White Teeth

is a great project.’

‘It is an abomination.’ (leaflet: The Sanctity of Creation)

Millat pulls out a chair from one of the desks and sits on it backwards, like a crab in a trap, legs and arms splayed either side.

‘I see it rather as correcting the Creator’s mistakes.’

‘The Creator doesn’t make mistakes.’

‘So you mean to continue?’

‘You’re damn right.’

‘And so do I.’

‘Well, that’s it, then, isn’t it? It’s already been decided. KEVIN will do whatever is necessary to stop you and your kind. And that’s the fucking end of it.’

But contrary to Millat’s understanding, this is no movie and there is no fucking end to it, just as there is no fucking beginning to it. The brothers begin to argue. It escalates in moments, and they make a mockery of that idea, a neutral place; instead they cover the room with history – past, present and future history (for there is such a thing) – they take what was blank and smear it with the stinking shit of the past like excitable, excremental children. They cover this neutral room in themselves. Every gripe, the earliest memories, every debated principle, every contested belief.

Millat arranges the chairs to demonstrate the vision of the solar system which is so clearly and remarkably described in the Qur’an, centuries before Western science (leaflet: The Qur’an and the Cosmos); Magid draws Pande’s parade ground on one blackboard with a detailed reconstruction of the possible path of bullets, and on the other board a diagram depicting a restriction enzyme cutting neatly through a sequence of nucleotides; Millat uses the computer as television, a chalk rubber as the picture of Magid- and-goat, then single-handedly impersonates every dribbling babba, great aunt and cousin’s accountant who came that year for the blasphemous business of worshipping an icon; Magid utilizes the overhead projector to illuminate an article he has written, taking his brother point-by-point through his argument, defending the patents of genetically altered organisms; Millat uses the filing cabinet as a substitute for another one he despised, fills it with imaginary letters between a scientist Jew and an unbelieving Muslim; Magid puts three chairs together and shines two anglepoise lamps and now there are two brothers in a car, shivering and huddled together until a few minutes later they are separated for ever and a paper plane takes off.

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 foot-loosity 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 programme. To

(a) first establish multiplicity, the Many, as an illusion, and

(b) thus prove reality a seamless, flowing whole. A single, indivisible One.

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 towards 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 towards 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, emigres, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.

18 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, 1 December 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 Ibrahim 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 demeanour, a repertoire of tense, inept gesticulations and a vague look of Sidney Poitier about him which 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 Ibrahim ad-Din Shukrallah crossed the room to the podium. Not that anyone would