A Night To Remember

Here is our first article sent in by a reader!!! Here Sarah has sent in her true story....

I was meeting my best friend Tom with my boyfriend, Raj, and we were going to hang out in the local park while it was still light. When we saw Tom, he asked Raj to go buy some cigarettes down the road for him. Tom and I waited, wondering what was taking so long. Raj returned with the cigarettes after about 20 minutes and his mood seemed to have taken a terrible turn: As we made our way to the park he walked ahead punching bins and other nearby objects with a face of thunder but still not saying a word to Tom or I. Instead he called someone on his mobile was yelling at them down the phone, although Tom and I weren’t close enough to hear what he was saying. I tried many times to ask what was wrong but he just replied “nothing” so I gave up and stayed away from him and his terrifying temper.

By the time we reached the park, I was furious with him for being so moody and ruining the evening, so I stormed off towards home. Raj chased after me and asked me why I was storming off. I told him I was sick of his mood and gave him one last chance to say what was wrong with him. He stayed silent for a minute, looking at the floor, before saying quietly “Some Tamils sparked me.”
Now I had no idea what “sparked” meant and assumed it meant that they tried to start a fight with him. I now became angry with him for not telling me about it earlier and again stormed off after arguing about it with him. Tom went over to Raj and they began to talk about what had happened. While I had the moment to myself I realised I was being unfair and went over and hugged Raj to apologize. Suddenly, Raj became very heavy in my arms and I realised that he had collapsed.

Tom came running over yelling
“Raj, where does it hurt, Raj?” Tom helped me get Raj to lie on the ground and I put my jacket under his head. I was terrified as I still had no idea what had happened to him. As Tom kept telling Raj to look at him and keep his eyes open, I asked Tom what was going on, as he seemed to know. He said that the Tamil guys had hit Raj around the head with a baseball bat until a shopkeeper came out and chased them off. After that Tom and I sat trying to figure out our next move. We had no idea what injuries he had gotten and every time we mentioned “hospital” or “ambulance” he would try to sit up, exclaiming,
“no, no, no, don’t, no” until we soothed him and got him to lie back on the floor. After about an hour of us deliberating, Raj sat up with the assistant of an apprehensive Tom and myself and began looking wildly around him:
“they’re here...I can hear them.”
We were sat in an open green and could easily see everyone around us. We were alone. Despite us continually telling him that we were alone, he just kept repeating
“They’re here... we have to go...they’re here.”
He stood up, swaying a little, and began walking towards the park exit, grabbing my hand and still looking around me.

Raj walked me home, still swaying and saying a jumble of words rather than sentences, and refused to let me go with him. Tom assured me he would look after him, and he closed the front door, I rushed to my laptop. Instinct told me that if I couldn’t find out what was wrong through the hospital, I would through the internet. I knew it wouldn’t be the same but at least it was something. I found a website listing symptoms of head injuries, and called Raj to get him to answer yes or no to which he had. He had ¾ of the symptoms for a severe head injury and the cure was to seek medical advice immediately, but no matter how I pleaded, Raj refused. Instead I spoke to him until 3am to ensure that he wouldn’t get concussion and not wake up. Before I allowed him to hang up, I made him promise to call me at 9am. Before I fell asleep, I closed my eyes and prayed like never before:
“Please, please let him wake up tomorrow. I beg you. Please.”

I was up at 7 and sitting and waiting for his call. At 9am on the dot, my phone rang: “hey babe.” I laughed pure relief at the sound of his voice and a coherent sentence.
“You ok?”
 “yeah...my head hurts and I can’t remember anything but I’m ok”
After a few more minutes of checking he was ok, I made him promise to go get checked out at the hospital as soon as possible.
“Sarah, I need to tell you something”
“What babe?”
“Those guys. I knew them. I haven’t seen them for two years, but I know them. They killed Kumal, my cousin.”
And so began the relationship changing conversation of Raj’s past. Two years ago, a Tamil gang stabbed and killed Raj’s cousin Kumal in a fight in front of him. Raj had always blamed himself, but I had never fully known why, until then. A few months before Kumal had been killed, he called Raj asking him to help him in a fight against a gang of Tamils. Raj went and during the fight at least 5 guys were kicking and beating his cousin. Raj had no idea what to do and started panicking, until Kumal cried,
“Look in your bag”
Raj quickly pulled off his bag, saw what his cousin had put in there, grabbed and ran at the group, thinking of nothing but saving his cousin.

“You stabbed someone?” I looked at him with a face of pure disbelief. He had always been a weapon hating peace keeper, and now I understood why, although I wish I didn’t. “Did they die?” Raj shook his head, staring at the floor. I watched him for a moment, taking in the pure guilt shame and sadness that had ridden his body and watched the tears drop slowly off the end of his nose. He stabbed someone. But he was not a stabber.

A few weeks after the incident, it was in the news that the Police had arrested a Tamil gang in East London and since then, crime had fallen by 65%.

Sarah, 23