White Teeth

aside some time, read both leaflets and felt peculiar ever since. In three short days Karina Cain, a darling of a girl, a real good sort who never really irritated him (on the contrary, who made him feel happy! Chuffed!), had irritated him more than she had managed in the whole year they’d been shagging. And no ordinary irritation. A deep unsettleable unsolvable irritation, like an itch on a phantom limb. And it was not clear to him why.

‘Yeah, man, Tyrone,’ said Millat with a nod and a wide grin. ‘Crystal, mate, crystal.’

Brother Tyrone nodded back. Millat was pleased to see he looked pleased. It was like being in the real life Mafia or a Bond movie or something. Them both in their black and white suits, nodding at each other. I understand we understand each other.

‘This is Sister Aeyisha,’ said Brother Tyrone, straightening Millat’s green bow-tie and pushing him towards a tiny, beautiful black girl, with almond eyes and high cheekbones. ‘She’s an African goddess.’

‘Really?’ said Millat, impressed. ‘Whereabouts you from?’

‘Clapham North,’ said Sister Aeyisha, with a shy smile.

Millat clapped his hands together and stamped his foot. ‘Oh, man, you must know the Redback Cafe?’

Sister Aeyisha the African goddess lit up. ‘Yeah, man, that was my place from way back when! You go there?’

‘All the time! Wicked place. Well, maybe I’ll see you round them gates sometime. It was nice to meet you, sister. Brother Tyrone, I’ve got to chip, man, my gal’s waiting for me.’

Brother Tyrone looked disappointed. Just before Millat left, he pressed another leaflet into his hand and continued holding his hand until the paper got damp between their two palms.

‘You could be a great leader of men, Millat,’ said Brother Tyrone (why did everybody keep telling him that?), looking first at him, then at Karina Cain, the curve of her breasts peeping over the car door, beeping her car horn in the street. ‘But at the moment you are half the man. We need the whole man.’

‘Yeah, wicked, thanks, you too Brother,’ said Millat, looking briefly at the leaflet, and pushing open the doors. ‘Laters.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Karina Cain, reaching over to open the passenger door and spotting the slightly soggy paper in his hand.

Instinctively, Millat put the leaflet straight in his pocket. Which was weird. He usually showed Karina everything. Now just her asking him grated somehow. And what was she wearing? Same belly top she always wore. Except wasn’t it shorter? Weren’t the nipples clearer, more deliberate?

He said, ‘Nothing.’ Grumpily. But it wasn’t nothing. It was the final leaflet in the KEVIN series on Western women. The Right to Bare: The Naked Truth about Western Sexuality.

Now, while we’re on the subject of nakedness, Karina Cain had a nice little body. All creamy chub and slender extremities. And come the weekend she liked to wear something to show it off. First time Millat noticed her was at some local party when he saw a flash of silver pants, a silver boob-tube, and a bare mound of slightly protruding belly rising up between the two with another bit of silver in the navel. There was something welcoming about Karina Cain’s little belly. She hated it, but Millat loved it. He loved it when she wore things that revealed it. But now the leaflets were making things clearer. He started noticing what she wore and the way other men looked at her. And when he mentioned it she said, ‘Oh, I hate that. All those leery old men.’ But it seemed to Millat that she was encouraging it; that she positively wanted men to look at her, that she was – as The Right to Bare suggested – ‘prostituting herself to the male gaze’. Particularly white males. Because that’s how it worked between Western men and Western women, wasn’t it? They liked to do it all in public. The more he thought about it, the more it pissed him off. Why couldn’t she cover up? Who was she trying to impress? African goddesses from Clapham North respected themselves, why couldn’t Karina Cain? ‘I can’t respect you,’ explained Millat carefully, making sure he repeated the words just as he had read them, ‘until you respect yourself.’ Karina Cain said she did respect herself, but Millat couldn’t believe her. Which was odd, because he’d never known Karina Cain to lie, she wasn’t the type.

