screaming for air

Vodka, vodka, vodka bottle screaming at me-drink me, drink me. Vodka bottle, vodka bottle. I forced the neck down. Further and further. My father sits at home doing the same thing except, he is screaming for his whisky. Blotting out the pain and naked weakness with fire, he guzzles greedily. No screams. This submission and degradation is not nice. This humiliation, the abasement and vulnerability it accrues, threatens to annihilate my senses; to rip me away from consciousness. Entering darkness, my will and strength slips away like an untrapped animal. I have surrendered; given up the fight. He gets his own way and snaps my spirit with a satisfied grin breaking out all over his face like a feverish rash. In my head, out goes the light. This event took place a whole week before my sixteenth birthday. Nearly a consenting adult; but not quite. Nearly happy; but not quite. My best friend Patrice had met this man at a local disco in Long Heaton. He seemed to charm and excite her. Having a bit of a reputation as a bit of a ladies’ man, he appeared friendly enough. Events leading up to that evening were inevitable as the sea leaving rings of shingle on the shore. Patrice was enamoured; I was impressed. I trusted him to make her happy. I called at his flat. He invited me in. Unknowingly, I thought she was there; she wasn’t. That is when his world sucked me in and spat me out again with venomous hatred. I became the debris, the entrails of his pleasurable experience. I was the poste restante of his carnality. The corsage of his wantonly wiles. He had splayed me. He had disposed of me, along with a clean, crisp white tissue which wiped away blood in sympathy. Was I dead? 3. My home life in Manchester was painful and ironic; painfully ironic. My father had arrived in the wake of a labour boom, fuelled by the resurgence of a growing post-war economy. (What he would do to my mother later on would be a destructive attempt to maintain control over another, to wail agonisingly in lament for the love he never had from his own mother). His mother had thrown him out at the age of fourteen to go and live on the rooftop of her eldest son’s large villa. It was to be a damaging experience. Britain’s legacy of colonialism was an invitation to a better life. India was spent abandoned and left to fend for itself after Britain’s final exit in 1949. The Jewel in the crown was no longer the apple of Britannia’s eye. In fact a sledgehammer pierced the heart of India and left her to die. Dad was hooked on going. In preparation, he was sent to Karachi University. Educating himself, he set his heart on coming to England. Arriving in 1959, his brother already living in Didsbury; Uncle Imran welcomed him with open arms to a new world. “Mohammed we will find you a beautiful wife, send for her. But first, we must get you a job, help you find somewhere to live”. And so my father thought, this was the beginning: for us, the end. I was five. I exited the shop. I started to run. Darkness welcomed me into its lap; inviting and mysterious. Swirling round me like a contender in a boxing ring, I was breathless. I had to submit to its power. Crying, with no-one in the world, I felt a stab go through the centre of my embryonic, small, soft heart. The trees lined the road at intervals. I was acutely aware of the sounds- leaves hissing, branches creaking like old rocking chairs under the weight of their malevolence. A dark sky looming in anticipation of rain. Birds- rooks, crows and tiny little sparrows darting past, peeping out at me from the nooks of the night; almost a sense of pity, yet suspicious of my presence. The world was a sinister place or so I felt, still running forlornly home, trying to make sense of the apparent abandonment. The cold atmosphere warned me of the danger lying ahead; a metaphor for life. Still frantically running, I felt the need to go and look after my father and, at the same time fetch my mother- a real push and pull effect. Is this why I’d been born? To be pulled in different directions; a symptom of survival, to be adaptable in an ever- changing arena. She would be at home getting ready for bed. Running and screaming, “Dad’s in a fight with Uncle Imran in his shop”, I fell sobbing into the warmth of my mother’s breast. From hell into heaven, from chaos into order; from war into peace: my mum was the best mother in the whole wide world. She resonated with kindness; her love and consideration for her child: I was important to someone. “Let’s go”, mum said. Find out what’s happened to Dad”; this she spoke in perfect pitch Urdu. Even then her dulcet tones soothed and calmed me like nothing else. Though he beat her often, she would love him immeasurably long after her own heart had stopped beating. “Yes Madam Mr. Ali was let off with a caution an hour ago. There is the discharge sheet if you don’t believe me”. “You Pucking bastard, I don’t pelief you, screamed my mother at the policeman. “Now listen here, I am telling you the truth. If you don’t calm yourself down, I will have to lock you up”. Mum was panting, trying to get her next words out, but my pleading, “Mum don’t, leave him, leave him, come on let’s go, let’s go please.” I believed the policeman. After all a professional in uniform symbolised reassurance and protection right? Eventually mum responded to my tugging at her beautiful lime green silk sari. Damn it, I had almost caused the bit holding it all together at the waist to unfurl. We fled down Plymouth Grove in equal panic. My mum was alarmed at her own disbelief with the policeman and I was now inducted into the experience of being separated from my father. I just wanted to find him, sitting at home with a smile and a hug for both of us- wife and child. 