Children. Samad had caught children like a disease. Yes, he had sired two of them willingly as willingly as a man can but he had not bargained for this other thing. This thing that no one tells youabout. This thing of knowing children. For forty-odd years, travelling happily along life's highway, Samad had been unaware that dotted along that road, in the creche facilities of each service station, there lived a subclass of society, a mewling, puking underclass; he knew nothing of them and it did not concern him. Then suddenly, in the early eighties, he became infected with children; other people's children, children who were friends of his children, and then their friends; then children in children's programmes on children's TV. By 1984 at least 30 per cent of his social and cultural circle was under the age of nine and this all led, inevitably, to the position he now found himself in.
He was a parent-governor.
By a strange process of symmetry, being a parent-governor perfectly mirrors the process of becoming a parent. It starts innocently. Casually. You turn up at the annual Spring Fair full of beans, help with the raffle tickets (because the pretty red-haired music teacher asks you to) and win a bottle of whisky (all school raffles are fixed), and, before you know where you are, you're turning up at the weekly school council meetings, organizing concerts, discussing plans for a new music department, donating funds for the rejuvenation of the water-fountains you're implicated in the school, you're involved in it. Sooner or later you stop dropping your child at the school gates. You start following them in.
"Put your hand down.""I will not put it down.""Put it down, please.""Let go of me.""Samad, why are you so eager to mortify me? Put it down.""I have an opinion. I have a right to an opinion. And I have a right to express that opinion.""Yes, but do you have to express it so often?" This was the hissed exchange between Samad and Alsana Iqbal, as they sat at the back of a Wednesday school governors meeting in early July '84, Alsana trying her best to force Samad's determined left arm back to his side.
"Get off, woman!"Alsana put her two tiny hands to his wrist and tried applying a Chinese burn. "Samad Miah, can't you understand that I am only trying to save you from yourself?"As the covert wrestling continued, the chairwoman Katie Miniver, a lanky white divorcee with tight jeans, extremely curly hair and buck teeth, tried desperately to avoid Samad's eye. She silently cursed Mrs. Hanson, the fat lady just behind him, who was speaking about the woodworm in the school orchard, inadvertently making it impossible to pretend that Samad's persistent raised hand had gone unseen. Sooner or later she was going to have to let him speak. In between nodding at Mrs. Hanson, she snatched a surreptitious glance at the minutes which the secretary, Mrs. Khilnani, was scribbling away on her left. She wanted to check that it was not her imagination, that she was not being unfair or undemocratic, or worse still racist (but she had read Colour Blind, a seminal leaflet from the Rainbow Coalition, she had scored well on the self-test), racist in ways that were so deeply ingrained and socially determining that they escaped her attention. But no, no. She wasn't crazy. Any random extract highlighted the problem:
Mrs. Janet Trott wishes to propose a second climbing frame be built in the playground to accommodate the large number of children who enjoy the present climbing frame but unfortunately have made it a safety risk through dangerous overcrowding. Mrs. Trott's husband, the architect Hanover Trott, is willing to design and oversee the building of such a frame at no cost to the school.
Chairwoman can see no objection. Moves to put the proposition to a vote.
Mr. Iqbal wishes to know why the Western education system privileges activity of the body over activity of the mind and soul.
The Chairwoman wonders if this is quite relevant.
Mr. Iqbal demands the vote be delayed until he can present apa per detailing the main arguments and emphasizes that his sons, Magid and MiUat, get all the exercise they need via headstands that strengthen the muscles and send blood to stimulate the somatosensory cortex in the brain.
Mrs. Wolfe asks whether Mr. Iqbal expects her Susan to undertake compulsory head stands Mr. Iqbal infers that, considering Susan's academic performance and weight problems, a head stand regime might be desirable.
"Yes, Mr. Iqbal?"Samad forcefully removed Alsana's fingers from the clamp grip they had assumed on his lapel, stood up quite unnecessarily and sorted through a number of papers he had on a clipboard, removing the one he wanted and holding it out before him.
