CHAPTER 5
While Kevin was shivering in Scotland, Cass was six thousand miles away.
Things had happened. A ten-day trip had turned into two long years, but in those two years, events had turned him from a boy into a man. However, a man could still feel lonely and in need of someone to listen to him describe what had happened and why and to help him understand.
Cass had decided long ago that when the chance came, he’d need to start his explanation with how he’d felt as a seventeen-year-old living around Park Road, a poor, predominantly Moslem, inner-city area, on a depressingly grey and wet Saturday afternoon.
He’d become so bored listening to a Tamer Hosny CD in his cramped bedroom that, despite the weather, he’d crept downstairs, checked that his mother and grandmother were distracted by the TV, opened the front door, and wandered away from the narrow, vehicle-blocked, Victorian brick cul-de-sac that was Shipley Street.
His short cut black hair and his teenage stubble that he might, but probably wouldn’t, have allowed to grow into something bigger like Shafiq’s was getting wetter by the minute. His trainers were wet through, his black jeans were saturated at the ankles, and his black nylon jacket was zipped to his neck to keep out the wind that swirled at the junction with Brick Street.
Cass had felt he was being swept along by an uncontrollable tide with no sense of purpose or direction. He’d passed no one he knew—no Kamal, Mo, Shafiq, Winston, or Kevin. Two years on and Cass could still remember how he’d felt that Saturday afternoon. It was as if he was the only person left alive.
But then he’d stopped outside Faisal World Travel and looked in. Stuck to the window were coloured cards in fluorescent pink, yellow, and green: “Cheap Flights—Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam.” Cass checked them all because he’d just become the proud holder of a British passport.
He’d always wanted a passport, but with him living in Shipley Street, meeting up with Kevs to stack shelves with tins of processed peas and sardines in Bashir’s shop after school, or playing pool down at the Youth Centre with Kevs, Mo, Kaff, Wills, or Hass, why would he need one? Cass’s mum didn’t know, but getting a passport had become a private obsession since Mo had shown him his. A passport was needed to explore the world beyond Shipley Street and experience new things, new people, new places, new ideas, and new beliefs. It was the route to learning and understanding the truth about what was really going on—the important things in life. Having a passport meant leaving all that was predictable and familiar behind and moving on.
And after a year of saving and not spending, Cass could see he could just afford a low-cost return flight to Paris or Amsterdam. But what would he do when he got there? Walk around the streets like now and then catch the return flight back to Bristol or Birmingham?
Bright strip lights shone inside the shop, and there were no other customers to be seen through the condensation. So Cass had gone inside to where it looked warm and dry and bright.
The wall was lined with a thin rack of glossy brochures of more exotic places—Mauritius, South Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Dubai, and Turkey. The desk had a computer, more brochures, and a few stacked files. Behind the desk was a door, an empty worn swivel chair, and a grey metal filing cabinet. In front of the desk were two empty plastic chairs, but no one sat in the chair behind it. For no reason, Cass pulled out a brochure called Sand and Sea and was flipping through pages of skyscraper hotels, blue skies, and swimming pools when the door behind the desk opened.
A dark middle-aged man emerged. He was thickly bearded with a white taqiyah prayer cap and a white salwar kameez beneath a dusty-looking, unbuttoned, silver-flecked black waistcoat. He stared at Cass for a moment so that Cass recognised him.
“Mr. Khan. Good afternoon, sir,” Cass said.
Khan coughed into his beard, shuffled a few steps in sandals and grey socks, and spoke in Punjabi. “You want something?”
“I’m not sure, sir.”
“Zenab is out.”
Cass didn’t know Zenab, but he knew Mr. Khan from the mosque. Everyone, including Cass’s mother and grandmother, knew Mr. Khan because he was their landlord. Cass hadn’t realised this place was also owned by him.
“You want to go somewhere, young man?” He’d changed to strongly accented English muffled by passing through thick lips and beard.
“Maybe,” Cass replied.
“Where?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Khan.” Cass winced at his own words. He’d been trying not to say “I don’t know” since his grandmother had become cross at him again and asked him, in Punjabi of course, if his name was Mr. I Dunno and when he’d learn to speak proper Punjabi and Urdu and Arabic and not answer back like rude English boys.
Khan seemed not to notice. He pulled out the chair behind the desk, sat down, pulled on his beard between thumb and first finger, scratched between the buttons of his waistcoat, and looked at him. “How is your mother?”
“Good, sir.”
“Does she know?”
“Know what, sir?”
“You want to go on a holiday?”
It wasn’t a holiday Cass wanted. He wanted adventure, new experiences, something different from the daily routine and the “all too foreseeable” normality. Khan must have seen Cass’s uncertainty because he’d flapped his hand. “Sit down.”
Cass, carrying the brochure with him, had perched on the edge of the plastic chair. Khan leaned back. “Qasim, isn’t it?”
“Cass, sir.”
“You thinking of going to Pakistan?”
Pakistan was the last place on Cass’s mind. “I’m not too sure, sir,” he said.
“You were at prayers today.”
His presence had been noted. Such was the closeness of the community. For three weeks now, since he and Kevin had discussed religion at the back of Bashir’s shop, Cass had tried to avoid the mosque for reasons he still could not actually put into words, but he’d gone today in case his mother found out. “Yes, sir. With Yassin after he closed the shop.”
“And you work in Asda.”
“Only part-time, sir. “
“And you’re at school?”
Khan knew a surprising amount. “Yes, sir.”
“Good, is it?”
“It’s OK.”
