Ayesha spent the next hours on the phone. She called Guddu, the brother of her father’s mother in Kahin Nahi outside Karachi and the only member of the family there with a telephone. The first dozen attempts didn’t connect, then she got a recorded voice that she recognised as her great-uncle’s. Her Urdu was good enough to understand that the voice was asking her to leave a message.
‘Guddu, it’s me, Ayesha.’ She spoke as calmly as she could. ‘I’m calling you from London. Asma says something has happened to Dad, but we can’t work out what. I know it isn’t easy for you to call, but please . . . please would you ring me as soon as you can?’ She paused and swallowed. ‘Oh Guddu, I’m so worried. I’m so, so worried . . .’
Ayesha put down the phone and sat for a moment. It was after midnight. Getting upset wouldn’t help anyone. She rang the Foreign Office, made a note of the out-of-hours duty number and called it. A sleepy female voice answered. ‘FCO out-of-hours. This number is for emergencies only.’ It was the first time that word had been spoken. ‘Yes,’ Ayesha said. ‘Yes, it is an emergency.’
She explained to the woman what little she knew. She was alone and scared; making contact with the Foreign Office felt reassuring. The British government had the authority that she lacked. Its machinery would whir into motion and take charge of things.
‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to ring back in the morning, madam,’ the woman was saying. ‘There isn’t anything that can be done at this time of night. Ring again on the main switchboard number tomorrow.’
Ayesha blinked. ‘Time of night? But my father is in trouble. I need your assistance. It’s urgent.’
‘I’m sorry, madam, that’s not something we can help you with. And I thought you said your father had died. If he’s dead, then there isn’t a hurry.’
Ayesha had been buoyed by adrenalin, but things were starting to hit her now. Yes, she thought, perhaps it really is true; perhaps Daddy really is dead. She calmed herself. Guddu hadn’t rung back. Until she heard from him, there was little she could do.
She tried to make the time pass by trawling the Internet for information on flights to Karachi. She found an early morning departure, glanced at her watch and saw it was leaving in less than five hours. Without thinking she opened the drawer with her British and Pakistani passports. She picked up the green one and slipped it into her handbag.
Her patience ran out; she rang Guddu again. This time he answered. ‘Kahin Nahi 261813. Hello.’ Guddu sounded harassed. Ayesha found herself unexpectedly on the verge of tears. ‘Guddu, it’s Isha. Are you all right? What’s happened to Daddy? We’ve been hearing all sorts of things. I left you a message . . .’
Guddu was old and his native language was Urdu. Ayesha listened as he did his best to explain, but she was catching one word in three. She stopped him repeatedly to ask for clarification; the story was getting more and more confused. She picked up the word ‘suicide’ and asked Guddu what he meant. He said something complicated in Urdu then something incomprehensible in English. The old man was flustered, his words tumbling out at such bewildering speed that Ayesha asked him to stop. ‘Guddu,’ she said slowly and clearly. ‘I think I should come to Kahin Nahi. Then I can see things for myself.’ Her great-uncle understood; the relief and gratitude in his reply were unmistakable.
Fifteen hours later Ayesha emerged from the customs hall of Karachi’s Jinnah airport carrying the single bag she’d had time to pack and plunged into the swirling sea of handwritten signs, shouting people and sweltering afternoon heat. The plane had coddled her in its familiar air-conditioned envelope, but this was another world.
In the terminal building Ayesha waved away the men in sweat-stained shirts who jostled her with cries of ‘Car for you! Car for you!’ and walked outside. Trusting to the safety of uniforms she buttonholed a taxi wallah and asked him to find her a driver for a journey out of town. She was worried that the man would laugh at her Urdu, but he nodded and led her to the parking lot. ‘This is Jasir,’ the man said. ‘Tell him where you wish to journey and he will take you there in the lap of modern safety and comfort.’ For the first time in twenty-four hours, Ayesha allowed herself the shadow of a smile. She negotiated the price with the driver and told him she needed to be in Kahin Nahi before sunset. She had managed to explain to Guddu that they should postpone Ibrahim’s funeral to the last permitted moment.
The hour’s drive passed in a flurry of anxiety. She hadn’t told anyone where she was going; she hadn’t slept; she felt feverish. Guddu had said suicide, but why would her happy, gentle father kill himself? If Ibrahim had died of a heart attack or in an accident that would be something she could understand. But everything she was being told seemed confusing. She wanted the truth but dreaded finding it.
