White Teeth

husband!’

She increased the speed of her sewing, dashing out the seam, progressing down the inner leg, while the Sphinx of the letterbox continued to ask unanswerable questions.

‘Mrs Iqbal… please can we talk? Is there any reason why we shouldn’t talk? Do we have to behave like children?’

Alsana began to sing.

‘Mrs Iqbal? Please. What can this possibly achieve?’

Alsana sang louder.

‘I must tell you,’ said Joyce, strident as ever, even through three panels of wood and double glazing, ‘I’m not here for my health. Whether you want me to be involved or not, I am, you see? I am.’

Involved. At least that was the right word, Alsana reflected, as she lifted her foot off the pedal, and let the wheel spin a few times alone before coming to a squeaky halt. Sometimes, here in England, especially at bus-stops and on the daytime soaps, you heard people say ‘We’re involved with each other,’ as if this were a most wonderful state to be in, as if one chose it and enjoyed it. Alsana never thought of it that way. Involved happened over a long period of time, pulling you in like quicksand. Involved is what befell the moon-faced Alsana Begum and the handsome Samad Miah one week after they’d been pushed into a Delhi breakfast room together and informed they were to marry. Involved was the result when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some stairs. Involved swallowed up a girl called Ambrosia and a boy called Charlie (yes, Clara had told her that sorry tale) the second they kissed in the larder of a guest house. Involved is neither good, nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other’s pockets… one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to being uninvolved. And the woman was right, one didn’t do it for one’s health. Nothing this late in the century was done with health in mind. Alsana was no dummy when it came to the Modern Condition. She watched the talk shows, all day long she watched the talk shows – My wife slept with my brother, My mother won’t stay out of my boyfriend’s life – and the microphone holder, whether it be Tanned Man with White Teeth or Scary Married Couple, always asked the same damn silly question: But why do you feel the need… ? Wrong! Alsana had to explain it to them through the screen. You blockhead; they are not wanting this, they are not willing it – they are just involved, see? They walk IN and they get trapped between the revolving doors of those two v’s. Involved. The years pass, and the mess accumulates and here we are. Your brother’s sleeping with my ex-wife’s niece’s second cousin. Involved. Just a tired, inevitable fact. Something in the way Joyce said it, involved – wearied, slightly acid – suggested to Alsana that the word meant the same thing to her. An enormous web you spin to catch yourself.

‘OK, OK, lady, five minutes, only. I have three catsuits to do this morning come hell or high water.’

Alsana opened the door and Joyce walked into the hallway, and for a moment they surveyed their opposite number, guessing each other’s weight like nervous prize fighters prior to mounting the scales. They were definitely a match for each other. What Joyce lacked in chest, she made up in bottom. Where Alsana revealed a weakness in delicate features – a thin and pretty nose, light eyebrows – she compensated with the huge pudge of her arms, the dimples of maternal power. For, after all, she was the mother here. The mother of the boys in question. She held the trump card, should she be forced to play it.

‘Okey-dokey, then,’ said Alsana, squeezing through the narrow kitchen door, beckoning Joyce to follow.

‘Is it tea or is it coffee?’

‘Tea,’ said Joyce firmly. ‘Fruit if possible.’

‘Fruit not possible. Not even Earl Grey is possible. I come from the land of tea to this godawful country and then I can’t afford a proper cup of it. P.G. Tips is possible and nothing else.’

Joyce winced. ‘P.G. Tips, please, then.’

‘As you wish.’

The mug of tea plonked in front of Joyce a few minutes later was grey with a rim of scum and thousands of little microbes flitting through it, less micro than one would have hoped. Alsana gave Joyce a moment to consider it.

‘Just leave it for a while,’ she explained gaily. ‘My husband hit a water pipe when digging a trench for some onions. Our water is a little funny ever since. It may give you the running shits or it may not. But give it a minute and it clears. See?’ Alsana gave it an unconvincing stir, sending yet larger chunks of unidentified matter bubbling up to the surface. ‘You see? Fit for Shah Jahan himself!’

Joyce took a tentative sip and then pushed it to one side.

‘Mrs Iqbal, I know we haven’t been on the best of terms in the past, but-’

‘Mrs Chalfen,’ said Alsana, putting up her long forefinger to stop Joyce speaking. ‘There are two rules that everybody knows, from PM to jinrickshaw-wallah. The first is, never let your country become a trading post. Very important. If my ancestors had followed this advice, my situation presently would be very different, but such is life. The second is, don’t interfere in other people’s family business. Milk?’

‘No, no, thank you. A little sugar…’

Alsana dumped a huge heaped tablespoon into Joyce’s cup.

‘You think I am interfering?’

‘I think you have interfered.’

‘But I just want the twins to see each other.’

‘You are the reason they are apart.’

‘But Magid is only living with us because Millat won’t live with him here. And Magid tells me your husband can barely stand the sight of him.’

Alsana, little pressure-cooker that she was, blew. ‘And why can’t he? Because you, you and your husband, have involved Magid in something so contrary to our culture, to our beliefs, that we barely recognize him! You have done that! He is at odds with his brother now. Impossible conflict! Those green bow-tied bastards: Millat is high up with them now. Very involved. He doesn’t tell me, but I hear. They call themselves followers of Islam, but they are nothing but thugs in a gang roaming Kilburn like all the other lunatics. And now they are sending out the – what are they called – folded-paper trouble.’

‘Leaflets?’

‘Leaflets. Leaflets about your husband and his ungodly mouse. Trouble brewing, yes sir. I found them, hundreds of them under his bed.’ Alsana stood up, drew a key out of her apron pocket and opened a kitchen cupboard stacked full of green leaflets, which cascaded on to the floor. ‘He’s disappeared again, three days. I have to put them back before he finds out they are gone. Take some, go on, lady, take them, go and read them to Magid. Show him what you have done. Two boys driven to different ends of the world. You have made a war between my sons. You are splitting them apart!’

A minute earlier Millat had turned the key ever so softly in the front door. Since then he had been standing in the hallway, listening to the conversation and smoking a fag. It was great! It was like listening to two big Italian matriarchs from opposing clans battle it out. Millat loved clans. He had joined KEVIN because he loved clans (and the outfit and the bow tie), and he loved clans at war. Marjorie the analyst had suggested that this desire to be part of a clan was a result of being, effectively, half a twin. Marjorie the analyst suggested that Millat’s religious conversion was more likely born out of a need for sameness within a group than out of any intellectually formulated belief in the existence of an all-powerful creator. Maybe. Whatever. As far as he was concerned, you could analyse it until the cows came home, but nothing beat being all dressed in black, smoking a fag, listening to two mammas battle it out over you in operatic style:

‘You claim to want to help my boys, but you have done nothing but drive a wedge between