She Wore Red Trainers (4 page)

‘Of course not, I don't know anybody! I'm the new kid on the block, remember?'

‘Well, if I were you, I would just look the other way. That's Zayd's sister. She is off-limits, man, totally off-limits.'

So, I had my answer. Now I could finally stop thinking about her.

The girl in the red trainers.

6

After leaving the basketball court, I went back to my favourite spot to sketch: a bench under some oak trees at the top of the hill, overlooking Brockwell Park and the surrounding neighbourhood.

This park was definitely my favourite place in the whole of London, especially early in the mornings when the mist rolled down from the hill and gave the green slopes an unearthly, magical feel. That was my favourite time to walk, when I shared the park with no one but the dog walkers and running enthusiasts. This was before the park filled up with yummy mummies and their toddlers in their state-of-the-art buggies, before the groups of teenagers coming out to use the basketball courts, the school kids determined to conquer the climbing frame, before the families carrying bags of stale bread came to feed the ducks and the Canada geese, before the barbecues, the Frisbee games and kite flyers.

This was my time to be alone with my thoughts, to process, to reflect. To be honest, I often felt like praying when I was up there, surrounded by the sounds of nature and the miracles of creation. It would be easy, really. Just work out the direction to pray, the
qiblah
, stand up and offer two
raka'at
, simples.

But even though I longed to feel the earth beneath my fingers and smell the scent of the grass as I touched my forehead to the ground in
sujud
, I had never plucked up the courage to do it. What if someone saw me? What if people stared? Would they take me for some extremist nutter and call the park ranger?

No, safer to sit and contemplate. I could always read from my pocket-sized Qur'an without attracting too much attention.

Sigh
.

The life of a post-9/11, 7/7 Muslim in London.

It was almost
Zuhr
time, around midday, so I knew that my sketching time was limited. I would have to go and get started on the housework before long. I opened my bag and took out the heavy sketch pad. I had started a drawing the week before, a landscape that stretched from one end of the park to the other.

I looked at it again, my head tilted to one side. It was quite good, very good in places. I moved my fingers lightly over the page, unsure where to start. I did a bit of shading, hardened a couple of edges, smudged some outlines. But I just wasn't feeling it anymore. Was it the fact that the empty green I had been sketching the other morning was now dotted with people? Or was it that I had other things on my mind?

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out and saw it was a text from my best mate, Rania.
Need to get outfits and heels for UMP show this Sun! U in?

Rania's mum, Auntie Azra, was an event organiser and was arranging the annual Urban Muslim Princess (UMP) fashion show and dinner party. She had invited us girls to come along to celebrate the end of our A levels – and to launch
Rania's first designer clothing collection. I was way beyond excited because I had seen the collection grow from the mood board stage to actual outfits that we were going to wear on the catwalk! How awesome was that?

All money raised was going to help a Muslim charity that worked with orphaned victims of war. The irony of laying on a lavish three course meal in order to feed starving orphans was not lost on me but I had learned to live with it. Some people help by going without, others help by going out into the field to volunteer, and still others help by paying to have a halal version of a prom. Don't judge.

I texted her back:
No doubt!

I turned the page of my sketch book. I felt like doing something different…

I chose a slim stick of charcoal and started to skip it over the paper, concentrating on the picture I could see quite clearly in my head. Lines blended into others, shading deepened the shadows, the flat side of the stick gave me the coverage I needed. I drew, deliberately ignoring the implications of the image I was creating, deliberately focusing on the technical side, not the emotional memory that was fuelling it.

And then it was done. I closed my eyes and turned away, clearing my mind. I always did that before looking at my work after I had finished. It helped me to look at it with fresh eyes and spot the mistakes.

I turned back to the sketchbook that lay open on the grass in front of me. My breath caught. It was good. It was really good, possibly the best I had done in a long time.

It was a drawing of a hand, a strong, beautiful hand, the fingers tipped by perfect fingernails. A hand holding a basketball with a mole below the little finger.

And it was obvious who the hand belonged to.

