Books by Tariq Mehmood

A topical tale of two Muslin schoolgirls in search of belonging and their attempt to come to terms with religious and social identity. Set against a backdrop of seething Islamaphobia.

A suicide bombing is being planned in Manchester, UK. Behind it lie Saleem Khans vivid memories - some full of regret and yearning, other humorous and yet others overshadowed by the surreal brutality of the war.In the 60s, he leaves his lover, his job as a teacher and his home in the rural Pakistan and travels to Bradford, a town seething with racism where Asians are Pakis and their labour is cheap. He finds a job working in a mill on an all-Asian night-shift, becomes an active trade unionist and when the mills close down, he drives a taxi. He gives up his religion and eventually falls in love with an English woman.But in the 1980s Pakistan draws him back. Now regarded as a smart abroadi, he gets involved as the English-speaking partner in his cousins transport business. When a truck driver he knows, does not return to base, he sets out to find him and unwittingly gets drawn across the border and into the killing fields of Afghanistan. Here, among Russian soldiers, Saudi Arabian Sheikhs, American Pirs, prostitutes and the holy warriors of the Mujahadeen, who take their orders and weapons from the United States, he meets Gulzarina, the woman whose life and experiences in a war without end allow him to finally make sense of his own.