White Teeth

tinued to pour tea and dress for dinner, even as the alarms went off, even as the city became a towering ball of fire. Born of

clockwork; individual life expectancy an optimistic fifty-two, and they are coolly aware that when you talk about apocalypse, when you talk about random death en masse, well, they are leading the way in that particular field, they will be the first to go, the first to slip Atlantis-like down to t

usband (1985), more people died in Bangladesh, more people perished in the winds and the rain, than in Hiroshima, Na

n to hold his life lightly. Even though he was relatively safe up there in the Chittagong Hills, the highest point of that low-lying, flatland country, still she hated the thought t

they seemed. For there were those who were quietly pleased that Alsana Iqbal, with her big house and her blacky white friends and her husband who looked like Omar Sharif and her son who spoke like the Prince of Wales, was now living in doubt and uncertainty like the rest of them, learning to wear misery like old familiar silk. There was a certain satisfaction in it, even as Zinat (who never revealed her role in the deed) reached over the chair armto take Alsana's hand in her sympathetic claws. "Oh, Alsi, I just keep thinking what a shame it is that he had to take the good one! He was so very clever and so beauti

ts, Alsana did not know, was not sure. During this period she read extensively from the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and tried hard to believe his assurances (Night's darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn), but she was, at heart, a practical woman and found poetry no comfort. For those six days her life was a midnight thing, a hair's breadth from the witching hour. But on the seventh day came light: the news arrived that Magid was fine, suffering only a broken nose delivered by a v

m to livelike she did never knowing, never being sure, holding Samad's sanity to ransom, until she waspaid in full with the return of her number-one-son-eldest-by-two-minutes, until she could oncemore put a chubby hand through his thick hair. That was her promise, that was her curse uponSamad, and it was exquisite revenge. At times it very nearly drove him to the brink, to thekitchen-knife stage, to the medicine cabinet. But Samad was the kind of person too stubborn to killhimself if it meant giving someone else satisfaction. He hung on in there. Alsana turning

y slippers?""Possibly, Sam

r.""Alsana, where have you put the remote control?""It is as likely to

he first time he had written, but Samad saw something different in this letter,something that excited him and validated the particular decision he had made; some change of tone,someSS o ^urity,

e a wiseman." Do you hear that? He wants to be a Wise man How many kids in that school do you knowwho want tobe wise men?"Maybe none, Samad Miah. Maybe all."Samad scowled at his wife and continued, "And here here where he talks about his nose: "Itseems to me that a vase should lot be in such a silly place where it can fall and break a boy s nose Itshould be somebody's fault an

that is destined for greatness, isn't he?" "Maybe, Samad Miah,maybe not." Maybe he'll go into government, maybe the law, sugge

it in two." Is that a boy who is fearful?"It clearly being incumbent upon someone to say no, Clara said it with little enthusiasm andreached for t

."Samad, never au fait with the language of the Willesden streets, nodded soberly and patted his son's hair. "It is good that you see the difference between you two boys, Millat, now rather than later." Samad glared at Alsana as she spun an index finger in a circle by her temple, as she tapped the side of her hea

ransatlantic stalemates above which mess the child rose untouchable and unstained, elevatedto the status of ever smiling Buddha, imbued with serene Eastern contemplation; capable of anything, a natural lea

al islandoutposts, stuck in an eternal state of original naivety, perpetual pre-pubescence

that firstrace down the birth canal, and now simply a follower by genetic predisposition, by the intricatedesign of Allah, the loser of two vital minutes that he would never make up, not in those all-seeingparabolic mirrors, not in those glassy globes of the godhead, not in his father's eyes. No

gingimage as often as shoes; sweet-as, safe, wicked, leading kids up hills to play football, downhill torifle fruit machines, out of schools, into video shops. In Rocky Video, Millat's favourite hau

had his fierce good looks squashed tightlyinside him like a jack-in-a-box set to spring aged thirteen, at which point he graduated from leaderof zit-faced boys to leader of women. The Pied Piper of Willesden Green, smitten girls trailingbehind him, tongues out, breasts pert, falling into pools of heartbreak.. . and all because he was theBIGGEST 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.

