Free If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn Page B

information, however small or seemingly insignificant, please contact this number . . .’
    I knew I should call that number, tell them what I’d seen, get Behrouz Sahar cleared of being a terrorist. But I couldn’t. Because of Dad. Whatever he’d done, he was still my father. I couldn’t risk him going back to prison.
    My mind raced with shock, anger, pity, guilt.
    What you going to do, Dan? What you going to do?

ALIYA
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    W PC Rennell drove me to a busy district of London called King’s Cross. The hotel was a tall narrow building down a side street, with the name Holly Lodge painted over the door and a sign in the window that said VACANCIES in winking blue lights. She hurried me past the deserted reception desk, up to the first floor, and pointed down a narrow corridor.
    â€˜You’ve got rooms 11 and 12. Do you want me to come in with you?’
    I looked into her scrubbed, shiny face. She gazed back as if she was still trying to work out what to make of me. ‘No, thank you,’ I said.
    â€˜OK. Here are your keys. I’ll be back first thing. Remember, stay inside as much as you can and don’t getfriendly with the other guests. If anyone asks who you are, you say your family name is Tarin and you’re down from Birmingham sorting out your visas. Any problems, call us immediately.’
    I took the keys and walked away, keeping my eyes fixed on the worn red carpet. I didn’t glance back until my fingers were on the door handle. She gave me a nod. I took a long slow breath and went inside. Mina was asleep on the bed. My mother was beside her, staring at the television. She didn’t look up when I came in and just went on running her prayer beads through her fingers, murmuring that Behrouz was a good boy, her firstborn, the apple of her eye. I should have gone to her, taken her hands, comforted her, but I couldn’t find the strength. I followed her eyes to the screen and kept them there, held by a strange sort of fascination. She was watching Mr Brody. He was standing outside Meadowview, telling the reporters that he’d had his suspicions about us from the minute we’d moved in and that this is what happened if you let scum into the country. Another man came on, a policeman who said that people like Behrouz ‘represented the worst kind of danger to the public, because they weren’t known to the police or the security services’. When the reporter asked him why the police hadn’t arrested any other members of Al Shaab, he looked angry and said they were doing everything they could but Al Shaab was an elusive organization with no traceable links to any other terror group.
    I looked away and gazed at the bumpy beige wallpaper, the thin green curtains, the battered brown furniture and the big plastic bag stuffed full of our things on the floor. I rummaged inside it for my purse and slipped downstairs. I didn’t know where I was going. I just needed to get away, to feel free again, but the cool night air and the rush of lights made me dizzy after the gloom of the hotel, and the sight of Behrouz’s photo staring from a news-stand made me want to cry out. The streets were crowded and it felt as if every face I passed was watching me, accusing me, condemning me: the man in the parked car, the homeless woman curled in her sleeping bag, the pizza-delivery boy revving his scooter. I wanted to scream at them that Behrouz was not a terrorist and that I was going to prove it. I slowed down, overcome by a sudden hopelessness. How could I prove anything? I was alone in a foreign city full of angry people who were convinced that my brother wanted to kill them.
    A crowd of men pushed past me. They knocked me off the kerb, shouting words I didn’t understand, and pulled at my headscarf. I ducked away from their tattooed arms and slopping beer cans and started to run. I heard them coming after me, roaring, laughing, swearing. I rushed