White Teeth

trouble. Who wants trouble?’

‘Well, watch out,’ said Millat, leaning forward, colliding with some buck teeth, slipping a tongue in momentarily, and then pulling back. ‘ ’Cos that’s all the trouble you’re getting.’

14 January 1989

Millat spread his legs like Elvis and slapped his wallet down on the counter. ‘One for Bradford, yeah?’

The ticket-man put his tired face close up to the glass. ‘Are you asking me, young man, or telling me?’

‘I just say, yeah? One for Bradford, yeah? You got some problem, yeah? Speaka da English? This is King’s Cross, yeah? One for Bradford, innit?’

Millat’s Crew (Rajik, Ranil, Dipesh and Hifan) sniggered and shuffled behind him, joining in on the yeahs like some kind of backing group.

‘Please?’

‘Please what, yeah? One for Bradford, yeah? You get me? One for Bradford. Chief.’

‘And would that be a return? For a child?’

‘Yeah, man. I’m fifteen, yeah? ’Course I want a return, I’ve got a baA-ii to get back to like everybody else.’

‘That’ll be seventy-five pounds, then, please.’

This was met with displeasure by Millat and Millat’s Crew.

‘You what? Takin’ liberties! Seventy – chaaaa, man. That’s moody. I ain’t payin’ no seventy-five pounds!’

‘Well, I’m afraid that’s the price. Maybe next time you mug some poor old lady,’ said the ticket-man, looking pointedly at the chunky gold that fell from Millat’s ears, wrists, fingers and from around his neck, ‘you could stop in here first before you get to the jewellery store.’

‘Liberties!’ squealed Hifan.

‘He’s cussin’ you, yeah?’ confirmed Ranil.

‘You better tell ’im,’ warned Rajik.

Millat waited a minute. Timing was everything. Then he turned around, stuck his arse in the air, and farted long and loud in the ticket-man’s direction.

The Crew, on cue: ‘Somokami!’

‘What did you call me? You – what did you say? You little bastards. Can’t tell me in English? Have to talk your Paki language?’

Millat slammed his fist so hard on the glass that it reverberated down the booths to the ticket-man down the other end selling tickets to Milton Keynes.

‘First: I’m not a Paki, you ignorant fuck. And second: you don’t need translator, yeah? I’ll give it to you straight. You’re a fucking faggot, yeah? Queer boy, poofter, batty-rider, shit-dick.’

There was nothing Millat’s Crew prided themselves on more than the number of euphemisms they could offer for homosexuality.

‘Arse-bandit, fairy-fucker, toilet-trader.’

‘You want to thank God for the glass between us, boy.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thank Allah, yeah? I hope he fucks you up wicked, yeah? We’re going to Bradford to sort out the likes of you, yeah? Chief!’

Halfway up platform 12, about to board a train they had no tickets for, a King’s Cross security guy stopped Millat’s Crew to ask them a question. ‘You boys not looking for any trouble, are you?’

The question was fair. Millat’s Crew looked like trouble. And, at the time, a crew that looked like trouble in this particular way had a name, they were of a breed: Raggastani.

It was a new breed, just recently joining the ranks of the other street crews: Becks, B-boys, Indie kids, wide-boys, ravers, rude-boys, Acidheads, Sharons, Tracies, Kevs, Nation Brothers, Raggas and Pakis; manifesting itself as a kind of cultural mongrel of the last three categories. Raggastanis spoke a strange mix of Jamaican patois, Bengali, Gujarati and English. Their ethos, their manifesto, if it could be called that, was equally a hybrid thing: Allah featured, but more as a collective big brother than a supreme being, a hard-as-fuck geezer who would fight in their corner if necessary; Kung Fu and the works of Bruce Lee were also central to the philosophy; added to this was a smattering of Black Power (as embodied by the album Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy); but mainly their mission was to put the Invincible back in Indian, the Bad-aaaass back in Bengali, the P-Funk back in Pakistani. People had fucked with Rajik back in the days when he was into chess and wore V-necks. People had fucked with Ranil, when he sat at the back of the class and carefully copied all teacher’s comments into his book. People had fucked with Dipesh and Hifan when they wore traditional dress in the playground. People had even fucked with Millat, with his tight jeans and his white rock. But no one fucked with any of them any more because they looked like trouble. They looked like trouble in stereo. Naturally, there was a uniform. They each dripped gold and wore bandanas, either wrapped around their foreheads or tied at the joint of an arm or leg. The trousers were enormous, swamping things, the left leg always inexplicably rolled up to the knee; the trainers were equally spectacular, with tongues so tall they obscured the entire ankle; baseball caps were compulsory, low slung and irremovable, and everything, everything, everything was Nike^TM; wherever the five of them went the impression they left behind was of one gigantic swoosh, one huge mark of corporate approval. And they walked in a very particular way, the left side of their bodies assuming a kind of loose paralysis that needed carrying along by the right side; a kind of glorified, funky limp like the slow, padding movement that Yeats imagined for his rough millennial beast. Ten years early, while the happy acid heads danced through the Summer of Love, Millat’s Crew were slouching towards Bradford.

‘No trouble, yeah?’ said Millat to the security guy.

‘Just going – ’ began Hifan.

‘To Bradford,’ said Rajik.

‘For business, yeah?’ explained Dipesh.

‘See-ya! Bidayo!’ called Hifan, as they slipped into the train, gave him the finger, and shoved their arses up against the closing doors.

‘Tax the window seat, yeah? Nice. I’ve blatantly got to have a fag in here, yeah? I’m fuckin’ wired, yeah? This whole business, man. This fuckin’ geezer, man. He’s a fuckin’ coconut – I’d like to fuck him up, yeah?’

‘Is he actually gonna be there?’

All serious questions were always addressed to Millat, and Millat always answered the group as a whole. ‘No way. He ain’t going to be there. Just brothers going to be there. It’s a fucking protest, you chief, why’s he going to go to a protest against himself?’

‘I’m just saying,’ said Ranil, wounded, ‘I’d fuck him up, yeah? If he was there, you know. Dirty fucking book.’

‘It’s a fucking insult!’ said Millat, spitting some gum against the window. ‘We’ve taken it too long in this country. And now we’re getting it from our own, man. Rhas clut! He’s a fucking bador, white man’s puppet.’

‘My uncle says he can’t even spell,’ said a furious Hifan, the most honestly religious of the lot. ‘And he dares to talk about Allah!’

‘Allah’ll fuck him up, yeah?’ cried Rajik, the least intelligent, who thought of God as some kind of cross between Monkey-Magic and Bruce Willis. ‘He’ll kick him in the balls. Dirty book.’

‘You read it?’ asked Ranil, as they whizzed past Finsbury Park.

There was a general pause.

Millat said, ‘I haven’t exackly read it exackly – but I know all about that shit, yeah?’

To be more precise, Millat hadn’t read it. Millat knew nothing about the writer, nothing about the book; could not identify the book if it lay in a pile of other books; could not pick out the writer in a line-up of