‘Mrs Iqbal? It’s Joyce Chalfen. Mrs Iqbal? I can see you quite clearly. It’s Joyce. I really think we should talk. Could you… umm… open the door?’
Yes, she could. Theoretically, she could. But in this atmosphere of extremity, with warring sons and disparate factions, Alsana needed a tactic of her own. She’d done silence, and word-strikes and food consumption (the opposite of a hunger-strike; one gets bigger in order to intimidate the enemy), and now she was attempting a sit-down protest.
‘Mrs Iqbal… just five minutes of your time. Magid’s really very upset about all of this. He’s worried about Millat and so am I. Just five minutes, Mrs Iqbal, please.’
Alsana didn’t rise from her seat. She simply continued along the hem, keeping her eye on the black thread as it shuttled from one cog to the next and down into the PVC, pressing the pedal of the Singer furiously, as if kicking the flank of a horse she wished to ride into the sunset.
‘Well, you may as well let her in,’ said Samad wearily, emerging from the lounge, where Joyce’s persistence had disturbed his appreciation of The Antiques Roadshow. (Aside from The Equalizer, starring that great moral arbiter Edward Woodward, it was Samad’s favourite programme. He had spent fifteen long televisual years waiting for some cockney housewife to pull a trinket of Mangal Pande’s out of her handbag. Oh, Mrs Winterbottom, now this is very exciting. What we have here is the barrel of the musket belonging to.. . He sat with the phone under his right hand so that in the event of such a scenario he could phone the BBC and demand the said Winterbottom’s address and asking price. So far only Mutiny medals and a pocket watch belonging to Havelock, but still he watched.)
He peered down the hallway at the shadowy form of Joyce through the glass and scratched his testicles, sadly. Samad was in his television mode: garish V-neck, stomach swelling like a tight hot-water bottle beneath it, long moth-eaten dressing gown, and a pair of paisley boxer-shorts from which two stick legs, the legacy of his youth, protruded. In his television mode action escaped him. The box in the corner of the room (which he liked to think of as an antique of its kind, encased in wood and on four legs like some Victorian robot) sucked him in and sapped all energy.
‘Well, why don’t you do something, Mr Iqbal? Make her go away. Instead of standing there with your flabby gut and your tiny willy on display.’
Samad grunted and tucked the cause of all his troubles, two huge hairy balls and a defeated-looking limp prick, back into the inner lining of his shorts.
‘She won’t go away,’ he murmured. ‘And if she does, she will only return with reinforcements.’
‘But why? Hasn’t she caused enough trouble?’ said Alsana loudly, loud enough for Joyce. ‘She has her own family, no? Why does she not go and for a change mess them up? She has boys, four boys? How many boys does she want? How bloody many?’
Samad shrugged, went into the kitchen drawer and fished out the earphones that could be plugged into the television and thus short-circuit the outside world. He, like Marcus, had disengaged. Leave them, was his feeling. Leave them to their battles.
‘Oh thank you,’ said Alsana caustically, as her husband retreated to his Hugh Scully and his pots and guns. ‘Thank you, Samad Miah, for your oh so valuable contribution. This is what the men do. They make the mess, the century ends, and they leave the women to clear up the shit. Thank you, husband!’
She increased the speed of her sewing, dashing out the seam, progressing down the inner leg, while the Sphinx of the letterbox continued to ask unanswerable questions.
‘Mrs Iqbal… please can we talk? Is there any reason why we shouldn’t talk? Do we have to behave like children?’
Alsana began to sing.
‘Mrs Iqbal? Please. What can this possibly achieve?’
Alsana sang louder.
‘I must tell you,’ said Joyce, strident as ever, even through three panels of wood and double glazing, ‘I’m not here for my health. Whether you want me to be involved or not, I am, you see? I am.’
Involved. At least that was the right word, Alsana reflected, as she lifted her foot off the pedal, and let the wheel spin a few times alone before coming to a squeaky halt. Sometimes, here in England, especially at bus-stops and on the daytime soaps, you heard people say ‘We’re involved with each other,’ as if this were a most wonderful state to be in, as if one chose it and enjoyed it. Alsana never thought of it that way. Involved happened over a long period of time, pulling you in like quicksand. Involved is what befell the moon-faced Alsana Begum and the handsome Samad Miah one week after they’d been pushed into a Delhi breakfast room together and informed they were to marry. Involved was the result when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some stairs. Involved swallowed up a girl called Ambrosia and a boy called Charlie (yes, Clara had told her that sorry tale) the second they kissed in the larder of a guest house. Involved is neither good, nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other’s pockets… one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to being uninvolved. And the woman was right, one didn’t do it for one’s health. Nothing this late in the century was done with health in mind. Alsana was no dummy when it came to the Modern Condition. She watched the talk shows, all day long she watched the talk shows – My wife slept with my brother, My mother won’t stay out of my boyfriend’s life – and the microphone holder, whether it be Tanned Man with White Teeth or Scary Married Couple, always asked the same damn silly question: But why do you feel the need… ? Wrong! Alsana had to explain it to them through the screen. You blockhead; they are not wanting this, they are not willing it – they are just involved, see? They walk IN and they get trapped between the revolving doors of those two v’s. Involved. The years pass, and the mess accumulates and here we are. Your brother’s sleeping with my ex-wife’s niece’s second cousin. Involved. Just a tired, inevitable fact. Something in the way Joyce said it, involved – wearied, slightly acid – suggested to Alsana that the word meant the same thing to her. An enormous web you spin to catch yourself.
‘OK, OK, lady, five minutes, only. I have three catsuits to do this morning come hell or high water.’
Alsana opened the door and Joyce walked into the hallway, and for a moment they surveyed their opposite number, guessing each other’s weight like nervous prize fighters prior to mounting the scales. They were definitely a match for each other. What Joyce lacked in chest, she made up in bottom. Where Alsana revealed a weakness in delicate features – a thin and pretty nose, light eyebrows – she compensated with the huge pudge of her arms, the dimples of maternal power. For, after all, she was the mother here. The mother of the boys in question. She held the trump card, should she be forced to play it.
