Mahmood

One day a few older boys come in to the shop. One’s communicating with me and the others are monitoring the cameras. He says to me, “You got my boy arrested.” For a minute I was confused. “Who?” And another of them says the same thing: “You got my boy arrested. The other night at your shop.” That’s when I understood who they were talking about.

“Well,” I said, “they came to shoplift and took everything from my shop.” And one goes, “You should have let them.” I got a bit angry and said, “Why – was it your shop? Do I work for you that I should let someone take stuff?” I was standing behind the counter and one of the boys came really close to me, face to face, and said, “What you going to do if I take stuff now?” Two of them had their hands in their pockets. In my mind they might have something. I’m alone, I’ve got nothing to protect myself. I went quiet.

Luckily for me my brother walks in and says, “What’s wrong?” I told him. One of the boys goes, “You should’ve let them do it. Things like this happen.” My brother said, “Why? How would you like it if I came to rob your house and ran away?”

The boys left. As they went, one of them gave me a kind of a look that said ‘watch your back’.

I calmed my brother down and told him to let it go. We rang the police. They came after about five hours, took a statement and said they would monitor the CCTV camera. My brother emphasised that they’ve given us serious threats: “We want you to take it on board.”

The officer said “We’ll do what we can.”

In school I was protected by my friends. There were some problems with skinheads. I used to walk to school with two of my friends. I’m asthmatic and I was late one day so I got to the first one’s house and he had gone. When I got to the second one’s house, he had gone too. So I started walking, and there were these two English boys and their dogs.

At that time I was scared of dogs. As I was walking, one of them got the dog and tried to scare me but – I don’t know what happened – the dog got out of its lead and started chasing me. I ran and ran and ran. An elderly English gentleman saw me as I got near school; he saw I was out of breath and I couldn’t take a step further. I was going to drop. He grabs hold of me, gets me a glass of water and says, “Relax”.

He got the lads to stop the dog. He walked me all the way into school and made me sit down at the table and I think he went to the reception area and told them what happened.

When my tutor came in he came straight up to me. We went outside the classroom and I told him everything. Then he took me to the head of year. I described what the boys looked like. Head of year called them in. Headteacher was there, and the guys’ parents were there, and the only thing the head teacher said to me was, “Mahmood, the decision is yours. If you want I’ll expel them straight away.”

And then I said to my head teacher, “Sir, I do not want to expel them. I forgive them.” And from then till college those two boys were my best friends.

We shook hands and stuff, and every time they walked with me and made sure that no one would say anything. So even in my high school I was protected. That’s the way I had it all the time with my friends. You can say they were my guardian angels.

The ambulance people come and they put me on a stretcher. They asked me two questions: “What’s your name and where do you live?” I told them my name and I saw him writing something on his hand.

When I was in the ICU ward I only saw like four faces that were saying my name and they put me into critical ward. Wednesday I got hit, Thursday I spent the whole night in coma and Friday evening is when I came round.

Saturday morning when I was proper awake, that’s when I realised what happened to me, because I couldn’t move anything on my right side. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t whisper. I just cried. I cried and cried and cried, and any visitors that came, I couldn’t get up to see them. It was like a dead body but just breathing. And I thought to myself, ‘Rather than being like this, I’d rather just die.’

When the police took my statement they said they would do this, this and this – put it on Crimewatch, do a witness appeal, because they were not getting anything.

One question that kept pissing me off was when they said to me, “Are you going to take revenge?”

I’m against that. What am I going to get out of taking this further? I’m going to have a friend or my brother or my cousin in a bed next to me. Either one of mine’s going to go to a grave or one of theirs is going to go to a grave. And I don’t want that.

That’s what I said to my friends and everyone: “Don’t do nothing because I don’t want to see any of you guys in here. If you want to do anything for me, try and get me justice.”

In my life, touch wood, to this day I’ve never raised my hand against anyone, or even raised my voice. I’ve had friends who have got on the wrong side of me but I’ve never said nothing. Even if my own friends are fighting I’d say, “What you lot doing? Grow up, solve through talk, through peace.”

Then police came and said “We’re not putting it on Crimewatch”. Why? “We think it’s not worth putting it on.” “Why?” No answer. I wanted it to be on Crimewatch because they had no forensic evidence.

They had thrown Crimewatch out the scene, they threw the witness appeal out of the scene – that’s when they do a TV thing and get me to appeal with my family – that went out the window as well. And I was getting annoyed, saying, “What is happening with my case?”

When they first came to do the ID parade and I was going through all the pictures, I said clearly, “These are all involved; they’re all involved”. They said “You just look for the one that hit you, we’ll deal with the rest”. The last two, three pages, his picture came up. I said, “Hold this picture,” went through the last two pages, came back and said, “That’s him.”

