The following is from Tariq Mehmood’s Sing to the Western Wind. Mehmood is an award-winning novelist and documentary filmmaker. His first novel, Hand on the Sun, was about a young immigrant to the UK experiencing racism in the 1970s and ’80s. He is the Co-director of the multiple-award-winning documentary Injustice, which is about people who have died in British police custody. He teaches at the American University of Beirut.

My loose aerial smacks against the outside wall. I turn and face the garden, where shadows race in front of the darkness; where the overgrown rose bush is scratching against the window, its thorns thicker than the veins in my arm, its only flower larger than my trembling fist. The reflection of my withered face, with deep sullen eyes, blurs behind raindrops sliding down the glass. An overcoat hangs on an open door behind me. I pour some whisky and knock it back. My throat burns. The scent of whisky hisses out of my nostrils.

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Pushing open the garden door, I step outside. Shadows disappear into the interlocking arms of lifeless conifers at the far end of my garden.

There is no wind and the rain has gone. My new aluminium bin is still in the middle of the garden, where I had left it, full of contents ready to burn. All that now remains is for me to lift the lid, pour the white spirit into the bin and set it on fire.

A powerful security light on one of the houses across the back alley has just come on. I lift the lid off the bin. I have shredded everything that could link the explosives to the friend who got them for me. The shreds are beneath the old clock I bought all those years ago, the one that never worked. The clock is face down on a pile of birthday cards, all marked ‘Return to sender’ in my daughter Aisha’s handwriting. I pick up a returned card and stare at the handwritten words. The curve of the ‘R’ is a perfect semi-circle that cuts through the left arm of the letter, and its right leg is slightly turned upwards, breaking just before the start of the ‘e’. The ‘t’ is crossed with a long cut. The words are close together, in a perfect straight line. There are three large exclamation marks at the end, with their dots dangling below them. The words are underlined with three deep lines, visible from the other side of the card’s envelope. I imagine Aisha scribbling these, her eyebrows curling towards each other, just like her mother’s used to when she stared unblinkingly at me. I think back to the last time I had seen the silence of those eyes.

Aisha’s eighth birthday was in a few days’ time. I had a quick pint with some mates and went home early from work. She was squatting next to her mother on a big white rug, leaning against a settee, rhythmically rocking backwards and forwards with a qaida, with which she was learning to read the Quran, repeating a letter and a word in Arabic. Her mother was leaning over an open Quran that sat in a carved wooden holder. When I walked in, she adjusted the dupatta on her head and continued moving her finger along a page, reading aloud.

Aisha looked at me, snapped her qaida shut, shot up and hopped around her mother, who grabbed her arm and yanked her down, saying, ‘Never lift your foot higher than the holy Quran.’

‘Let her go, Yasmin!’ I ordered.

Yasmin ignored me, opened Aisha’s qaida and said, ‘Repeat your lesson.’

‘How many times have I said it’s a waste of time reading words in a language you don’t understand?’

Aisha looked at me with pleading eyes. ‘You can get up, Aisha,’ I said.

Her mother glared at her. Aisha opened her qaida.

I smiled at Aisha and said, ‘Come, my daughter, let’s go for a Chinese and you can tell me what you want for your birthday.’

Aisha snatched her arm free from her mother and ran to me. Yasmin started reciting from the Quran again.

Before leaving the house, Aisha held my hand and took me to the kitchen, where her school bag was dangling off the back of a chair. She rummaged through it and handed me an envelope. It was her school report. I sat down on a chair. Aisha jumped into my lap and stared at me as I read the report: Whilst Aisha is a bright intelligent child, she gets bored quickly and is often disruptive in class.

‘Have I been a good girl, Abba?’ Aisha asked.

I kissed her on the head and said, ‘You have been an angel.’

Aisha’s face lit up with joy and she vaulted to the fridge, poured some apple juice into a plastic glass, gulped it down and tossed the empty glass into the sink before turning towards me.

As we were leaving the house, I said, ‘But it says you are sometimes a bit naughty in class.’

Aisha stepped in front of me, placed her hands on the sides of her hips and protested, ‘Dad! You’re horrible.’

‘But it also says that you are really helpful, and always listen to your teacher.’

Aisha beamed with joy, put her little hand in mine, skipped along and asked, ‘Why does Mummy never come with us to the Chinese?’

‘She just doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Tell me, what would you like?’

‘Why do grown-ups always fight?’

‘They don’t . . .’

‘When you and Mummy are not fighting fighting, you’re still fighting, just not fighting fighting.’

‘Come on, what do you want for your birthday?’ I asked.

Aisha let go of my hand, stepped in front of me, gave me a great big smile and said, ‘I’m not allowed to wear dresses now that I am growing up, Mummy says.’

‘If you want a dress for your birthday, you’ll get a dress for your birthday. And I’ll tell your mother you can wear whatever you like,’ I said, grabbing hold of Aisha’s arm just as she was about to step off the pavement.

At the Chinese, Aisha sat on one of two tall stools and insisted on eating in the shop. I stood next to her, watching her as she shoved large chunks of chicken breast into her mouth. She bit into a small ketchup packet. It burst open. Some of it dribbled into the takeaway box and some down her yellow flowery frock. Throwing a mischievous look at me, she licked ketchup out of the box.