8. Dad’s best friend and drinking buddy, was on the way home from the pub. He drunkenly-should mother believe him?-verified that indeed Dad had resumed drinking activities at the pub. Mother was at once relieved and frightened. The animosity of chaos would pursue her into the early hours. His hand would land on her exquisitely delicate features with evil rapture. And so I heard her screaming holes of agony into that most memorable night - my first night of the rest of my childhood. 9. I remember when my two siblings arrived shortly after me. My two sisters: both born innocently into a miserable life; to be beset by problems the average middle class child in their everydayness, would struggle to understand. My father would detest the arrival of my sister the second one and third, given the first was also a girl (myself) - he didn’t want girls. They were not worthy. They were not able to carry on the family name. They were costly, had to have a dowry provided for and had messy body problems. Having two girls was mentally too much for him therefore, how was this translated into daily existence? My sisters were born one and two years apart respectively from myself. The second one was in 1968. Her name was Shaquila. She was the one my father decided would be the scapegoat, black sheep, earthwaster and ubiquitously unwanted. His desire to be a father again disappeared the moment he realised her gender. He hated her. Together with the third sister born in 1970, my father was a thoroughly unhappy one. Or, was having children he could not cope with, a trigger for depression, angst and a desire for nothingness...an embracing of his inherent, childish weaknesses? The third one was called Fozia. She was a frail child, so my father thought. She was an indelible scar on daddy’s memory and when she cried as a newborn baby; I remember his face contorting like the body of a spiny-tailed animal -a monitor perhaps- on having been shot through the heart, ready for roasting by the hungry locals in a faraway land: he rapidly scurried away into the garden. Well, the elder of the two was the black sheep (as mentioned). She was ridiculed in every sense, in every place and situation. At school, at home, on the street and in her dreams, Shaquila was doomed and even though her youth bellowed occasionally at my Dad to have mercy on her, he nevertheless was unrelenting and unforgiving in his quest to systematically abuse and destroy her. Weighing well beneath her normal range, she had prematurely withered; like the branches of a tree that having had the process of photosynthesis denied to them- like the harsh labour of a prolonged winter dominating a landscape- scream and plead and shout for the sun’s kisses and hugs and smiles. Brittle, bony and dry was her soul; like one branch off that tree; it could be snapped and discarded ready for the fire. When oft he beat her, her soul and spirit would try to slip silently into the earth where the roots of that tree -still dearly trying to preserve a modicum of life tucked away beneath the ground- tried desperately to shield and protect her; where the soft, sensuous soil of the earth from where she came, which first had given her life; like the womb from which she sickly and weakly sprang; from which she had only been lightly attached, was then thrown back to be met by the tortuous reality of being. The tree in all it’s might could not help her. My sisters were born in alternate years to myself. The second one was in 1968. Her name was Shaquila. She was the one my father decided would be the scapegoat, black sheep, earthwaster and wholly unwanted. His disappointment appeared the moment he realised her gender. He hated her. Together with the third sister born in 1970, my father was a thoroughly unhappy one. Or, was having children he could not cope with, a trigger for his oncoming depression and whoring with whisky that would always ring his bell; angst and a desire for ‘nothingness’? … ‘ I am nothing, I’ll never be anything, I couldn’t want to be anything. Apart from that, I have in me, all the dreams in the world’. (Fernando Pessoa) The third one was called Fozia. She was a frail child, or so my father thought. She was the third of three indelible scars. When she cried as a newborn baby, I remember his face contorting like that of a spiny-tailed animal, ready for roasting by the hungry locals in a faraway land: he rapidly scurried away into the garden. He walked in drunk one day wild-eyed and laughing maniacally. I was in the front room downstairs. That familiar click, click of the latch as he entered the house; this click I dreaded, made a scraping sound against the uneven, concrete front step. He had found solace from himself in the form of at least twelve pints of beer. The Wagon and Horses which was a twenty minute walk from the cul