Masturbation recommenced in earnest. Those two months, between seeing the pretty red-haired music teacher once and seeing her again, were the longest, stickiest, smelliest, guiltiest fifty-six days of Samad's life. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he found himself suddenly accosted by some kind of synaesthetic fixation with the woman: hearing the colour of her hair in the mosque, smelling the touch of her hand on the tube, tasting her smile while innocently walking the streets on his way to work; and this in turn led to a knowledge of every public convenience in London, led to the kind of masturbation that even a fifteen-year-old boy living in the Shetlands might find excessive. His only comfort was that he, like Roosevelt, had made a New Deal: he was going to beat but he wasn't going to eat. He meant somehow to purge himself of the sights and smells of Poppy Burt-Jones, of the sin of istimna, and, though it wasn't fasting season and these were the longest days of the year, still no substance passed Samad's lips between sunrise and sunset, not even, thanks to a little china spitoon, his own saliva. And because there was no food going in the one end, what came out of the other end was so thin and so negligible, so meagre and translucent, that Samad could almost convince himself that the sin was lessened, that one wonderful day he would be able to massage one-eyed-Jack as vigorously as he liked and nothing would come out but air.
But despite the intensity of the hunger spiritual, physical, sexual Samad still did his twelve hours daily in the restaurant. Frankly, he found the restaurant about the only place he could bear to be. He couldn't bear to see his family, he couldn't' bear to go to O'Connell's, he couldn't bear to give Archie the satisfaction of seeing him in such a state. By mid August he had upped his working hours to fourteen a day; something in the ritual of it picking up his basket of pink swan-shaped napkins and following the trail of Shiva's plastic carnations, correcting the order of a knife or fork, polishing a glass, removing the smear of a finger from the china plates soothed him. No matter how bad a Muslim he might be, no one could say Samad wasn't a consummate waiter. He had taken one tedious skill and honed it to perfection. Here at least he could show others the right path: how to disguise a stale onion bhaji, how to make fewer prawns look like more, how to explain to an Australian that he doesn't want the amount of chilli he thinks he wants. Outside the doors of the Palace he was a masturbator, a bad husband, an indifferent father, with all the morals of an Anglican. But inside here, within these four green and yellow paisley walls, he was a one-handed genius.
"Shiva! Flower missing. Here."It was two weeks into Samad's New Deal and an average Friday afternoon at the Palace, setting up.
"You've missed this vase, Shiva!"Shiva wandered over to examine the empty, pencil-thin, aquamarine vase on table nineteen.
"And there is some lime pickle afloat in the mango chutney in the sauce carousel on table fifteen.""Really?" said Shiva drily. Poor Shiva; nearly thirty now; not so pretty; still here. It had never happened for him, whatever he thought was going to happen for him. He did leave the restaurant, Samad remembered vaguely, for a short time in 1979 to start up a security firm, but 'nobody wanted to hire Paki bouncers' and he had come back, a little less aggressive, a little more despairing, like a broken horse.
"Yes, Shiva. Really and truly.""And that's what's driving you crazy, is it?""I wouldn't go as far as to say crazy, no ... it is troubling me.""Because something," interrupted Shiva, 'has got right up your arse recently. We've all noticed it.""We?""Us. The boys. Yesterday it was a grain of salt in a napkin. The day before Gandhi wasn't hung straight on the wall. The past week you've been acting like Fuhrer-gee," said Shiva nodding in Ardashir's direction. "Like a crazy man. You don't smile. You don't eat. You're constantly on everybody's case. And when the head waiter's not all there it puts everybody off. Like a football captain.""I am certain I do not know to what you are referring," said Samad, tight-lipped, passing him the vase.
"And I'm certain you do," said Shiva provocatively, placing the empty vase back on the table.
"If I am concerned about something, there is no reason why it should disrupt my work here,"said Samad, becoming panicked, passing him back the vase. "I do not wish to inconvenience others."Shiva returned the vase to the table once more. "So there is something. Come on, man ... I know we haven't always seen eye to eye, but we've got to stick together in this place. How long have we worked together? Samad Miah?"Samad looked up suddenly at Shiva, and Shiva saw he was sweating, that he seemed almost dazed. "Yes, yes .. . there is ... something."Shiva put his hand on Samad's shoulder. "So why don't we sod the fucking carnation and go and cook you a curry sun'll be down in twenty minutes. Come on, you can tell Shiva all about it. Not because I give a fuck, you understand, but I have to work here too and you're driving me mad, mate."Samad, oddly touched by this inelegant offer of a listening ear, laid down his pink swans and followed Shiva into the kitchens.
"Animal, vegetable, mineral?"Shiva stood at a work surface and began chopping a breast of chicken into perfect cubes and dousing them in corn flour.
"Pardon me?""Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?" repeated Shiva impatiently. The thing that's bothering you.""Animal, mainly.""Female?"Samad dropped on to a nearby stool and hung his head.
"Female," Shiva concluded. "Wife?"The shame of it, the pain of it will come to my wife, but no . she is not the cause.""Another bird. My specialist subject." Shiva performed the action of rolling a camera, sang the theme to Mastermind and jumped into shot. "Shiva Bhagwati, you have thirty seconds on shagging women other than your wife. First question: is it right? Answer: depends. Second question: shall I go to hell? -'
Samad cut in, disgusted. "I am not.. . making love to her.""I've started so I'll finish: shall I go to hell? Answer '
"Enough. Forget it. Please, forget that I mentioned anything of this.""Do you want aubergine in this?""No .. . green peppers are sufficient.""Alrighty," said Shiva, throwing a green pepper up in the airand catching it on the tip of his knife. "One Chicken Bhuna coming up. How long's it been going on, then?""Nothing is going on. I met her only once. I barely know her.""So: what's the damage? A grope? A snog?""A handshake, only. She is my sons' teacher."Shiva tossed the onions and peppers into hot oil. "You've had the odd stray thought. So what?"Samad stood up. "It is more than stray thoughts, Shiva. My whole body is mutinous, nothing will do what I tell it. Never before have I been subjected to such physical indignities. For example:
I am constantly '
"Yeah," said Shiva, indicating Samad's crotch. "We noticed that too. Why don't you do the five-knuckle-shuffle before you get to work?""I do .... I am .. . but it makes no difference. Besides, Allah forbids it.""Oh, you should never have got religious, Samad. It don't suit you." Shiva wiped an onion-tear away. "All that guilt's not healthy.""It is not guilt. It is fear. I am fifty-seven, Shiva. When you get to my age, you become .. .
concerned about your faith, you don't want to leave things too late. I have been corrupted by England, I see that now my children, my wife, they too have been corrupted. I think maybe I have made the wrong friends. Maybe I have been frivolous. Maybe I have thought intellect more important than faith. And now it seems this final temptation has been put in front of me. To punish me, you understand. Shiva, you know about women. Help me. How can this feeling be possible? I have known of the woman's existence for no more than a few months, I have spoken to her only once.""As you said: you're fifty-seven. Mid-life crisis.""Mid-life? What does this mean?" snappedSamadirritably. "Dammit, Shiva, I don't plan to live for one hundred and fourteen years.""It's a manner of speaking. You read about it in the magazines these days. It's when a man gets to a certain point in life, he starts feeling he's over the hill.. . and you're as young as the girl you feel, if you get my meaning.""I am at a moral crossroads in my life and you are talking nonsense to me.""You've got to learn this stuff, mate," said Shiva, speaking slowly, patiently. "Female organism, gee-spot, testicle cancer, the menstropause mid-life crisis is one of them. Information the modern man needs at his fingertips.""But I don't wish for such information!" cried Samad, standing up and pacing the kitchen. "Thatis precisely the point! I don't wish to be a modern man! I wish to live as I was always meant to! Iwish to return to the East!""Ah, well .. . we all do, don't we?" murmured Shiva, pushing the peppers and onion around thepan. "I left when I was three. Fuck knows I haven't made anything of this country. But who's gotthe money for the air fare? And who wants to live in a shack with fourteen servants on the payroll?
Who knows what Shiva Bagwhati would have turned out like back in Calcutta? Prince or pauper?
