The Prosecutor by Nazir Afzal

Author:Nazir Afzal [Afzal, Nazir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473571488
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2020-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

VIII

It was late when I slipped the key in the lock of my front door. I turned it gently, so I didn’t disturb my family as they slept. It was always late these days. Everyone was in bed and the house was quiet. I scanned the post on the kitchen table, put the kettle on and picked up the school photos of our children that my wife had left out. The kettle whirred to its whistle as I fondly traced my finger around their smiling faces, thinking of all the things I was missing out on in their lives. The school plays, concerts, birthday parties, sports days. They were growing up fast and there was so much I wanted to know, but never had the time to ask them. What excited them? What friends were they making? Which teachers did they like? I was an absent father in my own home. It was so easy to become absorbed by my work and the community engagement. I couldn’t remember the last time we had taken a holiday. Life in London, which had once seemed so fresh and exciting, now seemed exhausting. Maybe I wasn’t just a stranger to my kids. I felt as though I was becoming a stranger to myself.

And while the work was always rewarding, lately I was feeling the weight of it on my shoulders. The threats from al-Qaeda had, thank God, come to nothing, but I had realised that my work was making me more of a public figure than I had ever expected. And it wasn’t just the religious extremists. Increasingly, as so much of my work involved finding ways into communities with cultural differences, I found myself coming into contact with groups from the resurgent far right, who had been watching my cases with interest. As I took an interest in honour crime, which was more prevalent in Asian communities, they thought they could weaponise me, use my work as a way of realising their racist agendas, ‘proving’ that immigrant communities were dangerous. It was exhausting stuff. But then, I was used to the race card being played.

By now, we were living in a time of coalition government and in the autumn of 2010 I was invited to join David Cameron for the launch of a national wellbeing project. I have to be honest, the call was a bit of a surprise: this wasn’t really my area. As I went to take my seat at the back of the room, I got a tap on the shoulder from an adviser.

‘Nazir, would you kindly come this way?’

I was ushered to the front of the room, where I was seated in front of the podium before the Prime Minister. I was somewhat bemused: this campaign had nothing to do with me. It dawned on me: I looked around at the 200 civil servants present and could see immediately that they had a diversity problem. As Cameron made his way to the front, the cameras homed in on me.

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