"Yes, yes. I have a motion. I have a motion."The subtlest manifestation of a groan went round the group of governors, followed by a short period of shifting, scratching, leg-crossing, bag-rifling and the repositioning of coats-on-chairs.
"Another one, Mr. Iqbal?""Oh yes, Mrs. Miniver.""Only you've tabled twelve motions already this evening; I think possibly somebody else '
"Oh, it is much too important to be delayed, Mrs. Miniver. Now, if I can just '
"Ms Miniver.""Pardon me?""It's just.. . it's Ms Miniver. All evening you've been .. . and it's, umm .. . actually not Mrs. It's Ms. Ms."Samad looked quizzically at Katie Miniver, then at his papers as if to find the answer there, then at the beleaguered chairwoman again.
"I'm sorry? You are not married?""Divorced, actually, yes, divorced. I'm keeping the name.""I see. You have my condolences, Miss Miniver. Now, the matter I '
"I'm sorry," said Katie, pulling her fingers through her intractable hair. "Umm, it's not Miss, either. I'm sorry. I have been married you see, so' Ellen Corcoran and Janine Lanzerano, two friends from the Women's Action Group, gave Katie a supportive smile. Ellen shook her head to indicate that Katie mustn't cry (because you're doing well, really well); Janine mouthed Go On and gave her a furtive thumbs-up.
"I really wouldn't feel comforta - I just feel marital status shouldn't be an issue it's not that I want to embarrass you, Mr. Iqbal. I just would feel more if you it's Ms.""Mzzz?""Ms.""And this is some kind of linguistic conflation between the words Mrs. and Miss?" asked Samad, genuinely curious and oblivious to the nether wobblings of Katie Miniver's bottom lip.
"Something to describe the woman who has either lost her husband or has no prospect of finding another?"Alsana groaned and put her head in her hands.
Samad looked at his clipboard, underlined something in pen three times and turned to the parent-governors once more.
"The Harvest Festival."Shifting, scratching, leg-crossing, coat-repositioning.
"Yes, Mr. Iqbal," said Katie Miniver. "What about the Harvest Festival?"That is precisely what I want to know. What is all this about the Harvest Festival? What is it? Why is it? And why must my children celebrate it?"The headmistress, Mrs. Owens, a genteel woman with a soft face half hidden behind a fiercely cut blonde bob, motioned to Katie Miniver that she would handle this.
"Mr. Iqbal, we have been through the matter of religious festivals quite thoroughly in the autumn review. As I am sure you are aware, the school already recognizes a great variety of religious and secular events: amongst them, Christmas, Ramadan, Chinese New Year, Diwali, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, the birthday of Haile Selassie, and the death of Martin Luther King. The Harvest Festival is part of the school's ongoing commitment to religious diversity, Mr. Iqbal.""I see. And are there many pagans, Mrs. Owens, at Manor School?""Pagan I'm afraid I don't under '
"It is very simple. The Christian calendar has thirty-seven religious events. Thirty-seven. The Muslim calendar has nine. Only nine. And they are squeezed out by this incredible rash of Christian festivals. Now my motion is simple. If we removed all the pagan festivals from the Christian calendar, there would be an average of Samad paused to look at his clipboard 'of twenty days freed up in which the children could celebrate Lailat-ul-Qadr in December, Eid-ul-Fitr in January and Eid-ul-Adha in April, for example. And the first festival that must go, in my opinion, is this Harvest Festival business.""I'm afraid," said Mrs. Owens, doing her pleasant-but-firm smile and playing her punchline to the crowd, 'removing Christian festivals from the face of the earth is a little beyond my jurisdiction.
Otherwise I would remove Christmas Eve and save myself a lot of work in stocking-stuffing."Samad ignored the general giggle this prompted and pressed on. "But this is my whole point.
