The Island of Hope

By S. H. Miah

One man's epic journey towards faith and redemption.

 

Jacob Lannister suffers mentally after fighting in the Iraq war. Not from what he saw, but the suffering he caused. Living alone in London, his life swirls in a quiet chaos.

 

Unforeseen circumstances force him to travel to an elusive island off the coast of Mauritania, named the Island of Hope.

 

Jacob discovers a way of life far beyond anything he imagined. And realises that the path to redemption is closer than he could've ever believed.

 

But will he take that leap of faith?

 

A heart-wrenching redemption story amidst the backdrop of a beautiful Muslim island. Let S. H. Miah's latest epic story whisk you away today.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muslim Fiction Project
• Release date: Feb 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224492992

Book preview

Chapter 1

Brian Street Park held something special about it for Jacob Lannister. The grass, now an ash grey that mimicked the clouds acting like ghouls above, used to field a lushness that swished over his feet when he crossed through it, hiding from his mother who would, contrary to the straightforwardness of other uppity parents, wade through it in playful search for her son.

The play area of the park was on the south side, situated between two large grass areas where not a single day passed wherein a football match wasn’t played. Jacob, however, loved the swings and the slide and the constant running around trying to climb back up to the monkey bars again. He’d laugh, and shout, and scream with delight at the top of his lungs before rushing over to where his mother sat on the sidelines. She’d smile with such pride that now Jacob shed a tear just thinking about her eyes.

A stark grey they were, but not like the deadened grass or corpses of clouds above. No, her eyes were twinkling with stars, like the night sky would reflect in her gaze, rather than dead and buried.

But she was dead now. She’d been dead for over five years, and in that hospital room her eyes had been a lifeless grey. And Jacob shelved her memory and returned his gaze to the husk of a park before him.

The bench he sat on was as rickety as they came. Rough wood dug into his backside, like it was tearing his skin apart, and his arms rested on planks of wood jutting out that possessed the sharpness of a scalpel and the ferocity of a soldier hellbent on causing death.

Jacob would know the latter description—he’d been one of them, after all. His eyes drifted over the sides of the park, where thick green fences prevented children from climbing over to Brian Street adjacent. Now, those fences that once meshed mesmerisingly with the grass below seemed to imprison Jacob, trapping him inside the confines of a past he could never return to.

Despite the yearn with which he tried.

That was why he came here, after all. That was why, after all these years, he still packed a bag filled with nothing but air and walked to Brian Street Park. That was why he walked the grey paved path winding through the park’s dead grass to that singular bench stationed on the greenery’s far side. That was why he sat there, legs hunched as much as his spine, mind slumped as much as his body, eyes drifting over the past he’d lost.

The joy, the contentment, the promise of a future—all that had escaped him.

And he had deserved to lose it, despite the roar in his chest, in his heart, that wished for those times to return. Wished for him not to make the biggest mistake of his life. For him not to cause death and destruction and carnage on a scale his innocent younger self would have never had nightmares of, let alone dreamed to do.

But he had done it. And, though he spent his days sitting on the bench in Brian Street Park, and though he chased the past with everything he had, he knew it couldn’t be changed. He knew that, no matter how hard he attempted to do so, what was done had passed. It couldn’t be brought forward, couldn’t be altered.

Life was a train forward, with no reverse, with no way back. It was a train on tracks that uprooted themselves from the ground as soon as they were passed, and Jacob was that sicko at the back of the train attempting to grab at those tracks and bring them into the carriage. Yearning to run back through tunnels moving away from him faster than the speed of light.

All at once, as she always did, that vision of her pierced his mind again. That vision plaguing him since the end of the war, through sleepless nights and dead days, through the wake of all his mental troubles after the troops had withdrawn after razing the place to the ground.

The vision was of a woman, wearing a majestic golden scarf that wrapped over her hair such that not a single strand escaped. Jacob gasped when he saw her, saw skin that was flawless, saw a long gown, similarly golden, stretching down from hidden neck to toe. He couldn’t see her shoes, could never let his eyes drift away from her face.

The vision was of a woman he’d seen back in Iraq, as an officer there. The woman—his comrades had bust into her house, had killed her father on the spot. And then, fuelled by a ferocity only matched by their current drunkenness and despondency, they’d slit the throat of the woman who Jacob watched now.