And who," said Shiva, some of his old beauty returning to his face, 'can pull the West out of 'emonce it's in?"Samad continued to pace. "I should never have come here that's where every problem has comefrom. Never should have brought my sons here, so far from God. Willesden Green! Calling cards insweetshop windows, Judy Blume in the school, condom on the pavement, Harvest Festival,teacher-temptresses!" roared Samad, picking items at random. "Shiva1 tell you, in confidence: mydearest friend, Archibald Jones, is an unbeliever! Now: what kind of a model am I for my children?""Iqbal, sit down. Be calm. Listen: you just want somebody. People want people. It happensfrom Delhi to Deptfbrd. And it's not the end of the world.""Of this, I wish I could be certain.""When are you next seeing her?""We are meeting for school-related business .. . the first Wednesday of September.""I see. Is she Hindu? Muslim? She ain't Sikh, is she?""That is the worst of it," said Samad, his voice breaking. "English. White. English."Shiva shook his head. "I been out with a lot of white birds, Samad. A lot. Sometimes it's worked,sometimes it ain't. Two lovely American girls. Fell head-over-heels for a Parisian stunner. Evenspent a year with a Romanian. But never an English girl. Never works. Never.""Why?" asked Samad, attacking his thumbnail with his teeth and awaiting some fearful answer,some edict from on high. "Why not, Shiva Bhagwati?""Too much history," was Shiva's enigmatic answer, as he dished up the Chicken Bhuna. "Toomuch bloody history."8.30 a.m." the first Wednesday of September, 1984. Samad, lost in thought somewhat, heard thepassenger door of his Austin Mini Metro open and close far away in the real world and turned to hisleft to find Millat climbing in next to him. Or at least a Millat-shaped thing from the neck down: thehead replaced by a Tomytronic - a basic computer game that looked like a large pair of binoculars.
Within it, Samad knew from experience, a little red car that represented his son was racing a greencar and a yellow car along a three-dimensional road of l.e.d."s.
Millat parked his tiny backside on the brown plastic seat. "Ooh! Cold seat! Cold seat! Frozen bum!""Millat, where are Magid and Me?""Coming.""Coming with the speed of a train or coming with the speed of a snail?""Eeek!" squealed Millat, in response to a virtual blockade that threatened to send his red carspinning off into oblivion.
"Please, Millat. Take this off.""Can't. Need one, oh, two, seven, three points.""Millat, you need to begin to understand numbers. Repeat: ten thousand, two hundred and seventy-three."Then blousand, poo bum dred and weventy-wee."Take it off, Millat.""Can't. I'll die. Do you want me to die, Abba?"Samad wasn't listening. It was imperative that he be at school before nine if this trip were goingto have any purpose whatsoever. By nine, she'd be in class. By nine-oh-two, she'd be opening theregister with those long fingers, by nine-oh-three she'd be tapping her high-mooned nails on awooden desk somewhere out of sight.
"Where are they? Do they want to be late for school?""Uh-huh.""Are they always this late?" asked Samad, for this was not his regular routine the school runwas usually Alsana's or Clara's assignment. It was for a glimpse of Burt-Jones (though theirmeeting was only seven hours and fifty-seven minutes away, seven hours and fifty-six minutesaway, seven hours .. .) that he had undertaken the most odious parental responsibility in the book.
And he'd had a hard time convincing Alsana there was nothing peculiar in this sudden desire toparticipate fully in the educational transportation of his and Archie's offspring:
"But Samad, you don't get in the house 'til three in the morning. Are you going peculiar?""I want to see my boys! I want to see Me! Every morning they are growing up1 never see it!
Two inches Millat has grown.""But not at eight thirty in the morning. It is very funnily enough that he grows all the timepraise Allah! It must be some kind of a miracle. What is this about, hmm?" She dug her fingernailinto the overhang of his belly. "Some hokery-pokery. I can smell it like goat's tongue gone off."Ah, Alsana's culinary nose for guilt, deceit and fear was without equal in the borough of Brent,and Samad was useless in the faceof it. Did she know? Had she guessed? These anxieties Samad had slept on all night (when hewasn't slapping the salami) and then brought to his car first thing so that he might take them out onhis children.
"Where in hell's name are they?""Hell's bells!""Millat!""You swore," said Millat, taking lap fourteen and getting a five-oh-oh bonus for causing thecombustion of Yellow Car. "You always do. So does M'ster Jones.""Well, we have special swearing licences."Headless Millat needed no face to express his outrage. "NOSUCH THING AS-'
"OK, OK, OK," back-pedalled Samad, knowing there is no joy to be had in arguing ontologywith a nine-year-old, "I have been caught out. No such thing as a licence to swear. Millat, where'syour saxophone? You have orchestra today.""In the boot," said Millat, his voice at once incredulous and disgusted: a man who didn't knowthe saxophone went in the boot on Sunday night was some kind of a social retard. "Why're youpicking us up? M'ster Jones picks us up on Mondays. You don't know anything about picking us up.
Or taking us in.""I'm sure somehow I will muddle through, thank you, Millat. It is hardly rocket science, after all.
Where are those two!" he shouted, beeping the horn, unhinged by his nine-year-old son's ability torecognize the irregularity in his behaviour. "And will you please be taking that damn thing off!"Samad made a grab for the Tomytronic and pulled it down around Millat's neck.
"YOU KILLED ME!" Millat looked back in the Tomytronic, horrified, and just in time towitness his tiny red alter-ego swerving into the barriers and disappearing in a catastrophic lightshow of showering yellow sparks. "YOU KILLED ME WHEN IWAS WINNING!"Samad closed his eyes and forced his eyeballs to roll up as faras possible in his head, in the hope that his brain might impact upon them, a self-blinding, if hecould achieve it, on a par with that other victim of Western corruption, Oedipus. Think: I wantanother woman. Think: I've killed my son. I swear. I eat bacon. I regularly slap the salami. I drinkGuinness. My best friend is a kaflfir non-believer. I tell myself if I rub up and down without usinghands it does not count. But oh it does count. It all counts on the great counting board of He whocounts. What will happen come Mahshar? How will I absolve myself when the Last Judgementcomes? . Click-slam. Click-slam. One Magid, one Irie. Samad opened his eyes and looked in therear-view mirror. In the back seat were the two children he had been waiting for: both with theirlittle glasses, Irie with her wilful Afro (not a pretty child: she had got her genes mixed up, Archie'snose with Clara's awfully buck teeth), Magid with his thick black hair slicked into an unappealingmiddle-parting. Magid carrying a recorder, Irie with violin. But beyond these basic details,everything was not as it should be. Unless he was very much mistaken, something was rotten in thisMini Metro something was afoot. Both children were dressed in black from head to toe. Both worewhite armbands on their left arms upon which were painted crude renditions of baskets ofvegetables. Both had pads of writing paper and a pen tied around their necks with string.
"Who did this to you?"Silence.
"Was it Amma? And Mrs. Jones?"Silence.
"Magid! Irie! Cat got your tongues?"More silence; children's silence, so desperately desired by adults yet eerie when it finallyoccurs.
"Millat, do you know what this is about?""Sboring," whined Millat. "They're just being clever, clever, snotty, dumb-bum, Lord Magooand Mrs. Ugly Poo."Samad twisted in his car seat to face the two dissenters. "Am I meant to ask you what this is about?"Magid grasped his pen and, in his neat, clinical hand, printed: if you want to, then ripped off thepiece of paper and handed it to Samad.
"A Vow of Silence. I see. You too, Me? I would have thought you were too sensible for such nonsense."Me scribbled for a moment on her pad and passed the missive forward. we are pros testing"Pros-testing? What are Pros and why are you testing them? Did your mother teach you this word?"Me looked like she was going to burst with the sheer force of her explanation, but Magidmimed the zipping up of her mouth, snatched back the piece of paper and crossed out the first s.
"Oh, I see. Protesting."Magid and Me nodded maniacally.
"Well, that is indeed fascinating. And I suppose your mothers engineered this whole scenario?
The costumes? The notepads?"Silence.
