White Teeth

To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure.

Can’t say fairer than that. Can’t say fairer than that. Can’t say fairer than that.

But let’s rewind a little.

1. To the pure all things are pure

Sex, at least the temptation of sex, had long been a problem. When the fear of God first began to creep into Samad’s bones, circa 1976, just after his marriage to the small-palmed, weak-wristed and disinterested Alsana, he had inquired of an elderly alim in the mosque in Croydon whether it was permitted that a man might… with his hand on his…

Before he had got halfway through this tentative mime, the old scholar had silently passed him a leaflet from a pile on a table and drawn his wrinkled digit firmly underneath point number three.

There are nine acts which invalidate fast:

(i) Eating and drinking

(ii) Sexual intercourse

(iii) Masturbation (istimna), which means self-abuse, resulting in ejaculation

(iv) Ascribing false things to Almighty Allah, or his Prophet, or to the successors of the Holy Prophet

(v) Swallowing thick dust

(vi) Immersing one’s complete head in water

(vii) Remaining in Janabat or Haidh or Nifas till the Adhan for Fajr prayers

(viii) Enema with liquids

(ix) Vomiting

‘And what, Alim,’ Samad had inquired, dismayed, ‘if he is not fasting?’

The old scholar looked grave. ‘Ibn ’Umar was asked about it and is reported to have answered: It is nothing except the rubbing of the male member until its water comes out. It is only a nerve that one kneads.’

Samad had taken heart at this, but the Alim continued. ‘However, he answered in another report: It has been forbidden that one should have intercourse with oneself.’

‘But which is the correct belief? Is it halal or haraam? There are some who say…’ Samad had begun sheepishly, ‘To the pure all things are pure. If one is truthful and firm in oneself, it can harm nobody else, nor offend…’

But the Alim laughed at this. ‘And we know who they are. Allah have pity on the Anglicans! Samad, when the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intellect go away,’ said the Alim, shaking his head. ‘And one third of his religion. There is an hadith of the Prophet Muhammad – peace be upon Him! – it is as follows: O Allah, I seek refuge in you from the evil of my hearing, of my sight, of my tongue, of my heart, and of my private parts.’

‘But surely… surely if the man himself is pure, then-’

‘Show me the pure man, Samad! Show me the pure act! Oh, Samad Miah… my advice to you is stay away from your right hand.’

Of course. Samad, being Samad, had employed the best of his Western pragmatism, gone home and vigorously tackled the job with his functional left hand, repeating To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure, until orgasm finally arrived: sticky, sad, depressing. And that ritual continued for some five years, in the little bedroom at the top of the house where he slept alone (so as not to wake Alsana) after crawling back from the restaurant at three in the morning each and every morning; secretly, silently; for he was, believe it or not, tortured by it, by this furtive yanking and squeezing and spilling, by the fear that he was not pure, that his acts were not pure, that he would never be pure, and always his God seemed to be sending him small signs, small warnings, small curses (a urethra infection, 1976, castration dream, 1978, dirty, encrusted sheet discovered but misunderstood by Alsana’s great-aunt, 1979) until 1980 brought crisis point and Samad heard Allah roaring in his ear like the waves in a conch-shell and it seemed time to make a deal.

2. Can’t say fairer than that

The deal was this: on 1 January 1980, like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that they can have chocolate, Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal, a business proposition, that he had made with God: Samad being the party of the first part, God being the sleeping partner. And since that day Samad had enjoyed relative spiritual peace and many a frothy Guinness with Archibald Jones; he had even developed the habit of taking his last gulp looking up at the sky like a Christian, thinking: I’m basically a good man. I don’t slap the salami. Give me a break. I have the odd drink. Can’t say fairer than that…

But of course he was in the wrong religion for compromises, deals, pacts, weaknesses and can’t say fairer than thats. He was supporting the wrong team if it was empathy and concessions he wanted, if he wanted liberal exegesis, if he wanted to be given a break. His God was not like that charming white-bearded bungler of the Anglican, Methodist or Catholic churches. His God was not in the business of giving people breaks. The moment Samad set eyes on the pretty red-haired music teacher Poppy Burt-Jones that July of 1984, he knew finally the truth of this. He knew his God was having his revenge, he knew the game was up, he saw that the contract had been broken, and the sanity clause did not, after all, exist, that temptation had been deliberately and maliciously thrown in his path. In short, all deals were off.

Masturbation recommenced in earnest. Those two months, between seeing the pretty red- haired music teacher once and seeing her again, were the longest, stickiest, smelliest, guiltiest fifty-six days of Samad’s life. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he found himself suddenly accosted by some kind of synaesthetic fixation with the woman: hearing the colour of her hair in the mosque, smelling the touch of her hand on the tube, tasting her smile while innocently walking the streets on his way to work; and this in turn led to a knowledge of every public convenience in London, led to the kind of masturbation that even a fifteen-year-old boy living in the Shetlands might find excessive. His only comfort was that he, like Roosevelt, had made a New Deal: he was going to beat but he wasn’t going to eat. He meant somehow to purge himself of the sights and smells of Poppy Burt-Jones, of the sin of istimna, and, though it wasn’t fasting season and these were the longest days of the year, still no substance passed Samad’s lips between sunrise and sunset, not even, thanks to a little china spitoon, his own saliva. And because there was no food going in the one end, what came out of the other end was so thin and so negligible, so meagre and translucent, that Samad could almost convince himself that the sin was lessened, that one wonderful day he would be able to massage one-eyed-Jack as vigorously as he liked and nothing would come out but air.

But despite the intensity of the hunger – spiritual, physical, sexual – Samad still did his twelve hours daily in the restaurant. Frankly, he found the restaurant about the only place he could bear to be. He couldn’t bear to see his family, he couldn’t bear to go to O’Connell’s, he couldn’t bear to give Archie the satisfaction of seeing him in such a state. By mid August he had upped his working hours to fourteen a day; something in the ritual of it – picking up his basket of pink swan-shaped napkins and following the trail of Shiva’s plastic carnations, correcting the order of a knife or fork, polishing a glass, removing the smear of a finger from the china plates – soothed him. No matter how bad a Muslim he might be, no one could say Samad wasn’t a consummate waiter. He had taken one tedious skill and honed it to perfection. Here at least he could show others the right path: how to disguise a stale onion bhaji, how to make fewer prawns look like more, how to explain to an Australian that he