de sac in which we lived, was my Dad’s local. The drinking community of that time was mainly settled immigrants with a few locals thrown in for cultural effect. All of the Irish men in Long Heaton gathered daily in small groups on a Friday night after a long week spent in the many local factories which surrounded Manchester in the early sixties. Some of these men had only arrived in the last few years and all of them were looking for a dream- new life, fresh starts, potential romances, wife, kids, comrades and friends. These men were united by these dreams regardless of colour. The collection of faces from the West Indies went to the pub and drank too! They were fast creating a new working class; a class in which men would work hard, have children and bring them up in the same way. Some men would straddle two cultures; desperate to apply the one from ‘back home’ and others would become more liberal and more receptive to the one on offer. Whichever route they chose, assimilation would be difficult; their own beliefs, their character and passion would spill over into this new social arena in order to dominate socially, and while providing that sense of illusion, nevertheless the more entrepreneurial ones would create new economies based on what capitalism had to offer. These men would move into and help build a new suburbia and the factory workers would stay in highly urbanised areas- where they were now- not in ‘digs‘, but in row upon row of small terraced houses with a few semis thrown in for competitive effect. It was happening in other major cities; high concentrations of minority communities, becoming ghettoised hotbeds helping to fuel the economy at large. Not only had she helped their families to live more prosperously in their homeland; she was going to do the same here ….. there actually were: opportunities! Perhaps Britain was there for her new men, the hostess, the mother and giver. After all, she was their rightful creditor; a provider and a geographical plinth upon which these men would carve their names, stand and fall beside with great honour and with even more sacrifice serve her; she was their colonial inheritance. She had enabled them to fly on a plane and come to live here. Surely she owed them? These men’s predecessors had recently helped her, empowered and sustained her. Britain was one of the most powerful nations on earth. It would be easy to accommodate those who had helped her. It was her turn. He was the most liberal of all. He was lucky, he had had a decent education; inverting that however, my father created his own-hellish life - small and inaccessible. A quagmire of mulchy sludge and black tar that, from the moment you dipped your toe, an oily, thick, smelly layer of it would engulf your humanity and suffocate you permanently. How could he do that to himself and to us? A sophisticated liar and fantasist who would regale stories to my mum of how many women he’d dated, bedded and rejected before he had met her. He would mention: Tina, Siobhan and Teresa, (with her being his girlfriend before my mum had been introduced to my father). This was to ensure he could emotionally control my poor, unwitting mum and make her feel unimportant, unworthy and inferior, not only to the others, but in comparison to him as well. 12. Having seen me standing there, caught like a baby animal in the headlights his eyes burning with inertia and drunken happiness, his gaze buried me in fear. “What are you here doing bitch?” This was a familiar greeting at the best of times and one to which I had grown used to with an excruciating reluctance. “Get to your room now“, he bellowed. Where’s your whore of a mother”? Reeking of beer, he fled past me. I felt a gush of air hit me. Blusteringly loud, he went straight into the kitchen. Hot with the healthy burning of chapatti aromas, my dad roared, “Why are you burning the house down, you fucking stupid woman?” At this my mum replied, I am making your dinner, Jaan”. Fear started palpably to streak across my mother’s countenance-she froze. Having the sense of a predator, he stuck her with a homicidal audacity that now replaced the fear with a nonchalant inertia; she had been beaten that much, her senses simply went on strike. Letting out a cursory squeal, my mum regained her composure and continued tossing the chapatti like tossing confetti at a wedding. After downing several pints of beer, countless Embassy filter cigarettes, doing the horses, chatting up the barmaids and talking to his friends in the pub, he was ravenous. He walked from the kitchen as he had just walked in the front door straight into the living room and waited for his lovingly-made food. Manchester was a little city at the time under and undeveloped, more like a little collection of provinces. Class ruled from the outside and colour living like varied chocolates in a box of milk tray within. Africans, Jamaicans the Irish and the Protestant C of E English, If there was any animosity towards our immediate family, then it was due to how the neighbours easily imagined what the interior of our house was like just from merely opening the front door, Cobwebs gathered around the blue paint flaking off the cornices in pleasurable abandon, the spider crawling along the trellis like rope it had made earlier, the