This Harvest Festival is not a Christian festival. Where in the bible does it say, For thou must steal foodstuffs from thy parents' cupboards and bring them into school assembly, and thou shall force thy mother to bake a loaf of bread in the shape of a fish? These are pagan ideals! Tell me where does it say, Thou shah take a box of frozen fish fingers to an aged crone who lives in Wembley1!"Mrs. Owens frowned, unaccustomed to sarcasm unless it was of the teacher variety, i.e." Do we live in a barn? And I suppose you treat your own house like that!
"Surely, Mr. Iqbal, it is precisely the charity aspect of the Harvest Festival that makes it worth retaining? Taking food to the elderly seems to me a laudable idea, whether it has scriptural support or not. Certainly, nothing in the bible suggests we should sit down to a turkey meal on Christmas Day, but few people would condemn it on those grounds. To be honest, Mr. Iqbal, we like to think of these things as more about community than religion as such.""A man's god is his community!" said Samad, raising his voice.
"Yes, umm .. . well, shall we vote on the motion?"Mrs. Owens looked nervously around the room for hands. "Will anyone second it?"Samad pressed Alsana's hand. She kicked him in the ankle. He stamped on her toe. She pinched his flank. He bent back her little finger and she grudgingly raised her right arm while deftly elbowing him in the crotch with her left.
"Thank you, Mrs. Iqbal," said Mrs. Owens, as Janice and Ellen looked over to her with the piteous, saddened smiles they reserved for subjugated Muslim women.
"All those in favour of the motion to remove the Harvest Festival from the school calendar '
"On the grounds of its pagan roots"On the grounds of certain pagan .. . connotations. Raise your hands."Mrs. Owens scanned the room. One hand, that of the pretty red-headed music teacher Poppy Burt-Jones, shot up, sending her many bracelets jangling down her wrist. Then the Chalfens, Marcus and Joyce, an ageing hippy couple both dressed in pseudo-Indian garb, raised their hands defiantly. Then Samad looked pointedly at Clara and Archie, sitting sheepishly on the other side of the hall, and two more hands moved slowly above the crowd.
"All those against?"The remaining thirty-six hands lifted into the air.
"Motion not passed.""I am certain the Solar Covenant of Manor School Witches and Goblins will be delighted with that decision," said Samad, retaking his seat.
After the meeting, as Samad emerged from the toilets, having relieved himself with some difficulty in a miniature urinal, the pretty red-headed music teacher Poppy Butt-Jones accosted him in the corridor.
"Mr. Iqbal.""Hmm?"She extended a long, pale, lightly freckled arm. "Poppy Burt-Jones. I take Magid and Millat for orchestra and singing."Samad replaced the dead right hand she meant to shake with his working left.
"Oh! I'm sorry.""No, no. It's not painful. It just does not work.""Oh, good! I mean, I'm glad there's no, you know, pain."She was what you would call effortlessly pretty. About twenty-eight, maybe thirty-two at most.
Slim, but not at all hard-bodied, and with a curved ribcage like a child; long, flat breasts that lifted at their tips; an open-neck white shirt, some well-worn Levis and grey trainers, a lot of dark red hair swished up in a sloppy ponytail. Wispy bits falling at the neck. Freckled. A very pleasant, slightly goofy smile which she was showing Samad right now.
"Was there something you wanted to discuss about the twins? A problem?""Oh no, no ... well, you know, they're fine. Magid has a little difficulty, but with his good marks I'm sure playing the recorder isn't high on his list, and Millat has a real flair for the sax. No, I just wanted to say that I thought you made a good point, you know," she said, chucking her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the hall. "In the meeting. The Harvest Festival always seemed so ridiculous to me. I mean, if you want to help old people, you know, well, vote for a different government, don't send them cans of Heinz spaghetti." She smiled at him again and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.
