In their defence, one thing should be made clear. At no point was the word kidnap mentioned. In fact had this been offered as terminology for what he was about to do, Samad would have been appalled and astounded, would have dropped the whole thing like the somnambulist who wakes up to find himself in the master bedroom with a breadknife in his hand. He understood that he had not yet informed Alsana. He understood that he had booked a 3 a.m. flight. But it was in no way self-evident to him that these two facts were related or would combine to spell out kidnap. So it was with surprise that Samad greeted the vision of a violently weeping Alsana, at 2 a.m. on 31 October, hunched over the kitchen table. He did not think, Ah, she has discovered what I am to do with Magid (it was finally and for ever Magid), because he was not a moustachioed villain in a Victorian crime novel and besides which he was not conscious of plotting any crime. Rather his first thought was, So she knows about Poppy, and in response to this situation he did what every adulterous man does out of instinct: attack first.
‘So I must come home to this, must I?’ – slam down bag for effect – ‘I spend all night in that infernal restaurant and then I am having to come back to your melodramatics?’
Alsana convulsed with tears. Samad noticed too that a gurgle sound was emanating from her pleasant fat which vibrated in the gap between her sari; she waved her hands at him and then put them over her ears.
‘Is this really necessary?’ asked Samad, trying to disguise his fear (he had expected anger, he didn’t know how to deal with tears). ‘Please, Alsana: surely this is an overreaction.’
She waved her hand at him once more as if to dismiss him and then lifted her body a little and Samad saw that the gurgling had not been organic, that she had been hunched over something. A radio.
‘What on earth-’
Alsana pushed the radio from her body into the middle of the table and motioned for Samad to turn it up. Four familiar beeps, the beeps that follow the English into whatever land they conquer, rang round the kitchen, and then in Received Pronunciation Samad heard the following:
This is the BBC World Service at 03.00 hours. Mrs Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, was assassinated today, shot down by her Sikh bodyguards in an act of open mutiny as she walked in the garden of her New Delhi home. There is no doubt that her murder was an act of revenge for ‘Operation Blue Star’, the storming of the Sikhs’ holiest shrine at Amritsar last June. The Sikh community, who feel their culture is being attacked by -
‘Enough,’ said Samad, switching it off. ‘She was no bloody good anyway. None of them is any bloody good. And who cares what happens in that cesspit, India. Dear me…’ And even before he said it, he wondered why he had to, why he felt so malevolent this evening. ‘You really are genuinely pathetic. I wonder: where would those tears be if I died? Nowhere – you care more about some corrupt politician you never met. Do you know you are the perfect example of the ignorance of the masses, Alsi? Do you know that?’ he said, talking as if to a child and holding her chin up. ‘Crying for the rich and mighty who would disdain to piss upon you. Doubtless next week you will be bawling because Princess Diana broke a fingernail.’
Alsana gathered all the spit her mouth could accommodate and launched it at him.
‘Bhainchute! I am not crying for her, you idiot, I am crying for my friends. There will be blood on the streets back home because of this, India and Bangladesh. There will be riots – knives, guns. Public death, I have seen it. It will be like Mahshar, Judgement Day – people will die in the streets, Samad. You know and I know. And Delhi will be the worst of it, is always the worst of it. I have some family in Delhi, I have friends, old lovers-’
And here Samad slapped her, partly for the old lovers and partly because it was many years since he had been referred to as a bhainchute (translation: someone who, to put it simply, fucks their sisters).
Alsana held her face, and spoke quietly. ‘I am crying with misery for those poor families and out of relief for my own children! Their father ignores them and bullies them, yes, but at least they will not die on the streets like rats.’
So this was going to be one of those rows: the same positions, the same lines, same recriminations, same right hooks. Bare fists. The bell rings. Samad comes out of his corner.
‘No, they will suffer something worse, much worse: sitting in a morally bankrupt country with a mother who is going mad. Utterly cuckoo. Many raisins short of the fruitcake. Look at you, look at the state of you! Look how fat you are!’ He grabbed a piece of her, and then released it as if it would infect him. ‘Look how you dress. Running shoes and a sari? And what is that?’
It was one of Clara’s African headscarfs, a long, beautiful piece of orange Kenti cloth in which Alsana had taken to wrapping her substantial mane. Samad pulled it off and threw it across the room, leaving Alsana’s hair to crash down her back.
‘You do not even know what you are, where you come from. We never see family any more – I am ashamed to show you to them. Why did you go all the way to Bengal for a wife, that’s what they ask. Why didn’t you just go to Putney?’
Alsana smiled ruefully, shook her head, while Samad made a pretence of calm, filling their metal kettle with water and slamming it down on the stove.
‘And that is a beautiful lungi you have on, Samad Miah,’ she said bitterly, nodding in the direction of his blue-towelling jogging suit topped off with Poppy’s LA Raiders baseball cap.
Samad said, ‘The difference is what is in here,’ not looking at her, thumping just below his left breast bone. ‘You say you are thankful we are in England, that’s because you have swallowed it whole. I can tell you those boys would have a better life back home than they ever-’
‘Samad Miah! Don’t even begin! It will be over my dead body that this family moves back to a place where our lives are in danger! Clara tells me about you, she tells me. How you have asked her strange things. What are you plotting, Samad? I hear from Zinat all this about life insurance… who is dying? What can I smell? I tell you, it will be over my dead body-’
‘But if you are already dead, Alsi-’
‘Shut up! Shut up! I am not mad. You are trying to drive me mad! I phoned Ardashir, Samad. He is telling me you have been leaving work at eleven thirty. It is two in the morning. I am not mad!’
‘No, it is worse. Your mind is diseased. You call yourself a Muslim-’
Alsana whipped round to face Samad, who was trying to concentrate his attention on the whistling steam emerging from the kettle.
‘No, Samad. Oh no. Oh no. I don’t call myself anything. I don’t make claims. You call yourself a Muslim. You make the deals with Allah. You are the one he will be talking to, come Mahshar. You, Samad Miah. You, you, you.’
Second round. Samad slapped Alsana. Alsana right hooked him in the stomach and then followed up with a blow to the left cheekbone. She then made a dash to the back door, but Samad caught her by the waist, rugby-tackled her, dragged her down and elbowed her in the coccyx. Alsana, being heavier than Samad, knelt up, lifting him; flipped him over and dragged him out into the garden, where she kicked him twice as he lay on the floor – two short, fierce jabs to the forehead – but the rubber-cushioned sole did little damage and in a moment he was on his knees again. They made a grab for each other’s hair, Samad determined to pull until he saw blood. But this left Alsana’s knee free and it connected swiftly with Samad’s crotch, forcing him to release the hair and swing a blind flier meant for her mouth but catching her ear. Around this time, the twins emerged half awake from their beds and stood at the long glass kitchen window to watch the fight, while the neighbours’ security lights came on, illuminating the Iqbal garden like a stadium.