Jacob assumed the mother faced the same fate, though he hadn’t the stomach to ask his fellow officers at the time.

His therapist, one Felicity Carper operating from the shawls of East London, said the woman of unknown name was a figment of his imagination. Something his mind conjured up when supressing the images of the past. A coping mechanism of sorts, but what exactly was Jacob coping with?

The yearn for the past, before he’d destroyed the lives of others?

He hadn’t been the one to shoot the bullet, hadn’t been the one who killed her and her family. But he’d promised them safety, promised them whilst they wore those twinkling eyes filled with unwavering hope. And he’d betrayed that promise, in the worst way possible.

And nothing could bring them back. Not a single wisp of anything in the world.

Jacob’s guilt pressed with the wind against the ragged jacket he wore, previously suede leather now just a decrepit brown. His trousers, grey like the dead grass, didn’t fare any better from the lashing air, and his jungle boots were dustier than the untouched corners of untouched rooms back in his house.

Felicity told him the woman, who had sauntered closer and now perched on the other edge of the bench, was a repressed emotion within him rising in the form of a traumatic experience. It was vying for his attention, apparently, so he could address the issues.

Jacob just thought the therapist wanted to rip him off with another round of sessions.

PTSD, she said, troubled him. Not that she understood—how could someone like Jacob have PTSD when he was the one that had killed unjustly, when he was the one that got her and her family killed, when he didn’t stop his fellow soldiers from committing the most heinous crime known to man?

Jacob breathed hard, tired of his own spiralling thoughts. But he couldn’t escape them, could never escape them.

How did someone who’d caused so much suffering suffer from the same mental debilitation?

Jacob clenched his fists together as the wind picked up speed. It was late in the evening, with the blue of the sky vanishing for a grey giving way to black, and that meant the kids and parents usually filling this deadness with their laughter and joy were back home. Cooped up and comfortable, whilst Jacob faced his demons in the form of the woman he’d gotten killed.

He glanced over, just once, and wished he hadn’t.

The glare on her face was palpable, was like the sun had infused its wrath in her eyes and directed the gaze at him. Jacob flinched at the hatred, trembled as he shoved himself to his side of the bench. Thankfully, the woman with a golden scarf and golden flowing gown didn’t near.

All she did was glare. A ferocity Jacob had never seen before now fuelled the woman, and then all at once, the woman disintegrated into thin air. The wisps of gold still tinted Jacob’s vision, but her leave wasn’t announced with a sound or smell. Just a silent passing, just as unbeknownst to Jacob as her death, until he’d found out a day later what had happened.

He and his fellow deployed troops had been stationed at a camp in the centre of the Iraqi desert, battling air more humid than the stifle of Jacob’s thoughts and littered with corpses and dried blood. Jacob couldn’t remember the exact area they were in, though the woman and her family had lived on the outskirts of Ramadi, in central Iraq and a hundred or so kilometres away from Baghdad.

The troops had been riding across the desert in a Humvee, with the plains of scattered golden-brown stretching in every direction Jacob looked. The vehicle jittered as it rolled over the sand on which bloodshed had taken place, on which injustices rigged themselves with the engine’s rumble. The sun was a constant in the sky, as if it never set, and that’s when Danny had said those words. The words that changed Jacob’s life forever.

We got that family you was talking about, Jakey, Danny said, smug smile on his face and lips busted from a scuffle the day before. He looked proud of himself, and Jacob stared at him, disbelief marring his features.

What you talking about? Jacob said. Danny lifted a forefinger and thumb in a gun position and mimicked a shot. You can’t be serious, mate. Jacob laughed a little, expelling the tension in his chest. But Danny topped it right back up again.

Shot them to bits you know. Seriously, you shoulda seen the looks on everyone’s faces.

Yeah, it was mad, Lannan, another one of Jacob’s fellow soldiers in the 4th Armoured Division, said. "Proper squirming, the woman was. Squirming and crying. Shoulda got her proper, you know. But I didn’t have time. Major said we needed to be back ‘fore nine, and you know it takes a good few hours for a sesh."