Arriving in Kahin Nahi Ayesha hardly recognised the place. She hadn’t been there for over twenty years. The small village had become a sprawling town. New roads ran at unexpected angles and Ayesha struggled to direct the cab driver to her grandmother’s house. They made false starts along dusty streets with rows of wooden houses, some of which looked familiar but never led where she expected them to. A woman sitting at the roadside shelling peas shook her head when they asked for directions. Ayesha told the driver to mention the Rahman house and the woman asked which Rahman they meant. Ayesha said, ‘The widow of Hassan, son of Mohammed.’ Finally the woman nodded.
Ten minutes later they pulled up at a two-storey house with distinctive iron railings along the front. The canopies of the jacaranda trees around the building had spread extravagantly since she was last here and a herd of goats had colonised what was once the garden. She paid the driver and walked up to the house, expecting to be met by her grandmother or by Guddu. But the door was answered by a man she didn’t know, and his perfunctory as salaam alaikum sounded unwelcoming. For a moment she feared she might have got the wrong house. She asked him in hesitant Urdu who he was, but the man told her to wait and closed the door. Ayesha’s stomach knotted. The taxi driver had gone; she was alone in a town she barely knew, grappling with a language she barely spoke, embroiled in a mystery she could barely comprehend.
The door opened and Ayesha was surprised to see her Uncle Ahmed. She hadn’t seen Ahmed for years, not since he and her father had fallen out so angrily that years of silence had followed, more than two decades of smouldering resentment between the brothers and chilly estrangement between the two branches of the Rahman family. Like Ibrahim, Ahmed had lived in Burnley, but they barely acknowledged each other’s existence. Ayesha and her brothers were told to look away if they encountered Ahmed’s children in the street.
Ayesha stared at her uncle, trying to square his presence with the events of the past twenty-four hours.
‘Uncle Ahmed?’
The swarthy man with a waxed moustache stepped forward from the shadow of the doorway. Ahmed was wearing a shalwar kameez, with a prayer cap on his head. Ayesha, who had only ever seen him in English shirt and trousers, found his appearance disconcerting. When he leaned towards her she caught the smell of curry on his breath.
‘My child.’ Ahmed ushered her into the house. ‘Come and rest.’ He clicked his fingers to a serving boy. ‘Tea for the memsahib. Serve it in the public room. Bring the armchair.’
Ahmed fussed over his niece, full of condolences. His sympathy was unnerving. She asked where her grandmother was and Ahmed spread his hands. ‘My mother is old; this tragedy has upset her mind. I have sent her to the house of her brother, Guddu, so he can care for her until her son is buried.’
Ayesha strained to take in what her uncle was telling her. ‘Where is my father, Uncle Ahmed?’ she said. ‘What happened to him? How did he die?’
Ahmed tilted his head to the side, concern on his face. ‘Ibrahim has been washed and anointed as the Qur’an enjoins us. He has been wrapped in the funeral sheets and will be buried before the sun goes down. As for the nature of his demise, the police station commander has recorded the death as suicide. I was not in Kahin Nahi when my brother passed. I have no further information.’
Ayesha put her hands to her face, hunched in the armchair in the public room. ‘Uncle Ahmed,’ she said, ‘this has been such a shock. I had no idea Daddy was unhappy. I never ever suspected he would think of killing himself. Why would he do such a thing?’
‘I repeat: I was not here when Ibrahim died, so I have no insight into his state of mind. If I may say so, you also have been living away from him. You did not know Ibrahim was unhappy, but perhaps you did not keep in touch with him as you should have. If you had stayed close, perhaps you would have known what was troubling your father. Perhaps you could have helped him.’
Ahmed’s words stung her. The thought that she had neglected her duty as a daughter had been in Ayesha’s mind since she learned of her father’s death. But it was hard to hear it from an uncle who had never been his brother’s keeper, whose coldness might have contributed to Ibrahim’s despair. Ayesha was about to say as much, but kept silent. It was a shared tragedy; recriminations would help no one.
‘You are right,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do as much for him as I should have done. I know he wanted to see me more and hear more about what I was doing. But I had my job in London; my life was in London – that’s why I couldn’t be there for him in Burnley. It’s not an excuse. I should have been a better daughter and now it’s too late . . .’
Ayesha burst into tears. Ahmed soothed her. ‘Don’t cry, my child. Things happen in this world. People despair of life and it is no one’s fault. We must trust in Allah. Life must take its course . . .’
