Home Fire(52)

Isma’s hand stroking her hair, trying to take her away from Parvaiz.

“Go.”





x.


“SHATTERED AND HORRIFIED”: SISTER OF PARVAIZ PASHA SPEAKS

Early this morning, Isma Pasha, the 28-year-old sister of London-born terrorist Parvaiz Pasha, who was killed in Istanbul on Monday, read a statement to journalists outside her family home in Wembley. She said, “My sister and I were shattered and horrified last year when we heard that our brother, Parvaiz, had gone to join people we regard as the enemies of both Britain and Islam. We informed Counter Terrorism Command immediately, as Commissioner Janet Stephens has already said. We wish to thank the Pakistan High Commission in Turkey for the efforts they’re making to have our brother’s body sent to Pakistan, where relatives will make plans for his burial, as an act of remembrance to our late mother. My sister and I have no plans to travel to Pakistan for the funeral.”

Pasha’s local mosque has also issued a statement to clarify it does not intend to hold funeral prayers for the dead man, and condemned rumors to the contrary as “part of a campaign of hatred against law-abiding British Muslims.”

Pasha’s body is in a mortuary in Istanbul, and sources say it could be several days before it is released for repatriation to Pakistan.

Istanbul police have said the dead man was not carrying any weapons at the time of his death. His reasons for approaching the British consulate when he was killed remain unknown, as does the identity of his killer—described by eye witnesses as an Asian male in his 30s. Commissioner Janet Stephens has said Pasha was working with the media wing of ISIS, which is responsible for the recruitment of fighters and of so-called “jihadi brides.” Tower Hamlets resident Mobashir Hoque, whose daughter, Romana, left for Syria in January to marry an ISIS fighter, told reporters, “My daughter was tricked into going by the lies and propaganda of men such as Parvaiz Pasha. My only disagreement with the Home Secretary’s decision is that it deprives me of the chance to spit on the terrorist’s grave.”

Sources in the Home Office say the Immigration Bill due to go before Parliament in the next session will introduce a clause to make it possible to strip any British passport holders of their citizenship in cases where they have acted against the vital interests of the UK. Under present rules only dual nationals or naturalized citizens with a claim to another nationality can have their citizenship revoked. The Home Secretary has repeatedly expanded on his predecessor’s claim that “citizenship is a privilege not a right” to say “citizenship is a privilege not a right or birthright.” The human rights campaign group Liberty issued a statement to say: “Removing the right to have rights is a new low. Washing our hands of potential terrorists is dangerously shortsighted and statelessness is a tool of despots not democrats.”





xi.


Woke up to rain gusting in through the windows broken by rocks. Isma had said at least it meant they spared Aunty Naseem’s house. Isma, shattered and horrified, playing the good citizen even now, dragging her sister’s name into that shameful act. Isma, traitor, betrayer.

Alone now in the house they’d grown up in, empty, the Migrants gone with all their furniture, only a mattress for furnishing, which Kaleem Bhai and Isma dragged across the street, since you insist on sleeping here, a double mattress for both sisters but this house was for the twins only now. Made Isma leave with a shrieking flapping of arms madwoman behavior that finally drove her away. Downstairs a pounding sound, what? Someone trying to break in, to break the house from inside for the crime of having been a roof over the terrorist’s head. Picked up the electric kettle with four heat settings the closest thing to a weapon that remained. Opened the door to David Beckham, the Queen, Zayn Malik boarding up the broken windows. Beckham almost hammered his thumb in surprise. “Didn’t think anyone was here,” he said from behind the mask with the voice of Abdul.

“Better go inside there may still be journos lurking,” said Zayn Malik, who was really David Beckham’s father.

“Cuppa would be lovely, though,” said the Queen aka Nat the greengrocer, jerking her tiaraed head toward the kettle.





xii.


Countless hours of recording, and never his own voice. As though he’d started to practice disappearing long ago. Now he wouldn’t even enter her dreams. Too angry.





xiii.


HOW MANY PARVAIZ PASHAS WILL IT TAKE FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO WAKE UP?

The revelation that Adil Pasha, the father of recently dead terrorist Parvaiz Pasha, abandoned his family in order to take up jihad has not entirely come as a surprise to one former classmate of the Preston Road resident.

“There was a rumor that his father had been a jihadi in Afghanistan who died in Guantánamo,” said the classmate, who wished to remain unnamed. “His sisters always denied it and said he’d died of malaria while abroad, but Parvaiz never did. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but looking back it’s obvious he thought jihad was something to boast about when he was still just a little kid.”

Sources at the Met say Adil Pasha fought with jihadi groups in Bosnia and Chechnya in the ’90s, and traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 to fight with the Taliban. He is believed to have died soon after. “We have no idea if he was killed in a battle or died of malaria or from other causes. But if he’d ever been in Guantánamo there would have been records, and there simply aren’t,” said a retired Special Branch officer who interviewed the Pasha family in 2002. “I remember the son, Parvaiz. He was very young but was already being allowed to idolize the father who fought with Britain’s enemies. I took away the photograph album he had with pictures of his dad holding a Kalashnikov, and an inscription saying ‘One day you’ll join me in jihad.’ I recommended CPS keep a close eye on him, but unfortunately this recommendation was never taken up.”