, criminal record for joyriding), Khandakar (sixteen, white girlfriend, wore mascara in theevenings), 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); wh

est? Hadn't they all come to thi

't they

ey are too safe in this country, accha? They live in big plasticbubbles of our own creation, their lives all mapped out for them.

aura seems to emanate from the photo: goodness and bravery through adversity, through hell andhigh water; the true Muslim boy; the child they never had. Pathetic as it was, Alsana found it faintlyamusing, 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.

er 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, duckingthe 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

ree

the shit out of the double glazing,Alsana, a great believer in the or

ana's mind about the inherent reliabilityof her favoured English institutions, amongst them: Princess Anne, Blu-Tack, Children's Roy

maybe not."Samad followed the voice to the bathroom and f

his son's hands. There's a bloody hurricane blowing and your crazy mother intends to sit here until the ro

n't split the hairs with me this

thing being severed at the roots and f

l in varying states of undress, looking out through the long kit

ee times and hammed it up with

oing to Archibald's. Maybe they still have light. And there is safety in numbers. Both of you get dressed, grab the essentials, the life or death things, and get in the car!"Hold

rom Taxi Foot bathDriver Linda Goodman's Starsigns Betamax copy of Purple Rain (book) (rock movie) Huge box of beedi cigarettesShrink-to-fit Levis 501 (re

glimpse of the shed sitting happy like a treehouse in next door's horse chestnut He picked upthe Swiss army knife he remembered leaving under the sink, collected his gold-plated,velvet-fringed Qur'an from the living room and was about to leave when the temptation to feel the gale, to see a little of the formidable destruction, came over him. He waited for a lull in the windand opened the k

elf, knocking him sideways and continuing along its path to the double glazing, which it cracked and exploded effortlessly, blowingglass inside, regurgitating eve

by the Bay of Bengal. I watched my mother drive through winds like these while my husband was poncing about in Delhi with a load of fairy college boys. I suggest my husband gets in the passenger se

dark look. "BBC or no BBC."The lights had gone out at Archie's, but the Jones household was prepared for every disastrous eventuality from tidal wave to nuclear fallout; by the time the Iqbals got there

what I mean 'sjustthe way I see it: it's me against the wind. If I've told you once, Ick-Ball, I've told you a million times: check the supporting walls. If they're not in tiptop condition, you're buggered, mate. You really are. And you've got to keep a pneumatic spanne

lsi, you look lovely as ever; hello, Millboid, yer scoundrel. So Sam, out

that in it's the frames. Just ripped out of that crumbling wa

one. Clara and Me are in the kitchen. We've got a Bunsen burner

ial calm reigned. Clara was stirring some beans, quietly hummingthe tune to Buffalo Soldier. Me

at me (as usual, except in a FRIENDLY way). I'm in love with a fool (stupid me)! If only he hadhis brother's brain

ght," sai

right,"

final thrilling peek through the window at the apoplectic trees before Archie blocked out the sky entirely with wood and nails. "That's the problem."Samad clipped Millat round the ear. "Don't you start in on the cheekiness. We know what we're doing. You forget, Archibald and I have coped with extreme situations. Once you have fixed a five-man tank in the middle

e to listen to old warhorse big mouths all night.""Go on, Sam," said Archie with a wink. "Give us the one about Mangal Pande. Tha

e sneeze, he is why we are the waywe are, the founder of modern India, the big historical chee

s. The question is: are the pretty men with the big white teeth willing to play you, et cetera. Gandhi had Mr. Kingsley bully for him but who will do Pande, eh? Pande's not pretty enough, is he? Too Indian-looking,

-grandfather, stupi

Decides to fu

, spliffed up to the eyeballs, tries to shoot his capt

said Clara a

ary," said Archie, laying down his hamm

lorious greenery, city-living for whole diaspora of magpie a tree of this kind tore itself from the dog shit and the concrete, took one tottering step forward, swooned and collaps

e trembled and wept and checked each other for injury. ThenArchie, visibly shaken by this blow to his DIY supremacy, reclaimed control over

es," said Archie, touching his wife's arm affectionately, 'you Bowdens have seen worse than this! Your mother was born in a bloody earthquake, for Christ's sake. 1907, Kingston's falling apart and Hortense pops into the world. You wouldn't see a little storm like this worrying her. Tough as nails, that one.""Not toughness," said Clara quietly, standing up to look through the broken window at the chaos outside, 'luck. Luck and faith.""I suggest we pray," said Samad, picking up his novelty Qur'an. "I suggest we acknowledge the might of the Creator as he does his worst this evening."Samad began nicking through and, finding what he wanted, brought it patr

had his head in the cupboard and was searching for the bin bags). "Not really my cup of tea, either. Never been a church man. No offence."Five more minutes passed without the wind. Then the quiet burst

