too clever for that. They know all about divide and conquer.’
Mia frowned. ‘I just can’t work it out,’ she repeated. She stared at the door, still swinging on its hinges in the wind.
Sameena Tanweer sat motionless, her tiny frame comically small on the sofa. A network of fine grey cracks spread across the leather and a fist-sized patch stained one of the seats. She had caught Hassan as a child pouring the contents of her Amla hair oil in a concentrated pool on the spot. She had tried to hide it with homemade sofa covers, flowery and powder blue, but her husband had shouted. He was still bitter about spending two months’ wages on the three-piece suite all those years ago and damn him if he was going to cover up real leather with cheap fabric like a fakir.
She sat there now, compulsively tracing the stain as the phone beside her hummed with the news. Her husband’s tone had been rushed and harsh, untempered by words of comfort as he told her of their son’s arrest.
In her mind, she searched frantically through a list. She couldn’t call Jahanara’s mum. That woman would spread the news to five others before she even came round. What about Kulsum? Wasn’t she always talking about her lawyer son? Or was he an accountant? Sameena couldn’t remember. Did she, after thirty years in Britain, really have no friends that she could call? Her social circle was limited to her neighbours, each of whom visited her several times a week to gossip about the unruly daughters and unkempt houses of their mutual acquaintances. Sameena always listened with patience but never partook in the gossip. She knew that every family had its flaws and she refused to pick apart another woman’s life.
After a long minute of inertia, she stood and hurried to Hassan’s bedroom, hitching up the hem of her sari on the stairs. Inside, she was hit by the musty aroma of a teenage boy. Last Tuesday she had hovered by the door pleading to clean his room but Hassan had swatted her away like a fly.
‘Leave the boy alone,’ her husband had said, the tetchiness clear in his tone. ‘He’s a teenager. He needs his space.’ Interestingly, he often took the opposite view.
Sameena stepped into the smell and opened a window. Then, thinking no further, she gathered armfuls of clothes and in three trips took them to the bathroom. She stripped his sheets and checked under the bed and mattress for secret hiding places. She pulled out his socks and underpants and added them to the pile.
‘It’s fine,’ her husband had said. ‘Don’t get hysterical.’ But she had heard the horror stories. She had heard how Muslim boys were shot in raids and evidence planted in computers. She had to protect her son.
When the bath was full of clothes, she took an armload and stuffed it in the washing machine. The rest she hosed down with two cups of detergent. She hurried back and gathered all the electronics strewn across his room: his laptop, his dusty old Xbox, a mobile phone with a shattered screen and several USB sticks. She took them to her room and scanned her furniture for a lockable hiding place or secret cavity. She thought desperately of a place to deposit the loot.
Finally, she rushed to the kitchen and located the large piece of Tupperware her husband used for leftovers from the restaurant. Inside, she lay the items in layers: first the laptop, then the console, then the phone and USB sticks slotted around the sides. With everything neatly inside, she shut the lid, wrapped the box in several bags of plastic and took it out to the garden. Gathering a fistful of her sari, she bent with a trowel and began to dig. When she had a hole almost two feet deep, she pressed the container inside and covered it with soil. She patted it down and scattered stones and leaves across the top to disguise the fact that it had been disturbed.
She stood over the spot in silence until the evening breeze made her shiver with cold. A vision of a nine-year-old Hassan crept into her mind, up in his room one sunny afternoon, standing over his cousin as quiet as a mouse. Her hands began to shake. She was doing this to protect her son.
Back inside the house, she laid a fresh set of sheets on his bed and then gathered an armful of her husband’s clothes. Carefully, she arranged the garments around Hassan’s room: a jumper askew on the back of a chair, balled socks at the foot of the bed, a pair of trousers at the bottom of the closet. It was only when the first wash cycle spun to a close that her heartbeat began to slow. What would those kafir do to her boy?
She unloaded the machine and was crouched down beside the basket when she heard the first knock. She froze for a moment, flinching when it came again, hard and insistent. She crept down the stairs and peeked through a window, coming face to face with a uniformed policeman. He pointed to the door.
‘Open up please, madam.’
Sameena stepped back from the window, her head thumping with dread. A heavy fist hammered on the door, the calls loud and impatient. She couldn’t just leave them on the doorstep, rousing Jahanara’s mum and Mrs Patel across the road. She gathered up her nerve, stepped forward and turned the latch.
A heavyset man, too fat to be a policeman, held up a black wallet with a badge and ID. He spoke to her with surprising calm and then, without invitation, he stepped inside. Two other men followed. They asked her questions she did not understand, the only familiar word her son’s name said over and over. Hassan, Hassan, Hassan. What fate had he drawn to this house?
The men marched upstairs, making her stomach lurch with each staccato step. She had checked everything carefully but what if they found something she missed? What if her efforts had all been in vain? In advancing hysteria, she hurried upstairs after them, standing sentry as they rummaged through her home and gathered up its pieces in evidence bags.
Every so often, one or the other would pause, asking her questions she couldn’t understand. One mimed the act of tapping on a keyboard but Sameena simply shrugged, pretending not to understand their search for a laptop. She caught the exasperation edging into his tone, the subtle roll of his eyes, the silent implication: Stupid woman. You stupid old woman.
They spent an hour meticulously combing her home. The fat policeman handed her a pile of papers, emphasising some lines of small black text. With a final sigh of annoyance, he gathered the last bag and walked out the door, leaving it open behind him.
Sameena shut it with trembling hands. She made herself some tea and sat on the sweaty leather sofa, mindlessly swirling the cup in her hands. In a low voice, she recited prayers of gratitude, thankful that she’d had time to clear his room and hide his sins.
It was when the clock struck nine that she heard the front door whine open. Her husband, Irfan, walked in, his thin frame hunched against the falling darkness. Hassan trailed in behind him. Sameena hurried to the corridor, biting down her anguish. She embraced her son and wrapped a protective arm around his head.
‘What is happening?’ she asked.
‘Kuthain-okol.’ Irfan swore, a low growl that rippled with anger. ‘A girl from his school is accusing them of such besharam things. And these police – they just believe anything she says.’
Sameena’s nails dug into her palms. ‘What things? What’s happening?’
‘Mum, calm down,’ said Hassan. ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’ His voice sounded strangely hollow as if reading from a script. ‘Some girl at school said she got pushed around by me and the boys. It’s not true, so it’s fine. There are four of us and one of her. It’s our word against hers. And everyone already knows that she’s crazy.’
‘But why is she saying these things?’
