Authors: Selma Dabbagh
It was remembering that he had left his window slightly open that morning that made Rashid feel a plunging sense of absence and desperation at being in the cell. In his room, it would be dark now. The sheets on the bed would be cold and the computer would be blipping to itself as the messages piled up on to its screen. There would be an orange light from the street. It was those transformative hours of the evening as night came about that he relished most in that room.
It was all there waiting for him. But he would not be going back, maybe not tonight, maybe not ever. He would become just another story of a detention, a deportation, a rendition: another story of injustice and illegality to be deleted as junk. That was how it was to end for him, on a piss-stinking mattress in an underground cell of a London police station with hookers and drunks. If he had known that this was how it would end.
If he had known.
Lisa. He had screwed up with Lisa. If he had not drunk so much beer at the restaurant, it would have been different. He would not have so much as
thought
about asking her sister out; he knew now that that was where things had started to go wrong. The small things he remembered now: the way she edited his essays with her red pen and straight back, the time she had stitched up his bag where the buckle had come undone, how she pushed her chin up as her hair fell back across the pillows and down the side of the bed, that time together on the stairwell. He hugged at his legs but they were stiff, bony things that no one would want.
The noise of slamming cell doors punched at his gut. Winded him. A round-up. All the Arabs in London. It was all over. There were grass stains on his knee from looking for the lighter he had dropped under the bench outside the Public Records Office that afternoon. They were signs from a different life. His mother smiling with the gun. They had not got her. She had done things – hijacked a plane for fuck’s sake – and they had not got her, and he had not even done anything and yet it was all over for him.
You fucking . . .
the shouting started up again.
Songs from the demonstration came from somewhere transformed into ancient chants by the acoustics of metal doors and shiny walls.
‘Mr Mujahed.’
Moojaheed.
One of the officers had slid back the tile-sized opening in the door. ‘We have now been able to verify your identity and due to that, we are able to downgrade the basis of your arrest from that of a Serious Arrestable Offence to an Arrestable Offence. This change of status, which has arisen due to a clarification of your identity, which appears to have initially been mistaken for that of another person, wanted by the police for more serious offences, means that—’ The eye had now been replaced by a mouth.
‘I can go?’
‘Oh no, my son. You cannot go.’ The officer sounded almost gleeful. ‘Because upon your person you were discovered to have – in your possession – a significant amount of cannabis resin. You even signed for it on your arrival.’ Rashid didn’t know how, but he had completely forgotten about it. ‘That would be marijuana,’ continued the officer. ‘We are therefore holding you on suspicion of being in possession of a Class C drug with intent to supply. You have requested the duty and the duty is on her way, although she seems to be taking her own sweet time due to the fact that they got all excited in her offices when they thought you were here as a terrorist suspect and they were going to send the partner, but now it is only a drugs and immigration matter they are sending a rep instead.’
The eyes appeared in the hole, pale popping eyes that moved slowly towards Rashid.
‘Only a junior mind, probably fresh out of nappies. Sometimes do more harm than good, so what do you think? You can go ahead with the interview without her right now if you choose to. Your choice, mind, but we may need to stick some others in your cell, if you see what I mean. Could disturb your peace and quiet, so if you want to get going, we are happy to go ahead now. At your service and Her Majesty’s pleasure, so to speak.’
Would youse shut it?
The woman’s voice yelled across the corridor at the revolutionary chanter. ‘Damn right,’ joined the officer.
Pigs
replied the voice.
‘Fucking shut it,’ the officer boiled up and exploded, ‘or I’ll fucking shut you up.’
‘I’ll wait for the lawyer, thank you.’ Rashid was standing now.
Thank you
? It was pathetic.
‘Suit yourself, if that’s what you really want. Could be a wait though.’ The officer slammed the window shut.
It was Lisa on the phone. A Lisa so breathless with consternation that it made her voice almost unrecognisable. Khalil excused himself from Eva to stand with the phone by the window of Eva’s flat.
‘It’s Rashid. They’ve arrested him. He left a message but I was tied up with everything. You see, my phone was off because I had a dinner, you know, with . . .’ Lisa mentioned the name of an aristocrat and gave another name that sounded very familiar to Khalil. ‘You know, the poet?’ she asked. ‘And I just picked up my messages. He must have been there for
ages.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Well, that’s the thing.’ She named a police station that sounded familiar to Khalil and faintly ominous. ‘That’s the police station where they interrogate terrorist suspects. They must think . . . Maybe they know about the family or . . . your activities.’
‘Perhaps you ought to be more careful what you say down the phone. Our “activities” are just connected to a human rights organisation.’ Khalil looked up at Eva who was pretending not to listen.
‘Of course,
your human rights activities
. I mean, you never know. Everyone is a suspect now. We must go immediately. Shall I meet you there?’
‘He didn’t say what they arrested him for?’
‘No. He said he had no idea.’ There seemed to be tears in her that were somewhere just below the excitement, or excitement just below the tears. ‘He needs a lawyer and I just don’t know
who
because I only know QCs. Excellent QCs but it’s no good for a police station.’
‘I’ll meet you by the front entrance, then?’
‘He wanted me to tell Iman. Can you let her know?’
Eva watched Khalil as he called Iman and put the phone back in his pocket. She continued watching him as he sat down. He unpacked some leaflets and books from his rucksack and stood up to leave.
‘As you will have gathered, they’ve arrested Rashid. We don’t know what for. I am going down to the police station. I don’t know how long it’s going to take.’ He shrugged at his bags on the floor. ‘I’ll leave these here. Sorry about this.’