"It is a great shame more people do not agree," said Samad, flattered somehow by the second smile and sucking in his well-toned 57-year-old stomach. "We seemed very much in the minority this evening.""Well, the Chalfens were behind you they're such nice people intellectuals," she whispered, as if it were some exotic disease of the tropics. "He's a scientist and she's something in gardening but both very down to earth with it. I talked to them and they thought you should pursue it. You know, actually, I was thinking that maybe we could get together at some point in the next few months and work on a second motion for the September meeting you know, nearer the actual time, make it a little more coherent, maybe, print out leaflets, that sort of thing. Because you know, I'm really interested in Indian culture. I just think those festivals you mentioned would be so much more .. . colourful, and we could tie it in with art work, music. It could be really exciting,"said Poppy Burt-Jones, getting really excited. "And I think it would be really good, you know, for the kids."It was not possible, Samad knew, for this woman to have any erotic interest in him whatsoever.
But still he glanced around for Alsana, still he jangled his car keys nervously in his pockets, still he felt a cold thing land on his heart and knew it was fear of his God.
"I'm not actually from India, you know," said Samad, with infinitely more patience than he had ever previously employed the many times he had been required to repeat this sentence since moving to England.
Poppy Burt-Jones looked surprised and disappointed. "You're not?""No. I'm from Bangladesh.""Bangladesh"Previously Pakistan. Previous to that, Bengal.""Oh, right. Same sort of ball-park, then.""Just about the same stadium, yes."There was a bit of a difficult pause, in which Samad saw clearly that he wanted her more than any woman he had met in the past ten years. Just like that. Desire didn't even bother casing the joint, checking whether the neighbours were in desire just kicked down the door and made himself at home. He felt queasy. Then he became aware that his face was moving from arousal to horror in a grotesque parody of the movements of his mind, as he weighed up Poppy Burt-Jones and all the physical and metaphysical consequences she suggested. He must speak before it got any worse.
"Well.. . hmm, it is a good idea, re tabling the motion," he said against his will, for something more bestial than his will was now doing the talking. "If you could spare the time.""Well, we can talk about it. I'll give you a call about it in a few weeks. We could meet after orchestra, maybe?""That would be ... fine"Great! That's agreed, then. You know, your boys are really adorable they're very unusual. I was saying it to the Chalfens, and Marcus put his finger on it: he said that Indian children, if you don't mind me saying, are usually a lot more '
"More?""Quiet. Beautifully behaved but very, I don't know, subdued."Samad winced inside, imagining Alsana listening to this.
"And Magid and Millat are just so ... loud."Samad tried to smile.
"Magid is so impressive intellectually for a nine-year-old everybody says so. I mean, he's really remarkable. You must be so proud. He's like a little adult. Even his clothes ... I don't think I've ever known a nine-year-old to dress so so severely."Both twins had always been determined to choose their own clothes, but where Millat bullied Alsana into purchases of red-stripe Nike, Osh-Kosh Begosh and strange jumpers that had patterns on the inside and the out, Magid could be found, whatever the weather, in grey pullover, grey shirt and black tie with his shiny black shoes and NHS specs perched upon his nose, like some dwarf librarian. Alsana would say, "Little man, how about the blue one for Amma, hmm?" pushing him into the primary colours section of Mothercare. "Just one blue one. Go so nice with your eyes. For Amma, Magid. How can you not care for blue? It's the colour of the sky!""No, Amma. The sky isn't blue. There's just white light. White light has all of the colours of the rainbow in it, and when it is scattered through the squill ions of molecules in the sky, the short-wave colours blue, violet they are the ones you see. The sky isn't really blue. It just looks that way. It's called Rayleigh scattering."A strange child with a cold intellect.
"You must be so proud," Poppy repeated with a huge smile. "I would be.""Sadly," said Samad sighing, distracted from his erection by the dismal thought of his second son (by two minutes), "Millat is a good-for-nothing."Poppy looked mortified at this. "Oh no! No, I didn't mean that at all... I mean, I think he's probably a little intimidated by Magid in that way, but he's such a personality! He's just not so . academic. But everybody just loves him such a beautiful boy, as well. Of course," she said, giving him a wink and a knock on the shoulder, 'good genes."Good genes? What did she mean, good genes'?
