The floor was richly carpeted, but the walls were unadorned painted brick and the lack of windows gave the interior a cold industrial feel. The building must have been newly purchased: people were building mosques all the time, and I knew that soon enough it would acquire the usual pictures of Mecca as well as wall hangings inscribed with words from the Holy Koran. At Christmas-time there would be tinsel too and small colourful lights flashing on and off.
My father raised his newspaper, hiding his face.
‘Don’t you want to know how the man flew?’ I asked.
The telephone rang. There had been many expensive pre-booked three-minute calls to and from my cousins in Pakistan of late, and my father climbed off his stool and shuffled into the back. I watched him go, and the shop suddenly darkened as a cloud moved across the sun. The radio broke into the azan, calling the faithful to prayer. My thoughts returned to the mosque.
They continued to clap, the sway of their bodies gathering a determined momentum. Wedged against my left shoulder was a man with long greasy hair. He had no beard, as though he was above ritual, and his bony, craggy face was exposed in sharp relief, suggesting someone who seldom ate. He had full swollen lips and hollow orbits ringed by a thick protuberance of bone as though his eyes should have been much bigger. He sat cross-legged, and around his shoulders was a robe of rich red and gold brocade that draped to the floor. One bent leg that had escaped from under his robe twitched. It didn’t jerk up and down; instead the muscles of his leg seemed to contract independently of any visible movement of the limb itself. It was strange and unnatural, as though the muscles were responding to pulses of electricity.
The imam, visibly exhausted, leant back against the step but continued to clap, and the chanting grew louder and its pace faster. There had been an unannounced change in its metre and while the word Allah was said in a barely controlled whisper, the syllable that followed, the hu, was spat into the room with all the breath the assembly seemed to possess.
Then the greasy-haired guy next to me uttered a long, high-pitched shriek that pierced my eardrums. I turned towards him and watched transfixed as he swayed violently from side to side. His arms were raised high above his head and while he swayed, slowly he seemed to rise. He repeated his shriek several times, the sound of someone in great pain, and then it was replaced by Allahu chanted so fast it sounded like another language. Behind us the room had grown silent. The man continued to rise and sway in what looked like a physically impossible movement; although the robe obscured his feet, it was as though he was freed of the laws of physics, as though he was levitating. I saw a flash of movement as the imam leapt off his steps and threw himself onto the levitating man, forcing him to the floor.
The man who had levitated, suddenly I recognized him. He was older now, with teeth that had separated and grown longer and a layer of blood at the crescent line of his gums, but it was his eyes that gave him away, large and wild and rolling in their sockets. It was Bobby. Bobby of the pound note and the bush in Lye Park. Bobby had not aged beyond recognition. I shuddered.
‘It’s all show,’ said my father, returning from the back room. ‘These modern imams, they’re all fakes.’
‘It’s true,’ I said in a deliberate challenge to his authority.
‘The coward has no views worth listening to.’
‘Then I quit.’
His coarse laughter issued a challenge. ‘Where will you go?’
*
It felt like the right thing to do, leaving the shop. Had I stayed I would have stayed forever. Back home I switched on the TV, leant back on the sofa and kicked off my shoes. My feet hurt from standing and my leg hurt from the punch at the mosque. On the screen, they were racing hamsters through perspex tunnels. It was a straight track about ten feet long and the owners of each of the three hamsters stood at the finish line, screaming encouragement and coaxing the animal with a morsel on a cocktail stick.
‘No, I’m not kidding,’ said Mum, striding in from the kitchen with a tray in her hands. She was continuing an earlier conversation between us, one that had been going on for weeks and that I had hoped had expired. ‘She’s a modern girl, she’s called Azra and she’s from Islamabad.’ Mum then repeated what I already knew. ‘In Islamabad they even have a Pizza Hut.’ She seemed proud of that.
‘I prefer curry.’
‘Azra is from a good family, clean and she fears Allah.’ Mum put my tray gently on the coffee table and took a seat opposite me. She plucked a plastic flower from a vase and examined it closely. ‘Lovely, isn’t it.’ Her eyes glistened. ‘How was your first day at the shop? You mustn’t argue with your father.’
In the weeks since Mum had started speaking of marriage to Azra, I had gradually formed a picture of my bride. She was a young girl dressed in a pink kurta-pajama. In my mind she had huge almond-shaped eyes cast demurely downwards and her smile was sweet and childlike, exposing perfect square-cut ivory teeth that sparkled as though they had never known use. She shared a dusty street with animals and trucks belching black smoke, and it was remarkable how she kept her white headscarf so clean.
‘Your father says he can rent you a small unit at the indoor market and you and your new bride can live with us.’
I sighed and took a sip of tea. Taking the fake rose off her, I said, ‘Perhaps I could sell pretend flowers?’
‘Have a biscuit, it might sweeten your tongue.’
Instead she offered me a glass of water from the tray. I took a sip and felt something strange in my mouth. Rather than spit it out, I swallowed quickly. I peered into the glass, and saw bits of paper floating in the water. ‘What’s all this stuff?’
Mum smiled nervously. ‘You have swallowed a spell.’
I floundered for words. ‘A curse?’
‘Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.’ Her voice rose in anger. ‘It has power and you will marry her in the end.’ Satisfied with what she had achieved, she continued in a conciliatory tone. ‘You may think you have nothing in common but, my son, once you lay eyes on her you will find something you like.’
‘I’d be at the market stall all day. What would she do?’
‘We’ll get along just fine, Azra and I, in this little house.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Although we might have to install central heating. They do fear the cold, do new Pakistanis.’
‘Wouldn’t it be a bit cramped?’ I picked at the paper on my tongue with a fingernail, then wiped it on my thigh.
We were seated on two identical sofas placed opposite each other. The armrests were covered with a protective layer of transparent plastic and that, coupled with the fact that they were weighty and almost immovable, still gave them a brand-new and almost official appearance. Between us was a coffee table, in the centre of which was a tall bronze vase out of which sprouted the lurid flowers. To one side was a tiled brown mantelpiece on which stood a green plastic carriage clock that could be set to play the azan five times a day. Above that was a picture of Mecca garlanded with tinsel as old and durable as the floral arrangement.