White Teeth (26 page)

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 scrub, 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 favorite haunt, run by an unscrupulous coke-dealer, you got porn when you were fifteen, R-rateds when you were eleven, and snuff movies under the counter for five quid. Here was where Millat really learned 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 learned 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-the-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 smelled 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 February 10, 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 April 28, 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:

October 15, 1987

Even when the lights went out and the wind was beating the shit out of the storm windows, 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 favored English institutions, among them Princess Anne, Children's Royal Variety Performance, Eric Morecambe,
Woman's Hour
). He got the flashlight 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 soapsuds, reading
Viz.

“Ah, Dad, wicked. Flashlight. 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—”

An almighty ripping noise, like something being severed at the roots and flung against a wall, came from outside.

Two minutes later and the family Iqbal were lined up in varying states of undress, looking out through the long kitchen window on to a patch in the lawn where the shed used to be. Millat clicked his heels three times and hammed it up with cornershop accent, “O me O my. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.”

“
All right,
woman. Are you coming
now
?”

“Maybe, Samad Miah, maybe.”

“
Dammit!
I'm not in the mood for a referendum. We're going 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!”

Holding the car trunk open against a wind determined to bring it down, Samad was first amused and then depressed by the items his wife and son determined essential, life-or-death things:

 

Millat

Born to Run
(album)—Springsteen

Poster of De Niro in “You talkin' to me” scene from
Taxi Driver

Betamax copy of
Purple Rain
(rock movie)

Shrink-to-fit Levi's 501 (red tab)

Pair of black Converse baseball shoes

A Clockwork Orange
(book)

 

Alsana

Sewing machine

Three pots of Tiger Balm

Leg of lamb (frozen)

Foot bath

Linda Goodman's Starsigns
(book)

Huge box of beedi cigarettes

Divargiit Singh in
Moonshine over Kerala
(musical video)

 

Samad slammed the trunk down.

“No penknife, no edibles, no light sources. Bloody great. No prizes for guessing which one of the Iqbals is the war veteran. Nobody even thinks to pick up the Qur
n. Key item in emergency situation: spiritual support. I am going back in there. Sit in the car and don't move a muscle.”

Once in the kitchen Samad shone his flashlight around: kettle, gas ring, teacup, curtain, and then a surreal glimpse of the shed sitting happy like a treehouse in next door's horsechestnut. He picked up the Swiss army knife he remembered leaving under the sink, collected his gold-plated, velvet-fringed Qur
n 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 wind and opened the kitchen door, moving tentatively into the garden, where a sheet of lightning lit up a scene of suburban apocalypse: oaks, cedars, sycamores, elms felled in garden after garden, fences down, garden furniture demolished. It was only his own garden, often ridiculed for its corrugated-iron surround, treeless interior, and bed after bed of sickly-smelling herbs, that had remained relatively intact.

He was just in the process of happily formulating some allegory regarding the bending Eastern reed versus the stubborn Western oak when the wind reasserted itself, knocking him sideways and continuing along its path to the storm windows, which it cracked and exploded effortlessly, blowing glass inside, regurgitating everything from the kitchen out into the open air. Samad, a recently airborne collander resting on his ear, held his book tight to his chest and hurried to the car.

“What are
you
doing in the driving seat?”

Alsana held on to the wheel firmly and talked to Millat via the rearview mirror. “Will someone please tell my husband that
I
am going to drive.
I
grew up 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 seat and doesn't fart unless I tell him to.”

Alsana drove at three miles an hour through the deserted, blacked-out high road while winds of 110 mph relentlessly battered the tops of the highest buildings.

“England, this is meant to be! I moved to England so I wouldn't have to do this. Never again will I trust that Mr. Crab.”