"Hullo!" said Archie, who had walked up behind them, giving Samad a strong thud on the back.
"Hullo!" he said again, shaking Poppy's hand, with the almost mock-aristocratic manner he used when confronted with educated people. "Archie Jones. Father of Me, for my sins.""Poppy Butt-Jones. I take Me for '
"Music, yes, I know. Talks about you constantly. Bit disappointed you passed her over for first violin, though .. . maybe next year, eh? So!" said Archie, looking from Poppy to Samad, who was standing slightly apart from the other two and had a queer look, Archie thought, a bloody queer look on his face. "You've met the notorious Ick-Ball! You were a bit much in that meeting, Samad, eh? Wasn't he, eh?""Oh, I don't know," said Poppy sweetly. "I thought Mr. Iqbal made some good points, actually. I was really impressed by a lot of what he said. I'd like to be that knowledgeable on so many subjects.
Sadly, I'm a bit of a one-trick pony. Are you, I don't know, a professor of some kind, Mr. Iqbal?""No, no," said Samad, furious that he was unable to lie because of Archie, and finding the word 'waiter' stopping in his throat. "No, the fact is I work in a restaurant. I did some study in younger days, but the war came and .. ." Samad shrugged as an end to the sentence, and watched with sinking heart as Poppy Burt Jones freckled face contorted into one large, red, perplexed question mark.
"War?" she said, as if he had said wireless or piano la or water-closet. "The Falklands?""No," said Samad flatly. "The Second World.""Oh, Mr. Iqbal, you'd never guess. You must have been ever so young.""There were tanks there older than us, love," said Archie with a grin.
"Well, Mr. Iqbal, that is a surprise! But they say dark skin wrinkles less, don't they?""Do they?" said Samad, forcing himself to imagine her taut, pink skin, folded over in layer after layer of dead epidermis. "I thought it was children that kept a man young."Poppy laughed. "That too, I'd imagine. Well!" she said, looking flushed, coy and sure of herself, all at the same time. "You look very good on it. I'm sure the Omar Sharif comparison's been made before, Mr. Iqbal.""No, no, no, no," said Samad, glowing with pleasure. "The only comparison lies in our mutual love of bridge. No, no, no ... And it's Samad," he added. "Call me Samad, please.""You'll have to call him Samad some other time, Miss," said Archie, who always persisted in calling teachers Miss. "Because we've got to go. Wives waiting in the driveway. Dinner, apparently.""Well, it was nice talking to you," said Poppy, reaching for the wrong hand again, and blushing as he met her with the left.
"Yes. Goodbye.""Come on, come on," said Archie, fielding Samad out of the door and down the sloping driveway to the front gates. "Dear God, fit as a butcher's dog, that one! Phee-yooo. Nice, very nice.
Dear me, you were trying it on ... And what were you on about mutual love of bridge. I've known you decades and I've never seen you play bridge. Five-card poker's more your game.""Shut up, Archibald.""No, no, fair dues, you did very well. It's not like you, though, Samad having found God and all that not like you to be distracted by the attractions of the flesh."Samad shook Archie's hand from where it was resting on his shoulder. "Why are you so irredeemably vulgar?"77 wasn't the one -1But Samad wasn't listening, he was already reciting in his head, repeating two English phrases that he tried hard to believe in, words he had learnt these past ten years in England, words he hoped could protect him from the abominable heat in his trousers:
To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure.
Can't say fairer than that. Can't say fairer than that. Can't say fairer than that. But let's rewind a little.