When they got ready to go out somewhere, he said, ‘You’re not dressing for me, you’re dressing for everybody!’ Karina said she didn’t dress for him or anybody, she dressed for herself. When she sang ‘Sexual Healing’ at the pub karaoke, he said, ‘Sex is a private thing, between you and me, it’s not for everybody!’ Karina said she was singing, not having sex in front of the Rat and Carrot regulars. When they made love, he said, ‘Don’t do that… don’t offer it to me like a whore. Haven’t you heard of unnatural acts? Besides, I’ll take it if I want it – and why can’t you be a lady, don’t make all that noise!’ Karina Cain slapped him and cried a lot. She said she didn’t know what was happening to him. Problem is, thought Millat, as he slammed the door off its hinges, neither do I. And after that row they didn’t talk for a while.

About two weeks later, he was doing a shift in the Palace for a little extra money, and he brought the matter up with Shiva, a newish convert to KEVIN and a rising star within the organization. ‘Don’t talk to me about white women,’ groaned Shiva, wondering how many generations of Iqbals he’d have to give the same advice to. ‘It’s got to the point in the West where the women are men! I mean, they’ve got the same desires and urges as men – they want it all the fucking time. And they dress like they want everyone to know they want it. Now is that right? Is it?’

But before the debate could progress, Samad came through the double doors looking for some mango chutney and Millat returned to his chopping.

That evening after work, Millat saw a moon-faced, demure-looking Indian woman through the window of a Piccadilly cafe who looked, in profile, not unlike youthful pictures of his mother. She was dressed in a black polo-neck, long black trousers and her eyes were partly veiled by long black hair, her only decoration the red patterns of mhendi on the palms of her hands. She was sitting alone.

With the same thoughtless balls he used when chatting up dolly birds and disco brains, with the guts of a man who had no qualms about talking to strangers, Millat went in and started giving her the back page of The Right to Bare pretty much verbatim, in the hope that she’d understand. All about soulmates, about self-respect, about women who seek to bring ‘visual pleasure’ only to the men who love them. He explained: ‘It’s the liberation of the veil, innit? Look, like here: Free from the shackles of male scrutiny and the standards of attractiveness, the woman is free to be who she is inside, immune from being portrayed as sex symbol and lusted after as if she were meat on the shelf to be picked at and looked over. That’s what we think,’ he said, uncertain if that was what he thought. ‘That’s our opinion,’ he said, uncertain whether it was his opinion. ‘You see, I’m from this group-’

The lady screwed up her face and put her forefinger delicately across his lip. ‘Oh, darling,’ she murmured sadly, admiring his beauty. ‘If I give you money, will you go away?’

And then her boyfriend turned up, a surprisingly tall Chinese guy in a leather jacket.

Deep in a blue funk, Millat resolved to walk the eight miles home, beginning in Soho, glaring at the leggy whores and the crotchless knickers and the feather boas. By the time he reached Marble Arch he had worked himself into such a rage he called Karina Cain from a phonebox plastered with tits and ass (whores, whores, whores) and dumped her unceremoniously. He didn’t mind about the other girls he was shagging (Alexandra Andrusier, Polly Houghton, Rosie Dew) because they were straight up, posh-totty slags. But he minded about Karina Cain, because she was his love, and his love should be his love and nobody else’s. Protected like Liotta’s wife in GoodFellas or Pacino’s sister in Scarface. Treated like a princess. Behaving like a princess. In a tower. Covered up.

Walking slower now, dragging his heels, there being nobody to go home to, he got waylaid in the Edgware Road, the old fat guys calling him over (‘Look, it’s Millat, little Millat the Ladies’ Man! Millat the Prince of Pussy-pokers! Too big to have a smoke is he, now?’) and gave in with a rueful smile. Hookah pipes, halal fried chicken and illegally imported absinthe consumed around wobbling outdoor tables; watching the women hurry by in full purdah, like busy black ghosts haunting the streets, late-night shopping, looking for their errant husbands. Millat liked to watch them go: the animated talk, the exquisite colours of the communicative eyes, the bursts of laughter from invisible lips. He remembered something his father once told him back when they used to speak to each other. You do not know the meaning of the erotic, Millat, you do not know the meaning of desire, my second son, until you have sat on the Edgware Road with a bubbling pipe, using all the powers of your imagination to visualize what is beyond the four inches of skin hajib reveals, what is