‘Okey-dokey, then,’ said Alsana, squeezing through the narrow kitchen door, beckoning Joyce to follow.
‘Is it tea or is it coffee?’
‘Tea,’ said Joyce firmly. ‘Fruit if possible.’
‘Fruit not possible. Not even Earl Grey is possible. I come from the land of tea to this godawful country and then I can’t afford a proper cup of it. P.G. Tips is possible and nothing else.’
Joyce winced. ‘P.G. Tips, please, then.’
‘As you wish.’
The mug of tea plonked in front of Joyce a few minutes later was grey with a rim of scum and thousands of little microbes flitting through it, less micro than one would have hoped. Alsana gave Joyce a moment to consider it.
‘Just leave it for a while,’ she explained gaily. ‘My husband hit a water pipe when digging a trench for some onions. Our water is a little funny ever since. It may give you the running shits or it may not. But give it a minute and it clears. See?’ Alsana gave it an unconvincing stir, sending yet larger chunks of unidentified matter bubbling up to the surface. ‘You see? Fit for Shah Jahan himself!’
Joyce took a tentative sip and then pushed it to one side.
‘Mrs Iqbal, I know we haven’t been on the best of terms in the past, but-’
‘Mrs Chalfen,’ said Alsana, putting up her long forefinger to stop Joyce speaking. ‘There are two rules that everybody knows, from PM to jinrickshaw-wallah. The first is, never let your country become a trading post. Very important. If my ancestors had followed this advice, my situation presently would be very different, but such is life. The second is, don’t interfere in other people’s family business. Milk?’
‘No, no, thank you. A little sugar…’
Alsana dumped a huge heaped tablespoon into Joyce’s cup.
‘You think I am interfering?’
‘I think you have interfered.’
‘But I just want the twins to see each other.’
‘You are the reason they are apart.’
‘But Magid is only living with us because Millat won’t live with him here. And Magid tells me your husband can barely stand the sight of him.’
Alsana, little pressure-cooker that she was, blew. ‘And why can’t he? Because you, you and your husband, have involved Magid in something so contrary to our culture, to our beliefs, that we barely recognize him! You have done that! He is at odds with his brother now. Impossible conflict! Those green bow-tied bastards: Millat is high up with them now. Very involved. He doesn’t tell me, but I hear. They call themselves followers of Islam, but they are nothing but thugs in a gang roaming Kilburn like all the other lunatics. And now they are sending out the – what are they called – folded-paper trouble.’
‘Leaflets?’
‘Leaflets. Leaflets about your husband and his ungodly mouse. Trouble brewing, yes sir. I found them, hundreds of them under his bed.’ Alsana stood up, drew a key out of her apron pocket and opened a kitchen cupboard stacked full of green leaflets, which cascaded on to the floor. ‘He’s disappeared again, three days. I have to put them back before he finds out they are gone. Take some, go on, lady, take them, go and read them to Magid. Show him what you have done. Two boys driven to different ends of the world. You have made a war between my sons. You are splitting them apart!’
A minute earlier Millat had turned the key ever so softly in the front door. Since then he had been standing in the hallway, listening to the conversation and smoking a fag. It was great! It was like listening to two big Italian matriarchs from opposing clans battle it out. Millat loved clans. He had joined KEVIN because he loved clans (and the outfit and the bow tie), and he loved clans at war. Marjorie the analyst had suggested that this desire to be part of a clan was a result of being, effectively, half a twin. Marjorie the analyst suggested that Millat’s religious conversion was more likely born out of a need for sameness within a group than out of any intellectually formulated belief in the existence of an all-powerful creator. Maybe. Whatever. As far as he was concerned, you could analyse it until the cows came home, but nothing beat being all dressed in black, smoking a fag, listening to two mammas battle it out over you in operatic style:
‘You claim to want to help my boys, but you have done nothing but drive a wedge between them. It is too late now. I have lost my family. Why don’t you go back to yours and leave us alone?’
‘You think it’s paradise over at my house? My family has been split by this too. Joshua isn’t speaking to Marcus. Did you know that? And those two were so close…’ Joyce looked a bit weepy, and Alsana reluctantly passed her the kitchen roll. ‘I’m trying to help all of us. And the best way to start is to get Magid and Millat talking before this escalates any further than it has. I think we can both agree on that. If we could find some neutral place, some ground where they both felt no pressures or outside influence…’
‘But there are no neutral places any more! I agree they should meet, but where and how? You and your husband have made everything impossible.’
‘Mrs Iqbal, with all due respect, the problems in your family began long before either my husband or I had any involvement.’
‘Maybe, maybe, Mrs Chalfen, but you are the salt in the wound, yes? You are the one extra chilli pepper in the hot sauce.’
Millat heard Joyce draw her breath in sharply.
‘Again, with respect, I can’t believe that it is the case. I think this has been going on for a very long time. Millat told me that some years ago you burnt all his things. I mean, it’s just an example, but I don’t think you understand the trauma that kind of thing has inflicted on Millat. He’s very damaged.’
‘Oh, we are going to play the tit for the tat. I see. And I am to be the tit. Not that it is any of your big-nose business, but I burnt those things to teach him a lesson – to respect other people’s lives!’
‘A strange way of showing it, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘I do mind! I do mind! What do you know of it?’
‘Only what I see. And I see that Millat has a lot of mental scars. You may not be aware, but I’ve been funding sessions for Millat with my analyst. And I can tell you, Millat’s inner life – his karma, I suppose you might call it in Bengali – the whole world of his subconscious shows serious illness.’
In fact, the problem with Millat’s subconscious (and he didn’t need Marjorie to tell him this) was that it was basically split-level. On the one hand he was trying real hard to live as Hifan and the others suggested. This involved getting his head around four main criteria.
To be ascetic in one’s habits (cut down on the booze, the spliff, the women).
To remember always the glory of Muhammad (peace be upon Him!) and the might of the Creator.
To grasp a full intellectual understanding of KEVIN and the Qur’ān.