Ayesha composed herself. It felt uncomfortable to share her grief with a man she hardly knew and whom her father had taught her to avoid. It struck her as strange that her grandmother would not be present at her son’s funeral; and she wanted to speak to Guddu, who seemed to know the most about her father’s death. But when she asked Ahmed to take her to Guddu’s house, he shook his head. ‘You must excuse me, my child. I have arrangements to make for Ibrahim’s burial. Sunset is not far off and there is still much work to do.’
When Ahmed left, Ayesha rang Guddu’s number on her mobile. Fifteen minutes later he was beside her, his old man’s eyes bleary with tears. His narrow, veined hands were shaking with sorrow. When he embraced her she felt the fragility of his emaciated body. As a girl in Pakistan and on her later childhood visits Ayesha had always loved Guddu and she sensed that he loved her. He had the same openness of character and emotional frankness as his sister, Ayesha’s grandmother, and her younger son, Ayesha’s father. Guddu motioned her into the garden. They walked through the long grass that scraped their legs, scattering the goats, seeking out the shade of the jacarandas.
Guddu was anxious to tell her something and it was easier to communicate now face to face. In a mixture of Urdu and English he consoled her, squeezed her hand, shared her grief. Then he spoke about the night her father died. Ibrahim had been in Kahin Nahi for several weeks, he said, staying at his mother’s house ‘while he was carrying out his business’. The house was large and rambling; Ibrahim slept in a ground floor bedroom that opened onto a terrace overlooking the garden.
‘I cannot be certain,’ Guddu said, ‘but now that I ponder upon it I recall several days on which unknown persons came to my attention in the vicinity of my sister’s home. I paid no heed. But last night I was sitting with my sister in the public room, Ibrahim had retired and I was about to leave for home. At that point it seems to me that I heard voices whispering in the garden and they were speaking not Urdu or Sindhi but Pathan. I say again that I may be mistaken, but with the benefit of hindsight it appears to me that I heard several bangs or blows emanating from the part of the house where Ibrahim was quartered.’
Guddu glanced at Ayesha, trying to gauge the impact his words were making.
‘My sweet girl,’ he said, ‘I do not wish to nurture unfounded suspicions, but subsequent events have given me food for thought. My sister became aware of Ibrahim’s fate when she went to his room with his late-night cocoa. Finding him on the floor, she despatched the serving boy to alert me. I telephoned to the police station and spoke to the Station In-Charge, Inspector Iqbal Hafiz. I was surprised to learn that the police already knew of Ibrahim’s death. Iqbal told me not to concern myself, that this was a case of suicide and his men were on the scene. When I hurried to your grandmother’s house I found men in uniform already there. I asked to see my nephew’s body, but was told that the bedroom had been sealed and Ibrahim’s remains taken to the morgue.’
‘But Guddu,’ Ayesha said, ‘how could the police have known that Daddy was dead? You had only just rung them . . .’
Guddu frowned. ‘That has puzzled me. And there are other things. The police showed uncharacteristic efficiency in compiling their First Investigation Report, to the extent that they had it ready when I arrived. As the closest literate relative, I was told to sign the FIR on behalf of the family, confirming that Ibrahim had committed suicide. They would not listen when I spoke of the Pathans whispering in the garden or the noise I heard coming from Ibrahim’s bedroom. It felt as if the policemen had their story fixed.’
‘But that can’t be right. The police wouldn’t lie. What reason would they have? If they say it was suicide, then surely it must be.’
‘Perhaps I am mistaken; I dearly hope I am. But Pakistan is not England, my love. Not everything here is done the way it is over there.’
It was less than twenty-four hours since Ayesha had learned of her father’s death. To hear now that he may have been murdered and the police were somehow covering it up added pain that felt too cruel to bear. Perhaps it would be best to ignore what Guddu was saying, to let events take their course? That would be the simplest way, the easiest for her . . . But the thought of her dead father and the ordeal of his final moments would not leave Ayesha. She had failed him in life, she told herself; she must not fail him in death. Letting matters drop, simply accepting whatever might have happened to him would be a betrayal. She was not going to do that.
‘So how do we find the truth?’
‘There is a way,’ Guddu said. ‘It will not be pleasant. But if the police are unwilling to help, we must do things for ourselves. We must see your father’s body. When I went to the morgue they refused to let me in. But even they would not have the effrontery to deny a daughter the right to see her father.’
Ayesha looked doubtful, but Guddu insisted. ‘It is our only chance. You must open up the winding sheet and discover what state your father’s body is in. We must not let them get away with this – for Ibrahim’s sake . . .’