"You are quite the political prisoners .. . not giving a thing away. All right: may one ask what itis that you are protesting about?"Both children pointed urgently to their armbands.
"Vegetables? You are protesting for the rights of vegetables?"Me held one hand over her mouth to stop herself screaming the answer, while Magid set abouthis writing pad in a flurry. weARE PROTESTING ABOUT THE HARVEST FESTIVAL.
Samad growled, "I told you already. I don't want you participating in that nonsense. It hasnothing to do with us, Magid. Why are you always trying to be somebody you are not?"There was a mutual, silent anger as each acknowledged the painful incident that was beingreferred to. A few months earlier, on Magid's ninth birthday, a group of very nice-looking whiteboys with meticulous manners had turned up on the doorstep and asked for Mark Smith.
"Mark? No Mark here," Alsana had said, bending down to their level with a genial smile. "Onlythe family Iqbal in here. You have the wrong house."But before she had finished the sentence, Magid had dashed to the door, ushering his motherout of view.
"Hi, guys.""Hi, Mark.""Off to the chess club, Mum.""Yes, M - M - Mark," said Alsana, close to tears at this final snub, the replacement of "Mum' for"Amma'. "Do not be late, now.""I GIVE YOU A GLORIOUS NAME LIKE MAG IDMAHFOOZMURSHEDMUBTASIM IQBAL!"Samadhad yelled after Magid when he returnedhome that evening and whipped up the stairs like a bullet to hide in his room. "ANDYOU WANT TO BE CALLED MARK SMITH!"But this was just a symptom of a far deeper malaise. Magid really wanted to be in some otherfamily. He wanted to own cats and not cockroaches, he wanted his mother to make the music of thecello, not the sound of the sewing machine; he wanted to have a trellis of flowers growing up oneside of the house instead of the ever growing pile of other people's rubbish; he wanted a piano inthe hallway in place of the broken door off cousin Kurshed's car; he wanted to go on bikingholidays to France, not day-trips to Blackpool to visit aunties; he wanted the floor of his room to beshiny wood, not the orange and green swirled carpet left over from the restaurant; he wanted hisfather to be a doctor, not a one-handed waiter; and this month Magid had converted all these desiresinto a wish to join in with the Harvest Festival like Mark Smith would. Like everybody else would.
BUT WE WANT TO DO IT. OR WE'LL GET A DETENTION.
MRS OWENS SAID IT IS TRADITION.
Samad blew his top. "Whose tradition?" he bellowed, as a tearful Magid began to scribblefrantically once more. "Dammit, you are a Muslim, not a wood sprite! I told you, Magid, I told youthe condition upon which you would be allowed. You come with me on haj. If I am to touch thatblack stone before I die I will do it with my eldest son by my side."Magid broke the pencil halfway through his reply, scrawling the second half with blunt lead. it'snot fair! i can't go onHAJI'VE GOT TO GO TO SCHOOL. I DON'T HAVE TIME TOGO TO MECCA. ITS NOT FAIR!
"Welcome to the twentieth century. It's not fair. It's never fair."Magid ripped the next piece of paper from the pad and held it up in front of his father's face.
you told her dad not to LET HER GO.
Samad couldn't deny it. Last Tuesday he had asked Archie to show solidarity by keeping Me athome the week of the festival. Archie had hedged and haggled, fearing Clara's wrath, but Samadhad reassured him: Take a leaf from my book, Archibald. Who wears the tro vers in my house?
Archie had thought about Alsana, so often found in those lovely silken trousers with the taperedankle, and of Samad, who regularly wore a long piece of embroidered grey cotton, a lungi, wrappedround his waist, to all intents and purposes, a skirt. But he kept the thought to himself.
we won't speak if you don't let us go. we won'tSPEAK EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER AGAIN. WHEN WE DIEEVERYONE WILL SAY IT WAS YOU. YOU YOU YOU.
Great, thought Samad, more blood and sticky guilt on my one good hand.
Samad didn't know anything about conducting, but he knew what he liked. True, it probablywasn't very complex, the way she did it, just a simple three four just a one-dimensional metro152nome drawn in the air with her index finger but aaah, what a joy it was to watch her do it! Herback to him; her bare feet lifting on every third beat out of her slip-on shoes; her backsideprotruding ever so slightly, pressing up against the jeans each time she lunged forward for one ofthe orchestra's ham-fisted crescendos what a joy it was! What a vision! It was all he could do tostop himself rushing at her and carrying her off; it frightened him, the extent to which he could nottake his eyes off her. But he had to rationalize: the orchestra needed her God knows they werenever going to get through this adaptation of Swan Lake (more reminiscent of ducks waddlingthrough an oil slick) without her. Yet what a terrific waste it seemed akin to watching a toddler on abus mindlessly grabbing the breast of the stranger sitting next to him what a waste, that somethingof such beauty should be at the disposal of those too young to know what to do with it. The secondhe tasted this thought he brought it back up: Samad Miah , . , surely a man has reached his lowestwhen he is jealous of the child at a woman's breast, when he is jealous of the young, of the future .. .
And then, not for the first time that afternoon, as Poppy Burt-Jones lifted out of her shoes oncemore and the ducks finally succumbed to the environmental disaster, he asked himself: Why, in thename of Allah, am I here? And the answer returned once more with the persistence of vomit:
Because I simply cannot be anywhere else.
Tic, tic, tic. Samad was thankful for the sound of baton hitting on music-stand, whichinterrupted him from these thoughts, these thoughts that were something close to delirium.
"Now, kids, kids. Stop. Shhh, quieten down. Mouths away from instruments, bows down. Down,Anita. That's it, yes, right on the floor. Thank you. Now: you've probably noticed we have a visitortoday." She turned to him and he tried hard to find some part of her on which to focus, some inchthat did not heat his troubled blood. This is Mr. Iqbal, Magid's and Millat's father."Samad stood up as if he'd been called to attention, draped hiswide-lapel led overcoat carefully over his volatile crotch, waved rather lamely, sat back down.
"Say "Hello, Mr. Iqbal."""HELLO, MR ICK-BALL," came the resounding chorus from all but two of the musicians.
"Now: don't we want to play thrice as well because we have an audience?""YES, MISS BURT JONES"And not only is Mr. Iqbal our audience for today, but he's a very special audience. It's becauseof Mr. Iqbal that next week we won't be playing Swan Lake any more."A great roar met this announcement, accompanied by a stray chorus of trumpet hoots, drumrolls, a cymbal.
"All right, all right, enough. I didn't expect quite so much joyous approval."Samad smiled. She had humour, then. There was wit there, a bit of sharpness but why think themore reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was? He was thinking like a Christian again; hewas saying Can't say fairer than that to the Creator.
"Instruments down. Yes, you, Marvin. Thank you very much.""What'll we be doin' instead, then, Miss?""Well.. ." began Poppy Burt-Jones, the same half-coy, half daring smile he had noticed before.
"Something very exciting. Next week I want to try to experiment with some Indian music."The cymbal player, dubious of what place he would occupy in such a radical change of genre,took it upon himself to be the first to ridicule the scheme. "What, you mean that Eeeee EEEAAaaaaEEEeeee AAOoooo music?" he said, doing a creditable impression of the strains to be found at thebeginning of a Hindi musical, or in the back-room of an "Indian' restaurant, along with attendanthead movements. The class let out a blast of laughter as loud as the brass section and echoed thegag en masse: Eeee Eaaaoo OOOAaaah Eeee OOOiiiiiiii .. . This, alongwith screeching parodic violins, penetrated Samad's deep, erotic half-slumber and sent hisimagination into a garden, a garden encased in marble where he found himself dressed in white andhiding behind a large tree, spying on a be-saried, bindi-wearing Poppy Butt-Jones, as she woundflirtatiously in and out of some fountains; sometimes visible, sometimes not.
"I don't think-' began Poppy Burt-Jones, trying to force her voice above the hoo-hah, then,raising it several decibels, "I DON'T THINK IT IS VERY NICE TO' and here her voice slippedback to normal as the class registered the angry tone and quietened down. "I don't think it is verynice to make fan of somebody else's culture."The orchestra, unaware that this is what they had been doing, but aware that this was the mostheinous crime in the Manor School rule book, looked to their collective feet.
