Ibrahim & Reenie by David Llewellyn

Author:David Llewellyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 978-1-78172-083-7
Publisher: Seren
Published: 2013-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

17

They had a full house that night, the first night of Eid. Both sides of the family gathered in their little house on Harold Road. His father and uncles talking about their businesses in the living room. His cousins in the dining room and hallway, the boys talking football, the girls talking clothes. The women, his mum and aunties, in the kitchen, listening to Ahmed Rushdi on a portable stereo so old it had not one but two cassette decks, while in the dining room the table practically creaked beneath the weight of bowls filled with pastries and sweets.

It had always tickled Ibrahim and his sister. Aisha, watching his mother and their aunties compete with one another through the medium of food. Everyone brought what they thought of as their speciality; Bhua Yasmin with her balushahi, Tayee Samira with her sohan papdi, and their mother with her laddu, and of course they would all claim they’d simply rustled up ‘a little something’ the night before when days, and perhaps weeks had gone into their preparation.

Even before the sound of the helicopter and police sirens, that night felt different to any other Eid. There seemed to be a silent realisation, among everyone there, that this could be the last time the whole family, on either side, would come together in one house. The cousins were growing up and moving away; Rashida to Canada, Iqbal to Dubai. Marriages would inflate the family further, and Ibrahim’s grandmother, his dadiji, joked that any future get-together would have to happen at the football stadium on Green Street.

As such, the mood in their house that night was celebratory but seasoned with something wistful. Or perhaps that was how Ibrahim remembered it with hindsight. Perhaps everyone had been having a wonderful night until then, and it was only what happened next that changed everything.

Hearing the noise and commotion from the street Ibrahim’s father, Nazir, rose from his chair and padded out into the hall, almost tripping over the piles of shoes on his way to the front door. For a moment he stood there, his short, thin frame silhouetted against the flashing blue lights. The sound of the helicopter grew louder, the downdraft from its blades rustling through the trees lining the street.

‘They’re outside number fifty-eight,’ his father said. ‘They’ve got guns.’

Ibrahim was seventeen, and considered himself streetwise enough to be unimpressed by a few sirens and a helicopter, but with those words he felt a dropping sensation in his chest, as if his heart had fallen, followed by a wave of nausea.

A brief silence fell over the party, then the chattering began again, but more excitedly, and Ibrahim was almost carried to their front door by the sudden surge of houseguests.

‘What is it?’

‘What’s happening?’

‘What’s going on?’

Elbowing her way past nieces and nephews, Ibrahim’s mother joined them on the doorstep, muttering something in Urdu; always her first language when shocked or surprised. Then came Aisha, standing on tiptoes to peer over their father’s shoulders and saying, ‘Who

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