Shaheed!

Chapter 1: Heathrow will be Easy

The passengers pressed forward with the urgency of goats escaping a pen.

An air hostess with rose-red lipstick bid Jahangir farewell. Corporate advertising decorated the metal passageway, though Jahangir did not understand what it was selling. He halted, seeing a yellow "Passport Control" sign ahead. The crowd surged past, staring at him as though he were from another world.

Jahangir wore the clothes of a fakir tending goats in the mountain valleys of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district. Not long ago he had used his patkay headscarf to tie a mule. Before he died, Jahangir's uncle had told him Heathrow would be easy. Two weeks dead and the memory wrapped his heart in razor wire.

On the moving walkway, he listened to the hum of machinery. There would be a party, with family, friends and neighbours all invited. That would come after Passport Control.

Unwrapping his patkay, he hung it over his shoulders. "Let them see your face," Uncle Khoshal had said. Jahangir swept a hand through his long hair. "If something happens to me, you will have to continue on your own." It had unnerved Jahangir; he would be lost without his uncle. Now, amidst all the airport signs, he was lost.

"If I am killed, go to Peshawar and find Atal's shop. When it is time to leave, Atal will drop you near the first airport checkpoint, and from there you must have a heart of iron. Remember - show no emotion. If you were to cry, the airline people might tell Border Control. They will ask, 'Why is this fourteen-year-old so unhappy?' Then everything becomes difficult."

Jahangir didn't sleep on the aeroplane. Taliban strictures against music and film meant he had avoided the in-flight entertainment. In any case, the video wouldn't have had subtitles in Pakhto. At most, he might have heard a Pakhtun cleric railing, or a mother wailing in the background of a news report about yet another bombing.

Reaching the main hall, Jahangir joined a queue of EU passport holders. In front, twenty people or so waited to hand documents to uniformed officers in the glass booths. Most were returning from business in the Middle East. The P.A. system, left switched on, buzzed overhead like a monster fly.

Hundreds of white people flooded into the Passport Control hall, returning from various holiday destinations. Children tagged along in the snaking queues. Back in Peshawar, three white men had boarded the plane. Everyone assumed they were intelligence officers working with NGOs.

Westerners risked being kidnapped and sold to militants, who made movies of beheadings. "Peshawar was once a beautiful city," Atal had said as they walked one evening. "Just look what they have done to it." A recent explosion had left a shop a burnt-out shell. Neighbouring shops wore a patina of black carbon in memory of the fire.

Ten people to go until he handed over his passport.

Jahangir tried to slow his heart rate by controlling his breathing. His uncle had taught him how to regulate his breathing the first day Jahangir had held a rifle. "Over a long distance," his uncle whispered as Jahangir aligned the scope on a hare, "even the movement from your heartbeat can make you miss. Take a few quick breaths. Then hold your breath in as you sight the target. Gently, gently, squeeze the trigger." A loud crack and the animal was dead. Uncle Khoshal was delighted.

More Heathrow arrivals poured into the hall as incoming planes landed. The queues snaked back to the rear of the hall. Imagine being there, Jahangir thought, then wished he was.