Forest Gate by Peter Akinti Read Free Book Online Page B

tone.
    'What, so we can end up like you?' said James. 'Eating stuffed-crust pizza all alone on a Monday night?'
    The old man slammed a meaty fist on their table, spilling a glass of orange juice and sending a fork clattering to the floor and causing heads to turn. The restaurant quietened as he waved the newspaper at them.
    'I got sons older than you. If you were my boys I'd kick your cursed arses. Join the army if you don't got nothing to do. Get yourselves fucking jobs, you stupid black boys. You gotta work. Stop killing each other, making us all look bad. I been here forty-six years. Never been arrested, much less seen a gun. In my day we knew about hard work. What happen to y'all? Go to school and get a job like everybody else. Lickle shits.'
    The old man tossed the newspaper on their table. The headline was about the murder of a black boy; the article said he was in a gang.
    'What the hell is y'all doing?' A neon light illuminated the sweat on his face and his eyes were wide. 'I bet you can't even read.'
    When the waitress and her manager asked the man for calm, he pushed past them and headed towards the glass front door. He turned and pointed a finger at my brother.
    'One day you'll wake up and you'll be sorry for your sins. You mark what I'm saying. Get a job, stupid lickle shits.' The old man opened the door, pulling the zip on his coat. He grimaced at the stiff breeze and then left. James and Ashvin accepted the manager's gesture of free ice cream and a small discount from their bill. They were both rather embarrassed when they left.
    When I think back to James and Ashvin's first encounter I worry about the inner promptings of our souls and I get confused about whether we are ever in control of our own actions. Ashvin and James were reserved and private, but both full of wit. They had a deep distrust of people and they regarded themselves as outcasts.
    Before that night with James, Ashvin had never spoken about the deaths of our parents. Not even with me. But he found himself speaking freely to James. He told James all about our father, who was shot dead, about our mother who was also shot after she was raped by the same armed gang.
    Our parents loved each other and our upbringing was a reflection of that love, our home a simple one. My mother had grown up in Scandinavia where her father had fled after leaving Somalia. She had a PhD in art history and she loved to paint although she wasn't very good. My father would joke that he spent more money on paint than on food. What made our father stand out from his peers was the way he expressed the love he held for our mother. They met in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, studying for the same paper on English literature. My father was strong-minded and fearless and he was so handsome he was almost intimidating. He was a professor of English at Mogadishu University and regularly published essays in political journals; he was a contributing reporter for Waayaha Press and the only Somali stringer for the New York Times . His constant and unabated criticism of sharia law, warlords, corruption in big business, and other general government internal policies eventually led to his death.
    They whipped my father and then shot him in the legs and made him watch while they mauled my mother. Most Somali houses have only two rooms. Ashvin, hiding in our third, saw the whole thing. I was late home from school. I am slowly forgetting the events of the day my parents died but I have a vivid memory about that night. By the time I had returned, Ashvin had put our parents' bodies beside each other and we lay silently with them until morning. We slept together as we had on many previous occasions, only that night our parents remained still. My brother wept with such lack of control it seemed almost primordial. I followed his lead but although I was older and in just as much pain, he was vastly more complex than I was. I did not really understand the magnitude of our loss. Ashvin cried long