Jacob hadn’t known. He’d heard rumours that fellow soldiers were up to disgusting business, illicit things the higher ups turned a blind eye to in the name of war, but hearing it in the flesh almost tipped him over the edge.

Jacob’s stomach had lurched, bile shooting through his throat with the velocity of a bullet at point blank range. Lannan was speaking about defiling the unnamed woman in other ways, ways too horrific for Jacob to think about even now, ten years later, with more meat on his bones and more troubles in his mind.

Jacob sighed, Brian Street Park flashing him to the present. A crow sang its death call in the distance, causing the skies to darken as if it matched the mood in Jacob’s mind. Jacob sat up, glanced around in case the woman of his imagination returned again. She didn’t, thankfully.

The wind slapped his face with the harsh strokes of his sins as he stood from the bench. His body groaned from the movement, as if his muscles had atrophied like his mind. The grass attacked his ankles like snakes with venom slithered within the greyish-green. The smell of dust trapped itself in his nostrils—the dust of Iraqi deserts.

Jacob had sins. Sins he was guilty for, but he’d never been charged for them. Jacob, however, believed in a sense of karma. That if one didn’t change their ways, didn’t repent for the wrong they’d done, then a punishment would slam down in this world.

Lannan suffered with debilitating cancer that was incurable, the last Jacob had heard a few years back. And Danny—he was still in that mental asylum, completely out of his head, in far worse condition than Jacob who only had to see a therapist every so often.

Jacob didn’t believe his own punishment had passed, though. It was incoming, and of that he was certain. More certain of than the fact he was alive, was breathing, was walking to a twenty-year-old gap in the park fence and stepping through.

God, I’m a wreck, he thought, entering Brian Street once more. The street was a vision of his childhood turned apocalyptic with the gloom of reality.

All Jacob wondered about, on the trudge towards home with the howling sky above him, was when his punishment would arrive.

And just how terrible it would be.

Chapter 2

Jacob cracked open the blood red front door and stepped inside. Instantly, the dust flooded his face, dust that resembled his time in Iraq so closely Jacob almost mistook the hallway for a flashback. He’d had enough of them to last a lifetime, and they didn’t seem to be ending any time soon, constantly plaguing any momentary lapses in concentration and of course his nightmares.

He deposited his shoes on a rack slumped against the right-side wall, with a defunct light bulb swinging ominously above it. The bulb had been smashed through in one of Jacob’s old outbursts a few years ago, and he hadn’t bothered to get it fixed.

Wasn’t like anyone was going to complain about it. Since his mother passed away, and since his father was somewhere across the world living as a drug addict without a care for either of his sons, Jacob lived alone. His brother Gareth lived up in England’s north with his wife, happy without their sorry excuse for a relative to deal with.

Jacob turned on the fierce light of his bathroom and glanced at himself in the mirror spanning the length of his body beside the shower. Whilst once he’d had clear skin the girls raved for, and a rugged beard shaved just enough for the stubble to rub through, now he fielded a beard trimmed far less than he was supposed to. His eyes were gaunt, sunken in, as were his cheeks and chin and upper sternum. It looked as if two craters had been clawed into his skull, and then little bulbs placed into them for vision.

Jacob glanced at his arms and found those scars littered across the expanse of his white skin, as if his body was a warzone. The scars reminded him not of the bravery of war and his supposed sacrifice, but the hundreds and thousands of innocent people that had died in his division’s hands alone, let alone throughout the rest of the British and American troops.

He paused mid-way through brushing his teeth, since a buzz tugged through his pocket to reach his ears. A buzz from his phone, which was strange since he never received phone calls—only texts from those that didn’t need him urgently. Calls were for when answers were required immediately, and with Jacob that was no one.

He quickly spat the toothpaste out, washed his hands, and grabbed the call just as the last buzz was fading away. He hadn’t even seen the name, and pressed the phone to his ear whilst water dripped from his fingers like a leaking tap.

Who’s it? he asked.

Hi, Jacob. It’s Felicity speaking. I’m just calling to confirm that you’re attending the session tomorrow? You remember where it is, don’t you? Just down the road from Whitechapel Station.