"Do you? Do you? How would you like it, Sophie, if someone made fan of Queen?"Sophie, a vaguely retarded twelve-year-old covered from head to toe in that particular rockband's paraphernalia, glared over a pair of bottle-top spectacles.
"Wouldn't like it, Miss.""No, you wouldn't, would you?""No, Miss.""Because Freddie Mercury is from your culture."Samad had heard the rumours that ran through the rank and file of the Palace waiters to theeffect that this Mercury character was in actual fact a very light-skin Persian called Farookh, whomthe head chef remembered from school in Panchgani, near Bombay. But who wished to split hairs?
Not wanting to stop the lovely Burt-Jones while she was in something of a flow, Samad kept theinformation to himself.
"Sometimes we find other people's music strange because their culture is different from ours,"said Miss Burt-Jones solemnly. "But that doesn't mean it isn't equally good, now does it?""NO, MISS"And we can learn about each other through each other's culture, can't we?""YES, MISS."For example, what music do you like, Millat?"Millat thought for a moment, swung his saxophone to his side and began fingering it like aguitar. "Bo-orn to ruuun! Da da da da daaa! Bruce Springsteen, Miss! Da da da da daaa! Baby, wewere bo-orn '
"Umm, nothing nothing else? Something you listen to at home, maybe?"Millat's face fell, troubled that his answer did not seem to be the right one. He looked over athis father, who was gesticulating wildly behind the teacher, trying to convey the jerky head andhand movements of bharata That yarn the form of dance Alsana had once enjoyed before sadnessweighted her heart, and babies tied down her hands and feet.
"Thriiiii-ller!" sang Millat, full throated, believing he had caught his father's gist. "Thriii-llernight! Michael Jackson, Miss! Michael Jackson!"Samad put his head in his hands. Miss Burt-Jones looked queerly at the small child standing ona chair, gyrating and grabbing his crotch before her. "OK, thank you, Millat. Thank you forsharing .. . that."Millat grinned. "No problem, Miss."While the children queued up to exchange twenty pence for two dry digestives and a cup oftasteless squash, Samad followed the light foot of Poppy Burt-Jones like a predator into the musiccupboard, a tiny room, windowless, with no means of escape, and full of instruments, filingcabinets over brimming with sheet music, and a scent Samad had thought hers but now identified asthe maturing leather of violin cases mixed with the mellowing odour of catgut.
"This," said Samad, spotting a desk beneath a mountain of paper, 'is where you work?"Poppy blushed. "Tiny, isn't it? Music budgets get cut every year until this year there wasnothing left to cut from. It's got to the point where they're putting desks in cupboards and callingthem offices. If it wasn't for the GLC, there wouldn't even be a desk.""It is certainly small," said Samad, scanning the room desperately for some spot where he mightstand that would put her out of arm's reach. "One might almost say, claustrophobic.""I know, it's awful but won't you sit down?"Samad looked for the chair she might be referring to.
"Oh God! I'm sorry! It's here." She swept paper, books and rubbish on to the floor with onehand, revealing a perilous looking stool. "I made it but it's pretty safe.""You excel in carpentry?" inquired Samad, searching once again for more good reasons tocommit a bad sin. "An artisan as well as a musician?""No, no, no I went to a few night classes nothing special. I made that and a foot stool, and thefoot stool broke. I'm no do you know I can't think of a single carpenter!""There is always Jesus.""But I can't very well say "I'm no Jesus" ... I mean, obviously I'm not, but for other reasons."Samad took his wobbly seat as Poppy Burt-Jones went to sit behind her desk. "Meaning you arenot a good person?"Samad saw that he had flustered her with the accidental solemnity of the question; she drew herfingers through her fringe, fiddled with a small tortoiseshell button on her blouse, laughed shakily.
"I like to think I'm not all bad.""And that is enough?""Well.. . I.. .""Oh my dear, I apologize .. ." began Samad. "I was not being serious, Miss Burt Jones"Well.. . Let's say I'm no Mr. Chippendale that'll do.""Yes," said Samad kindly, thinking to himself that she had far better legs than a Queen Annechair, 'that will do.""Now: where were we?"Samad leant a little over the desk, to face her. "Were we somewhere, Miss Burt Jones(He used his eyes; he remembered people used to say that it was his eyes that new boy in Delhi,Samad Miah, they said, he has eyes to die for.)"I was looking looking1 was looking for my notes where are my notes?"She began rifling through the catastrophe of her desk, and Samad leant back once more on hisstool, taking what little satisfaction he could from the fact that her fingers, if he was not mistaken,appeared to be trembling. Had there been a moment, just then? He was fifty-seven it was a good tenyears since he'd had a moment he was not at all sure he would recognize a moment if one camealong. You old man, he told himself as he dabbed at his face with a handkerchief, you old fool.
Leave now leave before you drown in your own guilty excrescence (for he was sweating like a pig),leave before you make it worse. But was it possible? Was it possible that this past month the monththat he had been squeezing and spilling, praying and begging, making deals and thinking, thinkingalways about her that she had been thinking of him?
"Oh! While I'm looking ... I remember there was something I wanted to ask youYes! said the anthropomorphized voice that had taken up residence in Samad's right testicle.
Whatever the question the answer is yes yes yes. Yes, we will make love upon this very table, yes,we will burn for it, and yes, Miss Burt-Jones, yes, the answer is inevitably, inescapably, YES. Yetsomehow, out there where conversation continued, in the rational world four feet above his ball-bag,the answer turned out to be "Wednesday."Poppy laughed. "No, I don't mean what day it is1 don't look that ditsy do I? No, I meant whatday is it; I mean, for Muslims. Only I saw Magid was in some kind of costume, and when I askedhim what it was for he wouldn't speak. I was terribly worried that I'd offended him somehow."Samad frowned. It is odious to be reminded of one's children when one is calculating the exactshade and rigidity of a nipple that could so assert itself through bra and shirt.
"Magid? Please do not worry yourself about Magid. I am sure he was not offended.""So I was right," said Poppy gleefully. "Is it like a type of, I don't know, vocal fasting?""Er .. . yes, yes," stumbled Samad, not wishing to divulge his family dilemma, 'it is a symbol ofthe Qur'an's .. . assertion that the day of reckoning would first strike us all unconscious. Silent, yousee. So, so, so the eldest son of the family dresses in black and, umm, disdains speech for a ... aperiod of... of time as a process of- of purification."Dear God.
"I see. That's just fascinating. And Magid is the elder?""By two minutes."Poppy smiled. "Only just, then.""Two minutes," said Samad patiently, because he was speaking to one with no knowledge of theimpact such small periods of time had amounted to throughout the history of the Iqbal family,'made all the difference.""And does the process have a name?""Amar durbol lagche.""What does it mean?"Literal translation: 7 feel weak. It means, Miss Butt-Jones, that every strand of me feelsweakened by the desire to kiss you.
"It means," said Samad aloud, without missing a beat, 'closed mouth worship of the Creator.""Amar durbol lagche. Wow," said Poppy Burt Jones"Indeed," said Samad Miah.
Poppy Burt-Jones leant forward in her chair. "I don't know .. . To me, it's just like this incredibleact of self-control. We just don't have that in the West that sense of sacrifice I just have so muchadmiration for the sense your people have of abstinence, of self-restraint."At which point Samad kicked the stool from under him like a man hanging himself, and met theloquacious lips of Poppy Burt-Jones with his own feverish pair.
And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking theirtime, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very sameday. Sometimes at the very same moment. At least, that would explain how two weeks later, duringthe old Druid festival of harvest, Samad can be found quietly packing the one shirt he's never wornto mosque (To the pure all things are pure) into a plastic bag, so that he might change later andmeet Miss Burt Jones (4.30, Harlesden Clock) without arousing suspicion .. . while Magid and achange-of-heart Millat slip only four cans of past their-sell-by-date chickpeas, a bag of varietycrisps and some apples into two rucksacks (Can't say fairer than that), in preparation for a meetingwith Me (4.30, ice-cream van) and a visit to their assigned old man, the one to whom they will offerpagan charity, one Mr. J. P. Hamilton of Kensal Rise.