To the pure all things are pure Sex, at least the temptation of sex, had long been a problem. When the fear of God first began to creep into Samad's bones, circa 1976, just after his marriage to the small-palmed, weak wristed and disinterested Alsana, he had inquired of an elderly alim in the mosque in Croydon whether it was permitted that a man might.. . with his hand on his .. .
Before he had got halfway through this tentative mime, the old scholar had silently passed him a leaflet from a pile on a table and drawn his wrinkled digit firmly underneath point number three.
There are nine acts which invalidate fast:
Eating and drinking Sexual intercourse Masturbation (istimna), which means self-abuse, resulting in ejaculation Ascribing false things to Almighty Allah, or his prophet, or to the successors of the Holy Prophet Swallowing thick dust Immersing one's complete head in water Remaining in Janabat or Haidh or Nifas till the Adhan for Fajr prayers (viii) Enema with liquids Vomiting"And what, Alim," Samad had inquired, dismayed, 'if he is not fasting?"The old scholar looked grave. "Ibn "Umar was asked about it and is reported to have answered:
it is nothing except the rubbing of the male member until its water comes out. It is only a nerve that one kneads."Samad had taken heart at this, but the Alim continued. "However, he answered in another report:
it has been forbidden that one should have intercourse with oneself.""But which is the correct belief? Is it hal al or hara am There are some who say ..." Samad had begun sheepishly, "To the pure all things are pure. If one is truthful and firm in oneself, it can harm nobody else, nor offend .. ."But the Alim laughed at this. "And we know who they are. Allah have pity on the Anglicans!
Samad, when the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intellect go away," said the Alim, shaking his head. "And one third of his religion. There is an hadith of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon Him! it is as follows: O Allah, I seek refuge in you from the evil of my hearing, of my sight, of my tongue, of my heart, and of my private parts.""But surely .. . surely if the man himself is pure, then ' "Show me the pure man, Samad! Show me the pure act! Oh, Samad Miah .. . my advice to you is stay away from your right hand."Of course. Samad, being Samad, had employed the best of his Western pragmatism, gone home and vigorously tackled the job with his functional left hand, repeating To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure, until orgasm finally arrived: sticky, sad, depressing. And that ritual continued for some five years, in the little bedroom at the top of the house where he slept alone (so as not to wake Alsana) after crawling back from the restaurant at three in the morning each and every morning; secretly, silently; for he was, believe it or not, tortured by it, by this furtiveyanking and squeezing and spilling, by the fear that he was not pure, that his acts were not pure, that he would never be pure, and always his God seemed to be sending him small signs, small warnings, small curses (a urethra infection, 1976, castration dream, 1978, dirty, encrusted sheet discovered but misunderstood by Alsana's great-aunt, 1979) until 1980 brought crisis point and Samad heard Allah roaring in his ear like the waves in a conch-shell and it seemed time to make a deal.
Can't say fairer than that The deal was this: on i January 1980, like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that they can have chocolate, Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal, a business proposition, that he had made with God: Samad being the party of the first part, God being the sleeping partner. And since that day Samad had enjoyed relative spiritual peace and many a frothy Guinness with Archibald Jones; he had even developed the habit of taking his last gulp looking up at the sky like a Christian, thinking: I'm basically a good man. I don't slap the salami. Give me a break. I have the odd drink. Can't say fairer than that.. .
But of course he was in the wrong religion for compromises, deals, pacts, weaknesses and can't say fairer than that. He was supporting the wrong team if it was empathy and concessions he wanted, if he wanted liberal exegesis, if he wanted to be given a break. His God was not like that charming white-bearded bungler of the Anglican, Methodist or Catholic churches. His God was not in the business of giving people breaks. The moment Samad set eyes on the pretty red-haired music teacher Poppy Burt Jones that July of 1984, he knew finally the truth of this. He knew his God was having his revenge, he knew the game was up, he saw that the contract had been broken, and the sanity clause did not, after all, exist, that temptation had been deliberately and maliciously thrown in his path. In short, all deals were off.