To purge oneself of the taint of the West.
He knew that he was KEVIN’s big experiment, and he wanted to give it his best shot. In the first three areas he was doing fine. He smoked the odd fag and put away a Guinness on occasion (can’t say fairer than that), but he was very successful with both the evil weed and the temptations of the flesh. He no longer saw Alexandra Andrusier, Polly Houghton or Rosie Dew (though he paid occasional visits to one Tanya Chapman, a very small redhead who understood the delicate nature of his dilemma and would give him a thorough blow job without requiring Millat to touch her at all. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: she was the daughter of a judge and delighted in horrifying the old goat, and Millat needed ejaculation with no actual active participation on his side). On the scriptural side of things, he thought Muhammad (peace be upon Him!) was a right geezer, a great bloke, and he was in awe of the Creator, in the original meaning of that word: dread, fear, really shit-scared – and Hifan said that was correct, that was how it should be. He understood this idea that his religion was not one based on faith – not like the Christians, the Jews, et al. – but one that could be intellectually proved by the best minds. He understood the idea. But, sadly, Millat was far from possessing one of the best minds, or even a reasonable mind; intellectual proof or disproof was beyond him. Still, he understood that to rely on faith, as his own father did, was contemptible. And no one could say he didn’t give one hundred per cent to the cause. That seemed enough for KEVIN. They were more than happy with his real forte, which was the delivery of the thing. The presentation. For instance, if a nervous-looking woman came up to the KEVIN stall in Willesden Library and asked about the faith, Millat would lean over the desk, grab her hand, press it and say: Not faith, Sister. We do not deal in faith here. Spend five minutes with my Brother Rakesh and he will intellectually prove to you the existence of the Creator. The Qur’ān is a document of science, a document of rational thought. Spend five minutes, Sister, if you care for your future beyond this earth. And to top it off, he could usually sell her a few tapes (Ideological Warfare or Let the Scholars Beware), two quid each. Or even some of their literature, if he was on top form. Everyone at KEVIN was mightily impressed. So far so good. As for KEVIN’s more unorthodox programmes of direct action, Millat was right in there, he was their greatest asset, he was in the forefront, the first into battle come jihad, cool as fuck in a crisis, a man of action, like Brando, like Pacino, like Liotta. But even as Millat reflected on this with pride in his mother’s hallway, his heart sank. For therein lay the problem. Number four. Purging oneself of the West.
Now, he knew, he knew that if you wanted an example of the moribund, decadent, degenerate, over-sexed, violent state of Western capitalist culture and the logical endpoint of its obsession with personal freedoms (Leaflet: Way Out West), you couldn’t do much better than Hollywood cinema. And he knew (how many times had he been through it with Hifan?) that the ‘gangster’ movie, the Mafia genre, was the worst example of that. And yet… it was the hardest thing to let go. He would give every spliff he’d ever smoked and every woman he’d ever fucked to retrieve the films his mother had burnt, or even the few he had purchased more recently which Hifan had confiscated. He had torn up his Rocky Video membership and thrown away the Iqbal video recorder to distance himself from direct temptation, but was it his fault if Channel 4 ran a De Niro season? Could he help it if Tony Bennett’s ‘Rags to Riches’ floated out of a clothes shop and entered his soul? It was his most shameful secret that whenever he opened a door – a car door, a car boot, the door of KEVIN’s meeting hall or the door of his own house just now – the opening of GoodFellas ran through his head and he found this sentence rolling around in what he presumed was his subconscious:
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.
He even saw it like that, in that font, like on the movie poster. And when he found himself doing it, he tried desperately not to, he tried to fix it, but Millat’s mind was a mess and more often than not he’d end up pushing upon the door, head back, shoulders forward, Liotta style, thinking:
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Muslim.
He knew, in a way, this was worse, but he just couldn’t help it. He kept a white handkerchief in his top pocket, he always carried dice, even though he had no idea what a crap game actually was, he loved long camel jackets and he could cook a killer seafood linguine, though a lamb curry was completely beyond him. It was all haraam, he knew that.
Worst of all was the anger inside him. Not the righteous anger of a man of God, but the seething, violent anger of a gangster, a juvenile delinquent, determined to prove himself, determined to run the clan, determined to beat the rest. And if the game was God, if the game was a fight against the West, against the presumptions of Western science, against his brother or Marcus Chalfen, he was determined to win it. Millat stubbed his fag out against the bannister. It pissed him off that these were not pious thoughts. But they were in the right ball park, weren’t they? He had the fundamentals, didn’t he? Clean living, praying (five times a day without fail), fasting, working for the cause, spreading the message? And that was enough, wasn’t it? Maybe. Whatever. Either way, there was no going back now. Yeah, he’d meet Magid, he’d meet him… they’d have a good face-off, he’d come out of it the stronger; he’d call his brother a little cock-a-roach, and walk out of that tête-à-tête even more determined to fulfil his destiny. Millat straightened his green bow-tie and slunk forward like Liotta (all menace and charm) and pushed open the kitchen door (Ever since I can remember…), waiting for two pairs of eyes, like two of Scorsese’s cameras, to pan on to his face and focus.
‘Millat!’
‘Amma.’
‘Millat!’
‘Joyce.’
(Great, supwoib, so we all know each other, went Millat’s inner monologue in Paul Sorvino’s voice, Now let’s get down to business.)
‘All right, gentlemen. There is no reason to be alarmed. It is simply my son. Magid, Mickey. Mickey, Magid.’