‘That’s enough now. Let’s go home,’ I said, placing the lid back on the takeaway container.

Yasmin was in the kitchen when we came back into the house. Pointing to Aisha’s dress, I said to Yasmin, ‘You should teach your daughter some better eating manners.’

‘What good are manners when you feed my child what you do and bring unclean stuff into my house?’ Yasmin protested.

She was a small woman, much smaller than when I had first met her. Her black hair was tied into a long plait that fell over her shoulder. Her eyes were always moist, with dark patches underneath. Even in front of me, she ensured that her dupatta fully covered her head.

Giving me a cold stare, with knotted brows she said, ‘How can you give her this meat to eat?’

‘And you can really tell the difference?’ I shouted.

Aisha snatched her hand away from me, went up to her mother and hugged her.

‘Halal meat is halal, my husband.’

‘You can taste the difference, woman, can you?’

‘The difference is here,’ Yasmin said, placing her hand across her chest.

Yasmin picked up a tissue and, wiping Aisha’s mouth, added, ‘Don’t put your dirty sins on my daughter.’

‘How dare you insult me,’ I said. I pulled a chicken drumstick out of the container, tore some flesh off it, shoved it into Yasmin’s mouth and hissed, ‘Tell me the fucking difference woman. Tell me the difference!’

Placing her hands over her ears, Aisha hid behind her mother. Yasmin pulled herself away from me, turned to the kitchen sink behind her and spat out the meat. A moment later she vomited. When she had finished, she rinsed her mouth and wiped her face with her green dupatta and said calmly, almost in a whisper, ‘Do you do this to your goree, your white woman?’

How dare she bring Carol into this? I thought.

‘But then white flesh wouldn’t take it like me, eh, my husband?’ Yasmin mocked as she went past me towards Aisha, who had stood where she was, mortified. Holding onto Aisha’s hand, Yasmin led her past me. ‘No one eats in this house because you eat haram and eat that forbidden outsider,’ she said quietly.

‘And it is called soure, a pig. Yes, a pig and not an outsider,’ I retorted.

Holding tightly to her mother’s legs, Aisha said meekly as she went past, ‘Abba, I just want to be normal.’

‘You are normal, my sweet.’ Tears of frustration burnt in my eyes.

‘And you shouldn’t do this sort of thing to Mummy.’ Aisha’s words hurt me. Taking a deep breath, I said to

Yasmin, ‘I am sorry . . .’

After kissing her mother on the forehead, Aisha hopped past me and ran into the living room. Moments later the television burst into life. Yasmin closed the kitchen door with her heel and said, ‘You may be my husband.’ Lifting the lid off a pot of dhal that was simmering on the gas cooker, she added, ‘You are not my God.’

She reached up, opened a cupboard and took a bag out.

‘I have told you, this stuff will not stay in my house, my husband,’ she said, unscrewing a bottle of whisky.

‘Don’t you dare touch it, you daughter of a blind donkey,’ I yelled.

‘I cannot sleep with the knowledge that this stuff is here.’ Yasmin held her hand over her nose as she emptied the bottle into the sink.

‘It is single malt,’ I screamed. ‘You bitch!’

I gripped her hand with my left and raised my right hand to strike her. She turned to me and looked at me without blinking. I snatched what was left in the bottle, poured myself a large whisky, knocked it back, and thought while going to the dining room at the back of the house, ‘I would be better off if the bitch were dead!’

‘I beg you again my husband,’ Yasmin said, walking in after me a short while later. Placing a tray of food in front of me, she added, ‘Do not drink sharab, especially not in front of my daughter and in my house. One day she will grow up.’

Knocking the tray off the table, I said, ‘I will drink here and I will keep it here. This is my house.’

I poured myself another whisky and knocked it back in one gulp. The image of the large kitchen knife flashed through my mind. How easy it would be to slit her throat, I thought. The warmth of the whisky filled my stomach. I shook my head, hoping to chase the murderous thoughts away. But they fought back. The knife seemed to have jumped out of the drawer and was floating towards me. I stood up and shook my head again. The knife vanished. I turned to leave and as I opened the front door, she said, ‘The stench is bad enough on your breath, but what is worse is the scent of that white woman of yours.’

I did not turn around. I knew she was picking food off the floor. She waited for a response from me and then said, ‘You should not have married me when you loved another.’

I walked out into the garden, slamming the door behind me.

Standing outside the door, I thought, how dare she bring Carol into everything? I should have left her in the village. She would never stop.

I was about to go back inside when she opened the door, knife in hand. I stepped inside, grabbed her hand with the knife, put the tip of the blade on my chest and said, ‘Go on, do it!’

I was trembling with rage. She stared at me coldly.

‘Let go of my Mummy now, Abba!’ Aisha said, bursting into the kitchen. She ran at me and bit my leg.

I shook my leg and Aisha stumbled backwards screaming, ‘Mummy!’

‘Aisha, go into the other room,’ Yasmin said.

Aisha went out of the room and shut the door, shouting, ‘I hate you, Abba!’ over and over again. I let go of Yasmin and pushed her away from me, saying, ‘This has to end.’

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From Sing to the Western Wind by Tariq Mehmood. Used with permission of the publisher, Verso Fiction. Copyright © 2025 by Tariq Mehmood.