Capital

time between working in this very shop and studying (in Ahmed’s view that should be ‘studying’) for an engineering doctorate. Either Usman was going through a devout phrase or – Ahmed’s view – he was pretending to. Whichever it was, he was making a big deal of his dislike of selling alcohol and magazines with naked women on their covers. Muslims were not supposed to blah blah. As if everybody in the family were not well aware of these facts and also well aware of the economic necessities at work. There was no reason for the blind to have been pulled down. The only reason to pull it down was to make it clear that alcohol could not be legally sold outside the licensing period; but last night the shop had been shut at eleven and they had a licence to sell alcohol until eleven. The last person inside the shop the night before was Usman, and his latest trick was, when Ahmed was absent, pulling down the blind so that it would not be clear whether or not his scruples had on this occasion allowed him to sell alcohol to the unbelievers. It was a wind-up.
    Ahmed unlocked the front door and pulled up the bottom of the shutter, which was always the hardest bit; then he shoved it up under the shop awning, as gently as he could. It was a cold day and his breath steamed freely. From just around the corner he could hear the whirr of the electric milk cart. He must have just missed it. Ahmed dragged the papers inside, puffing slightly, and pulled the door to. On a bad day when Rohinka was busy with the children and he was minding the shop all day, that would be the only exercise he would get in the whole twenty-four hours.
    While he got on with the business of unpacking and setting out the newspapers, and then putting together the bundles for the three delivery boys who would be arriving at any time after six o’clock or so, Ahmed grumbled to himself. He loved Usman, of course he did, but there was no question that he was an annoying little bastard. If his precious conscience wouldn’t allow him to serve alcohol he should plainly say so, and then Ahmed could give him a bollocking and – this of course was the real reason Usman wouldn’t come out and say so plainly – get on Skype to their mother in Lahore. Hah! That would be a good one. That would be a classic. Mrs Kamal would scream. She would yell. She would denounce every single bad thing Usman had ever done, omitting nothing and minimising nothing, and then describe every single good thing that had ever been done for him, and then would invite Allah to inform her of what she had done, given the extraordinarily total contrast between his badness and his family’s goodness, what they had done to deserve such a thing. She would invite Allah to strike her dead rather than witness any further displays of ingratitude. She would go into orbit. And that would be just the warm-up. That would be her just getting going. She would give Usman such a bollocking there would be a real chance he’d drop dead right there on the spot. The world would realise that Pakistan had no real need of its nuclear deterrent since they already had the elder Mrs Kamal.
    The thing which most irritated Ahmed about his younger brother was the self-righteousness. Usman could not prevent it from being clear that he thought he was a better Muslim, a better person, than his two brothers, thanks to his new religious scruples. That was hard to take, all the more so because it was written on his face and in his body language rather than said out loud where it could be shouted down. His expression when he was putting magazines like Zoo or Nuts on the shelf, or giving change to a customer who’d just bought a bottle of wine – he looked like a Rottweiler chewing a wasp. On some days when Usman had been on in the evening, or when he’d done the first shift at the weekend, Ahmed would find the men’s magazines hidden at the back of the shelf, behind the car and computer mags. It was obvious when Usman had done it, though when Ahmed had asked him about it he had blamed the customers. It was supposed to be a shop, you were supposed to sell people things, not try to see how many people you could deter from buying Special Brew by the sheer force of your scowling. Usman stood behind the counter with his shoulders hunched and his stupid unkempt new beard, looking like something from a Wanted poster.
    On the subject of scowling, Ahmed could hear footsteps thumping down the stairs. From the weight of them and