Page 50 of People Change

While he was relieved to see his brother, this quickly turned to dread because Mehdi wouldn’t let this go; he wouldn’t defuse a situation, of course he wouldn’t.

‘That’s my brother,’ Mehdi said, pointing to Kian. He was with his friend Marshall, who was just as big as him, muscled and tall. Together they towered over the boys from the car, even though they were probably younger than them.

‘It was a misunderstanding, mate,’ the passenger said, stuttering.

‘I don’t think it was,’ Mehdi said. ‘You touch my brother and his friends and think you can get away with it. No, no, no.’

Unlike the previous scrapping, uneven punches, pulling of bodies – a mess of a fight really – what happened next was clean and terrifying. Mehdi punched the skinhead squarely in the face, so hard that he fell to the ground instantly. Marshall grabbed the passenger by his coat, because he was about to run away, and slammed his face into the back of the car. They then proceeded to kick them both on the ground, despite their whimpering, despite the many witnesses around them, despite Kian shouting at them to stop.

‘Go home,’ Mehdi told Kian after it all. ‘And don’t tell Mum or Dad.’

Kian realised then that he had been frozen to the spot as he’d watched it happen. When he and his friends walked back home, their legs heavy with each step, they said nothing, not even Teddy. Spinning around in his head was the thought that maybe if he had defended himself properly, instead of being so weak, his brother wouldn’t have had to step in.

Maybe, if it hadn’t been for Kian, Mehdi wouldn’t have been sent to prison after all.

Old Wounds

Now

Kian’s body is shaking as he tells the full story to Shirin, though he pretends it isn’t. He has imagined her turning on him, seeing him so differently, but she only wipes tears that he didn’t even know were streaming down his face and says, ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ He says he knows it wasn’t, though that is only partly true. It doesn’t matter how many people tell him that, he knows the only way he can believe it is if Mehdi says it – and he hasn’t. He still hasn’t spoken to Mehdi about it at all since he was released, ten years ago now.

His brother now lives in Manchester with his wife and two children. He works as a substance-misuse support worker, but his road to this life was not easy. When Mehdi left juvenile prison, it was bittersweet. He returned agitated, impatient for life to resume as he’d hoped it would. He struggled to secure a job because of his criminal record. He had done poorly in the GCSEs he’d taken and, as a result, couldn’t get into college. He was lost – considering different career moves every week – limiting himself to the ones that allowed a criminal record, even though they didn’t suit his skillset. Meanwhile, Kian completed college, then moved to Glasgow to study Art at university. In the end, their parentswere so overjoyed that one of them was going to university that they didn’t fight Kian half as much as he’d expected when he told them he was going to study Art.

It was only when Mehdi dedicated himself to Islam, and began going to the local mosque, that he found some semblance of peace and calm. He met other reformed men who mentored him, related to him on a level no one else had. He completed an access course to go to university to study Psychology, and his life took a different path. Despite this, though, Kian cannot help but feel responsible for the path Mehdi could have taken. The subject of his imprisonment is glossed over. As if that year – and how it affected Mehdi’s future – never happened at all. Though Kian’s part in it, his guilt, sits heavy in his chest. It is a burden he’ll carry for ever.

A Perfect Subject

Then

Shirin was one of the few things that kept Kian afloat. Even if he never quite acknowledged it, each day when he woke up he looked forward to seeing her in school, even if it was only in passing, even if they didn’t have a chance to speak. And if they had planned to skip class together, he would think of all the things he wanted to say to her. Like had she listened to The xx before? Yes, she loved them. Did she like Kings of Leon? No, ‘Sex on Fire’ was a song that made her cringe (they then had a ten-minute debate in which he tried to convince her that she was wrong). Or sometimes they could tell that the other had something on their mind. Like when his brother got into a fight in prison, and his parents said he might not be let out after a year, which made Kian feel physically sick for days. Or when, later, they agreed just to give him a warning, because it wasn’t that severe. Back then, the world didn’t openly talk about anxiety. So Kian didn’t know the sick feeling he had was anxiety. That his thinking sometimes, over and over and over,I wish I didn't existwas an intrusive thought. It wasn’t true, because he had no intention of acting on the wish, but the sentence still pervaded his thoughts.

He had never had a friend like Shirin. He had friends he saw after school and weekends, but talking about their feelings wasn’t something they did. With Shirin he discovered that it was something he needed to do, and she was there for him. Without her he felt he would drown completely.

Decisions needed to be made. While his brother’s life was paused, his was moving on. His parents made passing comments about university, about their friend Tahereh’s son and how he was studying Engineering at Oxford, or about Pouran’s daughter, who was doing Law at UCL. In the air was expectation, though Kian preferred it to the perpetual stench of disappointment and anguish.

On a dry spring day Shirin asked, ‘What subjects are you going to study in sixth form?’

She had brought a polka-dot fleece blanket with her, which they sat on, looking ahead of them at the Humber Bridge, which had become a regular spot they met at. He often wondered who she told her parents she was seeing. Her mum had even dropped her off today, though Shirin had told Kian to pretend he didn’t know her until her mum had driven off. On the blanket between them now was a half-eaten Easter egg that they had got on clearance. They broke off pieces to eat.

He was wearing a hoodie, shorts and Converse. It wasn’t really hot enough to justify the shorts, but between the travelling clouds the sun would shine down on them, warming his legs up. Shirin wore dark jeans and a black jumper, her eyes smoky. Everything with Rob had died down, and Shirin said she was over it, but Kian knew she wasn’t completely.

He paused as though he had not thought about what he was planning to study, though he had. ‘History, Politics, English and Geography.’

Shirin’s hand landed on Kian’s shoulder. ‘Hold up. Not Art?’

He shrugged, though he didn’t mind her hand there. She removed it and clasped both her hands behind her back, like she was stretching. ‘I want to do Politics at uni, so it doesn’t make sense to do Art,’ he said.

‘But you only need three A-levels to get into a good uni – can’t Art be your fun fourth one? That’s what I’m doing with Drama.’

‘Yeah, I don’t know. My parents are having a hard time right now. I don’t want to cause any arguments or anything. And I get where they’re coming from – they just want to make sure I can get into a good uni.’ Kian felt weak saying these words aloud. It wasn’t him, he didn’t think, to be like this. But his mum was always sad now, his dad always quiet, though snappy when he needed to be.

‘I mean, do you even want to do Politics at uni? I thought you were really into art.’ She took a bite out of an uneven piece of Easter egg.

He gulped, though his throat was dry and, rather than look ahead, as he had been doing, he turned to glance at Shirin. He could feel the almost helpless look on his face as he said, ‘I dunno.’

Her face softened and she looked down for a moment before looking back up at him, this time her face more confident, less sympathetic. ‘I think you know what that means.’

‘You don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Your parents are quite relaxed with you.’ She gave him a look. ‘Obviously not with boys and stuff, but you can tell them you’re doing Drama and they will simply accept it. Mine are so stressed about my brother, and me turning out like him, they won’t let me do anything that strays from the path they want for me.’