The Road from Damascus (39 page)

Gabor slipped out too quickly to attract attention. Walked home, checking his shoulder for the deracinated Muslims who might spill up from Brick Lane. Climbed stairs, and unlocked triple locks. Instead of leaving his shoes in the shoe rack he kicked them off next to the bed. The pointlessly clean sheets. He washed his mouth with tap water and lay down fully clothed.

It was just him. Gabor and his imaginings.

Sami stepped out. Just walking distance, to a London University venue where the famed Rashid Iqbal would be delivering a speech against religion. Rashid Iqbal: of Indian birth and British nationality, postmodernist, controversialist, author of
Taboo Buster, Haris of the Harem
, and
I-Slam-Slim: Representing Islam, Aggression and the Human Image.
Sami’s kind of thing, previously. In fact, Iqbal’s books were on Sami’s shelves, in the house where Muntaha lived.

It was nostalgia for his previous certainties that brought Sami out, plus the opportunity to disrupt his routine of window-gazing, tight-knuckle driving lessons, and pseudo-subversive dawntime training. And perhaps even sociability. Tom Field would be in attendance, and Dr Schimmer.

It was the holidays, but the most committed student groupuscules were there in the conference hall’s forecourt and corridors. Such activity was, for the militants, either a prelude to disillusion and drugs, or training too, for more serious, more right-wing lobbying later on. Blacksoc, Leftsoc, Beersoc, Gaysoc, Greensoc, and unformed youth picking among the stalls like it was an early freshers week. Asking, which soc is coolest, and which can I fix a CV for? Which does the best T-shirt? Which will most suitably define me?

Miniature demonstrations had been organized in specific reaction to the visiting speaker, and they hectored the audience as it washed into the hall.

There was a huddle of Hizb al-Hurriya girls flapping in jilbabs and niqabs on one side of a plastic, leaflet-strewn table, and skullcapped bearded boys on the other. The boys held banners whose meanings were obscure if you couldn’t supply the context:

‘Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq… And Now Our Faith Itself!’

‘Truth Is Distinct From Falsehood!’

‘War in the North!’ This a reference to ethnic disturbances in the old mill towns, white versus brown, and police versus brown, and Bengali versus Mirpuri, but understood here as Ignorance versus Islam, the original battle.

On the other side of the queue, activists of the Radical Humanist Society, dressed as logically and badly as scientists, chewing on limp roll-ups, represented the pro-Iqbal perspective, bearing a banner of their own. ‘Outlaw Faith!’ it declared.

There were also delegations of politicos whose positions were more obscure, such as Revolutionary Solidarity with Third World Peoples, and Class Fight, who were undecided – despite tens of emergency policy meetings – if the struggle against pipe-dream false consciousness should be prioritized, or alternatively, the necessity of winning over proletarian Asian energies, and who therefore changed their accents according to the colour of the nearest listener, and handed out safe pamphlets on the strike weapon or black rights.

Middle-class whites of the Socialist Workers Party and Revolutionary Communist Party had come simply to show their relevance, entirely avoiding the Rashid Iqbal question in favour of spitting insider insults at each other. Like ‘Tankies!’ Or ‘Trots!’ Or ‘Big moustache boys!’ Or ‘Infantile Leftists!’

Then, arranged in a secondary ripple of offence taken, at mocking distance from the primary stalls, were the reactions to the reactions. An Out-Rage! posse chanted ‘Mullahs Kill Queers!’ towards the Hurriya crew. The Jewish Students Against Muslim Nazis were also engaged in low-level taunting.

Tom Field had hooked Sami’s elbow in a pincer grasp, hurrying him through the noise. With the other gnarled hand he flicked at the activists.

‘This, in their totality, from religious to secular, right to left, is what we call opposition. What we call, at this late stage, the hope for a brighter future.’ He made one cracked cackle. ‘Feeling optimistic?’

One of the Hurriya brothers clocked Sami’s beard.

‘As-salaamu alaikum,’ he shot at him in level tone.

‘Wa-alaikum assalaam,’ Sami shot back. He was thinking of a cynical enough response to make to Tom, and realized too late he’d fallen into a trap.

‘You’re one of us, boy. Why you going in there?’

