Brick Lane (25 page)

In prayer he does not falter, thought Nazneen. And she pleaded with herself to keep fast to the words.

'None is born of Him and neither is He born. There is none like unto Him.'

He bowed, hands on knees, straight back. She saw how well he moved. Twice more. It was he who moved, but she who felt dizzy.

Nazneen rolled up the mat and put it in the wardrobe. She would need it again soon but this setting straight was necessary. Later, when she changed the sheets after he had been, she remembered this action. She remembered it perfectly. In the only way that pain can be truly remembered, through a new pain.

He had packed the vests himself and he was waiting to go. He fiddled with the strap across his shoulder and he fingered the mobile. He began to leave and then he adjusted his bag again and he said, 'I want to ask you to come to something. A meeting.' He ran a hand over his hair. 'Please ask your husband. It's for all Muslims. We want everyone to be represented. And we don't have any older women.'

It was only after he had gone that she realized. He meant her as an older woman.

Of course she would not go. It was out of the question. she did not mention it to Chanu because there was no question of her going. There was no point in raising it.

On the day, she had little to do. She had finished her sewing in the night, moving between the kitchen to eat and the sitting room to work. She had gone into the bedroom and taken Chanu's book from the pillow. She had gone again and pulled up the bedclothes to hide his shoulders. A third time, she watched him from the door, and stepped out of the way when he stirred.

She was tired today but she was restless. The fridge was stacked with Tupperware and there was no real excuse to cook. She washed a few socks in the kitchen sink, and then she went out.

The meeting was in a low building at the edge of the estate. It had been built without concession to beauty and with the expectation of defilement. The windows were fixed with thick metal grilles that had never been opened and notices were screwed to the brickwork that read in English and Bengali:
Vandals will be Prosecuted.
This was pure rhetoric. The notices were scrawled over in red and black ink. One dangled by a single remaining screw. Someone had written in careful flowing silver spray over the wall,
Pakis.
And someone else, in less beautiful but confident black letters, had added,
Rule.
The doors were open and two girls in hijab went inside.

Nazneen, seeking cover, rushed to follow. Sunlight lit up the entrance but inside the hall was gloomy. The girls had gone straight to the front and were arranging themselves on chairs. Nazneen hesitated; she considered turning round. Nobody had seen her.

'Get on the train of repentance, sister, before it passes your station.'

Her mouth was full of saliva and she could not swallow.

A small young man with a scabrous-looking beard grinned at her. He was drowning in white panjabi-pyjama and he had a skullcap in his hands. He waved the skullcap at her. 'Welcome. You are welcome, sister. Go and sit down.'

She walked uncertainly past empty folding chairs. Four rows at the front were at best half full. Where to sit? Next to someone. Not a man. Not next to someone. Leave a seat between. It will look rude. No, it will look as though I am expecting someone to join me. My husband. But he won't come and then they will wonder about me. Talk. Even before I have left they will talk. She held on to the edge of a chair. She saw people indistinctly and she heard voices without hearing words.

He put his face in front of hers. He was saying something. Now he was pointing. 'Sit there,' Karim said. She sat down hard.

He walked to the front and jumped up on the small stage. He clapped his hands.

'Right,' he said. 'Thank you all for coming.'

She heard the door open. Now the same voice that had greeted her at the entrance. 'Get on the train of repentance, brother, before it passes your station.'

She allowed herself to look around. Mostly young men, jeans and trainers, a few kurtas, a handful of girls in hijab. Maybe twenty people.

'Right,' Karim said again. 'I shall ask our Secretary to read out the business for today. Anyone wants to add anything, please raise your hand.'

The small man with the ineffectual beard ran up from the back. 'Business of the day. Number one, name selection. Number two, mission statement. Number three, election of Board.'

Immediately a hand went up. The Secretary pointed to it. 'Yes?'

'Why don't we do this all in our own language?'

The Secretary grinned. He looked at Karim. 'Question from the floor. Do I allow it?'

Karim stood with his arms folded. 'I will answer. This meeting is open to all Muslims. I'm talking about the ummah here. Every brother and every sister, wherever they come from.'