Unbeknownst to all involved, ancient ley-lines run underneath these two journeys or, to put it inthe modern parlance, this is a rerun. We have been here before. This is like watching TV in Bombayor Kingston or Dhaka, watching the same old British sitcoms spewed out to the old colonies in onetedious, eternal loop. Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition it'ssomething to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island toisland. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round andround. There's no proper term for it original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would bebetter. A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbalsthat they can't helpbut re-enact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, fromone brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign. It will take a fewreplays before they move on to the next tune. And this is what is happening as Alsana sews loudlyon her monstrous Singer machine, double-stitching around the vacancy of a crotchless knicker,oblivious to the father and the sons who are creeping around the house, packing clothes, packingprovisions. It is a visitation of repetition. It is a dash across continents. It is a rerun. But one at atime, now, one at a time .. .
Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet theyoung: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other's rationality; with theknowledge that the other will find what they say hard to understand, that it will go beyond them(not so much over the head as between the legs); and with the feeling that they must arrive withsomething the other will like, something suitable. Like Garibaldi biscuits.
They like them," explained Me when the twins queried her choice, as the three of them rumbledto their destination on the top of the 52 bus, 'they like the raisins in them. Old people like raisins."Millat, from under the cocoon of his Tomytronic, sniffed, "Nobody likes raisins. Dead grapesbleurgh. Who wants to eat them!""Old people do," We insisted, stuffing the biscuits back into her bag. "And they're not dead,akchully, they're dried.""Yeah, after they've died.""Shut up, Millat. Magid, tell him to shut up!"Magid pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and diplomatically changed the subject.
"What else have you got?"Me reached into her bag. "A coconut.""A coconut!""For your information," snapped Me, moving the nut out of Millat's reach, 'old people likecoconuts. They can use the milk for their tea."Irie pressed on in the face of Millat retching. "And I got some crusty French bread and somecheese-singlets and some apples '
"We got apples, you chief," cut in Millat, 'chief, for some inexplicable reason hidden in theetymology of North London slang, meaning fool, arse, wanker, a loser of the most colossalproportions.
"Well, I got some more and better apples, akchully, and some Kendal mint cake and some ackeeand salt fish"I hate ackee and salt fish"Who said you were eating it?""I don't want to.""Well, you're not going to.""Well, good, 'cos I don't want to.""Well, good, 'cos I wouldn't let you even if you wanted to.""Well, that's lucky 'cos I don't. So shame," said Millat; and, without removing his Tomytronic,he delivered shame, as was traditionally the way, by dragging his palm along Irie's forehead.
"Shame in the brain.""Well, akchully, don't worry 'cos you're not going to get it'
"Oooh, feel the heat, feel the heatl' squealed Magid, rubbing his little palm in. "You beenshamed, man!""Akchully, I'm not shamed, you're shamed 'cos it's for Mr. J. P. Hamilton '
"Our stop!" cried Magid, shooting to his feet and pulling the bell cord too many times.
"If you ask me," said one disgruntled OAP to another, 'they should all go back to their ownBut this, the oldest sentence in the world, found itself stifled by the ringing of bells and thestamping of feet, until it retreated under the seats with the chewing gum.
"Shame, shame, know your name," trilled Magid. The three of them hurtled down the stairs andoff the bus.
And the 52 bus goes two ways. From the Willesden kaleidoscope, one can catch it west like thechildren; through Kensal Rise, to Portobello, to Knightsbridge, and watch the many colours shadeoff into the bright white lights of town; or you can get it east, as Samad did; Willesden, Dollis Hill,Harlesden, and watch with dread (if you are fearful like Samad, if all you have learnt from the cityis to cross the road at the sight of dark-skinned men) as white fades to yellow fades to brown, andthen Harlesden Clock comes into view, standing like Queen Victoria's statue in Kingston - a tallstone surrounded by black.
Samad had been surprised, yes surprised, that it was Harlesden she had whispered to him whenhe pressed her hand after the kiss that kiss he could still taste and demanded where it was he mightfind her, away from here, far from here ("My children, my wife," he had mumbled, incoherent);expecting "Islington' or maybe "West Hampstead' or at least "Swiss Cottage' and getting instead,"Harlesden. I live in Harlesden.""Stonebridge Estate?" Samad had asked, alarmed; wide-eyed at the creative ways Allah foundto punish him, envisioning himself atop his new lover with a gangster's four-inch knife in his back.
"No but not far from there. Do you want to meet up?"Samad's mouth had been the lone gunman on the grassy knoll that day, killing off his brain andswearing itself into power all at the same time.
"Yes. Oh, dammit! Yes."And then he had kissed her again, turning something relatively chaste into something else,cupping her breast in his left hand and enjoying her sharp intake of breath as he did so.
Then they had the short, obligatory exchange that those who cheat have to make them feel lesslike those who cheat.
"I really shouldn't '
"I'm not at all sure how this-'
"Well, we need to meet at least to discuss what has '
"Indeed, what has happened, it must be discu '
"Because something has happened here, but '
"My wife .. . my children"Let's give it some time .. . two weeks Wednesday? 4.30? Harlesden Clock?"He could at least, in this sordid mess, congratulate himself on his timing: 4.15 by the time hegot off the bus, which left five minutes to nip into the McDonald's toilets (that had black guards onthe door, black guards to keep out the blacks) and squeeze out of the restaurant flares into a darkblue suit, with a wool V-neck and a grey shirt, the pocket of which contained a comb to work histhick hair into some obedient form. By which time it was 4.20, five minutes in which to visit cousinHakim and his wife Zinat who ran the local pounds + sop shop (a type of shop that trades under thefalse premise that it sells no items above this price but on closer inspection proves to be theminimum price of the stock) and whom he meant inadvertently to provide him with an alibi.
"Samad Miah, oh! So smart-looking today it cannot be without a reason."Zinat Mahal: a mouth as large as the Blackwall Tunnel and Samad was relying upon it.
"Thank you, Zinat," said Samad, looking deliberately disingenuous. "As for a reason ... I am notsure that I should say.""Samad! My mouth is like the grave! Whatever is told to me dies with me."Whatever was told to Zinat invariably lit up the telephone network, rebounded off aerials, radiowaves and satellites along the way, picked up finally by advanced alien civilizations as it bouncedthrough the atmosphere of planets far removed from this one.
"Well, the truth is .. .""By Allah, get on with it!" cried Zinat, who was now almost on the other side of the counter,such was her delight in gossip. "Where are you off to?""Well... I am off to see a man in Park Royal about life insurance. I want my Alsana wellprovided for after my death but!" he said, waggling a finger at his sparkling, jewel-coveredinterrogator who wore too much eyeshadow, "I don't want her to know! Thoughts of death areabhorrent to her, Zinat.""Do you hear that, Hakim? Some men worry about the future of their wives! Go on get out ofhere, don't let me keep you, cousin. And don't worry," she called after him, simultaneously reachingfor the phone with her long curling fingernails, "I won't say one word to Alsi."Alibi done, three minutes were left for Samad to consider what an old man brings a young girl;something an old brown man brings a young white girl at the crossroads of four black streets;something suitable .. .
"A coconut?"Poppy Burt-Jones took the hairy object into her hands and looked up at Samad with a perplexedsmile.
"It is a mixed-up thing," began Samad nervously. "With juice like a fruit but hard like a nut.
Brown and old on the outside, white and fresh on the inside. But the mix is not, I think, bad. We useit sometimes," he added, not knowing what else to say, 'in curry."Poppy smiled; a terrific smile which accentuated every natural beauty of that face and had in it,Samad thought, something better than this, something with no shame in it, something better andpurer than what they were doing.
"It's lovely," she said.
Out in the street and five minutes from the address on their school sheets, Me still felt theirritable hot sting of shame and wanted a rematch.
"Tax that," she said, pointing to a rather beat-up motorbike leaning by Kensal Rise tube. "Taxthat, and that," indicating two BMXs beside it.
