White Teeth

s; an unflinching and honest stare, a meticulous inspection that would go beyond the heart of the matter to its marrow, beyond the

lour of baked bread. Back to the day when they were first assigned to each other, Samad Miah Iqbal (row 2, Over here now, soldier!) and Alfred Archibald Jones (Move it, move it, move it), the day Archie involuntarily forgot that most fundamental principle of English manners. He stared. They were standing side by side on a stretch of black dirt-track Russian ground, dressed identically in little triangular caps perched on their heads like paper s

privates and a captain in their five-man Churchill rolling through Athens on its way to Thessaloniki. It was i April 1945. Archie Jones was the driver of the tank, Samad was thewireless operator, Roy Mackintosh was the co-driver, Will Johnson was crunched on a bin as the g

his thing."A voice crackled through the wireless, and Samad, not wishin

, after Samad had giv

just in a passion over my arse?"Their captain, Dickinson-Smith, who was in a passion over Samad's arse (but not only that; also his mind; also two sle

s just making an objection, sir. It is hard, sir, for a man to concentrate on his Foxt

said Roy, who hated Samad and

hateful Sultan nickname, but he never did it in the right way; it was always too soft, too similar to Samad's own luxurious language and only resulted in Roy and the other eighty Roys under his direct command hating Dickinson-Smith, ri

s what's good for him, the Indian Sultan bastard. No disres

r even spoke at all. Even Roy's Polite Gesture was a sign of Dickinson-Smith's failure. In those other tanks, in the Shermans, Ch

ey, Disob

he word "Sultan" refers to certain men of the Arab lands many hundreds of miles west of Bengal. To call me Sultan is about as accurate, in terms of the mileage, you understand, as if I referred to you as a Jerry-Hun fat bastard.""I called you Sultan and I'm calling you it again,

bout?" asked Mackintosh

ze as they say, and trying to get Sapper Jones here to stop his staring business, his goggly eyes, just this and only this .. . and I

ot the place a

of you. Jones, check the m

checked

t the war as to make sure it ran smoothly. By the time Archie joined the conflict, it was clear that the cruel, bloody decisions would be made by air, not in the 3o-centimetre difference between the width of a German armour piercing shell and an English one. The real war, the one where cities were brought to their knees, the war with the deathly calculations of size, detonation,The Root Canals of Alfred Archibald Jones and Samad

can, sir. Private Ick-Ball has passed to me at 16.47 hours a radio message that informs m

war," Samad h

n particular Samad said, "I should not be here."As usual he was ignore

ome mullah, some sepoy, wearing out my chap pals in hard service. My great-grandfather Mangal Pande' he looked around for the recognitio

ful pig fat-smeared bullet and sent it spinni

tory, lifted five dead, tightly curled fingers from their usual resting place on his chest 'this shi

and worse than fools. Fools, Hindus, Sikhs and Punjabis. And now there is all this murmuring about independence give Bengal independence, Archie, is what I say leave India in bed with the British, if that's wh

eyeballing had created a kind of silk-thread bond between th

go, go and fight in Italy, Rissaldar Major Pugri, Daffadar Pugri, with my grand old English troops! Mistake! And then they take me, hero of the 9th North Bengal Mounted Rifles, hero of the Bengal flying corps, and say, "Samad Miah Iqbal, Samad, we are going to confer on you a great honour. You will fight in mainland Europe not starve and drink your own piss in Egypt or Malaya, no you will fi

"I destroyed a Nazi hide-out from the air.

Po Valley. Lord Mounthatten himself was to have congratulated me himself in his own person. He would have shaken this hand. But this was all preve

a trench, his gun went off and shot me through the wrist. But I

ty's Army with the rest of the losers; with men like Archie, with men like Dickinson-Smith (whose governm

d Battalion. Much of the problem with the outfit lay with the capt

d his father before him, and his father before him, ad infinitum. Young Thomas had resigned himself to his fate and was engaged in a concerted and prolonged effort (four years now) to get his name on the ever ext

lled on foreign soil. And on the occasions when there wasn't a war the Dickinson-Smiths busied themselves with the Irish Situation, a kind of Dickinson-Smith holiday resort of death, which had been going since 1600 and showed no sign of letting up. But dying's no easy trick. And though the chance to hurl themselves in fr

tivation and despair. Amongst the well-worn canon was the Tragic Death of Roy's Fiancee, a hairdresser who slipped on a set of rollers and broke her neck on the sink; Archie's Failure to Go to Grammar School because his mother couldn't afford to buy the uniform; Dickinson-Smith's many murdered relatives; as for Will Johnson, he did not speak in the day but whimpered as he slept, and his face spoke eloquently of more miserable miseries than anyon