At the entrance to the morgue Ayesha and Guddu found a group of men with cigarettes in their mouths and guns in their hands. Ayesha recognised one of them as the man who had opened the door of her grandmother’s house. When she asked Guddu who they were, he frowned. ‘They are the ones who kept me away from Ibrahim’s body. I don’t know who they work for, but they are powerful men, more powerful than the police.’
The men demanded Guddu and Ayesha’s identification documents. They tried to bar their path. But Guddu spoke to them with an air of authority. When he told them that Ayesha was Ibrahim’s daughter come to see her father the men exchanged hurried whispers. One of them took out a mobile phone and began tapping in a number, but Guddu forced the issue. ‘Have you people no shame? She must be allowed to see her father. The Prophet, peace be upon him, will curse those who turn away an orphan!’
The men moved aside to let Ayesha into the building, but when Guddu made to follow they pushed him away.
It was dark in the morgue, the only sliver of light from a ventilation grille in the external wall. Ayesha’s eyes grew used to the gloom. A row of shrouded corpses made her gasp. She forced herself to step forward, examining the tags on the bodies until she found the one marked Ibrahim Rahman. Pity, revulsion and awe washed through her. This final meeting with the father she had adored, fought with and consoled could not have been more unsettling. She needed time to make peace with him, but there was none; she craved the dignity of a measured farewell, but events were rushing her on.
She felt the contours of her father’s body beneath the tightly wound shroud, placed her hands on his chest, his arms and shoulders. But she could not bring herself to unwrap the cloth; the whiteness of the funeral sheet was all that lay between her and the horror beneath. She was turning away when she heard Guddu’s voice. In the silent morgue it startled her; she couldn’t see where it came from until she spotted a shadow at the ventilation grille. ‘Ayesha, you must hurry. The men are phoning their bosses. Have you unwrapped him?’
Ayesha shook herself. ‘I’m trying, Guddu. But it’s not easy. I don’t know what I’ll find . . .’
‘I know, love; I know. But you must do it. Do it for his sake!’
She located the loose end of her father’s winding sheet and tugged at it. The material began to unravel. She made out the top of Ibrahim’s head with the little bald patch he had taken such care to disguise with his Brylcreem and comb-overs. The familiarity of it jolted her; the thought that she would never see him again, never tease him about his hair, his paunch, his self-mocking pretence at manly vanity.
She pulled again at the cloth. Ibrahim’s face was visible now, his eyes closed, his features serene. But there was something odd about the side of his head. She pulled away more of the shroud and saw it was covered in blood. Ayesha wanted to scream, but Guddu was whispering through the grille, urging her to press on.
To release the next fold of cloth she had to lift her father’s head. She slid her hand under his neck, but it sank into his flesh. The back of his head was missing. Ayesha vomited on the floor. She counted the gashes that could have been caused only by the most violent of blows; she noted the weal around her father’s throat where a noose of wire had buried itself in his flesh.
Guddu’s voice came again at the grille. ‘Ayesha! Put back the shroud! They’re coming. They will kill us if they know we’ve opened the body!’
The men were shouting to her. ‘Come out, memsahib! The sun is setting. We have to complete the burial . . .’
‘. . . or the old man won’t get his seventy-two virgins!’ shouted another, and there was a burst of laughter.
Ayesha heard the warnings. She didn’t doubt their lives were in danger. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The thought that wrapping her father back in his funeral sheet would be the last thing she would ever do for him was too much to bear. She stood helpless over the body.
‘Closing time, ladies and gentlemen! Drink up; we’re closing.’
The voice of the bar manager interrupted her story. Ayesha was in tears. She had spoken for nearly two hours and held herself together with dignity. But the memory of her father’s injuries, his ligatured neck and battered skull, had finally been too much. I placed my hand on her arm and she forced herself to smile.
‘You’re upset,’ I said. ‘Let’s stop, shall we?’
Ayesha shook her head. ‘I want to tell you everything. I haven’t spoken like this to anyone. I’d like another drink.’
I looked to the waiter, but he made a gesture to say the bar was closing. ‘Let me try him,’ Ayesha said. ‘I think he’s Pakistani. I can use my Urdu.’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’m pretty certain he’s Spanish.’ We both laughed.
I could have prolonged our conversation – we could have gone to another bar – but the truth is I was happy to suspend Ayesha’s tale. I had begun the evening with no interest in her story, but something had stirred. The narrative seemed to be settling into the plucky-heroine genre, a battle against dark forces with an outcome either tragic or triumphant. But perhaps not . . . Turning points are tangled things and the knots can be tricky to unpick. I knelt to examine the broken heel of Ayesha’s shoe and managed to push it back into place. I told her it should last until the taxi got her home.