Everyone at Glenard Oak was at work; they were Babelians of every conceivable class and colour speaking in tongues, each in their own industrious corner, their busy censer mouths sending the votive offering of tobacco smoke to the many gods above them (Brent Schools Report 1990: 67 different faiths, 123 different languages).
Laborare est Orare:
Nerds by the pond, checking out frog sex,
Posh girls in the music department singing French rounds, speaking pig Latin, going on grape diets, suppressing lesbian instincts,
Fat boys in the PE corridor, wanking,
High-strung girls outside the language block, reading murder casebooks,
Indian kids playing cricket with tennis rackets on the football ground,
Irie Jones looking for Millat Iqbal,
Scott Breeze and Lisa Rainbow in the toilets, fucking,
Joshua Chalfen, a goblin, an elder and a dwarf, behind the science block playing Goblins and Gorgons,
And everybody, everybody smoking fags, fags, fags, working hard at the begging of them, the lighting of them and the inhaling of them, the collecting of butts and the remaking of them, celebrating their power to bring people together across cultures and faiths, but mostly just smoking them – gis a fag, spare us a fag – chuffing on them like little chimneys till the smoke grows so thick that those who had stoked the chimneys here back in 1886, back in the days of the workhouse, would not have felt out of place.
And through the fog, Irie was looking for Millat. She had tried the basketball court, the smoking garden, the music department, the cafeteria, the toilets of both sexes and the graveyard that backed on to the school. She had to warn him. There was going to be a raid, to catch all illicit smokers of weed or tobacco, a combined effort from the staff and the local constabulary. The seismic rumblings had come from Archie, angel of revelation; she had overheard his telephone conversation and the holy secrets of the Parent-Teacher Association; now Irie was landed with a burden far heavier than the seismologist, landed, rather, with the burden of the prophet, for she knew the day and time of the quake (today, two thirty), she knew its power (possible expulsion), and she knew who was likely to fall victim to its fault line. She had to save him. Clutching her vibrating chub and sweating through three inches of Afro hair, she dashed through the grounds, calling his name, inquiring of others, looking in all the usual places, but he was not with the cockney barrow-boys, the posh girls, the Indian posse or the black kids. She trudged finally to the science block, part of the old workhouse and a much loved blind-spot of the school, its far wall and Eastern corner affording thirty precious yards of grass, where a pupil indulging in illicit acts was entirely hidden from the common view. It was a fine, crisp autumn day, the place was full; Irie had to walk through the popular tonsil-tennis/groping championships, step over Joshua Chalfen’s Goblins and Gorgons game (‘Hey, watch your feet! Mind the Cavern of the Dead!’) and furrow through a tight phalanx of fag smokers before she reached Millat at the epicentre of it all, pulling laconically on a cone-shaped joint, listening to a tall guy with a mighty beard.
‘Mill!’
‘Not right now, Jones.’
‘But Mill!’
‘Please, Jones. This is Hifan. Old friend. I’m trying to listen to him.’
The tall guy, Hifan, had not paused in his speech. He had a deep, soft voice like running water, inevitable and constant, requiring a force stronger than the sudden appearance of Irie, stronger maybe, than gravity, to stop it. He was dressed in a sharp black suit, a white shirt and a green bow-tie. His breast pocket was embroidered with a small emblem, two hands cupping a flame, and something underneath it, too small to see. Though no older than Millat, his hair-growing capacity was striking, and his beard aged him considerably.
‘… and so marijuana weakens one’s abilities, one’s power, and takes our best men away from us in this country: men like you, Millat, who have natural leadership skills, who possess within them the ability to take a people by the hand and lift them up. There is an hadith from the Bukhārā, part five, page two: The best people of my community are my contemporaries and supporters. You are my contemporary, Millat, I pray you will also become my supporter; there is a war going on, Millat, a war.’
He continued like this, one word flowing from another, with no punctuation or breath and with the same chocolatey delivery – one could almost climb into his sentences, one could almost fall asleep in them.
‘Mill. Mill. ’Simportant.’
Millat looked drowsy, whether from the hash or Hifan wasn’t clear. Shaking Irie off his sleeve, he attempted an introduction. ‘Irie, Hifan. Him and me used to go about together. Hifan-’
Hifan stepped forward, looming over Irie like a bell tower. ‘Good to meet you, sister. I am Hifan.’
‘Great. Millat.’
‘Irie, man, shit. Could you just chill for one minute?’ He passed her the smoke. ‘I’m trying to listen to the guy, yeah? Hifan is the don. Look at the suit… gangster stylee!’ Millat ran a finger down Hifan’s lapel, and Hifan, against his better instinct, beamed with pleasure. ‘Seriously, Hifan, man, you look wicked. Crisp.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Better than that stuff you used to go around in back when we used to hang, eh? Back in them Kilburn days. ’Member when we went to Bradford and-’
Hifan remembered himself. Reassumed his previous face of pious determination. ‘I am afraid I don’t remember the Kilburn days, brother. I did things in ignorance then. That was a different person.’
‘Yeah,’ said Millat sheepishly. ‘ ’Course.’
Millat gave Hifan a joshing punch on the shoulder, in response to which Hifan stood still as a gate post.
‘So: there’s a fucking spiritual war going on – that’s fucking crazy! About time – we need to make our mark in this bloody country. What was the name, again, of your lot?’
‘I am from the Kilburn branch of the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation,’ said Hifan proudly.
Irie inhaled.
‘Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation,’ repeated Millat, impressed. ‘That’s a wicked name. It’s got a wicked kung-fu kick-arse sound to it.’
Irie frowned. ‘KEVIN?’
‘We are aware,’ said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, ‘that we have an acronym problem.’
‘Just a bit.’
‘But the name is Allah’s and it cannot be changed… but to continue with what I was saying: Millat, my friend, you could be the head of the Cricklewood branch-’
‘Mill.’
‘You could have what I have, instead of this terrible confusion you are in, instead of this reliance on a drug specifically imported by governments to subdue the black and Asian community, to lessen our powers.’
‘Yeah,’ said Millat sadly, in mid-roll of a new spliff. ‘I don’t really look at it like that. I guess I should look at it like that.’
‘Mill.’
‘Jones, give it a rest. I’m having a fucking debate. Hifan, what school you at now, mate?’
Hifan shook his head with a smile. ‘I left the English education system some time ago. But my education is far from over. If I can quote to you from the Tabrīzī, hadith number 220: The person who goes in search of knowledge is on active service for God until he returns and the-’