Mr Light Eyes.

***

If there's one thing I've learned about life, it's this: when you are not supposed to do something, you will find it near impossible to resist and when you have to do something, you'll find any number of excuses to avoid doing it.

Take that morning. As soon as I saw that boy – Ali – and saw the way his face lit up, I knew that there was something potentially wonderful there. Wonderful or dangerous. And, given my circumstances – being a practising Muslim and expected not to even be able to recognise a member of the opposite gender (ahem) – it could only be dangerous. Tragic, even. You see, in my community, it doesn't really work the way it does in the movies: boy meets girl, boy fancies girl, boy asks girl out, they go out, discover they are amazingly compatible soul mates and begin a torrid affair with lots of romantic dates and passionate encounters and a nice dose of happily ever after at the end of the movie.

In my community, a ‘boy meets girl' romance normally results in heartbreak, betrayal and a damaged reputation – for the girl, of course! In every scenario I had ever seen, it was the girl who paid the price for entertaining the guy's advances. Because that's what guys do, right? They try it. They keep knocking and knocking and knocking until someone lets them in. That's their job. The job of a girl with her head screwed on is to not be the fool who opens the door to the
fitnah
dressed up like Prince Charming.

So, back to the paradox of the human condition: I knew all this. I was painfully aware of the price to be paid for embarking on a pointless obsession that could so easily lead to the haram, the forbidden. So I mastered myself. Every time he popped into my head, it is like I was closing the curtains, shutting him out. I probably wouldn't ever see him again, anyway.

I would not talk about him.

I would
definitely
not ask Zayd about him.

I would not even think about him.

At all.

No one needed to see my drawing. It could be my little secret.

7

We had decided to start unpacking after a week or so.

A few hours in, we were still at it and Dad said he needed a cup of tea.

‘I'll make it,' I sighed.

As I waited for the kettle to boil, I thought of Umar still lost in sleep in his room. He had point blank refused to wake up and help unpack. ‘I think he may be coming down with something,' I had muttered vaguely when Dad asked where he was. I thought it would be easier than Dad going in after him. Besides, it wasn't like we couldn't manage without him.

It had been harder than I expected to talk Umar round to the idea of leaving the home we all loved, all his friends, to stay at an unknown location in strange, far away London for the summer.

‘Why? Why do we have to leave?' he had yelled at me when I first told him what Dad was planning. I knew why he was so upset: his whole life was in Hertfordshire where he was part of a tight-knit group of friends at school; he'd started making music – and there was a girl in the picture somewhere. I understood his frustration, but what could I do?

‘We can't afford not to, Umar,' I had said, as gently as I could. ‘Dad's business is in trouble and he needs the rent from
this house. Please try to be reasonable. We'll be back after the summer, inshallah, don't worry.'

‘But I don't want to go to London – or anywhere else!' He had jumped up out of his seat, his eyes blazing. I had never seen him so angry. ‘Why does everything have to change? Why can't we just stay here? We could stay with Nana Jordan for the summer…'

But I knew there was no way Dad would go for that. I shook my head.

‘I'm sorry, Umar, but this is the way it's got to be. And it's only until the end of the summer, inshallah…'

‘Don't we get to have a say about
anything
in this house anymore? It's become more like a dictatorship than a proper family!'

He had turned and stormed out, shrugging on his jacket. His sleeve had caught the edge of the lamp on the side table. It toppled, then fell onto the hardwood floor. I bent down to pick it up as the front door slammed: a crack had appeared in the base. The lamp had been one of Mum's favourites, a memento from her and Dad's visit to Venice. I was sure I could fix it somehow.

I needn't have bothered: Dad made me leave that in storage, along with all Mum's other things.

The steam from the kettle scalded my wrist. My eyes were stinging with unshed tears.

That was when I heard the revving of a motorbike engine. I leaned over and peered into the parking lot to see a rider getting off the back of a huge, glossy motorbike, with yellow and blue flames painted on the side. He took off the massive helmet he was wearing, looked up, and waved. It was Usamah.