I identified the person who attacked me and I even identified the people that were with him. They didn’t arrest. They go, “There’s no evidence so we can’t arrest”. They said to me that “the case is in your hands. You’ve identified your attacker. You wouldn’t even have a case otherwise.”

What’s that supposed to mean, I don’t have a case? I’ve spent ten months in hospital, my life’s jeopardized, I can’t work, I have nightmares, I have flashbacks. My life is messed up physically, financially, emotionally, and you’re saying to me the case is in my hands. What are you lot for? Just to show me your faces and never do anything?

In my case they had a good fifty, sixty statements – police, witness, hospital statements – and you’re telling me you still can’t get the others?

I still remember when I gave my first statement and there was an Asian officer – I think he was Indian. He said it straight to the officer that was with him: “The time you’ve taken to do this interview here, within this time the others would’ve been inside.”

The police wouldn’t even speak to my dad and brother, even though they knew I couldn’t speak much and it affects me emotionally. They go, “We only want to speak to Mahmood. We’re not speaking to anyone else.” Why not? I’ve given my family authority, you’ve seen me in hospital, why are you saying this?

Some day he’ll be out, and all of them will reunite again, and this time it might not be me, but it will be someone else.

I’ll tell you now, the case thing hurts me more than the attack.

I still think the police could’ve done something.

I still feel that. Bullshit law, bullshit law.

At home, family say I’ve gone more aggressive. I go touchy on little things and my friends say it as well. Before my injury I never used to care what people say. Never. When I found someone’s talking about me in a nasty way I always used to say, “Rather than you talking about me, look your own way and analyse yourself.”

But now when someone says something, I get emotional, and think, ‘If I didn’t have this injury, I wouldn’t be where I am.’

Anything I do now is going to be harder for me.

I feel someone else’s pain more now because of what I’ve been through. I’ll never forget the night it happened or the days that I spent in hospital. Ten months in hospital is a long time. Every day after you’ve done your therapies, and everyone goes home and you’re sitting alone on that bed, you ask yourself questions. “Why me? Why did I go wrong? I don’t deserve this.” And even till today I say I did not deserve it.

I’m very emotional. Say you put on any film and there’s a crying scene, I’ll start crying. The other day I was watching a film, I can’t remember the name now, and there was a crying scene and my little sister goes to me, “Why’re you crying?” And I go, “I don’t know, I just feel like crying because they’re crying.” And she goes, “Grow up. You’re old now. You should come out of all that.”

I’m closer to my sisters than to my brothers, because whenever my sisters need anything doing they come to me first and ask my advice. My brothers do what they want to do and then tell me afterwards.

I’m really close with my mum. With my incident, my mum was shocked and everyone feared for her, because she just went into a bad phase.

We all live together. My second youngest brother, he’s working, looking after the shop, and my other brother, he’s at university doing his final year in information systems. So work-wise I don’t harass him, but the one at the shop, I’m always asking what is going on in there. Full detail report of the day.

There are a few details that they don’t tell. Like when customers are argumentative. I know recently there was something like that, but they won’t tell me. I rang one of the persons at the takeaway who I’m friends with. I wanted to talk to him about something, and he mentioned that this is what happened. I go, “No one told me.” He goes, “It was not to be told.”

At home I try to be as normal as I can so my parents, brother and sisters don’t need to take up unnecessary stress. I’ve been in severe pain and I just take a tablet and stay at home, and don’t say I’m in pain. Because the minute I say I’m in pain everything will be, “Shall we do this, shall we do that?” Or, “Lie down and do nothing.”

Right now all my decisions are being made for me at home. Yeah, they get discussed, but then that’s not my decision. It’s just a verbal agreement. The business is only mine in name now. The person who’s running it comes only once a month, that’s if he has issues in the shop, and my dad and my brother deal with all of it.

In this kind of condition, how I’m perceived matters a lot. I don’t want people to have negative thoughts about me.

Even on the tube I’ll be looking around. I know when a particular face is actually looking at me and I know he’s looking at my condition and there’s a lot of things in his head right now. Even when I go shopping with my mum, I’ll say to her, “Look, he’s looking at me like this.” And then my mum’ll say, “You just think like that. No they’re not.” I go, “Trust me.”

Alright, they might not be completely, but I know: he’s seen me walk and the thought that’s running in his head is “Why?” You can tell me not to think like that, but I’m telling you this is happening, and I don’t want anyone to think negatively of me.

Right now I can say I’m slowly coming out of that shell, but I’m not out completely. I still lock myself in my room. Just lock the door and stay there till I feel comfortable and confident to walk out of my room and go sit downstairs.

I’ve still got to get myself out because, OK, everyone has a bit of fear in them. But I can say that after my injury I fought my own death and woke myself up to recovery level. I’ve got belief that Allah will help me and make me strong. He’s helped me up to here and with his help I’ll be able to fight anything else as well.