The Questioner stood up and looked elaborately around the hall, even at the empty chairs.
'Ekhane amra shobai Bangali?
Anyone here not speak Bengali?'

There was a moment's silence before a chair scraped back and a black man in a wide-sleeved swirly-print shirt stood up. 'Do I look like a Bengali to you, brother?'

The Questioner showed his palms as if the game was up, and they both sat back down.

'OK,' said the Secretary. 'Name selection. Item one. I open it to the floor.'

'Muslim League!'

'United Muslim Action.'

'Muslim Front.'

The two girls whom Nazneen had seen coming in whispered behind their hands. Eventually one called out, 'Society of Muslim Youth, Tower Hamlets.'

The Secretary waved his arms. He dropped his skullcap, picked it up and thrust it in his pocket. 'Enough suggestions. We'll take a vote. What was the first one? Who made the first suggestion? Speak up.'

The Questioner jumped to his feet. 'This man is Secretary, but he takes no notes. It is totally un-Islamic'

The Secretary drew himself up to his full height. His small face bulged with indignation. 'Where does it say in the Qur'an anything about taking notes?'

'It is clear in the hadith and the sunnah that a man must take his responsibilities seriously.'

The Secretary wound himself up to reply. His beard quivered. The turn-up of one pyjama leg had come down and covered one foot entirely. Nazneen worked it out. His beard was too young to grow full.

Karim put a hand on the boy's shoulder. 'Get a pen and a pad. You will be in charge of keeping the record.'

There was some discussion then about whether the name of the group could be chosen without the purpose of the group being voted on first. The Secretary grew excited. As his excitement grew, so his pyjamas seemed also to grow until he became a thin voice squeaking inside a tent. 'It's the Agenda, man. We got to stick to the Agenda.'

Karim settled it. 'We'll take the name first. We all know what we are here for.'

There was a general, murmured agreement. Nazneen found herself joining in although she was only there because there was no sewing and no housework to be done.

He walked about the stage and she saw that it was a show of command. He stood at the edge of the stage and said, 'The Secretary has noted all your suggestions. I have another to add. The Bengal Tigers.'

There was a collective gasp, and the hijab girls raised their hands to their mouths for some more intensive whispering.

'Ben-gal Ti-gers,' shouted a young man in the front row. He punched the air with his fist in time to the syllables. 'Can I have that name for my band?'

The Questioner was on his feet again. 'Are we forgetting our non-Bengali brother here?'

Karim walked across the stage to stand in front of the swirly-shirt man. The Secretary followed, pad at the ready. 'I ain't meaning,' said Karim, 'to alienate you, man.'

The black man stood up and bowed deeply. 'Man, I think it is a
powerful
name. I gonna be proud to be a Bengal Tiger.'

The vote was taken and the motion carried (unanimously, said the Secretary, with one ununanimous vote against) and the meeting moved on to item two: mission statement.

Suggestions were shouted up from the floor while the Secretary scribbled on his pad. He sat on the edge of the stage now with his legs dangling and he chewed the end of his pen, just like Bibi. Karim remained standing, though every so often he moved about so that when he became still again he could plant his legs and fold his arms and show his strength anew. The girls in hijab had grown more relaxed. They no longer whispered but talked to each other without raising their hands. And they shouted out suggestions freely. 'Women's rights,' called one. 'Sex education for girls,' called the other. 'Got to put that in.' But she lowered her head immediately she had spoken, ducking out of it.

Karim called for a break and from somewhere a trolley was found, decked with white plastic cups. The girls placed themselves behind it and served. The young men took out their packets of Marlboros.

Directly in front of Nazneen, some lads had broken the line of chairs to form a sub-committee.

'They take down one of ours, right, we'll take down ten of theirs. Simple as that.'

'Burn their office. What we waiting for?'

'We don't know where it is.'

'They shouldn't come round here. What they doin' round here if they don't like it?'

'We don't want no trouble. But if they come asking, yeah, we'll give them what they want.'

'Few years ago – think about it – they'd never dare.'

'We was better organized.'

'Now we's too busy fighting each other.'

'Brick Lane Massive 'gainst the Stepney Green Posse.'

'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.'