Jacob was confused. He’d never forgotten about an appointment before, let alone a therapy session. He was messed in the head from remembering too much, not forgetting. Felicity had never reminded him, either, which meant something must’ve changed.

And that something would plague Jacob until he found out what it was, of course.

I’m coming, Jacob said, hanging up the phone call before Felicity could get another word in. He pushed his phone into his pocket and leaned his hands against the edge of the sink. The chill spread throughout his body, fingertips to hair to toes, and the silence was deafening as it compressed his thoughts out to his ears such that he could almost hear them out loud.

He was going to the therapy session tomorrow, back to that white building with white walls and a therapist in a white uniform. To meet with Felicity Carper, the person tasked with wading through the waters of his mind and finding the real him again.

Jacob sighed, letting the shuddering breath escape his lips. The house almost shook from the weight of his thoughts, his inner turmoil. He glanced up, into the mirror, and bloodshot eyes met him. Almost demonic eyes.

Did that real him even exist? An innocent true self beneath the layering of guilted thoughts?

Or was the real him just as evil as he believed?

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Carper’s Psychology Clinic situated itself in the bustling centre of London. But not in the central London teeming with clean pavements without an ounce of dirt speckling any of the fine concrete slabs. Not in the central London where high-rise buildings sunk their tips into the sky and wherein thousands of professionals burgeoned their fledgeling careers.

No, this side of central London featured those on the lower classes of life. Immigrants presenting histories riddled with conflict and war and hardship. Pavements where drugs were thrown on street corners, as opposed to mere boxes of restaurant waste and the odd rotten vegetable. The streets were large, wide so the filth could run its course across the ground, and largely filled with those battling for fragments of life, rather than living to the fullest.

But the area had a vitality to it, a vibrance that washed over anyone that visited, a culture that glistened amongst the corporate nature of the entire country, not only the city of London. Jacob, however, whilst acknowledging that, could only see the negatives poke through the noise.

And, as he stepped out of Whitechapel Station, the rubbish smacked his nose with a pungent smell that wrinkled his features. He turned right and began walking, hood up and head down and ignoring the sellers every other door chanting their prices that were no lower than last week. Women dressed the same as that woman of his imagination, with wrapped scarves and long gowns and hiding their beauty, strode on each side of Jacob, at a faster pace than him, towards a place in the distance where they would all convene.

The midday sun roared in the sky ahead, and since it was September, the sun was presenting its final dance before dipping behind clouds for the remainder of autumn and winter. For Jacob, however, that final dance only revealed an oppressive heat that, whilst not as hot as Iraq, caused his shirt to stick to his skin. His tongue was dry like a desert had dropped onto his tastebuds, and the smell of rubbish didn’t waver the further he walked from the station.

Perhaps it was, as Felicity Carper said, another coping mechanism—clothes fastening themselves against him as if a shield from the elements.

The clinic itself was nothing spectacular. It was a glass building in a little side street off the main Whitechapel Road, in between different fruit shops and houses set into the brick above the stores. As soon as Jacob turned into the side road, the hustle and bustle dimmed behind him, fading into the distance like it was merely a dream. It was like he’d entered another world.

The glass doors of the clinic were always cleaned to perfection, with a sparkle that signified good mental health, untainted by the minds of those treated at the clinic. Jacob pressed into one of the double doors and stepped inside, greeted with air conditioning and a soft blue carpet that attempted to mimic the sky but was a shade too dark.

The receptionist asked him to sit in the waiting room until Dr Carper called him in, and Jacob did just that. He sat on a chair with blue fabric similar in colour to the floor, crossing one leg over the other to stop them both jittering. Not that the position ceased the trembling of his heart, as he remembered the call Felicity had given him the night before.

The call meant something major was about to happen, such that Felicity was worried Jacob wouldn’t even attend the session. What it was, though, remained a mystery to Jacob. A mystery that would unveil itself soon enough, if only a little patience was exercised.

More seats surrounded Jacob, like a tide of blue, though at midday on a Wednesday, those seats were empty, devoid of life, with Jacob the only living soul in the waiting area. Jacob turned to his left, and almost shot out of his seat from fright.

That woman from his imagination sat beside him, the woman whose family he’d betrayed, whose family he’d allowed to be killed at the hands of British oppression in Iraq. A widespread oppression that swept over the entire country.