Millat and Magid jumped into action. The practice of 'taxing' something, whereby one laysclaims, like a newly arrived colonizer, to items in a street that do not belong to you, was wellknown and beloved to both of them.
"Cha, man! Believe, I don't want to tax dat crap," said Millat with the Jamaican accent that allkids, whatever their nationality, used to express scorn. "I tax dat," he said, pointing out anadmittedly impressive small, shiny, red MG about to turn the corner. "And-dat' he cried, gettingthere just before Magid as a BMW whizzed past. "Man, you know I tax that," he said to Magid,who offered no dispute. "Blatantly."Me, a little dejected by this turn of events, turned her eyes from the road to the floor, where shewas suddenly struck by a flash of inspiration.
"I tax those!"Magid and Millat stopped and looked in awe at the perfectly white Nikes that were now in Me'spossession (with one red tick, one blue; so beautiful, as Millat later remarked, it made you want tokill yourself), though to the naked eye they appeared to be walking towards Queens Park attachedto a tall natty-dread black kid.
Millat nodded grudgingly. "Respect to that. I wish I'd seed dem." "Tax!" said Magid suddenly,pushing his grubby finger up against some shop glass in the direction of a four-foot-long chemistryset with an ageing TV personality's face on the front.
He thumped the window. "Wow! I tax that!"A brief silence ensued.
"You tax that? asked Millat, incredulous. "That? You tax a chemistry set?"Before poor Magid knew where he was, two palms had made a ferocious slap on his forehead,and were doing much rubbing for good measure. Magid gave We an et to Brute type of pleadinglook, in the full knowledge that it was useless. There is no honesty amongst almost-ten year-olds.
"Shame! Shame! Know your name!""But Mr. J. P. Hamilton," moaned Magid from under the heat of shame. "We're here now. Hishouse is just there. It's a quiet street, you can't make all this noise. He's old.""But if he's old, he'll be deaf reasoned Millat. "And if you're deaf you can't hear.""It doesn't work like that. It's hard for old people. You don't understand.""He's probably too old to take the stuff out of the bags," said Me. "We should take them out andcarry them in our hands."This was agreed upon, and some time was taken arranging all the foodstuffs in the hands andcrevices of the body, so that they might 'surprise' Mr. J. P. Hamilton with the extent of their charitywhen he answered the door. Mr. J. P. Hamilton, confronted on his doorstep by three dark-skinnedchildren clutching a myriad of projectiles, was duly surprised. As old as they had imagined but fartaller and cleaner, he opened the door only slightly, keeping his hand, with its mountain range ofblue veins, upon the knob, while his head curled around the frame. To Me he was reminiscent ofsome genteel elderly eagle: tufts of feather-like hair protruded from ear drums, shirt cuffs and theneck, with one white spray falling over his forehead, his fingers lay in a permanent tight spasm liketalons, and he was well dressed, as one might expect of an elderly English bird in Wonderland asuede waistcoat and a tweed jacket, and a watch on a gold chain.
And twinkling like a magpie, from the blue scattering in his eyes undimmed by the white andred surround, to the gleam ofa signet ring, four argent medals perched just above his heart, and the silver rim of a SeniorService packet peeping over the breast pocket.
"Please," came the voice from the bird-man, a voice that even the children sensed was from adifferent class, a different era. "I must ask that you remove yourselves from my doorstep. I have nomoney whatsoever; so be your intention robbing or selling I'm afraid you will be disappointed."Magid stepped forward, trying to place himself in the old man's eye line for the left eye, blue asRayleigh scattering, had looked beyond them, while the right was so compacted beneath wrinkles ithardly opened. "Mr. Hamilton, don't you remember, the school sent us, these are '
He said, "Goodbye, now," as if he were bidding farewell to an elderly aunt embarking on a trainjourney, then once more "Goodbye', and through two panels of cheap stained-glass on the closeddoor the children watched the lengthy figure of Mr. Hamilton, blurred as if by heat, walking slowlyaway from them down a corridor until the brown flecks of him merged with the brown flecks of thehousehold furnishings and the former all but disappeared.
Millat pulled his Tomytronic down around his neck, frowned, and purposefully slammed hislittle fist into the doorbell, holding it down.
"Maybe," suggested Irie, 'he doesn't want the stuff."Millat released the doorbell briefly. "He's got to want it. He asked for it," he growled, pushingthe bell back down with his full force. "SGod's harvest, in nit Mr. Hamilton! Mr. J. P. Hamilton!"And then that slow process of disappearance began to rewind as he reconstituted himself via theatoms of a staircase and a dresser until he was large as life once more, curled around the door.
Millat, lacking patience, thrust his school information sheet into his hand. "SGod's harvest."But the old man shook his head like a bird in a bird-bath. "No, no, I really won't be intimidatedinto purchases on my own doorstep. I don't know what you are selling please God let it not beencyclopedias at my age it is not more information one requires but less.""But it's free!""Oh .. . yes, I see .. . why?""SGod's harvest," repeated Magid.
"Helping the local community. Mr. Hamilton, you must have spoken to our teacher, because shesent us here. Maybe it slipped your mind," added Me in her grown-up voice.
Mr. Hamilton touched his temple sadly as if to retrieve the memory and then ever so slowlyopened his front door to full tilt and made a pigeon-step forward into the autumn sunlight. "Well.. .
you'd better come in."They followed Mr. Hamilton into the town house gloom of his hall. Filled to the brim withbattered and chipped Victoriana punctuated by signs of more recent life children's broken bikes, adiscarded Speak-and-Spell, four pairs of muddy wellies in a family's variant sizes.
"Now," he said cheerily, as they reached the living room with its beautiful bay windows throughwhich a sweeping garden could be seen, 'what have we got here?"The children released their load on to a moth-eaten chaise longue, Magid reeling off thecontents like items from a shopping list, while Mr. Hamilton lit a cigarette and inspected the urbanpicnic with doddering fingers.
"Apples .. . oh, dear me, no ... chickpeas .. . no, no, no, potato-chipsIt went on like this, each article being picked up in its turn and chastised, until the old manlooked up at them with faint tears in his eyes. "I can't eat any of this, you see .. . too hard, toobloody hard. The most I could manage is probably the milk in that coconut. Still... we will have tea,won't we? You'll stay for tea?"The children looked at him blankly.
"Go on, my dears, do sit downMe, Magid and Millat shuffled up nervously on the chaise longue. Then there was a click-clacksound and when they looked up Mr. Hamilton's teeth were on his tongue, as if a second mouth hadcome out of the first. And then in a flash they were back in.
"I simply cannot eat anything unless it has been pulverized beforehand, you see. My own fault.
Years and years of neglect. Clean teeth never a priority in the army." He signalled himself clumsily,an awkward jab at his own chest with a shaking hand. "I was an army man, you see. Now: howmany times do you young people brush your teeth?"Three times a day," said Me, lying.
"LIAR!" chorused Millat and Magid. "PANTS ON FIRE!""Two and a half times.""Well, dear me, which is it?" said Mr. Hamilton, smoothing down his trousers with one handand lifting his tea with the other.
"Once a day," said Me sheepishly, the concern in his voice compelling her to tell the truth.
"Most days.""I fear you will come to regret that. And you two?"Magid was midway through formulating some elaborate fantasy of a toothbrush machine thatdid it while you slept, but Millat came clean. "Same. Once a day. More or less."Mr. Hamilton leant back contemplatively in his chair. "One sometimes forgets the significanceof one's teeth. We're not like the lower animals teeth replaced regularly and all that we're of themammals, you see. And mammals only get two chances, with teeth. More sugar?"The children, mindful of their two chances, declined.
"But like all things, the business has two sides. Clean white teeth are not always wise, now arethey? Par exemplum: when I was in the Congo, the only way I could identify the nigger was by thewhiteness of his teeth, if you see what I mean. Horridbusiness. Dark as buggery, it was. And they died because of it, you see? Poor bastards. Or ratherI survived, to look at it in another way, do you see?"The children sat silently. And then Irie began to cry, ever so quietly.
