White Teeth

it or whether they would stop dying in future, but it was educational all the same; as good an excuse for a get- together as any. It was a Thursday night, Alsana and Clara had cooked, and everybody was watching history on TV.

‘Who’s for more rice?’

Millat and Irie held out their plates, jostling for prime position.

‘What’s happening now?’ asked Clara, rushing back to her seat with a bowl of Jamaican fried dumplings, from which Irie snatched three.

‘Same, man,’ Millat grumbled. ‘Same. Same. Same. Dancing on the wall, smashing it with a hammer. Whatever. I wanna see what else is on, yeah?’

Alsana snatched the remote control and squeezed in between Clara and Archie. ‘Don’t you dare, mister.’

‘It’s educational,’ said Clara deliberately, her pad and paper on the arm rest, waiting to leap into action at the suggestion of anything edifying. ‘It’s the kind of thing we all should be watching.’

Alsana nodded and waited for two awkward-shaped bhajis to go down the gullet. ‘That’s what I try and tell the boy. Big business. Tip-top historic occasion. When your own little Iqbals tug at your trousers and ask you where you were when-’

‘I’ll say I was bored shitless watching it on TV.’

Millat got a thwack round the head for ‘shitless’ and another one for the impertinence of the sentiment. Irie, looking strangely like the crowd on top of the wall in her everyday garb of CND badges, graffiti- covered trousers and beaded hair, shook her head in saddened disbelief. She was that age. Whatever she said burst like genius into centuries of silence. Whatever she touched was the first stroke of its kind. Whatever she believed was not formed by faith but carved from certainty. Whatever she thought was the first time such a thought had ever been thunk.

‘That’s totally your problem, Mill. No interest in the outside world. I think this is amazing. They’re all free! After all this time, don’t you think that’s amazing? That after years under the dark cloud of Eastern communism they’re coming into the light of Western democracy, united,’ she said, quoting Newsnight faithfully. ‘I just think democracy is man’s greatest invention.’

Alsana, who felt personally that Clara’s child was becoming impossibly pompous these days, held up the head of a Jamaican fried fish in protest. ‘No, dearie. Don’t make that mistake. Potato peeler is man’s greatest invention. That or Poop-a-Scoop.’

‘What they want,’ said Millat, ‘is to stop pissing around wid dis hammer business and jus’ get some Semtex and blow de djam ting up, if they don’t like it, you get me? Be quicker, innit?’

‘Why do you talk like that?’ snapped Irie, devouring a dumpling. ‘That’s not your voice. You sound ridiculous!’

‘And you want to watch dem dumplings,’ said Millat, patting his belly. ‘Big ain’t beautiful.’

‘Oh, get lost.’

‘You know,’ murmured Archie, munching on a chicken wing, ‘I’m not so sure that it’s such a good thing. I mean, you’ve got to remember, me and Samad, we were there. And believe me, there’s a good reason to have it split in two. Divide and conquer, young lady.’

‘Jesus Christ, Dad. What are you on?’

‘He’s not on anything,’ said Samad severely. ‘You younger people forget why certain things were done, you forget their significance. We were there. Not all of us think fondly upon a united Germany. They were different times, young lady.’

‘What’s wrong with a load of people making some noise about their freedom? Look at them. Look at how happy they are.’

Samad looked at the happy people dancing on the wall and felt contempt and something more irritating underneath it that could have been jealousy.

‘It is not that I disagree with rebellious acts per se. It is simply that if you are to throw over an old order, you must be sure that you can offer something of substance to replace it; that is what Germany needs to understand. As an example, take my great-grandfather, Mangal Pande-’

Irie sighed the most eloquent sigh that had ever been sighed. ‘I’d rather not, if it’s all the same.’

‘Irie!’ said Clara, because she felt she should.

Irie huffed. And puffed.

‘Well! He goes on like he knows everything. Everything’s always about him – and I’m trying to talk about now, today, Germany. I bet you,’ she said, turning to Samad, ‘I know more about it than you do. Go on. Try me. I’ve been studying it all term. Oh, and by the way: you weren’t there. You and Dad left in 1945. They didn’t do the wall until 1961.’

‘Cold War,’ said Samad sourly, ignoring her. ‘They don’t talk about hot war any more. The kind where men get killed. That’s where I learnt about Europe. It cannot be found in books.’

‘Oi-oi,’ said Archie, trying to diffuse a row. ‘You do know Last of the Summer Wine’s on in ten minutes? BBC Two.’

‘Go on,’ persisted Irie, kneeling up and turning around to face Samad. ‘Try me.’

‘The gulf between books and experience,’ intoned Samad solemnly, ‘is a lonely ocean.’

‘Right. You two talk such a load of sh-’

But Clara was too quick with a slap round the ear. ‘Irie!’

Irie sat back down, not so much defeated as exasperated and turned up the TV volume.

The 28-mile-long scar – the ugliest symbol of a divided world, East and West – has no meaning any more. Few people, including this reporter, thought to see it happen in their lifetimes, but last night, at the stroke of midnight, thousands lingering both sides of the wall gave a great roar and began to pour through checkpoints and to climb up and over it.

‘Foolishness. Massive immigration problem to follow,’ said Samad to the television, dipping a dumpling into some ketchup. ‘You just can’t let a million people into a rich country. Recipe for disaster.’

‘And who does he think he is? Mr Churchill-gee?’ laughed Alsana scornfully. ‘Original whitecliffsdover piesnmash jellyeels royalvariety britishbulldog, heh?’

‘Scar,’ said Clara, noting it down. ‘That’s the right word, isn’t it?’

‘Jesus Christ. Can’t any of you understand the enormity of what’s going on here? These are the last days of a regime. Political apocalypse, meltdown. It’s an historic occasion.’

‘So everyone keeps saying,’ said Archie, scouring the TV Times. ‘But what about The Krypton Factor, ITV? That’s always good, eh? ’Son now.’

‘And stop sayin’ “an historic”,’ said Millat, irritated at all the poncey political talk. ‘Why can’t you just say “a”, like everybody else, man? Why d’you always have to be so la di da?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ (She loved him, but he was impossible.) ‘What possible fucking difference can it make?’

Samad rose out of his seat. ‘Irie! This is my house and you are still a guest. I won’t have that language in it!’

‘Fine! I’ll take it to the streets with the rest of the proletariat.’

‘That girl,’ tutted Alsana as her front door slammed. ‘Swallowed an encyclopedia and a gutter at the same time.’

Millat sucked his teeth at his mother. ‘Don’t you start, man. What’s wrong with “a” encyclopedia? Why’s everyone in this house always puttin’ on fuckin’ airs?’

Samad pointed to the door. ‘OK, mister. You don’t speak to your mother like that. You out too.’