‘Mark? No Mark here,’ Alsana had said, bending down to their level with a genial smile. ‘Only the family Iqbal in here. You have the wrong house.’
But before she had finished the sentence, Magid had dashed to the door, ushering his mother out 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 MAGID MAHFOOZ MURSHED MUBTASIM IQBAL!’Samadhad yelled after Magid when he returned home that evening and whipped up the stairs like a bullet to hide in his room. ‘AND YOU WANT TO BE CALLED MARK SMITH!’
But this was just a symptom of a far deeper malaise. Magid really wanted to be in some other family. He wanted to own cats and not cockroaches, he wanted his mother to make the music of the cello, not the sound of the sewing machine; he wanted to have a trellis of flowers growing up one side of the house instead of the ever growing pile of other people’s rubbish; he wanted a piano in the hallway in place of the broken door off cousin Kurshed’s car; he wanted to go on biking holidays to France, not day-trips to Blackpool to visit aunties; he wanted the floor of his room to be shiny wood, not the orange and green swirled carpet left over from the restaurant; he wanted his father to be a doctor, not a one-handed waiter; and this month Magid had converted all these desires into 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 scribble frantically once more. ‘Dammit, you are a Muslim, not a wood sprite! I told you, Magid, I told you the condition upon which you would be allowed. You come with me on haj. If I am to touch that black 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’S NOT FAIR! I CAN’T GO ON HAJ. I’VE GOT TO GO TO SCHOOL. I DON’T HAVE TIME TO GO TO MECCA. IT’S 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 Irie at home the week of the festival. Archie had hedged and haggled, fearing Clara’s wrath, but Samad had reassured him: Take a leaf from my book, Archibald. Who wears the trousers in my house? Archie had thought about Alsana, so often found in those lovely silken trousers with the tapered ankle, and of Samad, who regularly wore a long piece of embroidered grey cotton, a lungi, wrapped round 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’T SPEAK
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 probably wasn’t very complex, the way she did it, just a simple three/four, just a one-dimensional metronome drawn in the air with her index finger – but aaah, what a joy it was to watch her do it! Her back to him; her bare feet lifting – on every third beat – out of her slip-on shoes; her backside protruding ever so slightly, pressing up against the jeans each time she lunged forward for one of the orchestra’s ham-fisted crescendos – what a joy it was! What a vision! It was all he could do to stop himself rushing at her and carrying her off; it frightened him, the extent to which he could not take his eyes off her. But he had to rationalize: the orchestra needed her – God knows they were never going to get through this adaptation of Swan Lake (more reminiscent of ducks waddling through an oil slick) without her. Yet what a terrific waste it seemed – akin to watching a toddler on a bus mindlessly grabbing the breast of the stranger sitting next to him – what a waste, that something of such beauty should be at the disposal of those too young to know what to do with it. The second he tasted this thought he brought it back up: Samad Miah… surely a man has reached his lowest when 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 once more and the ducks finally succumbed to the environmental disaster, he asked himself: Why, in the name 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, which interrupted 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 visitor today.’ She turned to him and he tried hard to find some part of her on which to focus, some inch that 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 his wide-lapelled 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 because of 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, drum rolls, 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 the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was? He was thinking like a Christian again; he was 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 E E E A A aaaa E E E eeee A A O oooo music?’ he said, doing a creditable impression of the strains to be found at the beginning of a Hindi musical, or in the back-room of an ‘Indian’ restaurant, along with attendant head movements. The class let out a blast of laughter as loud as the brass section and echoed the gag en masse: Eeee Eaaaoo O O O Aaaah Eeee O O O iiiiiiii… This, along with screeching parodic violins, penetrated Samad’s deep, erotic half-slumber and sent his imagination into a garden, a garden encased in marble where he found himself dressed in white and hiding behind a large tree, spying on a be-saried, bindi-wearing Poppy Burt-Jones, as she wound flirtatiously in and out of some fountains; sometimes visible, sometimes not.