Mr. Hamilton continued, Those are the split decisions you make in war. See a flash of white andbang! as it were .. . Dark as buggery. Terrible times. All these beautiful boys lying dead there, rightin front of me, right at my feet. Stomachs open, you know, with their guts on my shoes. Like theend of the bloody world. Beautiful men, enlisted by the Krauts, black as the ace of spades; poorfools didn't even know why they were there, what people they were fighting for, who they wereshooting at. The decision of the gun. So quick, children. So brutal. Biscuit?""I want to go home," whispered Irie.
"My dad was in the war. He played for England," piped up Millat, red-faced and furious.
"Well, boy, do you mean the football team or the army?""The British army. He drove a tank. A Mr. Churchill. With her dad," explained Magid.
"I'm afraid you must be mistaken," said Mr. Hamilton, genteel as ever. "There were certainly nowogs as I remember though you're probably not allowed to say that these days are you? But no ...
no Pakistanis .. . what would we have fed them? No, no," he grumbled, assessing the question as ifhe were being given the opportunity to rewrite history here and now. "Quite out of the question. Icould not possibly have stomached that rich food. No Pakistanis. The Pakistanis would have beenin the Pakistani army, you see, whatever that was. As for the poor Brits, they had enough on theirhands with us old QueensMr. Hamilton laughed softly to himself, turned his head and silently admired the roamingbranches of a cherry tree that dominated one whole corner of his garden. After a long pause heturned back and tears were visible in his eyes again fast,sharp tears as if he had been slapped in the face. "Now, you young men shouldn't tell fibsshould you? Fibs will rot your teeth.""It's not a lie, Mr. J. P. Hamilton, he really was," said Magid, always the peace-maker, alwaysthe negotiator. "He was shot in the hand. He has medals. He was a hero.""And when your teeth rot '
"It's the truth!" shouted Millat, kicking over the tea-tray that sat on the floor between them.
"You stupid fucking old man.""And when your teeth rot," continued Mr. Hamilton, smiling at the ceiling, 'aaah, there's noreturn. They won't look at you like they used to. The pretty ones won't give you a second glance,not for love or money. But while you're still young, the important matter is the third molars. Theyare more commonly referred to as the wisdom teeth, I believe. You simply must deal with the thirdmolars before anything else. That was my downfall. You won't have them yet, but mygreat-grandchildren are just feeling them now. The problem with third molars is one is never surewhether one's mouth will be quite large enough to accommodate them. They are the only part of thebody that a man must grow into. He must be a big enough man for these teeth, do you see? Becauseif not oh dear me, they grow crooked or any which way, or refuse to grow at all. They stay lockedup there with the bone an impaction, I believe, is the term and terrible, terrible infection ensues.
Have them out early, that's what I tell my granddaughter Jocelyn in regard to her sons. You simplymust. You can't fight against it. I wish I had. I wish I'd given up early and hedged my bets, as itwere. Because they're your father's teeth, you see, wisdom teeth are passed down by the father, I'mcertain of it. So you must be big enough for them. God knows, I wasn't big enough for mine .. .
Have them out and brush three times a day, if my advice means anything."By the time Mr. J. P. Hamilton looked down to see whether his advice meant anything, his threedun-coloured visitors hadalready disappeared, taking with them the bag of apples (apples he had been contemplatingasking Jocelyn to put through the food processor); tripping over themselves, running to get to agreen space, to get to one of the lungs of the city, some place where free breathing was possible.
Now, the children knew the city. And they knew the city breeds the Mad. They knew Mr.
White-Face, an Indian who walks the streets of Willesden with his face painted white, his lipspainted blue, wearing a pair of tights and some hiking boots; they knew Mr. Newspaper, a tallskinny man in an ankle-length raincoat who sits in Brent libraries removing the day's newspapersfrom his briefcase and methodically tearing them into strips; they knew Mad Mary, a black voodoowoman with a red face whose territory stretches from Kilburn to Oxford Street but who performsher spells from a bin in West Hampstead; they knew Mr. Toupee, who has no eyebrows and wears atoupee not on his head but on a string around his neck. But these people announced their madnessthey were better, less scary than Mr. J. P. Hamilton they flaunted their insanity, they weren't halfmad and half not, curled around a door frame. They were properly mad in the Shakespearean sense,talking sense when you least expected it. In North London, where councillors once voted to changethe name of the area to Nirvana, it is not unusual to walk the streets and be suddenly confronted bysage words from the chalk-faced, blue-lipped or eye browless From across the street or from theother end of a tube carriage they will use their schizophrenic talent for seeing connections in therandom (for discerning the whole world in a grain of sand, for deriving narrative from nothing) toriddle you, to rhyme you, to strip you down, to tell you who you are and where you're going(usually Baker Street the great majority of modern-day seers travel the Metropolitan Line) and why.
But as a city we are not appreciative of thesepeople. Our gut instinct is that they intend to embarrass us, that they're out to shame ussomehow as they lurch down the train aisle, bulbous-eyed and with carbuncled nose, preparing toask us, inevitably, what we are looking at. What the fuck are we looking at. As a kind ofpre-emptive defence mechanism, Londoners have learnt not to look, never to look, to avoid eyes atall times so that the dreaded question "What you looking at?" and its pitiful, gutless, useless answer"Nothing' might be avoided. But as the prey evolves (and we are prey to the Mad who are pursuingus, desperate to impart their own brand of truth to the hapless commuter) so does the hunter, andthe true professionals begin to tire of that old catch phrase "What you looking at?" and move intomore exotic territory. Take Mad Mary. Oh, the principle's still the same, it's still all about eyecontact and the danger of making it, but now she's making eye contact from a hundred, twohundred, even three hundred yards away, and if she catches you doing the same she roars down thestreet, dreads and feathers and cape afloat, Hoodoo stick in hand, until she gets to where you are,spits on you, and begins. Samad knew all of this they'd had dealings before, he and red-faced MadMary; he'd even suffered the misfortune of having her sit next to him on a bus. Any other day andSamad would have given her as good as he got. But today he was feeling guilty and vulnerable,today he was holding Poppy's hand as the sun crept away; he could not face Mad Mary and hervicious truth-telling, her ugly madness which of course was precisely why she was stalking him,quite deliberately stalking him down Church Road.
"For your own safety, don't look," said Samad. "Just keep on walking in a straight line. I had noidea she travelled this far into Harlesden."Poppy snatched the quickest glance at the multicoloured streaming flash galloping down thehigh street on an imaginary horse.
She laughed. "Who is that?"Samad quickened the pace. "She is Mad Mary. And she is not remotely funny. She isdangerous.""Oh, don't be ridiculous. Just because she's homeless and has mental health .. . difficulties,doesn't mean she wants to hurt anyone. Poor woman, can you imagine what must have happened inher life to make her like that?"Samad sighed. "First of all, she is not homeless. She has stolen every wheelie bin in WestHampstead and has built quite a significant structure out of them in Fortune Green. And secondlyshe is not a "poor woman". Everyone is terrified of her, from the council downwards, she receivesfree food from every corner shop in North London ever since she cursed the Ramchandra place andbusiness collapsed within the month." Samad's portly figure was working up quite a sweat now, ashe shifted another gear in response to Mad Mary doing the same on the other side of the street.
Breathless, he whispered, "And she doesn't like white people."Poppy's eyes widened. "Really?" she said, as if such an idea had never occurred to her, andturned round to make the fatal mistake of looking. In a second, Mad Mary was upon them.
A thick globule of spit hit Samad directly between his eyes, on the bridge of his nose. He wipedit away, pulled Poppy to him and tried to sidestep Mad Mary by ducking into the courtyard of St.
Andrew's Church, but the Hoodoo stick slammed down in front of them both, marking a line in thepebbles and dust that could not be crossed over.
She spoke slowly, and with such a menacing scowl that the left side of her face seemedparalysed. "You .. . lookin'... at... some .. . ting?"Poppy managed a squeak, "No!"Mad Mary whacked Poppy's calf with the Hoodoo stick and turned to Samad. "You, sir! You .. .
lookin' ... at... some .. . ting?"Samad shook his head.
