Brick Lane (45 page)

'The racists – they cleared out of here
ages
ago.'

'What about Shiblu Rahman?'

Nazneen recognized the name. The man had been stabbed to death.

'It could happen again.'

'Thing is, see, they is getting more sophisticated. They don't say
race,
they say
culture, religion.'

'They put their filthy leaflets through my front door.'

'We all know what we're here for. Why don't we get on with it?'

Karim called the meeting to order. 'Right. We're taking a vote. What are we for? We are for Muslim rights and culture. We're into protecting our local ummah and supporting the global ummah.'

The Secretary scrambled onto the stage. 'Voting. Everyone raise your hand. I mean, those in support – raise the hand.'

All hands were raised.

'Unanimous.' He made a mark on the page.

'What are we against?' said Karim. 'We are against—'

'Lion Hearts,' someone shouted from the floor.

'We are against,' said Karim, 'any group that opposes us.'

It was carried.

The musician made a request for his band to become the official musical group of the Bengal Tigers. 'Spread the message, like. Are you cool with it, man?'

The Questioner was on his feet once again. 'What will we do?' He had changed his seat during the break and was close enough now for Nazneen to see that he had the dangerous face of an enthusiast. 'We are "for" this and "against" that. Are we a debating club?'

There was some laughter and the Questioner's face grew keener still. He was spare and hungry, this boy. His clothes hung from his bones as if flesh was an unnecessary expense, as if his passion consumed him. The only extravagance was his nose, which was large, though being hard and bony-looking it managed yet to add to the impression of austerity.

'What do we want?' said the Questioner. 'Action, or debating?'

Karim cut off the laughter. 'Item three. Election of the Board.' He looked at the Questioner. 'If I am elected, the action will begin straight away.'

The Secretary was elected to be Secretary. Though no one else stood for the position, he looked down into his crotch as the vote was taken as if the suspense were unbearable. Afterwards, he hitched his pyjamas in the manner of one girding his loins.

Karim and the Questioner stood for Chairman. It was close. Nine votes for the Questioner and ten for Karim. I have given him victory, thought Nazneen. She felt it a momentous thing. By raising her hand, or not raising it, she could alter the course of events, of affairs in the world of which she knew nothing.

The Questioner went to the front and got up on the stage. He shook Karim's hand with great energy, and they slapped each other on the back. Nazneen understood that they hated each other. Then he proposed himself as Treasurer and the position was quickly secured.

In the hall, the air vibrated to the tune of a meeting about to break up. Dozens of tiny adjustments, and the anticipation of a greater movement. The Secretary waved his pad. 'Wait. Wait. One more election. Spiritual Leader.' He jumped off the stage, dragged an old man from his seat and pushed him onto the platform. Nazneen saw that the old man was wearing flat, open-toe sandals with a white plastic flower on the heel strap: women's shoes. And she knew that the imam had only recently been imported. He kept wetting his lips and smiling. He had not the slightest idea what was going on. He was duly elected.

Karim came with his bundles of jeans and unlined dresses slung over his shoulder. He sat on the arm of the sofa and talked. When his phone rang he no longer took it out into the hallway. Sometimes he spoke into the phone about leaflets and print runs, meetings and donations. Sometimes his voice was soft and slid away from him, and he closed the phone and said briskly, 'Worry and nerves. That's what you get.'

He began to talk to her about the world. She encouraged him. 'Is it?' she said.

His knowledge shamed her. She learned about her Muslim brothers and sisters. She learned how many they were, how scattered, and how tortured. She discovered Bosnia. 'When that was?' she said. He could not have been more than fourteen or fifteen at the time. He shamed her. And he excited her.

In a place called Chechnya, there was at this time jihad. He read from his magazine.
'Allah willing – the Mujahideen will see you in the heart of your Mother Russia
–
not just Chechnya. Allah willing
–
we will inherit your land.'
He held up the flimsy pages, offering her proof. 'It's a world-wide struggle, man. Everywhere they are trying to do us down. We have to fight back. It's time to fight back.'

Holding up the magazine with English words on the front, he said, 'Can you read this?'

She inclined her head, side to side.
'Amar ingreji poda oti shamanyo.'
In English, I can read only a little bit.

He left Bengali newsletters for her. One was called
The Light;
another was simply titled
Ummah.
Chanu had never given her anything to read. And what good were his books anyway? All that ancient history.

She put the newsletters on the table for her husband to see.
You are not the only one who knows things.
But when she heard him coming she hid them. Those next few days reading became a sweet and melancholy secret, caressing the phrases with her eyes, feeling Karim floating there, just beyond the words.

One thing she could not grasp: the martyrs.

'But Allah does not allow it.'

'It's not
suicide,
yeah. It's war.'

She knew about Palestine. He told her, 'They go to the streets protesting a child has been killed. They go home carrying the body of another.'

It gave her pain. Now when she walked the anxious tightrope between the children and their father, when she was disquieted by her undisciplined mind or worried about her sister – now she felt the smallness of it all. So she mistook the sad weight of longing in her stomach for sorrow, and she read in the night of occupiers and orphans, of Intifada and Hamas.

And he prayed in her home several more times. As he took the mat from her, the tips of their fingers found each other and she smelled the crisp smell of his shirt.

The smell of limes.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dr Azad had the misfortune of youthful hair. It was hard not to smile at his thick and shiny pelt, especially as the years had not bypassed his face. They had, in fact, trampled it. His cheeks hung slack as ancient breasts. His nose, once so neatly upturned, appeared to crumble at the end. And the puffy skin around his eyes was fit to burst.

He sat up straight, as if his entire body was in splints, and he drank two glasses of water.

'Next time,' said Chanu, 'you must bring your wife.'

'Of course,' said the doctor.

'She is well? I hope she is very well. Such a superb hostess – to produce a meal like that, even without a moment's notice. We must have her to dinner. I tell my wife, let us return hospitality to Mrs Azad.'

They had never, in all these years, been invited back. And we were never invited in the first place, Nazneen reminded herself.

Chanu hunched to his food to abbreviate the journey between plate and mouth. There was a fleck of dal in his eyebrows. Dr Azad barely inclined his head to eat. His elbows never strayed far from his ribcage.

'It is good of you to remember,' said the doctor. 'After more than a decade many people would begin to forget.'

'Daughter too. She is well?'