gineering disaster noise, and the tank slowly ground to a halt. They were in a tiny Bulgarian village borderi

the tracks has broken. We're gonna have to radio for help, and then sit tight till it arr

have to wait here until help arrives.""How long will this be?""A day," piped up Johnson. "We're way off from the rest.""Are we required, Captain Smith, to rema

hat d'ya think this is,

ll go when you come back."So Samad and Archie went into the village and spent three hours drinking Sambucca and listening to the cafe owner tell of the miniature invasion of two Nazi

ient," said the old man, shaking

don't need many of'em to conquer and pil

ne weak is a colony, Sa

Mackintosh and Johnson and Captain Thomas Dickinson-Smith de

ke an iron tongue. It appeared that Thomas Dickinson-Smith had, as his attacker moved towards him, turn

. Twice. Then led the ink a solemn dance along the dotted line and wrote history in his name. The end of war in Europe. As the paper was whisked away by a man at

ange enough for an Iqbal and a

Archie stood on a Bulgarian roadside, Samad clutching a han

ansport and defence. Worst: we have lost our command. A man of war without a commander is a very bad business indeed."Archie turned from Samad and threw up violently in a bush. Priv

knack when it came to wires and nails and glue. And it was a funny kind of struggle between knowledge and pract

chie's little finger strayed towards the correct item. It was awkward, an Indian telling an Englishman what to do but somehow the quietness of it, the manliness of it, got them over it. It was during

ing one hand not enough to manipulate the wires or to pin them to the radio

one in no time," sa

hildren had begun to gather round the tank, attracted by the grisly

ocket and pulled out five thin pink strips. The boy distributed them snootily amongst his friends. They began chewing wildly, eyes b

crawny boy was sent up as the Pe

No more," said Archie, going through an elaborate sign language. "I'

. Let's get on with it, OK?""Bubblegum, mister, Mr. Soldier, bubblegum." It became a chant

m in such a strenuous manner that it pus

y, preparing to bargain. There in his open fist four green

t this?" asked Samad, making a snatch

the impish dance that children learn from war

me."Samad made a grab for the boy and caught him by the arm of his shirt. He tried desperately

asn't his and revenge the killing of men who would not have acknowledged him in a civilian street. Archie was amazed. It was his country; in

his free arm and pointed to a large derelict hous

hat house kill our

y, mister?" sq

. Can't move. Dr. Sick."A few remaining children exci

oy, now enjoying the attention,

Bulgarian? Greek?" Samad released the

he strain of having to be continually at war in such a pleasant village began to pull at Archie and Samad, and bit by bit

his own having fallen apart, he had a few of the dead man's medals to spare and with them purchased other niceties and necessities: coffee, soap, cho

f pork away. "And my Rita Hayworth leaves me only with my own soul.""Why don't you eat it?" said Archie, guzzling his two chops down like a madman. "Strange busi

ank, enjoying the lingering crimson sunsets and chatting about their previous incarnations as newspaper boy (Archie) and biology student (Samad). They knocked around ideas that Archie did not entirely understand, and Samad offered secrets into the cool night that he had never spoken out loud. Long, comfortable silences passed between them like those between women who have known each other for years.

along the airwaves in search of ears to hear them. (By now, the village knew the war was over, but they felt disinclined to reveal the fact to their two visitors, whose daily barterin

both men's families

righton City?" asked Samad, anchoring his h

h, but otherwise he was quite unremarkable. Girls would be attracted to his large, sad Sinatra blue eyes, but the

"in-laws", as you say. Dear God, those two are so far up the rectums of the establishment in Bengal that even the Lord Governor sits snivelling waiting for his mull

continued Samad, only slightly d

nally, throughout the ages, you understand for really enormous melons."Samad performed the necessary

" asked

, but this time with the kind of anatomical exaggeratio

e child of my generation.""You mean your wife's not bloody born yet?""What of it?" asked Samad, pulling a cigarette from Archie'

d Samad tersely, 'that it is a good idea."Their final evening in the village was absolutely dark, silent. The muggy air made it unpleasant to smoke, so Archie and Samad tapped their fingers on the co

obscure hidden passion that the reticence of new acquaintance has prevented being spoken. But for Samad, nothing was closer or meant more to him than his blood. It was natural, then, as they sat on holy ground, that he should speak of what was holy to him. An

first bullet of the Mutiny. I remember it now, clear as a bell. And that was your grandfather!""Great-grandfather.""Well, well. That's something, isn't it?" said Archie, placing his hands behind his head and lying back to look at the stars. "To have a bit of history in your blood like that. Motivates you, I'd imagine. I'm a Jones, you see. "Slike a "Smith". We're nobody . My father used to say: "We're the chaff, boy, we're the chaff." Not that I've ever been much bothered, mind. Proud all the same, you know. Good honest English stock. But in your family you had a hero!"Samad puffed up with pride. "Yes, Archibald, that is exactly the word. Naturally, you will get these pett