O’Connell’s once more. Because Alsana had eventually conceded Joyce’s point, but did not care to dirty her hands. Instead, she demanded Samad take Magid ‘out somewhere’ and spend an evening persuading him into meeting with Millat. But the only ‘out’ Samad understood was O’Connell’s and the prospect of taking his son there was repellent. He and his wife had a thorough wrestle in the garden to settle the point, and he was confident of success until Alsana fooled him with a dummy trip, then an armlock-knee-groin combination. So here he was: O’Connell’s, and it was as bad a choice as he’d suspected. When he, Archie and Magid walked in, trying to make a low-key entrance, there had been widespread consternation amongst both staff and clientele. The last stranger anybody remembered arriving with Arch and Sam was Samad’s accountant, a small rat-faced man who tried to talk to people about their savings (as if people in O’Connell’s had savings!) and asked not once but twice for blood pudding, though it had been explained to him that pig was unavailable. That had been around 1987 and nobody had enjoyed it. And now what was this? A mere five years later and here comes another one, this time all dressed in white – insultingly clean for a Friday evening in O’Connell’s – and way below the unspoken minimum age requirement (thirty-six). What was Samad trying to do?
‘Whattareya tryin’ to do to us, Sammy?’ asked Johnny, a mournful-looking stick of an ex-Orangeman, who was leaning over the hot plate to collect some bubble and squeak. ‘Overrun us, are ya or sumthin?’
‘Oo ’im?’ demanded Denzel, who had not yet died.
‘Your batty bwoy?’ inquired Clarence, who was also, by God’s grace, hanging on in there.
‘All right, gentlemen. There is no reason to be alarmed. It is simply my son. Magid, Mickey. Mickey, Magid.’
Mickey looked a little dumbfounded by this introduction, and just stood there for a minute, a soggy fried egg hanging off his spatula.
‘Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal,’ said Magid serenely. ‘It is a great honour to meet you, Michael. I have heard such a great deal about you.’
Which was odd, because Samad had never told him a thing.
Mickey continued to look over Magid’s shoulder to Samad for confirmation. ‘You what? You mean the one you, er, sent back ’ome? This is Magid?’
‘Yes, yes, this is Magid,’ replied Samad rapidly, pissed off by all the attention the boy was getting. ‘Now, Archibald and I will have our usuals and-’
‘Magid Iqbal,’ repeated Mickey slowly. ‘Well, I bloody never. You know you’d never guess you was an Iqbal. You’ve got a very trusting, well, kind of sympathetic face, if you get me.’
‘And yet I am an Iqbal, Michael,’ said Magid, laying that look of total empathy on Mickey and the other dregs of humanity huddled around the hot counter, ‘though I have been gone a long time.’
‘Say that again. Well, this is a turn-up for the books. I’ve got your… wait a minute, let me get this right… your great-great-grandfather up there, see?’
‘I noticed it the moment I came in, and I can assure you, Michael, my soul is very grateful for it,’ said Magid, beaming like an angel. ‘It makes me feel at home, and, as this place is dear to my father and his friend Archibald Jones I feel certain it shall also be dear to me. They have brought me here, I think, to discuss important matters, and I for one can think of no better place for them, despite your clearly debilitating skin condition.’
Mickey was simply bowled over by that, and could not conceal his pleasure, addressing his reply both to Magid and the rest of O’Connell’s.
‘Speaks fuckin’ nice, don’t he? Sounds like a right fuckin’ Olivier. Queen’s fucking English and no mistake. What a nice fella. You’re the kind of clientele I could do wiv in here, Magid, let me tell you. Civilized and that. And don’t you worry about my skin, it don’t get anywhere near the food and it don’t give me much trouble. Cor, what a gentleman. You do feel like you should watch your mouth around him, dontcha?’
‘Mine and Archibald’s usual, then, please, Mickey,’ said Samad. ‘I’ll leave my son to make up his mind. We will be over by the pinball.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Mickey, not bothering or able to turn his gaze from Magid’s dark eyes.
‘Dat a lovely suit you gat dere,’ murmured Denzel, stroking the white linen wistfully. ‘Dat’s what de Englishmen use ta wear back home in Jamaica, remember dat, Clarence?’
Clarence nodded slowly, dribbling a little, struck by the beatific.
‘Go on, get out of it, the pair of you,’ grumbled Mickey, shooing them away, ‘I’ll bring it over, all right? I want to talk to Magid here. Growing boy, he’s got to eat. So: what is it I can get you, Magid?’ Mickey leant over the counter, all concern, like an over-attentive shopgirl. ‘Eggs? Mushrooms? Beans? Fried slice?’
‘I think,’ replied Magid, slowly surveying the dusty chalkboard menus on the wall, and then turning back to Mickey, his face illumined, ‘I should like a bacon sandwich. Yes, that is it. I would love a juicy, yet well-done, tomato ketchup-ed bacon sandwich. On brown.’
Oh, the struggle that could be seen on Mickey’s kisser at that moment! Oh, the gargoylian contortions! It was a battle between the favour of the most refined customer he had ever had and the most hallowed, sacred rule of O’Connell’s Pool House. NO PORK.
Mickey’s left eye twitched.
‘Don’t want a nice plate of scrambled? I do a lovely scrambled eggs, don’t I, Johnny?’
‘I’d be a liar if I said ya didn’t,’ said Johnny loyally from his table, even though Mickey’s eggs were famously grey and stiff, ‘I’d be a terrible liar, on my mother’s life, I would.’
Magid wrinkled his nose and shook his head.
‘All right – what about mushrooms and beans? Omelette and chips? No better chips in the Finchley Road. Come on, son,’ he pleaded, desperate. ‘You’re a Muslim, int ya? You don’t want to break your father’s heart with a bacon sandwich.’
‘My father’s heart will not be broken by a bacon sandwich. It is far more likely that my father’s heart will break from the result of a build-up of saturated fat which is in turn a result of eating in your establishment for fifteen years. One wonders,’ said Magid evenly, ‘if a case could be made, a legal case, you understand, against individuals in the food service industry who fail to label their meals with a clear fat content or general health warning. One wonders.’
All this was delivered in the sweetest, most melodious voice, and with no hint of threat. Poor Mickey didn’t know what to make of it.
‘Well, of course,’ said Mickey nervously, ‘hypothetically that is an interesting question. Very interesting.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Yeah, definitely.’
Mickey fell silent and spent a minute elaborately polishing the top of the hot plate, an activity he indulged in about once every ten years.
‘There. See your face in that. Now. Where were we?’