Suddenly she was screaming. "BLACK MAN! DEMBLOCK YOU EVERYWHERE YOU TURN!""Please," stuttered Poppy, clearly terrified. "We don't want any trouble.""BLACK MAN!" (She liked to speak in rhyming couplets.)"DE BITCH SHE WISH TO SEE YOU BURN!""We are minding our own business' began Samad, but he was stopped by a second projectile ofphlegm, this time hitting him on the cheek.
"Tru hill and gully, dem follow you dem follow you, Tru hill and gully, de devil swallow you'im swallow you." This was delivered in a kind of singing stage-whisper, accompanied by a dancefrom side to side, arms outstretched and Hoodoo stick resting firmly underneath Poppy Burt-Jones's chin.
"What 'as dem ever done for us body got kill us and enslave us? What 'as dem done for ourminds got hurt us an' enrage us? What's de pollution?"Mad Mary lifted Poppy's chin with her stick and asked again,"WHAT'S DE POLLUTION?"Poppy was weeping. "Please ... I don't know what you want me to '
Mad Mary sucked her teeth and turned her attention once more to Samad.
"WHAT'S DE SOLUTION?""I don't know."Mad Mary slapped him around the ankles with her stick.
"WHAT'S DE SOLUTION, BLACK MAN?"Mad Mary was a beautiful, a striking woman: a noble forehead, a prominent nose, agelessmidnight skin and a long neck that Queens can only dream about. But it was her alarming eyes,which shot out an anger on the brink of total collapse, that Samad was concentrated on, because hesaw that they were speaking to him and him alone. Poppy had nothing to do with this. Mad Marywas looking at him with recognition. Mad Mary had spotteda fellow traveller. She had spotted the madman in him (which is to say, the prophet); he felt sureshe had spotted the angry man, the masturbating man, the man stranded in the desert far from hissons, the foreign man in a foreign land caught between borders .. . the man who, if you push himfar enough, will suddenly see sense. Why else had she picked him from a street full of people?
Simply because she recognized him. Simply because they were from the same place, he and MadMary, which is to say: far away.
"Satyagraha," said Samad, surprising himself with his own calmness.
Mad Mary, unused to having her interrogations answered, looked at him in astonishment.
"WHAT'S DE SOLUTION?""Satyagraha. It is Sanskrit for "truth and firmness". Gandhi gee's word. You see, he did not like"passive resistance" or "civil disobedience"."Mad Mary was beginning to twitch and swear compulsively under her breath, but Samad sensedthat in some way this was Mad Mary listening, this was Mad Mary's mind trying to process wordsother than her own.
"Those words weren't big enough for him. He wanted to show what we call weakness to be astrength. He understood that sometimes not to act is a man's greatest triumph. He was a Hindu. I ama Muslim. My friend here is'
"A Roman Catholic," said Poppy shakily. "Lapsed.""And you are?" began Samad.
Mad Mary said cunt, bitch, rhasclaat several times and spat on the floor, which Samad took as asign of cooling hostilities.
"What I am trying to saySamad looked at the small group of Methodists who, hearing the noise, had begun to gathernervously at the door of St. Andrew's. He grew confident. There had always been a manquepreacher in Samad. A know-it-all, a walker-and-a-talker. With a small audience and a lot of fresh airhe had always beenable to convince himself that all the knowledge in the universe, all the knowledge on walls, was his.
"I am trying to say that life is a broad church, is it not?" He pointed to the ugly red-brickbuilding full of its quivering believers. "With wide aisles He pointed to the smelly bustle of black,white, brown and yellow shuffling up and down the high street. To the albino woman who stoodoutside the Cash and Carry, selling daisies picked from the churchyard. "Which my friend and Iwould like to continue walking along if it is all right with you. Believe me, I understand yourconcerns," said Samad, taking his inspiration now from that other great North Londonstreet-preacher, Ken Livingstone, "I am having difficulties myself we are all having difficulties inthis country, this country which is new to us and old to us all at the same time. We are dividedpeople, aren't we."And here Samad did what no one had done to Mad Mary for well over fifteen years: he touchedher. Very lightly, on the shoulder.
"We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with my legs crossed, lettingthe things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight the holy war.
Jihad! And certainly we could argue this out in the street, but I think, in the end, your past is not mypast and your truth is not my truth and your solution it is not my solution. So I do not know what itis you would like me to say. Truth and firmness is one suggestion, though there are many otherpeople you can ask if that answer does not satisfy. Personally, my hope lies in the last days. Theprophet Muhammad peace be upon Him! tells us that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will bestruck unconscious. Deaf and dumb. No chit-chat. Tongueless. And what a bloody relief that will be.
Now, if you will excuse me."Samad took Poppy firmly by the hand and walked on, while Mad Mary stood dumbstruck onlybriefly before rushing to the church door and spraying saliva upon the congregation.
Poppy wiped away a frightened tear and sighed.
She said, "Calm in a crisis. Impressive."Samad, increasingly given to visions, saw that great grandfather of his, Mangal Pande, flailingwith a musket; fighting against the new, holding on to tradition.
"It runs in the family," he said.
Later, Samad and Poppy walked up through Harlesden, around Dollis Hill, and then, when itseemed they were hovering too near to Willesden, Samad waited till the sun went down, bought abox of sticky Indian sweets and turned into Roundwood Park; admired the last of the flowers. Hetalked and talked, the kind of talking you do to stave off the inevitable physical desire, the kind oftalking that only increases it. He told her about Delhi circa 1942, she told him about St. Albanscirca 1972. She complained about a long list of entirely unsuitable boyfriends, and Samad, not ableto criticize Alsana or even mention her name, spoke of his children: fear of Millat's passion forobscenities and a noisy TV show about an A-team; worries about whether Magid got enough directsunlight. What was the country doing to his sons, he wanted to know, what was it doing?
"I like you," she said finally. "A lot. You're very funny. Do you know that you're funny?"Samad smiled and shook his head. "I have never thought of myself as a great comic wit.""No you are funny. That thing you said about camels She began to laugh, and her laugh was infectious.
"What thing?""About camels when we were walking.""Oh, you mean, "Men are like camels: there is barely one in a hundred that you would trust with your life.""Yes!""That's not comedy, that is the Bukharl, part eight, page onehundred and thirty," said Samad. "And it is good advice. I have certainly found it to be true.""Well, it's still funny."She sat closer to him on the bench and kissed his ear. "Seriously, I like you.""I'm old enough to be your father. I'm married. I am a Muslim.""O K, so Dateline wouldn't have matched our forms. So what?""What kind of a phrase is this: "So what?" Is that English? That is not English. Only theimmigrants can speak the Queen's English these days."Poppy giggled. "I still say: So '
But Samad covered her mouth with his hand, and looked for a moment almost as if he intendedto hit her. "So everything. So everything. There is nothing funny about this situation. There isnothing good about it. I do not wish to discuss the rights or wrongs of this with you. Let us stick towhat we are obviously here for," he spat out. "The physical, not the metaphysical."Poppy moved to the other end of the bench and leant forward, her elbows resting on her knees.
"I know," she began slowly, 'that this is no more than it is. But I won't be spoken to like that.""I am sorry. It was wrong of me '
"Just because you feel guilty, I've nothing to feel '
"Yes, I'm sorry. I have no '
"Because you can go if you '
Half thoughts. Stick them all together and you have less than you began with.
"I don't want to go. I want you." Poppy brightened a bit and smiled her half-sad, half-goofy smile.
"I want to spend the night.. . with you.""Good," she replied. "Because I bought this for you while you were next door buying those sugary sweets.""What is it?"She dived into her handbag, and in the attenuated minute in WKwhich she scrabbled through lipsticks and car-keys and spare "i change, two things happened.
1.1 Samad closed his eyes and heard the words To the pure all things are pure and then, almostimmediately afterwards, Can't say fairer than that.
1.2 Samad opened his eyes and saw quite clearly by the bandstand his two sons, their whiteteeth biting into two waxy apples, waving, smiling.
And then Poppy resurfaced, triumphant, with a piece of red plastic in her hand.
"A toothbrush," she said.
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