And this is the point at which faces turn away, in embarrassment or pain, as a mother runs wailing across a street, as an ambulance is heard in the distance, as a father stands beating himself around the head, a mutely screaming son clinging to his knee.
The old woman in number twenty turns away, she has been standing by her window with her husband, watching, he is standing tall with one arm around her and the other gripping the windowsill. She is hunched over, turned into his chest, looking up at him, mouthing something like oh lord oh lord oh that poor poor boy oh lord over and over. He turns and guides her away from the window, he lays both hands on her shoulders, protectively.
The young man in number eighteen turns away, he can hardly breathe, he stumbles onto his sofa and tips his face to the ceiling. There is a feeling like a rope circled around his chest, I was not quick enough is all he is thinking, I was not quick enough and the thought clamps down upon him like a vice.
The man with the burnt hands turns away, he turns to the boy’s father and takes hold of his wrists, pulls them away from his head. It hurts him to do so, violently, the strain of gripping is pulling and cracking his scarred skin, but he does this, he pulls the man’s hands to his side and looks him in the eye and says, enough, now, this is no good, your boy. And the man straightens his distorted face, looks down to his son, picks him up and whispers hushush it is okay.
His daughter stands at her window, not watching. She has taken another ribbon and wound it around her face, across her eyes, there is smooth silk where her eyes might be, she is perfectly still.
And the ambulance arrives, and the paramedic crouches over the boy, his fluorescent jacket rustles and squeaks, he puts down a plastic case like a box of tools, he presses two fingers against the boy’s neck. What’s his name love he says to the boy’s mother. His name is Shahid she says, and the paramedic starts repeating it, shining a light into the dying boy’s eyes, hello Shahid, Shahid can you hear me, hello Shahid?
And behind him, watching, his mother is murmuring his name as well. Shahid, his name is Shahid. His name is Shahid Mohammed Nawaz. His name is Shahid.
There are faces at windows up and down the street, faces in frames like portraits in a gallery. The man with the tattoo, the boyfriend of the woman with the henna-red hair, stretching his head from the high window, a jarful of petals in one hand. The architect boy at number eleven, a pen behind his ear and another clamped between his teeth, his fists stacked on top of each other and holding up his chin like a greek column. The girl and the boy at number twenty-seven, naked, a duvet held up across their chests like a beach-towel, squashed together in the small square of the window, their skin creased from being so long in bed and their hands covering their mouths.
And so they pick him up, Shahid, they lay him on a stretcher and they roll the stretcher into the ambulance. And his mother gets into the ambulance with him, and as the ambulance driver closes the doors he meets the eyes of the paramedic and an understanding passes between them. The ambulance leaves the street, the siren is sounding but the vehicle is not moving as fast as it could be.
The man with the sponge, dabbing at his forehead with an unfolded white handkerchief, he offers to drive the father and the children, the father calls to his daughter, she comes running from the house and they all squeeze into his shining car and disappear around the corner.
And that’s all there is. That’s it. There is no pause or rewind, there is no image enhancement, no recording of the moment beyond a thick streak of black rubber smeared across the road, a stain which itself will soon fade. Later, the police may come and take measurements, make estimates regarding speed of impact, suggest possible causes. They might ask people living in the street what they saw this afternoon, what exactly did they see please. Later, possibly, a court will sit silently considering the facts and opinions, and maybe they will pass judgement upon the young man still sitting in his new car. But the moment will never be again, the moment is gone.
The two girls on the front step of number twenty-two, sitting and watching and not speaking, they look at the girl with the long straight hair, the girl whose lips still taste of the young boy’s mouth, they look to her as she walks towards them. She stops, and she crouches by them, she says no, no chance, he was already, he had no chance, and she stands and walks into her house,
and the boy with the soapy trainers stands and follows her and closes the door.
The young man at number eighteen, sitting low in his sofa and holding his chest, he can think of nothing else, he will never think of anything else. I could have saved him is what he is thinking, I could have, there was something, maybe, and then underneath this thinking, shamefully, there is the thought that she was watching and she would have seen.