‘A bacon sandwich.’
At the sound of the word ‘bacon’, a few ears began to twitch at the front tables.
‘If you could keep your voice down a little…’
‘A bacon sandwich,’ whispered Magid.
‘Bacon. Right. Well, I’ll have to nip next door, ’cos I ain’t got none at present… but you just sit down wiv your dad and I’ll bring it over. It’ll cost a bit more, like. What wiv the extra effort, you know. But don’t worry, I’ll bring it over. And tell Archie not to worry if he ain’t got the cash. A Luncheon Voucher will do.’
‘You are very kind, Michael. Take one of these.’ Magid reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of folded paper.
‘Oh, fuck me, another leaflet? You can’t fucking move – pardon my French – but you can’t move for leaflets in Norf London these days. My brother Abdul-Colin’s always loading me wiv ’em an’ all. But seein’ as it’s you… go on, hand it over.’
‘It’s not a leaflet,’ said Magid, collecting his knife and fork from the tray. ‘It is an invitation to a launch.’
‘You what?’ said Mickey excitedly (in the grammar of his daily tabloid, launch meant lots of cameras, expensive-looking birds with huge tits, red carpets). ‘Really?’
Millat passed him the invite. ‘Incredible things are to be seen and heard there.’
‘Oh,’ said Mickey, disappointed, eyeing the expensive piece of card. ‘I’ve heard about this bloke and his mouse.’ He had heard about this bloke and his mouse in this same tabloid; it was a kind of filler between the tits and the more tits and it was underneath the byline: ONE BLOKE AND HIS MOUSE.
‘Seems a bit dodgy to me, messing wiv God an’ all that. ’Sides I ain’t that scientifically minded, you see. Go right over my head.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. One just has to look at the thing from a perspective that interests you personally. Take your skin, for example.’
‘I wish somebody would fuckin’ take it,’ joked Mickey amiably. ‘I’ve ’ad a-fucking-nuff of it.’
Magid did not smile.
‘You suffer from a serious endocrine disorder. By which I mean, it is not simply adolescent acne caused by the over-excretion of sebum, but a condition that comes from a hormonal defect. I presume your family share it?’
‘Er… yeah, as it happens. All my brothers. And my son, Abdul-Jimmy. All spotty bastards.’
‘But you would not like it if your son were to pass on the condition to his sons.’
‘Obviously, no. I ’ad terrible trouble in school. I carry a knife to this day, Magid. But I can’t see how that can be avoided, to be honest with you. Been goin’ on for decades.’
‘But you see,’ said Magid (and what an expert he was at the personal interest angle!), ‘it can certainly be avoided. It would be perfectly simple and much misery would be saved. That is the kind of thing we will be discussing at the launch.’
‘Oh, well, if that’s the case, you know, count me in. I thought it was just some bloody mutant-mouse or sommink, you see. But if that’s the case…’
‘Thirty-first of December,’ said Magid, before walking down the aisle to his father. ‘It will be wonderful to see you there.’
‘You took your time,’ said Archie, as Magid approached their table.
‘Did you come by way of the Ganges?’ inquired Samad irritably, shifting up to make space for him.
‘Pardon me, please. I was just speaking with your friend, Michael. A very decent chap. Oh, before I forget, Archibald, he said that it would be perfectly acceptable to pay in Luncheon Vouchers this evening.’
Archie almost choked on a little toothpick he was chewing on. ‘He said what? Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure. Now, Abba, shall we begin?’
‘There’s nothing to begin,’ growled Samad, refusing to look him in the eye. ‘I am afraid we are already far into whatever diabolic plot fate has in store for me. And I want you to know, that I am not here of my own volition but because your mother begged me to do this and because I have more respect for that poor woman than either you or your brother ever had.’
Magid released a wry, gentle smile. ‘I thought you were here because Amma beat you in the wrestling.’
Samad scowled. ‘Oh yes, ridicule me. My own son. Do you never read the Qur’ān? Do you not know the duties a son owes to his father? You sicken me, Magid Mubtasim.’
‘Oi, Sammy, old man,’ said Archie, playing with the ketchup, trying to keep things light. ‘Steady on.’
‘No, I will not steady on! This boy is a thorn in my foot.’
‘Surely “side”?’
‘Archibald, stay out of this.’
Archie returned his attention to the pepper and salt cellars, trying to pour the former into the latter.
‘Right you are, Sam.’
‘I have a message to deliver and I will deliver it and no more. Magid, your mother wants you to meet with Millat. The woman Chalfen will arrange it. It is their opinion that the two of you must talk.’
‘And what is your opinion, Abba?’
‘You don’t want to hear my opinion.’
‘On the contrary, Abba, I would very much like to hear it.’
‘Simply, I think it is a mistake. I think you two can do no possible good for each other. I think you should go to opposite corners of the earth. I think I have been cursed with two sons more dysfunctional than Mr Cain and Mr Abel.’
‘I am perfectly willing to meet with him, Abba. If he will meet with me.’
‘Apparently he is willing, this is what I am told. I don’t know. I don’t talk with him any more than I talk with you. I am too busy at the moment trying to make my peace with God.’
‘Er…’ said Archibald, crunching on his toothpick out of hunger and nerves, and because Magid gave him the heebie-jeebies, ‘I’ll go and see if the food is ready, shall I? Yes. I’ll do that. What am I picking up for you, Madge?’
‘A bacon sandwich, please, Archibald.’
‘Bac -? Er… right. Right you are.’
Samad’s face blew up like one of Mickey’s fried tomatoes. ‘So you mean to mock me, is that it? In front of my face you wish to show me the kaffir that you are. Go on, then! Munch on your pig in front of me! You are so bloody clever, aren’t you? Mr Smarty-pants. Mr white-trousered Englishman with his stiff- upper-lip and his big white teeth. You know everything, even enough to escape your own judgement day.’
‘I am not so clever, Abba.’
