Brick Lane (92 page)

Nazneen looked beyond the cordon into the neck of Brick Lane. It revealed nothing. The electrical shops were shuttered, the stonemason's dark, the sandwich-shop window showed empty trays and a naked glass counter, and only the steps and the awning of the Capital City Hotel were lit up.

Inside her, the thoughts ebbed and flowed. Shahana had cleared out long ago. She was at the station, buying a ticket to Paignton. Shahana was still at the Shalimar, trapped by looters or her own fear, cowering in the toilets with Nishi. If she was at the station, it was too late. But if she was on Brick Lane . . .

Panic hit Nazneen like an asthma attack. For a few moments she felt she would expire then and there, into the policeman's folded arms.

A white couple came up to the cordon and asked something. They looked disappointed. They wanted curry. More people were arriving, expecting curry and lager. Nazneen's policeman spoke to a woman with a wattled neck and a strident voice.

'Can I suggest that you consult a restaurant guide, madam.'

Nazneen slipped around the back of him. She hoisted her sari and hurdled over the orange and white tape. Someone thumped her on the back. She turned her head, but there was no one behind her. It was only her heart playing tricks. She stuck close to the walls and shadows, crossed a side street with its little vein of houses and entered the main artery of Brick Lane.

Across the way, formed in a semi-circle, was a row of perspex shields, and behind the shields an arc of police with bulging jackets. A group of lads stood on the pavement and in the road, hoods pulled up, scarves around their faces, as though they had entered a manly purdah. It was quiet.

Nazneen passed behind the boys. They paid her no attention. In lighted windows, waiters pressed their foreheads to the glass. Restaurant owners stood by, nerves flickering across important faces. All the mixed-blood vitality of the street had been drained. Something coursed down the artery, like a bubble in the bloodstream.

A police car was parked at a crazy angle in the road, the front doors wide open and the interior abandoned. The car rocked. A door swung shut. It rocked again. Nazneen looked at the boys pushing it. They worked quickly and quietly, as though this was a task they had been assigned to do and they wanted to make a good job of it. The car went over and suddenly a noise licked around Brick Lane like a flame, crackling from every corner.

'Bengal Tigers,
zindabad!'
went the cry. Long live the Bengal Tigers.

As the boys whooped, Nazneen began to run again. A tall dark shape smashed the windows of the police car with a stick. Another hurled something through the hole. It whizzed through the air and exploded with a dull thud. From behind the black municipal bins, out of doorways, round corners and up from car bonnets, more and more people appeared, ejected by this simple purgative. Nazneen ran past the car. A figure dressed in white was crumpled on the ground by the rear wheel. She turned round. The figure rose and fell again, toppled by a large and heavy head. It was the Multicultural Liaison Officer, and he was praying. Nazneen sprinted towards the car. She got hold of the man's flappy white sleeve and pulled it.

'Please,' she said. 'Get up.'

He turned his face towards her and the whites of his eyes showed clearer than his robe in the dark. 'Ah, sister, how many rakahs for the isha prayer?'

'Are you mad? Get up. Run.'

'What? I is praying to Allah to save all these boys. Can't get up now.'

'Allah,' said Nazneen, heaving at the neck of his robe, 'does not want your prayer now. He wants you to save yourself.' The cotton ripped and she let go.

'Damn,' said the Multicultural Liaison Officer. He got on his knees. 'Shit. You made me swear.'

Nazneen pulled his arm. 'You can make du'a later. Run. Now. Run.'

A siren wail smacked the sky and showered their heads. They ran down the road. Nazneen's feet hit the pavement so hard she felt it in her teeth. At the corner of Hanbury Street she stopped and looked over her shoulder. The police car belched a little black smoke and burst into a ball of fire.

'
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
—'

The Shalimar was three blocks up. Nazneen said, 'Let's go. Come on.'

The Multicultural Liaison Officer raised his arms.
'I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.'

'I can't wait for you.'

'Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.'
He turned to Nazneen. 'In these circumstances, better safe than sorry.' He lifted his face to heaven.

