Fair Game Read Free

the name of his father. They had accepted that and Simeon Khalid was the name on his driving licence and his tax file, and it was the name on the British passport that he was eventually given. Simeon Khalid had nothing but contempt for the British but he was happy to take advantage of their stupidity.
    There were four Somalis sitting at the second table, two teenagers in cheap suits and ill-fitting shirts, and an older couple, worried parents. The woman was holding back tears, occasionally dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Her husband was a big man but stooped with age, and he sat with his arms folded and stared straight ahead, a battered trilby on the table in front of him. The two teenagers were the accused, and they were the reason that the gar had assembled.
    A Somali man in his twenties was standing at the door to the café, looking out. ‘He is coming, Wiil Waal,’ he hissed.
    Crazy Boy nodded. At the gar he was referred to as Simeon Khalid but among his friends and within the Somali community he was Wiil Waal, Crazy Boy. The gar was where the Somali community resolved conflicts and where justice was handed out. Two of the men sitting opposite Crazy Boy were in their seventies, elders of the Somali community, men whose wisdom was revered and whose judgement was accepted by all. In between them sat a man in his fifties, bald and overweight and wearing a crumpled linen jacket, his lips blackened from chewing khat leaves. He was the aggrieved party and he wanted justice from the gar .
    The man who ran the café was in his sixties, and had been one of the first refugees to leave Somalia after the civil war began in 1991. He had worked hard, but a gambling habit meant that he had little to show for a lifetime of toil and he now worked for Crazy Boy. Crazy Boy nodded at him and the man began busying himself at the tea urn. A middle-aged man in a raincoat pushed open the café door. His name was Sadiiq and he nodded at Crazy Boy. Crazy Boy nodded back. Sadiiq had also sought refuge in England at the start of the civil war and had been one of the first Somalis to move into Ealing. He sat on the local council and was often sought out by journalists to comment on news stories involving the Somali community. Sadiiq held the door open so that his companion, an old man in a heavy wool coat, could enter. He was in his seventies with a full head of curly hair that had gone grey many years earlier and his knuckles were swollen with arthritis. ‘ Ma nabad baa? ’ he said as he took the empty seat next to Crazy Boy. The question wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular, it was the standard Somali greeting. ‘Is it peace?’
    The men at the table nodded and mumbled, ‘ Waa nabad .’ It is peace.
    Sadiiq pulled up a chair and squeezed in between two of the elders, muttering an apology.
    ‘I am sorry for my lateness,’ said the old man in Somali. ‘My wife is ill and I had to change her dressing.’ The man’s name was Mohamed Dhamac Taban, and all the men at the table knew that his wife was dying from cancer. No one knew for sure how old Taban was, not even the man himself. His birth had never been registered in Somalia and he had made up a date when he’d arrived in England in 1985.
    ‘The gar is not in session until you are at the table,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘We all hope and believe that God will smile at your wife and help her in your time of need.’
    Taban nodded without smiling, accepting the kind words but knowing in his heart that there was nothing that could be done to help his wife.
    The waiter appeared with a tray of glasses containing milky black tea flavoured with ginger, cinnamon and green cardamom pods. He carefully placed a glass in front of each of the men and a bowl of sugar cubes on each table.
    Crazy Boy waited patiently for Taban to sip his tea. As the oldest member of the Somali community, Taban was the head of the gar and was entitled to deference and respect but Crazy Boy knew that the old