‘To hear the… to see what… doesn’t mean I agree or disagree…’ Sami, feeling an answer was required, watched guilty-browed over his shoulder the expectant, hurt face of his bearded brother.

Tom pulled him on through institutional doors. The crowd behind them chanted their public slogans with personal urgency, as if this was the last chance for them to make a point. The sound became wordless crackling and crows’ screeches as they made distance into the hall.

It was a full audience which Sami surveyed. In the front row, university VIPs and athletic cameramen in leather and straps. In the rows behind, excited students pretending not to be, and tweedy academic and writerly types including Dr Schimmer, and then a mix of colours and styles and snarls, some very natty, some very grungy. Some niqab girls had infiltrated. There were Africans wearing all their wealth, and brown and yellow intellectuals with thin spectacles and folded legs, and Indo-Pakistanis from rich to poor. At the very back a white but dreadlocked pair sat together, or at least side by side, with each a pair of big headphones muffling their already muffled skulls. Sami and Tom bustled into place at the front of the mixed-up rows, behind Dr Schimmer.

Just in time. A reedy, jaundiced fellow stood and pushed air at the audience to win a partial hush.

‘Our guest today requires no introduction. Nevertheless…’

Polite laughter tinkled from the rows in front of Sami.

‘Nevertheless, a very brief introduction must be made. Rashid Iqbal is one of this country’s leading cosmopolitan intellectuals. Rashid’s groundbreaking novel,
Taboo Buster
, was described as “a continent finding its voice”. This voice, at once powerful and subtle, demands to be heard. No stranger to controversy, Rashid has recently called for the hijab, or Muslim headscarf, to be banned from British educational establishments. A similar debate is, of course, taking place in France. It is on his more general theme, against religion, that we will hear him talk today. So, before my brevity becomes long-winded, I give you Rashid Iqbal.’

The same section of audience heartily applauded the round, brown man in brown corduroy who rose the short distance to his feet, supporting himself with arms braced on the table beneath him. He had a bulging square face like too much dough risen out of the mould, its creases of experience ironed out by self-satisfaction, and low-hooded crab eyes on stalks, and worm hairs sprouting not only from ears and nostrils but from the mushroomy grey nose itself, from the temples, from the highest contours of his cheeks.

Jaundice waited for the clapping to subside, then continued.

‘Responding to Rashid will be our own Daoud Jenkinson, a historian at the university, a convert to the Islamic religion, and a founder member of the British Muslim Committee. Daoud’s latest book,
Secular Fundamentalism: A Panic Discourse
, has been described as “a timely riposte to contemporary fanaticism”. So, therefore, thank you, Daoud.’

The speaker took to his seat amid dimmer clapping from the front and, behind Sami, a fast crop of whooping. Daoud, a beak-nosed man in a faded, wide-lapelled three-piece suit, squinted his acknowledgement past a sparse and pointy beard.

Rashid Iqbal, still precariously on his feet, inflated above the table.

‘To begin with,’ he began, ‘two images.’

Pause One.

‘The suicide bomber.’

Pause Two.

‘The book burner.’

A pause more pregnant than the previous.

‘I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, Homo Religiens. Willing to kill for no other reason than his belief.’

Pause.

‘His belief in a world that does not exist.’

Pause.

‘A belief not based on evidence.’

Pause.

‘This vengeful father in the sky.’

He stretched out his arms in welcome or entreaty and smiled benevolently.

‘Have we not, by this point, had enough of him?’

Into his swing now, Rashid Iqbal dropped the dramatic timing.

‘Where does it come from, such blind, destructive belief? From misery, of course. As Freud and Marx taught, religion is illusion and opiate. Opium. It is painkiller for sick, for hurting people. A man or woman who has no problems is a man or woman who has no god.’

His voice reached Sami’s ear as a stick tapping on hollow wood. There were echoes from the lobby, a rising hysteria, words as intense and thickly matted as branches and twigs in dark forest, too layered to be distinct.

‘It looks grim.’ Rashid Iqbal, man of letters, unperturbed. ‘But, friends, it isn’t. What can’t be stopped is progress. As surely as our ape ancestors developed large brains and delicate voice boxes, so Homo Religiens will become Homo Secularens.

‘The religious tell us that above us there is a divine law, a divine master to be obeyed. The master who, in his various guises, has commanded the Inquisition and the religious policemen of Saudi Arabia. Why should we obey such a cruel master, with so much blood on his heavenly hands? What have we done so wrong that we cannot trust ourselves?

