Ride or Die. Khurrum Rahman

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СКАЧАТЬ sat up, back straight, such was the discipline, she kept her eyes fixed firmly on the prayer mat even though there was no doubt that she would have noticed in her peripheral vision a stranger in her home.

      She turned her head slowly over her right shoulder to the angel who records good deeds and softy whispered, ‘As-salamu-alaykum Rahmattulah.’ She turned her head slowly over her left shoulder to the angel who records wrongful deeds and softly whispered, ‘As-salamu-alaykum Rahmattulah.’ It signalled the end of prayers.

      She folded the prayer mat twice over and got to her feet. Turning her back to me, she placed the mat on the bookshelf, amongst Islamic literature mixed in with comics. She sat down on Rafi’s bed, her hands clasped together on her lap, and for the first time lifted her eyes to me. She nodded.

      The gun felt heavy as I lifted my arm and pointed it at her. I nodded back and shot her in the chest. She fell to her side, her head finding her son’s pillow.

      I would not let the guilt in. She had a hand in this.

      I stepped out of the bedroom and waited on the landing for Saheed Kabir, faithful servant of Ghurfat-al-Mudarris. A man who helped fight a war that to many was justified. He was a small part of a huge movement, one that had become too powerful in the battle against the West, against the deaths of innocent Muslims across the world. He was a man who had educated his two sons with nothing but hatred towards the West and hatred towards the Kafir.

      In the eyes of his ten-year-old son, I was that Kafir. I was that Munafiq. I was that traitor.

      I heard the sound of the flush and then the sound of running water. I lifted the Glock and pointed it at the toilet door. The water stopped, the handle turned and the door opened.

      Saheed met my gaze before his eyes moved towards the bedroom, then back on me. Filled with dread, his mouth moved, a silent question on his lips.

      I answered it with a slow shake of my head.

      Saheed fell heavily to his knees, a tear escaping from his eyes as his obese body shook and shuddered. ‘Asif?’ His voice barely above a whisper. ‘My son?’

      I shook my head again and his howl deafened me as tears flooded his eyes.

      ‘My family,’ he cried, at my feet. ‘You took away my family.’

      ‘You took away mine.’

      I shot him twice in the chest.

      I would not let the guilt in. Saheed Kabir had a hand in this.

Chapter 7

      Sophia looked up at Easedale House, the tired-looking tower block standing tall but unremarkable amongst the surrounding identical tower blocks that filled the landscape within Brentford’s Ivy Bridge Estate. Brentford had undergone – or was in the middle of – a regeneration project; Sophia wasn’t sure which. It had been ongoing for years. Her crappy flat in her crappy tower block was a few minutes’ walk away from the flats on the waterfront with price-tags she could never dream of affording. Nine figures had been spent on the regeneration, but not a drop on the Ivy Bridge Estate. Sophia despised having to walk past the smell of the rich, so close to her shit-hole flat.

      Not even entertaining the idea of the piss-stinking lift, Sophia trudged up three floors. She walked past a whiny malnourished Alsatian tied to the railing on the first floor, and nodded curtly at a neighbour slumped on the landing of the second floor, who, judging by his eyes and blank stare, looked as if he’d fallen off whatever wagon he had been on. She entered the lobby of the third floor and let herself into her apartment. She closed the door behind her and double-locked it, aware that the cheap Homebase locks wouldn’t withstand force. The door probably wouldn’t even withstand somebody leaning against it.

      As per routine, Sophia picked up the iron bar on the small hallway table and gripped it firmly in both hands as she walked from room to room, checking for chancers. She entered the bedroom last, dropped the bar on the side table and shrugged off her coat, letting it fall in a puddle at her feet. An ancient desktop PC sat on a desk in the corner of the room. Sophia lifted the monitor off the computer and placed it to the side. Her heart picked up as she clicked the two catches on the side of the PC and lifted the cover. Inside, sitting on the motherboard, right beside the hard drive, was a small stack of fifty pound notes, amounting to exactly ten thousand pounds. She sighed with relief, clicked the cover back in place and sat the monitor on top of the computer. And then, as she did every night after a shift, fell backwards with her arms out onto her unmade double bed, enjoying the thrill of her body bouncing gently before coming to rest. Strands of blonde hair fell across her face. She blew them away from her eyes and stared up at the damp patch on the ceiling, lit by the two working downlights. It was not a view she would get used to.

      Sophia Hunt had arrived in London, aged 22, clutching hopefully onto her Performing Arts Diploma. She’d waited patiently for the opportunity – that one successful audition that would kick-start her career and give her the chance to live life on her own terms. Meanwhile, she worked hard as a cleaner. No, that’s not right. She worked as a cleaner, but the effort was minimal, as were the wages and tips. Sophia’s mother had been a cleaner. So had her grandmother. Was it predetermined for Sophia to end up on her hands and knees, with a J-cloth and a backache, and to serve those who felt it was open season to grab, grope and fondle the fucking help?

      Sophia’s father had been a social worker, before he injured himself, accidentally-on-purpose, and pissed off with his benefits. He wasn’t big on sharing-is-caring. Sophia didn’t blame him. At least he’d had some semblance of get-up-and-go when he’d got up and left.

      Her mother, not able to afford childcare, dragged Sophia to her cleaning jobs, from the age of seven through to her teenage years. She couldn’t bear to watch her mother crawl around grand homes with her bad back and her bad knees, making the place gleam whilst pocketing items that wouldn’t be missed. It made Sophia sad. Sad to watch her mum. Sad that they were surrounded by money but didn’t have any.

      She died of a heart attack on the job, with an apron full of silverware. Sophia promised herself that she would not end up in the same position. But she was going up against life and patterns and a history of bloody cleaners in her family.

      Sophia put in her all to achieve her Performing Arts Diploma, sacrificing sleep to study lines, skipping meals to stay skinny, taking extra classes to help improve her singing and dancing. But it had become quite evident, fairly soon after she’d arrived in London, that she was just one of a million starlets who shared that same hunger.

      Working as an extra on TV wasn’t as exciting as it had seemed. Hours of waiting around with all the other desperados, eating yesterday’s sandwiches, until she was called to aimlessly sit in a coffee shop or a pub whilst the A-listers blocked her view of the camera. Regardless, she gave it everything, made each role her own. Once she had to push a pram across the road and she did it method. Making sure the road was clear as any mother would, looking left, looking right, and then left again, before tentatively crossing over, only for the director to shout, ‘Cut! Just cross the bloody road!’

      Her diploma meant nothing, on top of which she couldn’t remember where she’d put it, and these days all the networks could afford to make was reality TV. Brain-dead airheads with no qualifications or discernible talent, catering for the brain-dead viewer. Despite herself, Sophia adjusted, realising that it may be her only СКАЧАТЬ