‘No, no, you are not. You are not half as clever as you think. I don’t know why I bother to warn you, but I do: you are on a direct collision course with your brother, Magid. I keep my ear to the ground, I hear Shiva talking in the restaurant. And there are others: Mo Hussein-Ishmael, Mickey’s brother, Abdul-Colin, and his son, Abdul-Jimmy – these are only a few, there are many more, and they are organizing against you. Millat is with them. Your Marcus Chalfen has stirred a great deal of anger and there are some, these green-ties, who are willing to act. Who are crazy enough to do what they believe is right. Crazy enough to start a war. There aren’t many people like that. Most of us just follow along once war has been announced. But some people wish to bring things to a head. Some people march on to the parade ground and fire the first shot. Your brother is one of them.’
All through this, as Samad’s face contorted from anger, to despair, to near-hysterical grins, Magid had remained blank, his face an unwritten page.
‘You have nothing to say? This news does not surprise you?’
‘Why don’t you reason with them, Abba,’ said Magid after a pause. ‘Many of them respect you. You are respected in the community. Reason with them.’
‘Because I disapprove as strongly as they do, for all their lunacies. Marcus Chalfen has no right. No right to do as he does. It is not his business. It is God’s business. If you meddle with a creature, the very nature of a creature, even if it is a mouse, you walk into the arena that is God’s: creation. You infer that the wonder of God’s creation can be improved upon. It cannot. Marcus Chalfen presumes. He expects to be worshipped when the only thing in the universe that warrants worship is Allah. And you are wrong to help him. Even his own son has disowned him. And so,’ said Samad, unable to suppress the drama queen deep within his soul, ‘I must disown you.’
‘Ah, now, one chips, beans, egg and mushroom for you, Sammy-my-good-man,’ said Archibald, approaching the table and passing the plate. ‘And one omelette and mushrooms for me…’
‘And one bacon sandwich,’ said Mickey, who had insisted on breaking fifteen years of tradition in bringing this one dish over himself, ‘for the young professor.’
‘He will not eat that at my table.’
‘Oh, come on, Sam,’ began Archie gingerly. ‘Give the lad a break.’
‘I say he will not eat that at my table!’
Mickey scratched his forehead. ‘Stone me, we’re getting a bit fundamentalist in our old age, ain’t we?’
‘I said-’
‘As you wish, Abba,’ said Magid, with that same infuriating smile of total forgiveness. He took his plate from Mickey, and sat down at the adjacent table with Clarence and Denzel.
Denzel welcomed him with a grin, ‘Clarence, look see! It de young prince in white. ’Im come to play domino. I jus’ look in his eye and I and I knew ’im play domino. ’Im an hexpert.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ said Magid.
‘Def-net-lee. Gwan.’
‘Do you think I should meet with my brother?’
‘Hmm. I don’ tink me can say,’ replied Denzel, after a spell of thought in which he laid down a five-domino set.
‘I would say you look like a young fellow oo can make up ’im own mind,’ said Clarence cautiously.
‘Do I?’
Magid turned back to his previous table, where his father was trying studiously to ignore him, and Archie was toying with his omelette.
‘Archibald! Shall I meet with my brother or not?’
Archie looked guiltily at Samad and then back at his plate.
‘Archibald! This is a very significant question for me. Should I or not?’
‘Go on,’ said Samad sourly. ‘Answer him. If he’d rather advice from two old fools and a man he barely knows than from his own father, then let him have it. Well? Should he?’
Archie squirmed. ‘Well… I can’t… I mean, it’s not for me to say… I suppose, if he wants… but then again, if you don’t think…’
Samad thrust his fist into Archie’s mushrooms so hard the omelette slithered off the plate altogether and slipped to the floor.
‘Make a decision, Archibald. For once in your pathetic little life, make a decision.’
‘Um… heads, yes,’ gasped Archie, reaching into his pocket for a twenty pence piece. ‘Tails, no. Ready?’
The coin rose and flipped as a coin would rise and flip every time in a perfect world, flashing its light and then revealing its dark enough times to mesmerize a man. Then, at some point in its triumphant ascension, it began to arc, and the arc went wrong, and Archibald realized that it was not coming back to him at all but going behind him, a fair way behind him, and he turned with the others to watch it complete an elegant swoop towards the pinball machine and somersault straight into the slot. Immediately the huge old beast lit up; the ball shot off and began its chaotic, noisy course around a labyrinth of swinging doors, automatic bats, tubes and ringing bells, until, with no one to assist it, no one to direct it, it gave up the ghost and dropped back into the swallowing hole.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Archibald, visibly chuffed. ‘What are the chances of that, eh?’
A neutral place. The chances of finding one these days are slim, maybe even slimmer than Archie’s pinball trick. The sheer quantity of shit that must be wiped off the slate if we are to start again as new. Race. Land. Ownership. Faith. Theft. Blood. And more blood. And more. And not only must the place be neutral, but the messenger who takes you to the place, and the messenger who sends the messenger. There are no people or places like that left in North London. But Joyce did her best with what she had. First she went to Clara. In Clara’s present seat of learning, a red-brick university, South-West by the Thames, there was a room she used for study on Friday afternoons. A thoughtful teacher had loaned her the key. Always empty between three and six. Contents: one blackboard, several tables, some chairs, two anglepoise lamps, an overhead projector, a filing cabinet, a computer. Nothing older than twelve years, Clara could guarantee that. The university itself was only twelve years old. Built on empty waste land – no Indian burial grounds, no Roman viaducts, no interred alien spacecraft, no foundations of a long-gone church. Just earth. As neutral a place as anywhere. Clara gave Joyce the key and Joyce gave it to Irie.
‘But why me? I’m not involved.’
‘Exactly, dear. And I’m too involved. But you are perfect. Because you know him but you don’t know him,’ said Joyce cryptically. She passed Irie her long winter coat, some gloves and a hat of Marcus’s with a ludicrous bobble on the top. ‘And because you love him, though he doesn’t love you.’
‘Yeah, thanks, Joyce. Thanks for reminding me.’
‘Love is the reason, Irie.’
