middle of the table was a large pile of chips. Nah, sir, they had cried last week. We don’t play for money. That’s haram, the last word loaded with scorn. Najim had moved on without mentioning the pictures of naked women he had seen them sharing earlier. I suppose that’s halal, is it? he’d wanted to ask, but the Dali Centre was a place of acceptance. Supported by government funding, the community centre was set up soon after the 7/7 London bombings to engage disadvantaged youths in the borough. It attracted a ragtag group of kids, mainly boys, mainly brown, who came to be free of judgment. Here, there were no prayer rooms to prompt them to be pious, no parents with lofty immigrant dreams. There were no pushy preachers or angry teachers, no masters they had to please. Here, the boys could be themselves and as long as they weren’t breaking the law, Najim let them be. Of course, it was hard not to dispense advice or push college brochures into the hands of his charges. Every year, he lay out a stack of ‘Informed Choices’ from the Russell Group universities. Every year, they remained untouched but it was not his role to push the boys in the right direction, only to pull them from the wrong one. Of course, sometimes, trouble came knocking regardless.
Najim leaned over the table to interrupt the game. Hassan stepped back from the haze of competition, his face flushed red and pools of sweat dampening his T-shirt.
‘Sorry to disturb you boys, but you’re needed in my office.’
Amir playfully jabbed Najim in the rib. ‘“Office?” Since when do you have an office? Do we have to call you sahib now?’
Najim smiled good-naturedly while the boys laughed at the jibe. ‘Come on. You have some visitors.’ He gestured to the door, praying it was nothing serious. ‘Bring your things.’
He led them through the main hall, across a small pitch with forlorn goalposts at either end, and into the northern edge of the complex. Outside his cramped office stood a slim woman with shiny blonde hair scraped into a bun. Next to her was a much older man, dressed all in grey. He had hair that verged on ginger and a face like crumpled paper, his features focused in the middle as if someone had scrunched up his face then smoothed it out again. Behind the pair stood two uniformed police officers.
The blonde woman spoke first. ‘I am DC Mia Scavo and this is DC John Dexter. Can you state your names please?’
Amir offered a bright smile. ‘What’s the problem, officer?’ Then, to Hassan, ‘Has your mum been caught working the streets again?’
A snigger rose in the group and Hassan, never one to take insult lightly, bounced a hand off Mo’s chest, silencing the taller boy, knowing that he – nervy, docile, amusingly principled – was the easiest target in the group.
Mia stepped forward. ‘State your names please,’ she repeated.
Farid complied, then Mo and Hassan too. Amir sighed exaggeratedly, his eyes rolling skyward. Fine, it said. Be a joyless cow. In a tone dripping with deference, he said, ‘I’m Amir Rabbani, ma’am. How may I help you please?’
Mia’s lips drew a tight line. ‘Mr Rabbani, I am arresting you on suspicion of rape.’ Her tone was even. ‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ While she spoke, her colleagues arrested the other three boys.
Amir looked to Najim for help. ‘Rape?’ he asked dumbly. ‘What are they on about?’
Mo grew pale and Farid flushed red as if the blood had drained from one boy to the other.
Najim reached out a hand, not touching Mia but close to it. ‘Excuse me, you can’t just arrest them. Don’t you need a warrant?’
Mia regarded him coolly. ‘We have reason to believe that these young men have committed a serious crime. We don’t need a warrant to arrest them for questioning.’ She turned to Amir. ‘Please come quietly. We can discuss this at the station. Your parents will be informed and will join you there.’
Amir flinched. ‘My parents are coming?’ His voice was tense with worry. ‘They’re going to kill me.’
Hassan next to him was a coil of anger. ‘This is bullshit,’ he swore. His last syllable climbed a register, creating the wobble he hated in his voice.
Mia watched them with interest, noting the change in mood at the mention of their parents. ‘Come on.’ She tugged Amir away and turned him towards the exit. He wrenched around and looked at his friends. Before he had a chance to speak, Mia pulled him back and gave him a gentle shove. As he began to walk, he heard Najim behind him. ‘Don’t worry,’ he shouted. And then, in Urdu: don’t tell the pigs anything.
Hashim Khan hurried up the stairs but failed to catch the door held briefly open. At sixty-one, his legs were far wearier than even two years before. He had increasingly begun to ask himself if it was time to wind down his fruit stall but his state pension was a few years away and could he really support his wife and three children without the extra income? He pushed open the wooden doors to Bow Road Police Station and followed Yasser Rabbani to reception.
Yasser, dressed in a tailored pinstripe suit with a woollen mustard coat slung around his shoulders, looked like he’d stepped out of a Scorsese movie. Despite approaching his sixties, he was powerfully built and strikingly handsome – clearly the source of Amir’s good looks. He placed a firm hand on the counter. ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for my son.’
The receptionist, a heavyset woman in her late forties, glanced up from her keyboard. ‘What’s his name, sir?’
Hashim leaned forward, his solemn eyes laced with worry. ‘Woh kiya kehraha hai?’ he asked Yasser to translate.
Yasser held up an impatient hand. ‘Ap kuch nehi boloh. Me uske saath baat karongi.’ He urged the older man to let him handle the conversation. He spoke with the woman for a few long minutes and then, in a muted tone, explained that their sons were under arrest.
Hashim wiped at his brow. ‘Saab, aap kyun nahi uske taraf se boltay? Mujhe kuch samajh nahi aaygi.’
Yasser shook his head. In Urdu, he said, ‘They don’t have interpreters here right now. And I can’t go with your son. Who’s going to look after mine?’
The older man grimaced. What could he – an uneducated man – do for his son? Thirty-five years he had been in Britain. Thirty-five years he had functioned with only a pinch of English. Now he was thrust into this fearsome place and he had no words to unpick the threat. He wished that Rana were here. His wife, who assiduously ran her women’s group on Wednesday afternoons, could speak it better than he. For a long time, she urged him to learn it too. Language is the path to progress, she would say, only half ironically. The guilt rose like smoke around him. Why had he spent so many exhausted hours by the TV? There was time for learning after a day on the stall. Cowed by embarrassment, he let himself be led away, along a corridor, into an austere room.
Farid sat alone under the fluorescent light, fingers knitted together as if in prayer. He looked up, a flame of sorrow sparking in his eyes. He offered a thin smile. ‘It’s okay, Aba,’ he said in Urdu. ‘Nothing happened. They just want to question us.’
Hashim sat down with his hands splayed on his knees and his joints already stiffening from the air conditioning. He
