slaughter of those within a day’s drive of London. Ayub was born as a Muslim during that war. He never had the cynicism of the youth. Boys like Ishaq, Marwane and Shams. They did not notice how their being had formed in a climate of distrust and harsh realities. Like their bones, their character calcified deeply until it became their essence. At their age, Ayub still believed in systems, he had a natural belief that things would improve and get better for all people. Srebrenica changed all that. Besieged by the Serbs on all sides, Bosnian Muslims gave up their guns as asked. They trusted Europe, trusted the United Nations, trusted their ‘safe haven’. A leap of faith that did not seem that wild, that delusory, at the end of the Cold War when everything was changing, when history had ended. But, when the town fell, eight thousand ended, forgotten in mass graves. Their bodies discarded, industrial bulldozers lumping their carcasses on top of each other.
Bosnia had many lessons. It destroyed the illusion that anything other than might is right, that Europe could be trusted. Ayub remembered. He had a clear vision of talking to one Bosniak in an old ramshackle cafe in Travnik, its roof collapsed like a broken back so that it was now really no more than a lean-to. Its stony faced walls riddled with bullet holes. Slumped and staring, the man had said, ‘Never give up your guns. Mercy is the privilege of the strong. Suffering, the reward of the weak.’ That wizened, striated, face and those absent raisin-eyes had stayed with Ayub.
‘And how do we do it?’ Adam asked.
‘By being better, that’s all there is. Work harder, be more honest, be kinder, persevere. Worship Allah for his sake alone, not for the trappings of the world. There’s no other way. No sensible alternative.’
Both men watched as the sun disappeared, its coral presence shimmering out of existence. Estate and night fusing, so that there was no horizon.
Adam said, ‘I’m sorry, Ayub, I’ve brought a proper downer with me.’
‘No, no, it’s good. Too much laughter does deaden the soul, like you say. It’s good to think about realities. It’s good to have some grown-up conversation.’
‘I don’t know how to say this…but there’s another reason I’m here.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m being hassled again. They’re back.’
Impassive, Ayub used a soft guiding hand to steward Adam back into the flat. ‘It’s time for prayer.’