Where are the kids?"One kid was in Chittagong, being dared by a friend to take off his lungi and march through a renowned crocodile swamp; the other two had sneaked out of the house

t do you mean? I'm fine!""No, you're not. You're always lo

ac.""You want my arse.""Don't be a wanker!""Well, it's no good, anyway. You're getting a bit big. I don't like big. You can't have me.""I wouldn't want to, Mr. Egomaniac.""Plus: imagine what our k

DAD.""Massive nose

trouble?""Well, watch out," said Millat, leaning forward, colliding with some buck teeth, slipping a tongue in momentarily, and then pulling back. "Cos that's all the trouble you're getting."14 January 1989Millat spread his legs like Elvis and slapp

rew (Rajik, Ranil, Dipesh and Hifan) sniggered and shuffled behi

urn? For a child?""Yeah, man. I'm fifteen, yeah? "Course I want a return, I've got a bar ii to get back to like ever

ce. Maybe next time you mug some poor old lady," said the ticket-man, looking pointedly at the chunky gold that fell from Millat's ears,

' you, yeah?"

r tell 'im,"

en he turned around, stuck his arse in the air, and

you call me? You what did you say? You

hard on the glass that it reverberated down the booths to the

you straight. You're a fucking faggot, yeah? Queer boy, poofter, batty-rider, shit-dick." There was nothin

ort out the likes of you, yeah? Chief!"Halfway up platform 12" about to board a train they had no tickets for, a King's Cross security guy stopped Millat's Crew to ask them a question. "You boys not looki

Indic kids, wide-boys, ravers, rude-boys, Acidheads, Sharons, Tracies, Kevs, Nation Brothers,

being, a hard-as-fuck geezer who would fight in their corner if necessary; Kung Fu and the works of Bruce Lee were also central to the philosophy; added to this was a smattering of Black Power(as embodied by the album Fear of a Black P

her's comments into his book. People had fucked with Dipesh and Hifan when they wore traditional d

nee; the trainers were equallyspectacular, with tongues so tall they obscured the entire ankle; baseball caps were compulsory, low slung and irremovable, and everything, everything, everything was Nike(tm); wherever the five of them went the impression they left behind was of one gigantic swoosh, one huge mark of corporate approval. And they walked in a very pa

h?" said Millat to

oing' beg

dford," s

ss, yeah?" ex

ped into the train, gave him the finger, and s

at always answered the group as a whole. "No way. He ain't going to be there. Just brothers going to be there. It's a fucking protest,you chief, why's he going to go to a protest against himself?""I'm just saying," said Ranil, wounded, "I'd fuck him up, yeah? If he was there, you know. Dirty fucking book.""It

igent, who thought of God as some kind of cross between Monkey Magic and Bruce Willis. "He'll ki

as a gene

could not identify the book if it lay in a pile of other books; could not pick out the writer in a line-up of other writers (irresistible, this line-up of offending writers: Socrates, Protagora

baller or afilm-maker; that he should go back to his own country; or stay here and earn his bloody keep; that he worshipped elephants and wore turbans; that no one who looked like Millat, or spoke like Millat, or felt like Millat, was ever on the news unless they had recently been murdered. In sho

n't read it?" ask

t buying that shit, man. No way,

star," s

nastiness,"

y-five, you kno

'you don't have to read shit to know that it's blasphemous, you get me?"Back in Wille

my voice.""Can't you understand, woman? This is the most important thing to happen to us in this country, ever. It's crisis point. It's the tickle in the sneeze. It's big time." Samad hit the volume button a few times with his thumb. "This woman Moira whateverhernameis she mumbles. Why is she reading news if she can't speak properly?"Moira, turned up suddenly in mid-sentence, said, '

