CHAPTER 19
It was around 3:00 a.m. when Cass arrived in the coastal town of Narathiwat.
At the town centre, he found a minibus service heading north to Pattani, Songkhla, and Nakhon Si Thammarat that, according to the sign, would leave at 7:30 a.m. He checked his money, paid the sleeping driver for a ticket to Songkhla, and was allowed to board to wait until it departed.
He was dozing when, as dawn broke, an elderly Buddhist monk clambered aboard and sat quietly on the seat opposite. Just before 7:30, a few others also got in and sat at the back. Then the bus departed and headed north into the countryside.
With the sun rising on his right, Cass pulled the curtain aside and slid open the tinted window to feel the breeze. It wasn’t a cool breeze, but the air smelled good. He felt sweaty and dirty. His bushy beard was greasy and tangled, but when he put his face into the wind and breathed in the damp early morning air that was thick with an exotic flowery perfume, it felt good. For months, he’d only smelled dry, dusty air—air that caused sores and encrusted nostrils until they bled. The red and white chequered shemagh he would always wear around his head and over his mouth was never enough. It lay now at the bottom of the backpack beside him.
He opened the bag, took out a bottle of water, and drank half. Then he glanced at the old monk who had been sitting motionless, huddled in orange-brown robes, staring, like Cass, out of the window on his side. His face was round, brown, and mottled with darker spots. His grey hair was shorn almost to his scalp. He had slipped his feet out of his dusty sandals and was resting them one on top of the other on the floor, and on the seat beside him lay a crumpled bag made of the same orange cloth as his clothing.
As Cass opened his own bag to return the water bottle, the monk turned, and Cass raised the bottle towards him as a gesture. Was he thirsty? The monk nodded and edged his way along the seat towards him, looked at him with clear brown eyes, took the bottle, put it to his lips, and took a long drink. Then he handed the bottle back, but Cass shook his head and raised his hand. “I have another,” he said. “Please keep it.”
The monk nodded, gave a tight-lipped smile, and continued his silent watching of the scenery slipping past. But Cass could see that his lips were moving and that, occasionally, he would nod and smile to himself, as if he was conversing with someone. Perhaps, Cass thought, he was praying, but he knew little of Buddhist religion.
Cass’s own thoughts wandered, and for some reason, he started to think about Bashir’s shop and how he would help Kevin stack shelves. How good it had been to hear Kevin’s voice the day before. It was just a minute in time but enough to know he was not entirely alone.
He thought about Dragos at the Romanian car wash on Bristol Road who he would help on Sundays and about Yassin who would tell him in his Bangladeshi way, “Cass, my friend, those who can’t find time to pray five times a day like a good Moslem must haste earnestly to the remembrance of God on a Friday. Pray to him for your good life, your mother, and your grandmother.”
And Cass, however reluctantly, would go with Yassin to the Park Road mosque just as he had done with the man his mother called Uncle Ayakar when he was about ten and still trying to understand what was going on.
The Imam had called him over one day and given him books to read, but Cass had put them under his bed because they were in Arabic, with no pictures except a photo of an unknown Imam on the cover.
He’d also given him a CD of children singing Islamic songs, and his grandmother had played them in the kitchen and smiled and clapped her hands. Grandma’s smiles were a rare sight. Her clapping was even rarer, but he still remembered one of the songs.
“I am a Moslem in the things I say / in everything I do every day. / We are Moslems in the things we say / in everything we do every day / Alhamdallah, Isbilllah, I am a Moslem and this I know / I need to eat so I may grow / When we eat, we say bismillah, / when we’re full we say alhamdalla.”
The words were simple, but the tune was catchy, and it had engraved itself in Cass’s memory. Even at night, “I go to sleep saying Allah’s name / and in the morning, I do the same.”
It was innocent enough but not enough to stir a desire to become the devout Moslem his grandmother expected. To Grandma, Cass was likely to turn out to be as big a disappointment, just as Kevin was—a bad boy. They were all bad boys—Kurt, Winston, Kevin, and himself. And then he thought about Mr. Wilkins, Willie, the math teacher who would jokingly call all of them his bad boys.
But Kevin? A bad boy? Poor boy would have been more accurate.
And Winston and Kurt, Nigerians or Jamaicans or whatever they pretended to be each week, were struggling with school and going home to a life that seemed so noisy and disjointed. At 43 Shipley Street, no one spoke. Silence prevailed as Cass’s mother watched TV and his grandmother slept.
But being called a bad boy was OK.
Being called a bad boy by Willie, the math teacher, was particularly cool because it suggested that Willie saw streaks of useful rebellion lying beneath. Being a bad boy had made Cass listen to Punjabi pop songs about bad boys and watch YouTube clips of Karachi street gang music every half hour until he became tired of it and moved on to Arab pop for a while. English pop was so dreary, so contrived, and so predictable.
Cass smiled to himself. Perhaps smiling was what came with the feeling of being free. Impossible as it was, he imagined Kevin suddenly getting on the bus at the next stop.
“Bloody hell, Cass, what are you doing on this bus? But what an unexpected pleasure. Al-hamdulilla.”
Kevs was OK. Kevs was just a bright but bored kid who found school pointless like a lot of the boys from the streets around Park Road and Shipley Street. With most of the rows of terraced houses around Shipley Street occupied by Pakistanis, Somalis, Afghans, Iraqis, or Africans, Kevs had been the only kid with a white mum. Kevin’s mum had blonde hair, was thin, and always seemed unwell but looked as if she’d come from pure white English stock.
But there weren’t many other differences between Cass and Kevin. Kevin had needed a father figure but didn’t have one. Neither did Cass. Kevin had needed adventure, but there was none to be found. So did Cass. And Kevin had needed a reason to live but hadn’t yet found one. Neither had Cass.
Cass, deep in his thoughts, continued staring out of the bus window with his head resting on the frame and the wind blowing on his face.
It was very Moslem down there in the far south of Thailand, and he knew there had long been problems with a separatist movement led by Islamic militants. Right now, though, it all seemed peaceful. They’d passed a few police blocks, and Cass had held his breath, but the police only spoke to the driver and waved them on.
The bus stopped for a short while in Pattani. The passengers sitting at the back got off, but the monk stayed on. Cass felt comfortable, knowing he was still there.
What is he thinking? Cass wondered as the bus travelled on. What did Buddhists pray for? Buddhism seemed peaceful enough. As far as Cass knew, no one gave long rambling speeches but sat and meditated and sometimes chanted in monotonous tones for hours.
Another hour passed, then the bus driver turned and spoke in Thai, and the old monk looked at Cass. “The driver says we arrive in Songkhla in five minutes,” he said in slow but good English. “The bus will then depart for Nakhon Si Thammarat in thirty minutes.”
Cass nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
It was mid-morning, hot and sunny, and Cass strolled around a street with vendors selling crispy banana fritters, sausages, meat balls, and fried chicken. Close by was the main covered market, hot, shadowy, and full of fruit, vegetables, meat, and fish. Cass was hungry. He bought more water, some crispy banana fritters and returned to where the bus was waiting. What should he do? Move on? He counted his money again and then, seeing the old monk reboard the bus, bought another ticket for Nakhon Si Thammarat.