Capital

Kamals were having lunch together, something they didn’t often do. Ahmed’s friend Hashim was looking after the shop downstairs, and Ahmed found that he could, with an effort of will, put out of his mind for as much as five minutes at a time the thought of Hashim running up incorrect amounts on the till, taking orders for expensive part-works without getting the customer’s full details, selling alcohol to fifteen-year-olds, and forgetting how to operate the lottery machine and the Oyster top-ups, while the queue backed out the door and regular customers vowed never to come to the shop again . . .
    ‘Iqbal seems all right to me,’ said Usman. ‘He takes things more seriously than you do, that’s all. It doesn’t seem to me such a bad characteristic.’
    ‘Get a shave,’ said Shahid.
    Rohinka brought another casserole over from the stove and put it on the table. There was barely space for it: the table already carried two oven-hot dishes, one of chicken in cumin and the other of stewed aubergines, both of them resting on heatproof mats; a platter of naan wrapped in a kitchen cloth to keep them warm; and a bowl of dal, one of Rohinka’s specialities, something she cooked almost every day and never twice to exactly the same recipe. She lifted the lid of the new dish and a beautifully complex smell of lamb and spices, her recipe for achari gosht, floated above the table in a cloud of fragrant steam. The men made varying murmurs and groans of appreciation. The achari gosht was intended to change the topic of conversation, but it didn’t work.
    ‘That smells great but if I eat a single thing more I’ll explode,’ said Shahid. ‘Look, the thing about Iqbal is the way he’s just so oblivious. I come in, I hear the television upstairs, I know it’s going to be tuned in to one of the news channels, him watching some latest atrocity or other, or ranting to himself about the kafr media, or he’s going to be on the internet muttering and typing and he shuts the screen as soon as I get in, as if I care about his stupid life and his stupid MSN chats with his stupid friends in stupid Belgium or stupid Algeria or stupid wherever. He just acts like he thinks everything he says and does is a big deal and he’s this man of mystery; meanwhile he’s sitting with his feet on the sofa, and leaving dishes in the sink, and he’s like this child who hasn’t grown up yet and doesn’t even realise it.’
    Rohinka and Ahmed exchanged a look. Both of them were thinking that this would not be an entirely inaccurate description of Shahid himself. Shahid saw the look and knew perfectly well what it meant, but didn’t care, because he knew he was right.
    ‘Do you think he is, maybe, I don’t know quite how to put it, up to something?’ asked Rohinka.
    Shahid didn’t want to think about that. It touched too directly on the things he had done when he was younger and had been, not exactly a jihadi, but a fellow traveller in jihad, and the companion of people who were certainly up to things then, and were probably still up to them now, if they were still alive. Iqbal was a blast from that particular past. For Shahid, he was therefore both a reminder of it and a reminder of how much he didn’t want to go there in his head. So he found himself not really asking too closely about who Iqbal really was and what his motives really were.
    ‘I hope not,’ was all Shahid said.
    ‘Would it be such a bad thing if he were’ – Usman waggled his fingers in contemptuous inverted commas – ‘“up to something”? Would it be so bad if somebody were doing something? Rather than just passively accepting a state of injustice and oppression?’
    ‘You are a child,’ said Ahmed, instantly very angry. ‘You don’t have any real opinions, you just strike attitudes to try and create an effect. It would be a boring enough habit in a teenager but in a man your age it’s pathetic.’
    ‘You were never a teenager, though, were you, Ahmed?’ said Usman, now just as angry. ‘You were always half-dead. Injustice? Oppression? Not your problem. As long as there was enough on your plate. Why care about anyone else? Why care about your fellow Muslims suffering as long as you’ve got enough food to stuff into your stomach?’
    ‘If you had ever cared for or looked after anyone in your life, you might know something about the responsibility of providing food,’ said Ahmed.
    Rohinka, loudly and deliberately, gave a cough. They looked at her,