She stared at him now, no longer clad in that majestic golden gown and scarf. Instead, she wore black clothing, loose yet scruffy and ragged, as if she’d traversed the depths of the desert alone whilst a dust storm raged across the Arab plains.

Her eyes were, as always, piercing, cutting to his heart and ripping apart whatever husks of humanity lay within. That guilt flared within him, and he didn’t know what to say, what to think.

This time, for the first time, she spoke.

You are guilty, she said, voice soft yet harsh, rough yet gentle, coarse yet fine. A contradiction in and of itself, so Jacob ripped his gaze away. And when he glanced back again, that woman with her flawless skin and Muslim clothing disappeared, leaving only a blue chair in her wake.

Jacob was breathing hard, pounding blood to muscles like he was in fight or flight with his own mind. With sweat collecting on his forehead, he leaned forwards, elbows on knees, and clasped his hands together.

A second later, the receptionist called him into Dr Carper’s clinic for his therapy session.

Jacob wondered what on earth, or perhaps hell would be more apt, would be revealed therein.

Chapter 3

Felicity Carper, if Jacob had to describe her in one word, was sharp more than anything else. Not only did she write with a pen holding a tip sharper than most knives, but her mind was quick to details, with an accuracy of transmission that astounded Jacob since he’d never been the best at reading comprehension. He hadn’t been much good at anything, in his own opinion, which was why he opted to join the army in the first place instead of rushing ahead with the academic life others were afforded.

Others like Felicity Carper, who, after struggling for years and years in university and through departments that didn’t want her due to her incisive and sharp strategy of therapy, managed to open a private clinic and finally attain success.

She held blonde hair that straightened as if it was attempting to be as sharp and witty as the mind that possessed it. Her shoulders never slumped, even when the chair lacked a backrest, and her arms were fixed to her notebook and pen. Constantly writing, even when her mouth spoke. Her perfume was light, a lilt in the air, and smelt largely of a rosy success.

Jacob didn’t know what force it was in the world, or indeed outside of it, that controlled fate. But it seemed those who worked the hardest achieved the most. And those like himself, who worked to kill innocent people—they were punished, in the end, when the supposed glory of their oppression vanished and left only heartache in its stead.

The room in which Jacob’s therapy session was to take place held white walls. Walls of innocence, of non-judgement, of openness and freedom like Jacob’s emotions were doves flying around, free to roam and evade capture and interrogation. Two leather brown chairs with little wooden legs sticking out furnished one corner, close to each other. A lamp and small candle lay on a desk at the other side, with a window letting in copious amounts of natural light that, strangely, caused everything to seem a little artificial.

Paintings, abstract from the look of things, were hung on the walls beside where Jacob and Felicity sat in those leather chairs, both minds whirring but for different reasons. Jacob’s because that vision of the woman in his imagination had rattled him. And Felicity’s no doubt because she was attempting to decode Jacob’s thoughts into something coherent that they could both understand.

So you say the vision spoke to you? Felicity asked. If it’s okay, could you expand more on what the vision was saying?

That was characteristic of Felicity—she never addressed the woman in his imagination as a real person, or even a woman. Only a vision, or a hallucination, or a figment of his conscience. She didn’t accept its reality, even though to Jacob the woman was as real as the eyes with which he saw her. As real as himself, though he didn’t relay that to Felicity. That was a part of his mind that scared even himself.

She said I’m guilty, Jacob said, shivering as he remembered the look in the woman’s eyes. One of hatred, of disgust, of wishing to murder him herself for the betrayal he’d committed.

Is that all the vision said? Felicity said. That you are guilty. Did the vision suggest you are guilty, or enforce that opinion of you?

It’s not an opinion. It’s a bloody fact, but not as if someone like you will ever see it that way.

"She said I am guilty, Jacob said. Said it like it’s the truth. No suggesting it there, and she’s right about it anyway."

Guilt is only within yourself, Felicity said, scribbling something in her notebook without lowering her glance from Jacob. It is an emotion like other emotions. If you feel it, it is real. If you do not feel it, then the vision’s words cannot ring true.