‘No, Joyce, Love’s not the fucking reason.’ Irie was standing on the Chalfen doorstep, watching her own substantial breath in the freezing night air. ‘It’s a four-letter word that sells life insurance and hair conditioner. It’s fucking cold out here. You owe me one.’
‘Everybody owes everybody,’ agreed Joyce and closed the door.
Irie stepped out into streets she’d known her whole life, along a route she’d walked a million times over. If someone asked her just then what memory was, what the purest definition of memory was, she would say this: the street you were on when you first jumped in a pile of dead leaves. She was walking it right now. With every fresh crunch came the memory of previous crunches. She was permeated by familiar smells: wet woodchip and gravel around the base of the tree, newly laid turd underneath the cover of soggy leaves. She was moved by these sensations. Despite opting for a life of dentistry, she had not yet lost all of the poetry in her soul, that is, she could still have the odd Proustian moment, note layers upon layers, though she often experienced them in periodontal terms. She got a twinge – as happens with a sensitive tooth, or in a ‘phantom tooth’, when the nerve is exposed – she felt a twinge walking past the garage, where she and Millat, aged thirteen, had passed one hundred and fifty pennies over the counter, stolen from an Iqbal jam-jar, in a desperate attempt to buy a packet of fags. She felt an ache (like a severe malocclusion, the pressure of one tooth upon another) when she passed the park where they had cycled as children, where they smoked their first joint, where he had kissed her once in the middle of a storm. Irie wished she could give herself over to these past-present fictions: wallow in them, make them sweeter, longer, particularly the kiss. But she had in her hand a cold key, and surrounding her lives that were stranger than fiction, funnier than fiction, crueller than fiction, and with consequences fiction can never have. She didn’t want to be involved in the long story of those lives, but she was, and she found herself dragged forward by the hair to their denouement, through the high road – Mali’s Kebabs, Mr Cheungs, Raj’s, Malkovich Bakeries – she could reel them off blindfold; and then down under pigeon-shit bridge and that long wide road that drops into Gladstone Park as if it’s falling into a green ocean. You could drown in memories like these, but she tried to swim free of them. She jumped over the small wall that fringed the Iqbal house, as she had a million times over, and rang the doorbell. Past tense, future imperfect.
Upstairs, in his bedroom, Millat had spent the past fifteen minutes trying to get his head around Brother Hifan’s written instructions concerning the act of prostration (leaflet: Correct Worship):
SAJDA: prostration. In the sajda, fingers must be closed, pointing towards the qibla in line with the ears, and the head must be between hands. It is fard to put the forehead on something clean, such as a stone, some earth, wood, cloth, and it is said (by savants) that it is wajib to put the nose down, too. It is not permissible to put only the nose on the ground without a good excuse. It is makruh to put only the forehead on the ground. In the sajda you must say Subhana rabbiyal-ala at least thrice. The Shiis say that it is better to make the sajda on a brick made from the clay of Karbala. It is either fard or wajib to put two feet or at least one toe of each foot on the ground. There are also some savants who say that it is sunnat. That is, if two feet are not put on the ground, namaz will either not be accepted or it will become makruh. If, during the sajda, the forehead, nose or feet are raised from the ground for a short while, it will cause no harm. In the sajda, it is sunnat to bend the toes and turn them towards the qibla. It is written in Radd-ul-mukhtar that those who say
That’s as far as he got, and there were three more pages. He was in a cold sweat from trying to recall all that was halal or haraam, fard or sunnat, makruh-tahrima (prohibited with much stress) or makruh-tanzihi (prohibited, but to a lesser degree). At a loss, he had ripped off his t-shirt, tied a series of belts at angles over his spectacular upper body, stood in the mirror and practised a different, easier routine, one he knew in intimate detail:
He was in the swing of it, revealing his invisible sliding guns and knives to the wardrobe door, when Irie walked in.
‘Yes,’ said Irie, as he stood there sheepish. ‘I’m looking at you.’
Quickly and quietly she explained to him about the neutral place, about the room, about the date, about the time. She made her own personal plea for compromise, peace and caution (everybody was doing it) and then she came up close and put the cold key in his warm hand. Almost without meaning to, she touched his chest. Just at the point between two belts where his heart, constricted by the leather, beat so hard she felt it in her ear. Lacking experience in this field, it was natural that Irie should mistake the palpitations that come with blood restriction for smouldering passion. As for Millat, it had been a very long time since anybody touched him or he touched anybody. Add to that the touch of memory, the touch of ten years of love unreturned, the touch of a long, long history – the result was inevitable.
Before long their arms were involved, their legs were involved, their lips were involved, and they were tumbling on to the floor, involved at the groin (hard to get more involved than that), making love on a prayer mat. But then as suddenly and feverishly as it had begun it was over; they released each other in horror for different reasons, Irie springing back into a naked huddle by the door, embarrassed and ashamed because she could see how much he regretted it; and Millat grabbing his prayer mat and pointing it towards the Kaba, ensuring the mat was no higher than floor level, resting on no books or shoes, his fingers closed and pointing to the quibla in line with his ears, ensuring both forehead and nose touched the floor, with two feet firmly on the ground but ensuring the toes were not bent, prostrating himself in the direction of the Kaba, but not for the Kaba, but for Allahu ta’ala alone. He made sure he did all these things perfectly, while Irie wept and dressed and left. He made sure he did all these things perfectly because he believed he was being watched by the great camera in the sky. He made sure he did all these things perfectly because they were fard and ‘he who wants to change worships becomes a disbeliever’ (leaflet: The Straight Path).
Hell hath no fury et cetera, et cetera. Irie walked hot-faced from the Iqbal house and headed straight for the Chalfens with revenge on her mind. But not against Millat. Rather in defence of Millat, for she had always been his defender, his blacky-white knight. You see, Millat did not love her. And she thought Millat didn’t love her because he couldn’t. She thought he was so damaged, he couldn’t love anybody any more. She wanted to find whoever had damaged him like this, damaged him so terribly; she wanted to find whoever had made him unable to love her.
