‘Er… yes, yes,’ stumbled Samad, not wishing to divulge his family dilemma, ‘it is a symbol of the Qur’ān’s… assertion that the day of reckoning would first strike us all unconscious. Silent, you see. So, so, so the eldest son of the family dresses in black and, umm, disdains speech for a… a period 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 the impact 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: I feel weak. It means, Miss Burt-Jones, that every strand of me feels weakened 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 incredible act of self-control. We just don’t have that in the West – that sense of sacrifice – I just have so much admiration 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 the loquacious lips of Poppy Burt-Jones with his own feverish pair.
7 Molars
And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their time, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very same day. Sometimes at the very same moment. At least, that would explain how two weeks later, during the old Druid festival of harvest, Samad can be found quietly packing the one shirt he’s never worn to mosque (To the pure all things are pure) into a plastic bag, so that he might change later and meet Miss Burt-Jones (4.30, Harlesden Clock) without arousing suspicion… while Magid and a change-of-heart Millat slip only four cans of past-their-sell-by-date chickpeas, a bag of variety crisps and some apples into two rucksacks (Can’t say fairer than that), in preparation for a meeting with Irie (4.30, ice-cream van) and a visit to their assigned old man, the one to whom they will offer pagan 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 in the modern parlance, this is a rerun. We have been here before. This is like watching TV in Bombay or Kingston or Dhaka, watching the same old British sitcoms spewed out to the old colonies in one tedious, eternal loop. Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition – it’s something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you’re still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There’s no proper term for it – original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better. A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals – that they can’t help but re-enact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign. It will take a few replays before they move on to the next tune. And this is what is happening as Alsana sews loudly on 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, packing provisions. It is a visitation of repetition. It is a dash across continents. It is a rerun. But one at a time, now, one at a time…
Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet the young: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other’s rationality; with the knowledge 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 with something the other will like, something suitable. Like Garibaldi biscuits.
‘They like them,’ explained Irie when the twins queried her choice, as the three of them rumbled to 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 grapes – bleurgh. Who wants to eat them?’
‘Old people do,’ Irie 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?’
Irie reached into her bag. ‘A coconut.’
‘A coconut!’
‘For your information,’ snapped Irie, moving the nut out of Millat’s reach, ‘old people like coconuts. 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 some cheese-singlets and some apples-’
‘We got apples, you chief,’ cut in Millat, ‘chief’, for some inexplicable reason hidden in the etymology of North London slang, meaning fool, arse, wanker, a loser of the most colossal proportions.
‘Well, I got some more and better apples, akchully, and some Kendal mint cake and some ackee and saltfish.’
‘I hate ackee and saltfish.’
‘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 heat!’ squealed Magid, rubbing his little palm in. ‘You been shamed, 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 own…’
But this, the oldest sentence in the world, found itself stifled by the ringing of bells and the stamping 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 and off the bus.
And the 52 bus goes two ways. From the Willesden kaleidoscope, one can catch it west like the children; through Kensal Rise, to Portobello, to Knightsbridge, and watch the many colours shade off 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 city is to cross the road at the sight of dark-skinned men) as white fades to yellow fades to brown, and then Harlesden Clock comes into view, standing like Queen Victoria’s statue in Kingston – a tall stone surrounded by black.