The rider in front got off and took off his helmet, revealing
short, black hair and a neat, curly beard.

‘This is my main man, Yusuf,' Usamah said after I had let them into the house, still shocked that they were actually there.

‘
As-salamu ‘alaykum
, bro,' Yusuf smiled and shook my hand.

‘
Wa'alaykum as-salam
, brothers!' Jamal piped up, determined to be part of the conversation.

‘I'm not a kid anymore, Ali,' he had said to me just that morning. ‘I'm nine – almost ten! You have to stop treating me like a baby. If I'm old enough to have to pray, I think I'm old enough to get a little respect around here!' And he'd puffed out his puny chest at me.

‘Respect, huh?' I'd teased him. ‘How about you start with those dishes sitting in the sink, waiting for a little respect?'

‘Oh, no,' he'd laughed, dancing off into the bathroom. ‘I said respect, not responsibility!'

But now, here he was again, wanting to play with the big boys. ‘Ready for some responsibility now, eh, Jamal?'

He stuck his tongue out at me just as Dad came in, rolling up his sleeves. Usamah and Yusuf greeted him. ‘
As-salamu ‘alaykum
, what do you want us to do, sir?' Usamah smiled. ‘We're at your service.'

‘You boys don't need to do that,' said Dad. ‘We can manage. What do you think I've got these strong lads for?'

Usamah chuckled then turned to me, ‘Yo, where's Umar?'

I made a face. ‘He's still asleep. I thought it would be best to just let him sleep while we get on with it.'

‘Yeah, I remember when I was that age – I would have slept all day if my mom let me!' We all laughed.

Just then, Umar stomped into the living room, rubbing
his eyes and yawning. He took one look at the mess and all of us standing with boxes in our hands and growled, ‘What's going on here?'

‘Umar!' Dad's voice was sharp, edged with embarrassment. ‘Is that any way to greet people? Where are your manners?'

But Umar's response was simply to kiss his teeth and stalk back out of the room, muttering under his breath.

‘Umar!' Dad quickly followed him and, a few moments later, we all heard his raised voice, going back and forth with Umar's monotone. Everybody pretended not to hear anything and, a moment later, Usamah was asking for a dustpan and brush and Yusuf was kneeling down in front of Jamal.

‘And how old are you, bro?

Jamal drew himself up to his full height. ‘Almost ten.'

Yusuf's eyes were wide. ‘Really? Subhanallah, I thought you were at least 12! Since you're such a big guy, you won't mind helping me shift these boxes, will you?'

Jamal shook his head and followed Yusuf to the far side of the lounge where the full boxes were stacked.

With everyone – except Umar – working together, it didn't take long for everything to be unpacked and put away. I put the kettle on again and Yusuf took a tin foil package out of his bag.

‘Chocolate cake,' he said by way of explanation. ‘My sister made it. She thought we might like something sweet after all that hard work.'

‘Mashallah,' said Usamah, hurrying to the sink to wash his hands. ‘May Allah bless your sister. She's always got a brother's back.' Then he turned to me. ‘Yusuf's sister, Sister Yasmin, can bake the hind leg off a giraffe!'

Jamal giggled as he took a bite of the rich, gooey chocolate
cake. ‘You always say such funny things, Usamah!'

‘Well, Allah made me funny, little brother. What can I say?'

‘Yusuf,' I said, turning to him, ‘what's this all about?' I was pointing to his leather jacket, and the embroidered insignia across the back. It said ‘Deen Riders'.

‘Oh, that?' Yusuf grinned. ‘That's our Muslim biker club.'

The look on my face must have said it all.

‘I know, it sounds crazy, right?' Usamah shook his head. ‘But these brothers are for real – good, solid brothers. And their bikes are amazing, man, straight up!'

Yusuf smiled modestly. ‘A group of us met at a motorbike show – the brothers with the beards are kind of easy to spot, y'know. And we decided to make a club of our own, with our own insignia and everything.'

I was puzzled. ‘But riding bikes isn't haram, is it? Why bring the
deen
into it?'