our judgement until all the facts are upon you. Because that land they call "India" goes by a thousand names and is populated by millions, and if you think you have found two men the same amongst that multitude, then you are mistaken. It is merely a trick of the moonlight."Samad released his hand and rummaged in his pocket, dabbing his finger into a repository of white dust

rve of the church dome. It was covered in words, this church. Words left three hundred years earlier by dissenters, unwilling to pay a burial tax during a cholera epidemic, locked in the church by a corrupt landlord and left to die in there but not before they covered every wall with letters to family, poems, statements of eternal disobedience. Samad liked the story well enough when he first heard it, but it only truly struck him when the morphine hit. Then every nerve in his body would be alive, and the information, all the information contained in the universe, all the information on walls, would pop its cork and flow

heorem, perhaps? Master Aristotelian philosophy?""What? Who? No ... I'd you know .. . make love to a lady," said Archie, whose inexperience made him prudish. "You know for the last time."Samad broke into a laugh. "For the first time, is more likely.""Oh, go on, I'm serious.""All right. And if there were no "ladies" in the vicinity?""Well, you can always," and here Archie went a pillar-box red, this be

mad, lighting a fag distractedly despite the h

mis spreading the white stuff- they were looking for something a little more permanent.""I can't see the difference, frankly," said Archie. "When you're dead, you're dead.""Oh no, Archibald, no," whispered Samad, melancholic. "

hildren!" sniggered Archie, simply amused. T

become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a sim

her you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can't. On both occasions, the man breathes.""Do you know," said Archie, after a pause, just before I left from Felixstowe I saw this new drill they have now which breaks in two and you can put different things on the end spanner, hammer

ns and yet I am more sinned against t

he weight of Samad on one

ee with me."Archie knew very well that Samad sneaked morphine from the cabinets, but he could see Samad

t again in England, OK?" said Sam

ng to imagine walking alon

der you my friend."Archie was not sure what he considered S

en we are big-bellied men sitting on our money-mountains. Someh

"Archie laid Samad down, got himself a mattress

" said Samad, pure co

shooting tin cans off each other's heads and throwing knives at potatoes stuck on sticks, each potato sporting a short black twig moustache. With all the exhaustion of revelation, Samad collapsed on to the front steps, sighed, and sat with his hands on his knees, his face turn

on?" demanded Ar

going on. In fact, it's gone off

re Hitler potatoes, my friend. They are vegetable dictators. Ex-dictators." He pulled one off its stick. "See

blocking his throat. This war was to have been his opportunity. He was expected to come home covered in glory, and then to return to Delhi triumphant. When would he ever have another chance? There were going to be no more wars like this one, everybody knew that. The soldier who had spoken to Archie wandered over. He was dressed in the summer uniform of the Russians: the thin material, high-necked collar and oversized, floppy

you were not aware?""Our radio ... it wasn'

tion!" He laughed his big laugh again. Directing his question to Samad, he asked, "Now, where are the rest of you?""There is no rest of us, comrade. The

over and so we find ourselves here quite without purpose." He smiled grimly and s

said the Russian, following Samad with his eyes until he had disappeared

red him. It turned out the Russian and the seven men with him were on their way to Poland, to liberate the work-c

fled," said the Russian, highly amused, turning a matchstick over and over between his finger and thumb. "Good phrase this .. . funny phrase. No, well, you see, I would have thought the same,

-Pierre Perret. A young Frenchman. A prodigy Very brilliant. He has worked in a scientific capacity for the Nazis since before the war. On the sterilization programme, and later the euthanasia policy. Internal German matters. He was one of the very loyal.""Blimey," said Archie, wishing he knew what it all meant. "Wotchyagunn

ou are the highest-ranking officer here Captain .. . Captain .. ."A gla

the Russian, looking at Archie with one eye and at s

following the eye's revolving p

Captain what? Blimey, no, you've got it arse-ways-up," said Archie, escaping the magnetic for

not a b

ay."Samad had stepped out on to the front steps silently as a shadow, in another of Dickinson-Smith's uniforms and with a cigarette hanging casually off his lower lip like a sophisticated sente

t the bloody captain. I am the bloody captain. Captain Samad Iqbal.""Comrade Nikolai Nick Peso

lier; the food's been disagreeing with me. Now: we'll set off tonight, after dark sh

blurted

ersburg. I was separated from my own in Berlin. It's a quite incredible likeness, don't you think?"The friendly Russian popped the eye out of its socket, and laid the slimy pearl in his palm

lim

en came to a restful halt in the centre of his longish, creased life-line.

