krugerkat
Synopsis
Memories of a violent protest in which his older brother was killed have long-lasting consequences on Xander. His family disintegrates. There are arguments in the dark. He has nightmares. After his mother can no longer bear the grief of living in the place she blames for killing her eldest son, she leaves with Xander to a neighbourhood that's supposed to bring her piece of mind. While she works double shifts to pay the rent, he focuses on being the good son. As the years pass, he loses contact with his Turkish father and a community where he no longer fits in.
In high school he meets Pippa Rose, a brilliant girl with revolutionary ideas. She brings him into her social circle, one that wants to be an agent of change in a world they see as broken. He's forced to face the dark shadows of his past and choose between what's right and what's wrong.
Excerpt
Fadi was the one who threw the Molotov cocktail. There was a time when I didn't know what dangers lurked within one. Some weeks before, sitting in front of the telly watching Al-Jazeera, he explained the flaming bottle as our father screeched obscenities at the images of soldiers, of women and children, of people we were supposed to feel some kind of kinship or extreme hatred toward. Unlike the moving pictures in front of us, things were black and white to him. It was like that with everything for Baba. Even down to the food that he ate: searingly hot or frigidly cold. Anything in between was downright wrong.
Before I knew what a match and the flick of a wrist could unleash, I thought cocktails were something rich people drank as they stood around in pretty dresses and fancy tuxedos while the rest of the world ducked and covered. These were the privileged. Those who didn't understand the word excess or waste. Meanwhile, we lived lean lives filled with hand-me down possessions. What we didn't grow in our own garden, we frugally made up for in discounted produce. And what we didn't eat, Baba forced down his own gullet. He had no appetite for waste. That was a luxury for the rich.
The cocktail in Fadi's hand was not meant for a black-tie affair. I knew it right away. I could sense the danger in the scent of petrol. The promise of devastation in the flint of the lighter. The spark of something that would change our lives forever with a simple trigger of his thumb. Around us, things had already gone sour. His friends were jeering him on in Turkish. Ahead of us, the line of riot gear stood solid in defence.
Buildings were shuttered around the crowd that lined this side of the divide with broken glass glimmering in between us. There was a thrum of anger in the air from young men mostly, boys just older than Fadi. And among them there was me. I was just a kid. Ten years old the week before and tagging along despite their protests.
It was his friend—the one who always punched me too hard in the arm and got pissy when I cried, the one who was so much of a tosser that I don't remember his name—he was the one who lit the petrol-soaked rag. I watched the flame, fascinated by how it came to life so quickly. When I looked up at Fadi, I could see the terror in his eyes—in all their eyes as they stepped back from him. In his hand was everything they thought they wanted. Careful what you wish for.
I didn't know then that he didn't have a choice. We were crowded in among the throng of dissatisfied, hostile youth. He couldn't just drop the bottle. Not without harming us—me, his kid brother in the mix.
And then he did it. The Molotov cocktail soared through the air in a fiery arc like a phoenix in flight. When it landed, clumsily, it burst into a deadly blast. Everything was alight, reflecting on the clear shields of our enemy. Beyond their visors, the fire burnished in their already alert eyes. Our thin hold together—as a group, as friends, as brothers—was coming apart at its very seams. Thing is, we weren't standing in the streets of Afghanistan or Iraq or some other place on earth where peace was just a word. Just a moment between gunshots.
We were in London. And what happened on that scorched day in August was just the beginning of the end. Fadi never made it home that night. Or any other night since then.