Eva watched Khalil put his things away. She did not know any of them at all really and now one of them had been arrested. She tried not to eye Khalil’s bags while he was there. She waited until Khalil had left before unzipping his black sports bag. It was half-empty and sagged in the middle. Inside was a pair of stripy old men’s pyjamas, two books (the one he’d shown her and another one on the absurd in Italian cinema), a toothbrush wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag, a T-shirt and a pair of underpants.
She pushed back the door to Iman’s room. She had never been in there before. The bed left a tiny L-shaped corridor around it, about a foot wide. A postcard of a fortress in Spain was stuck above Iman’s bed, a tiny flag waved on a matchstick next to a blue goblet with a gold trim. Eva opened the cupboards and found a row of new clothes, far more dressy than the jeans Iman normally wore. Most of them still had their labels attached to them.
There was a stack of books next to the bed. Eva edged along and picked one up. Leather-bound and old, it was filled with Arabic script. In her mind Eva saw robed men rocking their heads on desert mountains, guns across their laps. She saw execution videos and a crowd of men beating their chests with their hands, cutting their backs with whips. She picked up another. The same. Same script. Religious-looking books. She shuddered at a line of verse by an anonymous poet of the Umayyad period which, had she been able to decipher it, would have read:
‘
My little boy’s smell is all lavender
Is every little boy like him, or hasn’t anyone given birth before me?’
The mat at the entrance to the police station reception was of a fuzzy synthetic material. It was sodden with the rain that came in when outside smokers kept it open while carrying on conversations with others inside. Leaves and cigarettes were mushed on to its bristles. Khalil watched Lisa walk up the outside ramp, swaying and clumping and pushing her way past the drunken friends and families in sweatpants and gold chains who were smoking under the porch.
Lisa acted as though she had not seen Khalil and went straight to reception. ‘I am here for Rashid Mujahed.’
‘Take a seat then, love. We’re not done with him yet.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I believe he has just gone into interview.’
‘Interview? Why has he only just gone into interview? How long have you been holding him? Has he been charged? Why have you held him so long? Has he got legal representation?’
‘All right, miss, if you take a seat I’ll phone the custody downstairs and find out for you. You a relative? A friend? What exactly?’
‘I’m a friend. His girlfriend, actually.’
‘Well, I know he’s got the duty with him for starters. The rest I can find out.’
‘A duty solicitor? What firm are they from?’
‘Hang on, love. Take a seat.’
‘No, I’m fine right here.’ Lisa tapped with her nails on the counter, waiting as the policewoman picked up the phone and dialled a number.
‘Right, right,’ the officer intoned down the phone. ‘Got ya.’ She was scribbling little notes that Lisa could not see although she was pressed right up against the glass. Lisa pulled her hair out from the back of her mackintosh.
‘All right, love, he was booked in at 16.20, made his telephone call at 17.50 and asked to see the solicitor at 18.43. The duty took her time only arriving at 20.48, at which point in time the relevant officers were tied up with other interviews, hence the delay in interview time to 21.32. The firm that the duty is from is Watkinson Farley and the duty’s name is David Farley. No. That’s who it was going to be but then it changed to Annabelle Prieston, Police Station Representative.’
‘She’s not a solicitor?’
‘No, like I say, she’s a rep. All the same as far as we’re concerned.’
‘And the delay? He comes in at 4.20 and does not get to ask for legal representation for more than an hour. Why is that? Where was he then?’
‘Well, he was down in the cells. I imagine that that delay was caused because the officers arrested him on suspicion of one charge and then, following a search, decided to question him on the basis of another one. That’s all the custody was able to tell me. Now, would you like to take a seat?’
Lisa looked around the room, watched by everyone in it, until she acknowledged that she had seen Khalil and, feigning surprise, came over to him. He moved the chip carton and the page of a free newspaper advertising mobile phone packages off the chair next to him.
‘Apparently he was arrested on suspicion of one thing but now they are interviewing him in relation to a charge connected to something they found in a search. What do you think?’ she whispered conspiratorially, although the waiting room had all clearly heard the policewoman relaying the report on Rashid. ‘What do you think he might’ve had on him?’
‘I have no idea. I’ve not seen the bastard for ages. I spent most of the day trying to find him in his room and then at Iman’s flat. We’d arranged to meet up at the demonstration but he disappeared before I even got to talk to him.’
‘He wasn’t at the hall of residence this morning?’ Lisa asked.
‘No. Wasn’t he at yours last night?’
‘Oh, no. It’s not like that. We haven’t actually seen that much of each other recently. We . . . I . . . have just been so busy organising the demo and the talks and everything. What did you think, by the way?’ Lisa asked.
‘I thought it was excellent. I missed quite a bit looking for Rashid, but what I saw was fine. Turnout was great. Who recommended Ayyoubi?’
‘He was good, wasn’t he? Just weird the way he ended his speech, didn’t you think? His party recommended him. I actually wanted one of the big spokesmen types, you know, the ones you see on TV all the time, but they couldn’t do it and put his name forward. I thought it worked quite well in the end.’ The moulded plastic chair squeaked under Lisa’s bottom as she pushed herself back into it, keeping her bag on her lap.
Rashid and Lisa had run out of things to say to each other long before Iman arrived, her hair streaming with rain.
Iman didn’t know what Lisa was doing there. Rashid had told her that he had hardly seen her since he had taken her sister out to a concert, months before, although they had spoken on the phone about work issues, speakers for the demonstration and things like that. Lisa did not seem delighted to see Iman. The two women greeted each other grudgingly.
‘What could he have on him that would show up in a search?’ Iman asked Khalil in Arabic after he answered her questions. Iman could feel Lisa shift uncomfortably at the change in language.
‘No idea,’ replied Khalil, switching back into English. ‘Where were you, anyway? I was waiting for you at your flat.’