That ain’t true, though, Jacob said. Guilt’s not just a feeling. It can be a truth, too. Like an outside truth, not something we can debate over.

Everything is subjective, is it not? Felicity said, flicking through her notebook and pinpointing something she’d written months back, in a previous session. You said here yourself that you do not believe truth to be real, that everything is relative to the person who is viewing it. Do you still believe this?

No, I don’t, Jacob said, and that belief was now firm in his heart. He’d said it before in a previous therapy session, and he recalled that session now. He’d said it whilst the woman of his imagination had been standing in the corner, staring at him for the entire session up until that point.

As soon as he’d mentioned that life was subjective, that things were merely in his head, that’s when the woman disappeared, into thin air, disintegrating like being roused from a dream.

You do not believe that anymore? Felicity asked to confirm, tearing Jacob away from the past.

The smell of her rosy perfume turned almost pungent, and the white walls attacked Jacob along with Felicity’s jabbing question. The air tasted salty, as if mixed in a concoction of his mind, and the air-conditioned room rose the temperature a notch.

I don’t believe that.

That is interesting, Felicity said, tone making it seem like Jacob was an animal under inspection at a vet. Prodded and probed for information, with no consent of its own. Jacob watched as Felicity scribbled in her notebook again, rather furiously this time, before turning back to him.

What do you think made you change your mind? Felicity asked.

Jacob didn’t answer her straight away. He knew this therapy session was important, otherwise Felicity wouldn’t have called him the night before to confirm his attendance. And yet, the extra importance hadn’t revealed itself, and Jacob was waiting for when it would come out of the shadows and confront him head on, as life always did.

Do you believe there’s evil in the world? Jacob asked, finally, and Felicity held her composure at the question. Jacob could tell, however, from the corner of his eye, that it had startled her.

What do you mean?

Do you think we’re the ones that decide what’s good and bad? Or do you think there’s things that’re always bad, and always good, no matter how you spin it?

I do not believe the answering of such questions is beneficial—

Just dance with me, Jacob said, letting a small smile overtake his face. He’d used that phrase on a first date when he was thirteen, wherein the girl whose name he’d forgotten wished to sit in the corner of the disco, drinking mocktails instead of dancing the evening away. The smile vanished as soon as it arrived, however, as if realising the futility of attempting to raise Jacob’s spirits when everything in life dragged him down once again. Why not?

There are things we may see as objectively bad, Felicity said. But I do not believe such a standard exists. We believe it does, but ultimately it’s minds against minds, and nothing is set in stone.

That’s where you’re wrong, Jacob said, and he said it with such strength that it surprised even himself. His fists clenched, so he deeply breathed and let the tension fade from his muscles. You’re absolutely wrong on that, he said much more calmly.

Felicity didn’t react, didn’t say a word, and she only leaned back in her brown leather chair, clicked her pen, and wrote something in her notebook. Why is that? she asked, glancing up at him once, before returning her gaze to the notebook as he spoke.

Because I got a family killed, Jacob said, and flashes of his time in Iraq surfaced as if memory-volcanoes constantly toeing the line, waiting to erupt at the worst moment. I told them I’d help them. I told them I’d stop them from dying. And then I didn’t do it, I couldn’t do it. Bloody drank the night away instead of saving them. And now they’re all dead, the whole lot of them. And millions more like them.

Jacob stared ahead at Felicity, and it annoyed her when the therapist took seconds to meet his gaze.

There ain’t a world in hell that what I did was good, Jacob said, fingering the hem of his fraying jacket. Ain’t a thought out there that could turn what I did into something positive. It doesn’t exist, Felicity. What I did was pure wrong, pure evil. And there’s no two ways about that, unfortunately.

For your recovery, it does not help to think that you are an inherently evil person.

If I don’t, then I’m just lying to myself, and that makes me worse than I already am.

Felicity paused, scribbled something else in her notebook, and then put the notebook down. Clicked the pen shut, and placed both on a small desk beside her chair, on which a lamp lay unused.

That is what I wished to speak about, Felicity said. "You…I sense, Jacob, that you are blocking your own mind from freeing itself. You seem to wish to recover, but don’t wish to at the same time. You feel guilt, and it is like you