Now, a more melancholy child than Millat, a more deep-thinking child, might have spent the rest of his life hunting these two minutes and making himself miserable, chasing the elusive quarry, laying it finally at his father’s feet. But what his father said about him did not concern Millat all that much: he knew himself to be no follower, no chief, no wanker, no sell-out, no fuckwit – no matter what his father said. In the language of the street Millat was a rudeboy, a badman, at the forefront, changing image as often as shoes; sweet-as, safe, wicked, leading kids up hills to play football, downhill to rifle fruit machines, out of schools, into video shops. In Rocky Video, Millat’s favourite haunt, run by an unscrupulous coke-dealer, you got porn when you were fifteen, 18s when you were eleven, and snuff movies under the counter for five quid. Here was where Millat really learnt about fathers. Godfathers, blood-brothers, pacinodeniros, men in black who looked good, who talked fast, who never waited a (mutherfuckin’) table, who had two, fully functioning, gun-toting hands. He learnt that you don’t need to live under flood, under cyclone, to get a little danger, to be a wise man. You go looking for it. Aged twelve, Millat went out looking for it, and though Willesden Green is no Bronx, no South Central, he found a little, he found enough. He was arsey and mouthy, he had his fierce good looks squashed tightly inside him like a jack-in-a-box set to spring aged thirteen, at which point he graduated from leader of zit-faced boys to leader of women. The Pied Piper of Willesden Green, smitten girls trailing behind him, tongues out, breasts pert, falling into pools of heartbreak… and all because he was the BIGGEST and the BADDEST, living his young life in CAPITALS: he smoked first, he drank first, he even lost it – IT! – aged thirteen and a half. OK, so he didn’t FEEL much or TOUCH much, it was MOIST and CONFUSING, he lost IT without even knowing where IT went, but he still lost IT because there was no doubt, NONE, that he was the best of the rest, on any scale of juvenile delinquency he was the shining light of the teenage community, the DON, the BUSINESS, the DOG’S GENITALIA, a street boy, a leader of tribes. In fact, the only trouble with Millat was that he loved trouble. And he was good at it. Wipe that. He was great.
Still, there was much discussion – at home, at school, in the various kitchens of the widespread Iqbal/Begum clan – about The Trouble with Millat, mutinous Millat aged thirteen, who farted in mosque, chased blondes and smelt of tobacco, and not just Millat but all the children: Mujib (fourteen, criminal record for joyriding), Khandakar (sixteen, white girlfriend, wore mascara in the evenings), Dipesh (fifteen, marijuana), Kurshed (eighteen, marijuana and very baggy trousers), Khaleda (seventeen, sex before marriage with Chinese boy), Bimal (nineteen, doing a diploma in Drama); what was wrong with all the children, what had gone wrong with these first descendants of the great ocean-crossing experiment? Didn’t they have everything they could want? Was there not a substantial garden area, regular meals, clean clothes from Marks ’n’ Sparks, A-class top-notch education? Hadn’t the elders done their best? Hadn’t they all come to this island for a reason? To be safe. Weren’t they safe?
‘Too safe,’ Samad explained, patiently consoling one or other weeping, angry ma or baba, perplexed and elderly dadu or dida, ‘they are too safe in this country, accha? They live in big plastic bubbles of our own creation, their lives all mapped out for them. Personally, you know I would spit on Saint Paul, but the wisdom is correct, the wisdom is really Allah’s: put away childish things. How can our boys become men when they are never challenged like men? Hmm? No doubt about it, on reflection, sending Magid back was the best thing. I would recommend it.’
At which point, the assembled weepers and moaners all look mournfully at the treasured picture of Magid and goat. They sit mesmerized, like Hindus waiting for a stone cow to cry, until a visible aura seems to emanate from the photo: goodness and bravery through adversity, through hell and high water; the true Muslim boy; the child they never had. Pathetic as it was, Alsana found it faintly amusing, the tables having turned, no one weeping for her, everyone weeping for themselves and their children, for what the terrible eighties were doing to them both. These gatherings were like last-ditch political summits, they were like desperate meetings of government and church behind closed doors while the mutinous mob roamed wild on the streets, smashed windows. A distance was establishing itself, not simply between fathersons, oldyoung, borntherebornhere, but between those who stayed indoors and those who ran riot outside.
‘Too safe, too easy,’ repeated Samad, as great-aunt Bibi wiped Magid lovingly with some Mr Sheen. ‘A month back home would sort each and every one of them out.’
But the fact was Millat didn’t need to go back home: he stood schizophrenic, one foot in Bengal and one in Willesden. In his mind he was as much there as he was here. He did not require a passport to live in two places at once, he needed no visa to live his brother’s life and his own (he was a twin after all). Alsana was the first to spot it. She confided to Clara: By God, they’re tied together like a cat’s cradle, connected like a see-saw, push one end, other goes up, whatever Millat sees, Magid saw and vice versa! And Alsana only knew the incidentals: similar illnesses, simultaneous accidents, pets dying continents apart. She did not know that while Magid watched the 1985 cyclone shake things from high places, Millat was pushing his luck along the towering wall of the cemetery in Fortune Green; that on 10 February 1988, as Magid worked his way through the violent crowds of Dhaka, ducking the random blows of those busy settling an election with knives and fists, Millat held his own against three sotted, furious, quick-footed Irishmen outside Biddy Mulligan’s notorious Kilburn public house. Ah, but you are not convinced by coincidence? You want fact fact fact? You want brushes with the Big Man with black hood and scythe? OK: on the 28th of April, 1989, a tornado whisked the Chittagong kitchen up into the sky, taking everything with it except Magid, left miraculously curled up in a ball on the floor. Now, segue to Millat, five thousand miles away, lowering himself down upon legendary sixth-former Natalia Cavendish (whose body is keeping a dark secret from her); the condoms are unopened in a box in his back pocket; but somehow he will not catch it; even though he is moving rhythmically now, up and in, deeper and sideways, dancing with death.
Three days:
15 October 1987
Even when the lights went out and the wind was beating the shit out of the double glazing, Alsana, a great believer in the oracle that is the BBC, sat in a nightie on the sofa, refusing to budge.
‘If that Mr Fish says it’s OK, it’s damn well OK. He’s BBC, for God’s sake!’
Samad gave up (it was almost impossible to change Alsana’s mind about the inherent reliability of her favoured English institutions, amongst them: Princess Anne, Blu-Tack, Children’s Royal Variety Performance, Eric Morecambe, Woman’s Hour). He got the torch from the kitchen drawer and went upstairs, looking for Millat.
‘Millat? Answer me, Millat! Are you there?’
‘Maybe, Abba, maybe not.’
Samad followed the voice to the bathroom and found Millat chin-high in dirty pink soap suds, reading Viz.
‘Ah, Dad, wicked. Torch. Shine it over here so I can read.’
‘Never mind that.’ Samad tore the comic from his son’s hands. ‘There’s a bloody hurricane blowing and your crazy mother intends to sit here until the roof falls in. Get out of the bath. I need you to go to the shed and find some wood and nails so that we can-’
‘But Abba, I’m butt-naked!’
‘Don’t split the hairs with me – this is an emergency. I want you to-’