Khan leaned over, took the brochure from Cass’s hand, and shook his head disapprovingly. He leaned back again, flipped through the pages himself, then looked at Cass through small black eyes that sunk deep in the creased and leathery brown skin, which showed through the beard. “Your family is from Jalandhar?”
“But I was born here. I am British, sir. I have never been.”
“I am from Jagrawan,” Khan said loudly and proudly. He dropped the brochure on the desk and leaned forward on his elbows. “You know it?”
Cass shook his head and repeated himself. “I have not been to Pakistan, sir.”
“You want to go?”
“Maybe . . . someday.”
“You have family there.” It was not a question.
“I think so, sir. My grandmother speaks about family.”
She often did, but the names meant nothing to Cass. He’d seen a few old, crumpled photos, but they still meant nothing. Was one of them his father? Perhaps but he’d never met him. Did that bother him? Not a lot.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen, sir.”
“You attend madrasa?” Khan was leaning forward, examining him, assessing him, and judging him.
To Cass, madrasa meant school—infants’ school at Brooklands Primary and secondary school at Woodlands—but he knew what Khan meant. Khan was asking if he’d attended classes ran by the imam who came down from Birmingham to teach memorisation of the Quran (hifz) and the next stage (alim) that led to being an accepted Islamic scholar in the community. It was what his mother and grandmother talked about. It was what they seemed to expect. Cass had gone along to one or two when he was about twelve but Kevin, then aged eleven, had asked him where he’d been all day.
“You gonna be a terrorist, Cass? That’s what they do innit—brainwashing.”
Cass half-believed it. After three more sessions, he almost completely believed it and gave up going, but he didn’t tell his mother or grandmother. Instead, he joined Kevin at Bashir’s shop, helping to stack shelves and the freezer and loading the van. It had become their Saturday morning habit. In the afternoon, they’d wander off to play football or just mess about on the City Council’s weed-strewn, concrete basketball pitch where a lot of other kids were also messing about, eating crisps, drinking fiz, or skiving from something or other. Kevin was Cass’s best mate.
Cass belatedly answered Khan’s question about madrassa. “Yes, sir.” But he was sure Khan didn’t believe him.
Khan paused, coughed, pushed the dilapidated, squeaking swivel chair backwards, put his hands behind his head, and crossed his legs beneath the shalwar kameez. “So where do you want to go?”
Cass’s nose, still cold and wet from the rain outside, threatened to drip. He sniffed. “Somewhere interesting, sir.”
Khan himself sniffed. “Interesting? What is interesting? Pakistan is interesting.”
“Yes, sir.”
Khan stood, pushed the “Sand and Sea” brochure further from his reach, and scuffed to the almost-empty shelves of brochures. He picked one up. “The Balearics,” he said, reading the title slowly and pronouncing it badly, as if he didn’t know where it was. “Interesting?”
“No, sir.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like the beach.”
“Have you ever been to a beach?”
“No, sir.”
“So how do you know?”
“It seems so . . . so boring, sir. And I can’t swim.”
“Safari to Kenya, East Africa?” It was asked with a sort of smirk.
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Wild animals should be left alone, sir, not photographed from the safety of Land Rovers.”
“Australia?”
“Too far, sir.”
“New York?”
“Too crazy, sir.”
Khan returned to the swivel chair. It sagged and creaked. “Then where?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Cass winced.
“Then why come in here?”
“I saw the cards in the window,”
“So you want somewhere cheap. Flight only.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“What do you have, sir?”
Cass couldn’t see the computer screen from his side of the desk, but Mr. Khan swung it further in his own direction and seemed to look at it. He moved the mouse around, sniffed, and then sat back. “Istanbul,” he said.
Cass’s geography was pretty good. He didn’t have a computer at home because of his mother and grandmother, but in school, he’d once looked at a site called Flight Tracker, which showed yellow images of thousands of planes moving in all directions across the globe complete with flight numbers, departure and arrival times, and types of aircraft. It was that site that had made him feel so restless. Hundreds of thousands of people were criss-crossing the world going places every minute of the day, except Cass. Cass just looked up from ground level. On a clear day, the nearest he got to flying was seeing vapour trails of planes moving west to America or east back to London, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam.
But Istanbul? That was in Turkey on the Bosporus, the bridge between Europe and Asia. Modern but Moslem—a place dotted with minarets and a famous Blue Mosque. Cass could almost taste kebabs and smell exotic perfumes.
“Yes, sir. Istanbul is OK.”
Cass now remembered Khan looking at him with a look of triumph like a salesman who’d just clinched the deal he’d wanted all along. He turned back to the computer. “Full two-week cheap package, flight included, three-star hotel, four hundred and fifty.”
“No, sir.”
“One-week return, airfare and hotel, going on a Friday, one hundred and ninety.”
“No, sir.”
“Cheaper package, one hundred and thirty.”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t afford it, sir.”
Khan leaned back in the chair, frowned beneath his prayer cap, and looked at Cass. “So what can you afford?”
“I need my money to spend, sir. If I spend it all on a ticket, I have nothing.”
“How long do you want to stay?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Khan had tapped his yellow teeth with a fingernail. “You have a passport?”
“Yes, sir. A new one.”
“Then come again tomorrow. Bring it with you.”
Khan had then stood up, gone to the front door, opened it, and Cass had walked out into the rain. He’d stood a moment on the pavement, zipped his jacket to his neck, and wondered whether to turn right or left. Before he’d decided, though, he’d been drenched by a cold spray of dirty gutter water from a passing bus. It was perhaps a taste of things to come.
That is how he’d explain how it started two years ago. Cass, now nineteen, then needed to explain why he was now in Malaysia carrying a fake Turkish passport.