smell from which the recipients’ nostrils ended up shellshocked as if the smell could be compared to rancid, overdue and rotten swill heading out to faraway farms for the little piggies. Or to the after smell of megaton bombs lined up then fired off as if the Cold war had become a hot one! Ashen corpses and sticky skin, teeth bared like a diseased dog’s, slivers of hot pink skin strewn over the ground like fresh pink confetti made from fresh pink roses; no thorns, all smells and smiles from the neighbours as they looked in even further to get a glimpse of the hell we endured daily. The house we all ‘lived in ( I use inverted commas as I question the validity of what lived means) was a three bed semi -detached house with a front and rear garden and garage attached precariously with -an adjoining coal shed- to the right hand side of the house. This was Victoria Park in Longsight in the early seventies. To the left of us was a black-Chinese man, (Cecil was his name, a phonetic luxuriousness to it which always calmed me as I said it over sometimes) who lived with his family, a boy and a girl- Claude and Wendy. The family name was Blacks. Claude was a clever and pleasant boy who suffered from asthma. Following an attack, he died suddenly at the age of thirteen. My mother was devastated and grieved for him almost as if he was her own son for at least a year. Wendy had learning difficulties and was very close to her father. A few years after Claude’s death, they split up, with Mrs. Black taking her daughter and moving out of the house. Mr. Black remarried and promptly moved his new, younger and more glamorous wife into the house. As neighbours, our relationship changed; we did not see him much after that. To the right of us lived a traditional Asian family- I say traditional as my family was diametrically opposed culturally; it could not be helped since my father was an alcoholic- who were called the Shafiqs. Dad owned a factory and increasingly found himself sleeping on a mattress on the premises, away from his growing children and diminutive wife-she was awfully petite and slim! The children who were similar ages to me and my siblings; consisted of Neelum, the eldest, Rizwan in the middle and the youngest-still a toddler, the same age as Fozia- was called Saima. Mother and father prayed devoutly five times a day, ate three In anticipation of fog, frost and ice- covered branches on which they could no longer sit. I was dead and he was relieved, I wasn’t coming back. How would I let the others know? Now I’d be gotten rid of forgotten discounted with pleasure and disappear like a dead star, hidden by the darkness of night in the eye of our (Milky Way-no sweets for me) galaxy. Hope was gone, dawn was dead, my spirit eked out of me like squeezing the milk out of a dandelion’s stem by an unwitting toddler pulling it innocently from the ground; one of dozens on a gorgeous summer’s day in the park local to families. Cremation came like a tsunami; no time wasted after the coroner’s quick and experienced summing up of the cause of death- I had had an ‘accident’ fell down the stairs with no restraints in place, not that it was a legal requirement in the days of the Bay City Rollers Slade, Alvin Stardust, Healey or posthumously -Martin Luther King-what the hell. Well actually, I now passionately hoped he’d go there; Gabriels’s kitchen; hot, humid and laden with fire oozing from the borders like melted, scarlet lipstick. Hearts rising, leaving damaged and naughty souls; hearts that really did not belong there; much like mine actually - a little half- beaten mulched mess moulded into a pulpy little mass sat all on its own waiting for metaphysical release. Well the dogtooth check coat became an enigmatic and mysterious loss to my eldest sibling; much as she was distraught, she accepted our father’s explanation for my weird and sudden absence.

Gone Now

Gone Now Razor-edged shards, daggers of pain educated themselves at the helm of death. Dark dark blackboards white paper and black ink calligraphic, thick and glutinous like tarry bilge, jettisoned bullets of knowledgeable pain into the lonely night. Like hardening concrete, stalagmite-like swords stabbed and prodded, bustled and nodded at each other united in agreement- He was to be the one that lonely night. Niveous angels bombed the classroom door eager to join; larrikin throngs, chaos busting its guts, getting in first, poking its finger at his head greedily ensnaring the man who was, by now- Well On His Way. His heart rufescent with heat and burning; sad pain and gurning. Evanescing from the lesson, from the still living, from life itself, the lesson came to an abrupt end. All lost. Nothing learnt. a useless worn out expiator, inexcusable, inexorable, inept; pain led him by the hand to pray now (prithee). Frigorific atmospheres ensued, the cold, hard miserable landscape, grim gloomy and glum. No smiles left. Heart slowing down, blood pressure falling spirit rising snow falling fingers freezing, ice forming. God’s angels urgently calling. He could no longer be mythomane, not with pathos knocking. Glistening there, were glittering stones of gleed taking him by the hand through God’s door. It shut. We couldn’t see him any more. Now he has gone, gone now. My beloved brother.