‘Fear of freedom, my friends. The human being observes his own capacity for destruction and fears himself. To be precise, he fears the responsibility for the pain he creates. Better, he decides, to blame something superhuman for his pain. Us causing the pain? he asks. No, we are only following orders. And so he reconciles himself to his misery, and stays in its depths for centuries and millennia.

‘So where is the hope? The answer to misery is technology. Technology and wealth. Technology and wealth are enemies such as religion has never met before.’

A piercing, speechifying voice called out from the back rows: ‘The white man developed tricknology when he got free of his debased tyrannical religion! But the Muslim got undeveloped when he let go of his true faith!’

The audience, entertainment on its face, twisted towards the voice.

‘Our friend mentions the Muslims.’ Iqbal grew an inch in response to the challenge. ‘Islam once offered a theory of unity. And now it has been superseded by practical unity. A world linked like one body by the arteries of flight paths and the nerves of the internet, a world rushing inevitably to embrace itself, in one economy, one legal system, one entertainment industry. This is not a world destined to remain attached to dusty dreams.’

Shouting blew and swirled in the corridor. And angry whispering inside the hall, repeated by Dr Schimmer, who was worrying at the narrow bridge of his nose, grunting, ‘Too, aa, simple!’

‘But won’t the Third World need its dreams? No, it’s false to think so. It could even be racism to think so. Those of us who think the dark-skinned and hairy have to remain in their delusion, for reasons of authenticity, they should look clearly at the world. The youth of Iran and India and Nigeria aspires to Hollywood and hip hop as much as our youth here does.’

Iqbal raised a chubby finger.

‘Pause a moment here. Hollywood and hip hop. The providers of stories. These are the alternatives, and this is where I come in. The storyteller liberated from Islam. Islam, you see, is not a civilization of narrative. It’s rules, that’s all. Rules and hygiene. It’s washing. A religion of the bathroom.

‘So I present literature in opposition to religion. With the little wealth needed to teach people to read, and the little technology needed to connect to the internet, literature can become available to all. What if the mosque is across the street? The screen is in the bedroom. Doesn’t have to be the written word even. It can be films, or songs. This is my wide definition of literature. Instead of the dominant narrative, I offer a competition of narratives, a hubbub of voices, a Babel. Instead of the one Word, I offer infinite words. Histories, novels, characters, fantasies. I do not say we do not have spiritual needs. I say that we can fulfil these needs more profitably with literature. The imagination.’

Having arrived at the nub, Iqbal leaned back to watch its reception. Mixed results. Ha-hums of comprehension from the front. A bubbling drizzle of complaint at the periphery. Squalls of dissent rushing in the corridors.

‘Literature,’ he continued, ‘isn’t clean. Literature is impure, as blended and mixed and polluted, as transgressively tainted, as a curry, a spiced Bombay curry, into which all the influences of a continent have been poured.’

Applause for this simile. The Daoud brother, meanwhile, was furiously scribbling, forehead red and crinkled, pointy nose and beard rising from the point of his pad like the tail of an exclamation. Scribbling about the spicy mix that was Islamic Spain. About the Greco-JudaicTndo-Persian masala of medieval Baghdad. About Qur’anic allusions to Alexander the Great. About syncretism and Sufi visions and Muslim travelogues.

Now Iqbal addressed the front rows, the swishing academic eyelashes, the flashing jaws of cameras, at an intimately low volume.

‘Let us isolate some enemies from the darkness of belief, and shine our enlightening torch upon them. Let us start with what we have here in this city. To start with, African exorcism. Here in this metropolis, in this new millennium, witch doctors whipping and burning their victims in order to expel evil spirits. Here in London, today. Do you not feel the need to expel some of these evil spirits yourselves?’

‘Indian!’ A proud African bellowed. ‘Don’t stereotype our traditions now!’

‘And further witcheries,’ Iqbal skipped on, louder, enjoying the temperature. ‘For instance, female circumcision, barbaric mutilation to give it its less polite name. A barbarism which must be stamped out! I call for compulsory hospital examination of African Muslim girls as a means of ensuring their genital rights!’

‘Get your hands off!’ someone male blasted from mid-hall.