The thin bearded man, from number thirteen, he picks up his son from the floor, he kisses him gently on the cheek and whispers something to him, he holds him to his chest and picks up his tricycle with the other hand, he carries his son back to his house. As they pass number seventeen, the father catches the eye of the boy with the shirt and tie, standing in his doorway, but nothing is said and they both look away. And the son pokes his head above the father’s shoulder, like a soldier from a trench, he stares at the end of the street, he blinks once and he stares.
At the end of the street, the man with the ruined hands stands with his arms wrapped around his daughter, he watches the traffic on the main road, re-forming after the ambulance’s passing, like the surface of a pond stilling from a stone’s entry.
He thinks of the boy’s mother, saying his name, he echoes her, he mouths the words, Shahid Mohammed, Shahid Nawaz, he wants to call it out loud, he lifts his face and lets his lips shape the words, miming a bellow, Shahid Mohammed, Shahid Nawaz, he thinks oh Allah have mercy let the whole world hear. He imagines what would happen if the whole street called his name, joining with the mother’s small voice, the whole street lifting the words and the words spreading through this city, taking flight like a flock of birds at dusk, clouding the sky, the voices allpresent, across fields and forests and oceans, sent out, transmitted, broadcast, on BBC and CNN, satellite and terrestrial and international optic fibres, on billboards and buses and videoscreens, on flyers and posters and newsjournals and magazines, the information, the name, pouring down from the sky like electronic rain, out from this one street and sucked down into the lightning-rod antennas that bristle from mansions and shantyhouses across all our misconnected world, a chorus of name-saying, a brief redemptive span of attention.
He imagines this, he whispers the name alone, Shahid Mohammed, and his voice does not rise even above the sound of a passing car.
But he whispers it all the same, like a prayer, he has no faith but the words keep coming, he thinks oh inshaallah let the whole world hear, let the whole world listen for a moment, his name is Shahid, Shahid Mohammed Nawaz, and he is dying.
Halfway across the city, in the back of the ambulance, Mrs Nawaz is holding her son’s hand. She is talking to him, she is telling him how special he is and how special he will always be, she is talking in her parents’ language and in her son’s language, she squeezes his hand and she shakes it a little as she speaks.
At number eighteen, the young man with the dry eyes is realising something is wrong, something is very wrong, there is a scorching pain through his left arm and into his chest, there is a crushing around his ribcage that feels like it will snap his bones. He is trying to breathe, but his mouth feels stuffed full of rags and paper.
In the ambulance, the paramedic glances up at the boy’s mother, and he takes hold of the boy’s hand himself. He squeezes it, and he says his name, Shahid. Mrs Nawaz squeezes her son’s hand tighter, as tightly as she held her husband’s hand the day she gave birth.
In his room, the young man with the dry eyes hammers at his chest with a weak fist. Suddenly, almost silently, he is dying, and he stands and thrashes around the room to escape it, pulling down curtains, spilling his box of packed possessions, knocking a small clay figure to the floor.
And there is an interruption in the way of things, a pause, something faint like the quivering flutter of a moth’s rainsodden wings, something unexpected. Something remarkable.
In the ambulance, Shahid breathes suddenly and violently through his nose, spraying blood and phlegm over the hands of his mother and the paramedic, a splutter that sets off sensors and alarms, the siren suddenly louder, the paramedic moving the mother to one side and calling through to the driver.
In his room, the young man lies on the floor, utterly still. Scattered around him there are broken plates and mugs, a torn poster, curtain hooks. He will stay here for three more days, and it will only be once his brother has telephoned, and banged on the door, and fetched the landlord, that he will be found and taken away.
And the ambulance passes on through the city, the traffic parting around it like the red sea, the city bearing it up, fast through the afternoon, along steaming pockmarked streets lined with parades of pubs and shops, past old factories with fading nameplates and retail outlets with neon signs, past the cinema and the bowling alley and the twenty-four-hour garage.
A row of taxis with their doors hung open.
A park full of children and parents and dogs, topless gardeners tugging out weeds.
The ambulance passes on through the city, through a red light, past a dead queue of traffic, up onto the dual carriageway, lifted high on concrete stilts over houses and shops, passing between two tall block buildings, dropping back down and left past a pub with a siege of shirt-sleeved drinkers, right past the supermarket and the carpark crammed with cars.