's he on about, eh? He can't wan

ern virtue! Oh no. Fact is, he is

y the same kettle with fish in it.""Oh, passions are running high at the Women's Committee shows how much Samad Iqbalknows. But I am not like Samad Iqbal. I restrain myself. I live. I let live.""It is not a matter of letting others live. It is a matter of protecting one's culture, shielding one's religion from abuse. Not that you'd know anything about that, naturally. Alwa

rs ago and who mixed within Bengal with indigenous groups of various racial stocks. Ethnic minorities include the Chakma and Mogh, Mongoloid peoples who live in the Chittago

back and back and back and it's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe. Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It's a fairy-tale!""You don't know w

n in Bradford. So,

g the books, has it? I don't believe it!""Nothing to do with me. Tickle in the sneeze, Mrs. Iqbal," said Samad coolly, sitting back in his armchair. "Tickle in the sneeze."When Millat came home that evening, a great bonfire was raging in the back garden. All his secular stuff four years' worth of cool, pre- and post-Raggastani, every album, every poster, special-edition t-shirts, club fliers collected and preserved over two years, be

oner or later."10 November 1989A wall was coming down. It was something to do with history. It was an Historic occasion. No one really knew quite who had put it up or who was tearing it down or whether this was good, bad or something else; no one knew how tall it was, how

t and Me held out their plate

g back to her seat with a bowl of Jamaican fr

you dare, mister.""It's educational," said Clara deliberately, her pad and paper on the arm rest, waiting to leap into action at the suggestion of anything edifying. "It's the kind of thing we all should be watching."Alsana no

like the crowd on top of the wall in her everyday garb of CND badges, graffiti-covered trousers and beaded hair, shook her head in saddened disbelief. She wasthat age. Whatever s

s the first time such a t

outsideworld. I think this is amazing. They're all fre

s to stop pissing around wid dis hammer business and jus' get some Semtex and blow de djam ting up, if they don't like it, you get me? Be quicker, in nit"Why do you talk like that?" snapped Irie, devouring a dumpling. That's not your voice. You sound ridiculous!""And you want to watch dem dumplings," said Millat, patting his belly. "Big ain't beautiful.""Oh, get lost.""You know," murmured Archie, munching on a chicken wing, "I'm not so sure that it's such a good thing. I mean, you've got to

ople dancing on the wall and felt contempt and something m

if you are to throw over an old order, you must be sure thatyou can offer so

ke my great grandfa

been sighed. "I'd rather not, if it's all the sam

fed. And

ere. You and Dad left in 1945. They didn't do the wall until 1961.""Cold War," said Samad sourly, ignoring her. "They don't talk about hot war any more. The kind where men get killed. That's where I learnt about Europe. It cannot be found in books.""Oi-oi," said Archie, trying to d

quick with a slap

uch defeated as exasperated

luding this reporter, thought to see it happen in their lifetimes, but last night,at the stroke of midnight, thousand

ood, eh? "Son now.""And stop sayin' "an historic"," said Millat, irritated at all the poncey political talk. "Why can't you just say "a", like everybody else, man? Why d'you always have to be so la di da?""Oh, for fuck's sake!" (She loved him, but he was impossible.) "What possible fuckingdifference can it make?"Samad rose out of his seat. TheI This is my house and you are still a guest. I won't have that language in it!""Fine! I'll take it to the streets with the rest of the proletariat.""That girl," tutted Alsana as her front door slammed. "Swallowed an encyclopedia and a gutter Millat sucked his teeth at his mother. "Don't you start, man. What's wrong with "a" encyclopedia? Why's everyone in this house always puttin' o

."Alsana put her palm on Archie's forehead and stroked it lightly. "You fool. Don't you know you're left behind like carriage and horses, like candle wax Don't you know to them you're old andsmelly like yesterday's fishnchip paper? I'll be agreeing with your daughter on one matter of importance." Alsana stood up, following Clara, who had left at this final insult and marched tearfully into the kitchen. "You tw

Cl

Cl

Cl

Cl

Cl

s pocket for a shiny ten pence when he realized there was no