White Teeth (56 page)

It goes on and on and on.

And it goes to prove what has been said of immigrants many times before now; they are
resourceful;
they make do. They use what they can when they can.

Because we often imagine that immigrants are constantly on the move, footloose, able to change course at any moment, able to employ their legendary resourcefulness at every turn. We have been told of the resourcefulness of Mr. Schmutters, or the footloosity of Mr. Banajii, who sail into Ellis Island or Dover or Calais and step into their foreign lands as
blank people,
free of any kind of baggage, happy and willing to leave their difference at the docks and take their chances in this new place, merging with the oneness of this greenandpleasantlibertarianlandofthefree.

Whatever road presents itself, they will take, and if it happens to lead to a dead end, well then, Mr. Schmutters and Mr. Banajii will merrily set upon another, weaving their way through Happy Multicultural Land. Well, good for them. But Magid and Millat couldn't manage it. They left that neutral room as they had entered it: weighed down, burdened, unable to waver from their course or in any way change their separate, dangerous trajectories. They seem to make no progress. The cynical might say they don't even move at all—that Magid and Millat are two of Zeno's headfuck arrows, occupying a space equal to themselves and, what is scarier, equal to Mangal Pande's, equal to Samad Iqbal's. Two brothers trapped in the temporal instant. Two brothers who pervert all attempts to put dates to this story, to track these guys, to offer times and days, because there isn't, wasn't, and never will be any
duration.
In fact, nothing moves. Nothing changes. They are running at a standstill. Zeno's paradox.

But what was Zeno's
deal
here (everybody's got a deal), what was his
angle
? There is a body of opinion that argues his paradoxes are part of a more general
spiritual
program. To

 

 

Because if you can divide reality inexhaustibly into parts, as the brothers did that day in that room, the result is insupportable paradox. You are always still, you move nowhere, there is no progress.

But multiplicity is no illusion. Nor is the speed with which those-in-the-simmering-melting-pot are dashing toward it. Paradoxes aside, they are running, just as Achilles was running. And they will lap those who are in denial just as surely as Achilles would have made that tortoise eat his dust. Yeah, Zeno had an angle. He wanted the One, but the world is Many. And yet still that paradox is alluring. The harder Achilles tries to catch the tortoise, the more eloquently the tortoise expresses its advantage. Likewise, the brothers will race toward the future only to find they more and more eloquently express their past, that place where they have
just been.
Because this is the other thing about immigrants ('fugees, émigrés, travelers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The End of History Versus The Last Man

“Look around
you
! And what do you see? What is the result of this so-called
democracy,
this so-called
freedom,
this so-called
liberty
? Oppression, persecution,
slaughter.
Brothers, you can see it on national television every day, every evening, every
night
! Chaos, disorder,
confusion.
They are not ashamed or embarrassed or
self-conscious
! They don't try to hide, to conceal, to
disguise
! They know as we know: the entire world is in a turmoil! Everywhere men indulge in prurience, promiscuity,
profligacy,
vice, corruption, and
indulgence.
The entire world is affected by a disease known as
Kufr—
the state of rejection of the oneness of the Creator—refusing to acknowledge the infinite blessings of the Creator. And on this day, December 1, 1992, I bear witness that there is nothing worthy of worship besides the sole
Creator,
no partner unto
Him.
On this day we should know that whosoever the Creator has guided cannot be
misguided,
and whosoever he has
misguided
from the straight path shall not return to the straight path until the Creator puts
guidance
in his heart and brings him to the
light.
I will now begin my third lecture, which I call ‘Ideological Warfare,' and that means—I will explain for those that don't understand—the war of these things . . . these ideologies, against the Brothers of KEVIN . . . ideology means a kind of brainwashing . . . and we are being indoctrinated, fooled, and
brainwashed,
my Brothers! So I will try to elucidate, explain, and
expound . . .
”

No one in the hall was going to admit it, but Brother Ibr
h
m ad-Din Shukrallah was no great speaker, when you got down to it. Even if you overlooked his habit of using three words where one would do, of emphasizing the last word of such triplets with his see-saw Caribbean inflections, even if you ignored these as everybody tried to, he was still physically disappointing. He had a small sketchy beard, a hunched demeanor, a repertoire of tense, inept gesticulations, and a vague look of Sidney Poitier about him that did not achieve quite the similitude to command any serious respect. And he was short. On this point, Millat felt most let down. There was a tangible dissatisfaction in the hall when Brother Hifan finished his fulsome introductory speech and the famous but diminutive Brother Ibr
h
m ad-Din Shukrallah crossed the room to the podium. Not that anyone would require an alim of Islam to be a towering height, or indeed for a moment dare to suggest that the Creator had not made Brother Ibr
h
m ad-Din Shukrallah precisely the height that He, in all his holy omnipotence, had selected. Still, one couldn't help thinking, as Hifan awkwardly lowered the microphone and Brother Ibr
h
m awkwardly stretched to meet it, you couldn't help thinking, in the Brother's very own style of third-word emphasis: five foot
five.

The other problem with Brother Ibr
h
m ad-Din Shukrallah, the biggest problem perhaps, was his great affection for tautology. Though he promised explanation, elucidation, and exposition, linguistically he put one in mind of a dog chasing its own tail: “Now there are many types of warfare . . . I will name a few. Chemical warfare is the warfare where them men kill each other
chemically
with warfare. This can be a terrible warfare. Physical warfare! That is the warfare with physical weapons in which people kill each other
physically.
Then there is germ warfare in which a man, he knows that he's carrying the virus of HIV and he goes to the country and spreads his germ on the loose women of that country and creates
germ
warfare.
Psychological
warfare, that is one of the most evil, the war where they try to psychologically defeat you. This is called psychological warfare. But ideological warfare! That is the sixth warfare which is the worst warfare . . .”

And yet Brother Ibr
h
m ad-Din Shukrallah was no less than the founder of KEVIN, an impressive man with a formidable reputation. Born Monty Clyde Benjamin in Barbados in 1960, the son of two poverty-stricken barefoot Presbyterian dipsomaniacs, he converted to Islam after a “vision” at the age of fourteen. Aged eighteen he fled the lush green of his homeland for the desert surrounding Riyadh and the books that line the walls of Al-Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University. There he studied Arabic for five years, became disillusioned with much of the Islamic clerical establishment, and first expressed his contempt for what he called “religious secularists,” those foolish ulama who attempt to separate politics from religion. It was his belief that many radical modern political movements were relevant to Islam and moreover were to be found in the Qur
n if one looked closely enough. He wrote several pamphlets on this matter, only to find that his own radical opinions were not welcome in Riyadh. He was considered a troublemaker and his life threatened “numerous, countless,
innumerable
times.” So in 1984, wishing to continue his study, Brother Ibr
h
m came to England, locked himself in his aunt's Birmingham garage and spent five more years in there, with only the Qur
n and the fascicles of Endless Bliss for company. He took his food in through the cat door, deposited his shit and piss in a Coronation biscuit tin and passed it back out the same way, and did a thorough routine of push-ups and sit-ups to prevent muscular atrophy. The
Selly Oak Reporter
wrote regular articles on him during this period, nicknaming him “The Guru in the Garage” (in view of the large Birmingham Muslim population, this was thought preferable to the press-desk-favored suggestion, “The Loony in the Lock-Up”), and had their fun interviewing his bemused aunt, one Carlene Benjamin, a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.