It’s a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, ‘Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn’t love me. He just couldn’t deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.’ Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll – then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greetings cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
Millat didn’t love Irie, and Irie was sure there must be somebody she could blame for that. Her brain started ticking over. What was the root cause? Millat’s feelings of inadequacy. What was the root cause of Millat’s feelings of inadequacy? Magid. He had been born second because of Magid. He was the lesser son because of Magid.
Joyce opened the door to her and Irie marched straight upstairs, maliciously determined to make Magid the second-son for once, this time by twenty-five minutes. She grabbed him, kissed him and made love to him angrily and furiously, without conversation or affection. She rolled him around, tugged at his hair, dug what fingernails she had into his back and when he came she was gratified to note it was with a little sigh as if something had been taken from him. But she was wrong to think this a victory. It was simply because he knew immediately where she had been, why she was here, and it saddened him. For a long time they lay in silence together, naked, the autumn light disappearing from the room with every minute that passed.
‘It seems to me,’ said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, ‘that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that.’
Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
3 p.m., 5 November 1992. The brothers meet (at last) in a blank room after a gap of eight years and find that their genes, those prophets of the future, have reached different conclusions. Millat is astounded by the differences. The nose, the line of the jaw, the eyes, the hair. His brother is a stranger to him and he tells him so.
‘Only because you wish me to be,’ says Magid with a crafty look.
But Millat is blunt, not interested in riddles, and in a single shot asks and answers his own question. ‘So you’re going through with it, yeah?’
Magid shrugs. ‘It is not mine to stop or start, brother, but yes, I intend to help where I can. It is a great project.’
‘It is an abomination.’ (leaflet: The Sanctity of Creation)
Millat pulls out a chair from one of the desks and sits on it backwards, like a crab in a trap, legs and arms splayed either side.
‘I see it rather as correcting the Creator’s mistakes.’
‘The Creator doesn’t make mistakes.’
‘So you mean to continue?’
‘You’re damn right.’
‘And so do I.’
‘Well, that’s it, then, isn’t it? It’s already been decided. KEVIN will do whatever is necessary to stop you and your kind. And that’s the fucking end of it.’
But contrary to Millat’s understanding, this is no movie and there is no fucking end to it, just as there is no fucking beginning to it. The brothers begin to argue. It escalates in moments, and they make a mockery of that idea, a neutral place; instead they cover the room with history – past, present and future history (for there is such a thing) – they take what was blank and smear it with the stinking shit of the past like excitable, excremental children. They cover this neutral room in themselves. Every gripe, the earliest memories, every debated principle, every contested belief.
Millat arranges the chairs to demonstrate the vision of the solar system which is so clearly and remarkably described in the Qur’ān, centuries before Western science (leaflet: The Qur’ān and the Cosmos); Magid draws Pande’s parade ground on one blackboard with a detailed reconstruction of the possible path of bullets, and on the other board a diagram depicting a restriction enzyme cutting neatly through a sequence of nucleotides; Millat uses the computer as television, a chalk rubber as the picture of Magid-and-goat, then single-handedly impersonates every dribbling babba, great aunt and cousin’s accountant who came that year for the blasphemous business of worshipping an icon; Magid utilizes the overhead projector to illuminate an article he has written, taking his brother point-by-point through his argument, defending the patents of genetically altered organisms; Millat uses the filing cabinet as a substitute for another one he despised, fills it with imaginary letters between a scientist Jew and an unbelieving Muslim; Magid puts three chairs together and shines two anglepoise lamps and now there are two brothers in a car, shivering and huddled together until a few minutes later they are separated for ever and a paper plane takes off.
It goes on and on and on.
And it goes to prove what has been said of immigrants many times before now; they are resourceful; they make do. They use what they can when they can.
Because we often imagine that immigrants are constantly on the move, footloose, able to change course at any moment, able to employ their legendary resourcefulness at every turn. We have been told of the resourcefulness of Mr Schmutters, or the foot-loosity of Mr Banajii, who sail into Ellis Island or Dover or Calais and step into their foreign lands as blank people, free of any kind of baggage, happy and willing to leave their difference at the docks and take their chances in this new place, merging with the oneness of this greenandpleasantlibertarianlandofthefree.
Whatever road presents itself, they will take, and if it happens to lead to a dead end, well then, Mr Schmutters and Mr Banajii will merrily set upon another, weaving their way through Happy Multicultural Land. Well, good for them. But Magid and Millat couldn’t manage it. They left that neutral room as they had entered it: weighed down, burdened, unable to waver from their course or in any way change their separate, dangerous trajectories. They seem to make no progress. The cynical might say they don’t even move at all – that Magid and Millat are two of Zeno’s headfuck arrows, occupying a space equal to themselves and, what is scarier, equal to Mangal Pande’s, equal to Samad Iqbal’s. Two brothers trapped in the temporal instant. Two brothers who pervert all attempts to put dates to this story, to track these guys, to offer times and days, because there isn’t, wasn’t and never will be any duration. In fact, nothing moves. Nothing changes. They are running at a standstill. Zeno’s Paradox.
But what was Zeno’s deal here (everybody’s got a deal), what was his angle? There is a body of opinion that argues his paradoxes are part of a more general spiritual programme. To
(a) first establish multiplicity, the Many, as an illusion, and
(b) thus prove reality a seamless, flowing whole. A single, indivisible One.
Because if you can divide reality inexhaustibly into parts, as the brothers did that day in that room, the result is insupportable paradox. You are always still, you move nowhere, there is no progress.
But multiplicity is no illusion. Nor is the speed with which those-in-the-simmering-melting-pot are dashing towards it. Paradoxes aside, they are running, just as Achilles was running. And they will lap those who are in denial just as surely as Achilles would have made that tortoise eat his dust. Yeah, Zeno had an angle. He wanted the One, but the world is Many. And yet still that paradox is alluring. The harder Achilles tries to catch the tortoise, the more eloquently the tortoise expresses its advantage. Likewise, the brothers will race towards the future only to find they more and more eloquently express their past, that place where they have just been. Because this is the other thing about immigrants (’fugees, émigrés, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.