She left him and walked close to the shops, brushing the walls with her arm. Ahead, eight or ten boys gathered behind a bin. The large black tank stood at shoulder height. Two lads darted out to the side and made an overarm bowling motion. They hurled themselves behind the bin and all the lads crouched down. Nazneen stopped moving. A lighted window at her back. She wished she had picked a better place to be, during this sinister game of hide-and-seek. There were no white people here at all. These boys were fighting themselves. A dizziness came over her and she leaned against the glass. How long, she thought, how long it has taken me to get this far.

Missiles rained across the road. Empty bottles, full cans, a brick, a chair, a winged stick. A bottle smashed at Nazneen's feet. She decided to run again. But which way? Towards the Shalimar and the source of the missiles? Or back up the road to take shelter? She turned round and back and round and suddenly she was not sure which way the cafe was. She recognized nothing. Silhouettes across the way, substantial as shadows but solid enough to smash through windows. Crouching shapes and whirling arms, the pale streak of trainers on the black ground that had gone soft beneath her feet. The buildings curved away from her, shrinking from the violent pavement. The light came in crackling twists of red that stabbed at the dark and did not lift it, as though a devil had danced through with his blazing torch. Nazneen tried to focus on a window and take refuge in the clean white light, but when she looked the light burned her eyes. In the middle of the road, a coiled snake of tyres flamed with acrid fury and shed skins, thick, black, choking, to the wind. Shop alarms rang,
clang, clang, clang,
more frightened than warning. Back up the road, an ambulance crawled stubbornly along, its twirling blue eye sending out a terrible, keening lament.

Nazneen got her legs to move. She walked with her arms in front of her, as if she did not trust her eyes. Gradually, she came back to herself. She had the sensation that she had fainted, and now the world was forming again. The light steadied itself. She recognized shapes for what they were and sensed the bodies that filled the dark, people-shaped outlines. A fire engine slashed across the tarmac. She passed the burning tyres and for a while her eyes became useless again. When she stepped out of that smoky infestation, she saw a figure standing alone in the middle of the road. His face was covered by a megaphone, but even then, even in the twisted light, he had a spare look about him. There was not an inch of waste. His jacket hung from his shoulders as from a coat hanger, no unnecessary flesh covering the bones.

'Brothers,' he said, and his voice was familiar. 'Brothers, why are you fighting yourselves, Musalman against Musalman?'

Another winged stick flew through the air and clattered on the pavement next to Nazneen. She bent down to look at it. It was a placard and it read: STOP THE WAR.

'Is this what happens when Islam goes on the march?' said the Questioner.

Nazneen hurried on. The megaphone competed with the screech of car brakes, car doors slamming, the clanging of shop alarms, a high-pitched whistle blown by a hooded youth as he raced past on a bicycle.

'The police are laughing at you, my friends. They are waiting for you to finish each other off.'

A boy ran into the road, beckoning with two hands wide,
come on, come on.
Within seconds, five others jumped on him and he fell to the ground. Another three piled on top. And then came the waiters, black-trousered, white-shirted, brandishing skewers and carving knives and chests pumped with outrage.
You bloody bastards,
they screamed.
What the hell you shitting on our doorsteps for? Go to Oxford Street! Go to Piccadilly Circus! Go to hell!

The heap of boys scrambled up and disappeared into the bowels of Brick Lane. 'Right now, let me tell you, the world is watching.' The Questioner turned slowly round with his megaphone, speaking his next words to the whole three hundred and sixty degrees. 'Right now, you should know, George Bush is laughing at you.'

Out of the dark, a woman with a microphone ran up to him. He lowered the megaphone. A white man shouldered a camera and swung it in his direction. The woman spoke to the Questioner and the Questioner replied but Nazneen could no longer hear him.

Ahead of her now were a blazing car arid two dozen heels turned up in flight. She began to hope that Shahana was on the train, or in Paignton, anywhere else but here. She tried to run with the crowd but she could not keep up. The next instant, something caught her around the chest and she lashed out at the air.

'Get in here,' said Karim. He dragged her into a doorway.