White Teeth

On April Fool’s Day, Samad turned up. He was all in white, on his way to the restaurant, crumpled and creased like a disappointed saint. He looked to be on the brink of tears. Irie let him in.

‘Hello, Miss Jones,’ said Samad, bowing ever so slightly. ‘And how is your father?’

Irie smiled with recognition. ‘You see him more than we do. How’s God?’

‘Perfectly fine, thank you. Have you seen my good-for-nothing son recently?’

Before Irie had a chance to give her next line, Samad broke down in front of her and had to be led into the living room, sat in Darcus’s chair and brought a cup of tea before he could speak.

‘Mr Iqbal, what’s wrong?’

‘What is right?’

‘Has something happened to Dad?’

‘Oh no, no… Archibald is fine. He is like the washing-machine advert. He carries on and on as ever.’

‘Then what?’

‘Millat. He has been missing these three weeks.’

‘God. Well, have you tried the Chalfens?’

‘He is not with them. I know where he is. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. He is on some retreat with these lunatic green-tie people. In a sports centre in Chester.’

‘Bloody hell.’

Irie sat down cross-legged and took out a fag. ‘I hadn’t seen him in school, but I didn’t realize how long it had been. But if you know where he is…’

‘I didn’t come here to find him, I came to ask your advice, Irie. What can I do? You know him – how does one get through?’

Irie bit her lip, her mother’s old habit. ‘I mean, I don’t know… we’re not as close as we were… but I’ve always thought that maybe it’s the Magid thing… missing him… I mean he’d never admit it… but Magid’s his twin and maybe if he saw him-’

‘No, no. No, no, no. I wish that were the solution. Allah knows how I pinned all my hopes on Magid. And now he says he is coming back to study the English law – paid for by these Chalfen people. He wants to enforce the laws of man rather than the laws of God. He has learnt none of the lessons of Muhammad – peace be upon Him! Of course, his mother is delighted. But he is nothing but a disappointment to me. More English than the English. Believe me, Magid will do Millat no good and Millat will do Magid no good. They have both lost their way. Strayed so far from the life I had intended for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and put me in an early grave. All I wanted was two good Muslim boys. Oh, Irie…’ Samad took her free hand and patted it with sad affection. ‘I just don’t understand where I have gone wrong. You teach them but they do not listen because they have the “Public Enemy” music on at full blast. You show them the road and they take the bloody path to the Inns of Court. You guide them and they run from your grasp to a Chester sports centre. You try to plan everything and nothing happens in the way that you expected…’

But if you could begin again, thought Irie, if you could take them back to the source of the river, to the start of the story, to the homeland… But she didn’t say that, because he felt it as she felt it and both knew it was as useless as chasing your own shadow. Instead she took her hand from underneath his and placed it on top, returning the stroke. ‘Oh, Mr Iqbal. I don’t know what to say…’

‘There are no words. The one I send home comes out a pukka Englishman, white suited, silly wig lawyer. The one I keep here is fully paid-up green bow-tie-wearing fundamentalist terrorist. I sometimes wonder why I bother,’ said Samad bitterly, betraying the English inflections of twenty years in the country, ‘I really do. These days, it feels to me like you make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started… but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers – who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained. Who would want to stay? But you have made a devil’s pact… it drags you in and suddenly you are unsuitable to return, your children are unrecognizable, you belong nowhere.’

‘Oh, that’s not true, surely.’

‘And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie… and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?’

As Samad described this dystopia with a look of horror, Irie was ashamed to find that the land of accidents sounded like paradise to her. Sounded like freedom.

‘Do you understand, child? I know you understand.’

And what he really meant was: do we speak the same language? Are we from the same place? Are we the same?

Irie squeezed his hand and nodded vigorously, trying to ward off his tears. What else could she tell him but what he wanted to hear?

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

When Hortense and Ryan came home that evening after a late-night prayer meeting, both were in a state of high excitement. Tonight was the night. After giving Hortense a flurry of instructions as to the typesetting and layout of his latest Watchtower article, Ryan went into the hallway to make his telephone call to Brooklyn to get the news.

‘But I thought he was in consultation with them.’

‘Yes, yes, he is… but de final confirmation, you understand, mus’ come from Mr Charles Wintry himself in Brooklyn,’ said Hortense breathlessly. ‘What a day dis is! What a day! Help me wid liftin’ dis typewriter now… I need it on de table.’

Irie did as she was told, carrying the enormous old Remington to the kitchen and laying it down in front of Hortense. Hortense passed Irie a bundle of white paper covered in Ryan’s tiny script.

‘Now you read dat to me, Irie Ambrosia, slowly now… an’ I’ll get it down in type.’

Irie read for half an hour or so, wincing at Ryan’s horrible corkscrew prose, passing the whiting fluid when it was required, and gritting her teeth at the author’s interruptions as every ten minutes he popped back into the room to adjust his syntax or rephrase a paragraph.

‘Mr Topps, did you get trew yet?’

‘Not yet, Mrs B., not yet. Very busy, Mr Charles Wintry. I’m going to try again now.’

A sentence, Samad’s sentence, was passing through Irie’s tired brain. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. And now that Ryan was out of the way, Irie saw her opportunity to ask it, though she framed it carefully.

Hortense leant back in her chair and placed her hands on her lap. ‘I bin doin’ dis a very long time, Irie Ambrosia. I bin’ waitin’ ever since I was a pickney in long socks.’

‘But that’s no reason-’

‘What d’you know fe reasons? Nuttin’ at all. The Witness church is where my roots are. It bin good to me when nobody else has. It was de good ting my mudder gave me, an’ I nat going to let it go now we so close to de end.’

‘But Gran, it’s not… you won’t ever…’

‘Lemme tell you someting. I’m not like dem Witnesses jus’ scared of dyin’. Jus’ scared. Dem wan’ everybody to die excep’ dem. Dat’s not a reason to dedicate your life to Jesus Christ. I gat very different aims. I still hope to be one of de Anointed evan if I am a woman. I want it all my life. I want to be dere wid de Lord making de laws and de decisions.’ Hortense sucked her teeth long and loud. ‘I gat so tired wid de church always tellin’ me I’m a woman or I’m nat heducated enough. Everybody always tryin’ to heducate you; heducate you about dis, heducate you about dat… Dat’s always bin de problem wid de women in dis family. Somebody always tryin’ to heducate them about someting, pretendin’ it all about learnin’ when it all about a battle of de wills. But if I were one of de hundred an’ forty-four, no one gwan try to heducate me. Dat would be my job! I’d make my own laws an’ I wouldn’t be wanting anybody else’s opinions. My mudder was strong-willed deep down, and I’m de same. Lord knows, your mudder was de same.