Russians swigged away at bottles of Sambucca until not a man among them could remember the first lines of their own national anthem, while Gozan sold roasted chicken pieces to the highest bidders, Samad stood atop the firs

second jeep, quiet, sober, fri

lions for Archie. But Samad, as he stood up there with his shiny officer buttons glistening in the moonlight like coins in a wishing-well, had struck the seventeen year-old Archie full square, an uppercut to the jaw that said: here is a man for whom no life-path is too steep. Here was a raving lunatic standing

alion around him and began the march up the mountain in search of a war he could one day tell his grandchildren about, as his great-grandfather's exploits had been told to him. Their progress was hampered by large clods of earth, torn from parts of th

an's nephew, drunkenly scrambli

of ours, Lieutenant Jones," said Gozan, who had been bribed two pairs of boots to keep quiet about his friends' sudden rise in rank. "What

ely, Archie turned to Samad, expecting one of his speeches; but before Gozan had even finished, Samad had suddenly picked up his pace, and within a minute was running, pushing ahead of

embarking upon the tale of a Cuban prostitute he had met in Amsterdam) and began to run to where he had last seen

thing but light up the undergrowth in increasingly bizarre anthropomorphisms; here a man, here a woman on he

Captain Ick-Ball! Capt

right, 'when you know I am no such thing?""Ick-Ball?" and as he asked the qu

s Army?""Course. We have to keep it up, though, don't we? Our cover, and that.""Our cover? Boy." Samad chuckled to himself in a way that

laying sil

line of the white stuff in the cup of each eyelid. The morphine had sharpened his mind to a knife edge and cut it open. It had been a luscious, eloqu

ts five useless appendages;at his skin, burnt to a chocolate-brown by the sun; he saw into his brain, made stupid by stupid conversation and the dull stimuli of death, and longed for the m

first person he sees. But in it was particularly aggravating to Samad that this should be Archie, who looked down at him w

not one of your English matey-boys. My name is Samad Miah Iqbal. Not Sam. N

are here because I wanted to tell you that I am the worse for wear, Lieutenant Jones. I am, as you say,

er with you?""It's true, I am very much the worse for the wearing. Bu

I see no future. I realize this may come as a surprise to you my upper lip,

nothing now, not even Allah, who is all powerful in his mercy. What am I going to do, after this war is over, this war that is already over what am I going to do? Go back to Bengal? Or to Del

rself.""Really? And is that how it is to be, friend?" asked Samad, standing, tripping over a stone and colliding back into Archie. "In one afternoon I promote you from Private Shitbag to lieuten

everyone to hear you? Put it down."Samad's gun arm shot out of the darkness and wrapped itself a

? An Indian, a turncoat English Indian with a limp wrist like a faggot and no medals t

officers, men of higher rank than ourselves, and how? By deceit. Doesn't that make us deserters?""The war was over! I mean, we made an effort to contact the rest.""Did we? Archie, my friend, did we? Really? Or did we sit around on our arses like deserters, hiding in a church while the world was falling apart around our ears, while

down. And calm down," s

esty? I have dragged you down with me, Archie, and for that I am sorry. The truth is, this was my fate.

sent-mindedly in his mout

at tank with the Captain, with Roy and the rest."O Lydia the

t like your great-uncle whatsisname."Beside it the wreck o

Great-grandfather," a

and we're not going to, not if we do this properly. So don't be such a silly fucker abo

he friendly Russian had ambled up behind them and was lo

Samad, dearly shaken, remov

r. Sick was as good as his name, sitting in an armchair in front of a wood-burning fire. Sick. Huddled in a rug. Pale. Very thin. In no uniform, just an open-neck white shirt and some dark coloured trousers. He was a young man too, not over twenty-

e Samad recognized his church, a blip of sandy paint on the horizon. The paintings were placed at intervals and wrapped round the room in a panoramic. Untrained and in a mawkish attempt at the modern style, a ninth sat a

bsurd amount of morphine, fallen through the hole morphine creates, and survived. You are never st

wince at the anglicized pronunciation, sending more bloody

t is that? That in yo

Samad, still pointing the gun, determined not to under

ve come to disturb me." He sighed and stood up. "So. Are you going to kill me, my friend?""I'm not your friend.""No, I do not suppose that you are. But is it your intention to kill me? Pardon me if I say you do not look old enough to squash flies."

e Indian's eye, stepped forward. "Pardon me, Captain."Samad remained silent, facing the Doctor, so the Russian stepped forward. "We do not have intentions in this matter," said the Russian, addressing Dr. Sick. "We have orders to bring you to Poland.""And there, will I be killed?""That will be for the proper authorities to decide The Do

r and stuck the gun into the ba

me civilized?" remarked Dr. Sick, as a group of twelve men

tom of the hill, the battalion