Hanif Kureishi - Collected Essays

My children are unfamiliar with what we call ‘the country’. When, one night, the hotel sprinkler system begins to hiss, they assume their room is being attacked by snakes. Their favourite place is anywhere with a mirror, and their idea of a good time is lying in a darkened room watching Sumo wrestling on Euro-Sport. They are capitalism’s finest — perfect disciples and consumers: wishing, buying, envying: it is all aimed at them. I wouldn’t want them to be excluded from the general orgy, nor for them to think it is all there is. But I know they will not want to miss the Manchester United — Newcastle match.

We drive along perilous coastal roads to the other, flatter side of the island, where, we have heard, the British gather; many of them have opened bars there. Many of them, I can see by looking along the beach, have read the Da Vinci Code.

In the car the twins are edgy and anxious, unimpressed by the precipitous views; next week they will begin at a new secondary school, an altogether bigger leap. If you have the misfortune to live with all your children, you won’t know the pain of having them enter and leave your life abruptly and often. These long drives are a good opportunity for us to talk, and for them to hear me and what I want of them. They’re even interested in what I might be writing next. They are surprised and not reassured to hear my theory that the worst bit of life is probably the beginning rather than the end.

We stop to eat at Es Guix, an old Majorcan property in the Sierra Tramuntana mountains, converted into a spacious restaurant. The lowest of its terraces has its own freshwater pool; after lunch the boys shoot down the slide into the freezing water, bobbing up under a waterfall, their bright faces howling in the natural shower.

The game has just started when we hurry into a British bar which has a large TV. The place is full of tattooed beasts in Newcastle shirts accompanied by robust pierced mingers in tiny bikinis talking on mobile phones. The staff are wearing England shirts with their black eyes; for some reason most of them have bits of sticking plaster on their faces.

‘We’re Manchester United,’ one of my sons fatally announces, stripping off his hoodie to reveal his Man Utd away shirt. ‘Only a little bit,’ I say, in an extremely high voice. Unfortunately we win the match two nil, but are moving rapidly and soundlessly towards the door when I pick up a sun hat from a table, stuffing it into the front of my trousers, believing it to be my little boys.’

Outside, my progress is blocked by a large man standing in front of me. ‘You got my ’at,’ he says. ‘Oh no, sir, surely not. I am hatless as well as quite ill.’ ‘What’s that then, right down the front of yer pants?’ ‘Oh yes, this little thing,’ I say, thrusting the hat at him, patting him on the back and legging it towards the car, the kids rushing ahead of me. ‘It probably wasn’t a good idea to tap on him like that,’ one of them says, wisely.

‘Never look back,’ I advise.

‘A paradise of tranquillity and relaxation,’ as our present hotel — La Reserva Rotana, in Manacor — characterises itself. It probably was, until the Kureishis arrived. It has cavernous rooms, huge beds, old paintings, its own vineyard and golf course, and there’s acres of space to chase chickens in; it has an outdoor chess set. Nearby there are monasteries, cathedrals, galleries, castles, gardens and lap dancers. We will be there for four days. This is some contrast to our first hotel, Ca’n Verdera, in the village of Fornalutx, which was compact, seemingly cut into the rock, weirdly and suddenly designed: post-modern in an old place. The Mediterranean, they say, is where all styles meet.

After this holiday I think the boys would want to go on a horse again, and they have even talked of taking up golf, after thrashing away with clubs one morning and shooting wildly across the course on a golf-cart. But kayaking wasn’t something we’d have thought of doing ourselves. We couldn’t even pronounce it. For me, usually, the point of a holiday is to be so indolent and bored that I can’t wait to get home and hide behind the curtains. It had never occurred to me to go on holiday and do new things . But our outings were organised by Jane Stanbury — soon known as ‘Indiana Jane’ — of Balearic Tours — who knew the place well and is aware that a bored boy is a bad boy.

In Majorca the water is clear and warm: the kids lie in the surf for ages, or put on masks and snorkel. They’ve never been so close to a live fish before, or swallowed so much sea. We are taken out in a small boat, passing huge yachts and looking back at expensive houses on the mountainside, with kids sitting out watching one another, and impatient fathers in Speedos talking on phones.

We were put on even smaller boats — kayaks. This is like being strapped to a lolly-stick and thrown into a flushing toilet. The moment the three boys were put into the sea, they took off, digging madly into the water with an oar which resembled a double-ended shovel, looking at the caves and the rocks which ran down the coast line. For them it was like riding a bicycle without stabilisers for the first time.

To be a tourist is to be behind glass, of course, protected from the real politics and pressures of the place you are visiting. But unlike with some Third World destinations, in Majorca you are not locked into some sort of compound surrounded by wire, while the rest of the population roams around outside, looking as though they can’t wait to get their fingers on your wind-pipe. The staff in the hotels are neither servile nor resentful. Majorca’s narrow roads are often congested with huge coaches, and soon the island will have to make many decisions about how far to go with tourism — whether that is the only purpose of the place. But until then the place is sublime, with far more to do than on most sand-and-sun destinations.

I follow the yelling boys up the steep path of a challenging hill. They want to get to the top; I want to sit down. They want to wait for me, but I tell them to go on, ahead of me. Next year I’ll be jumping off that rock, just watch me.

This winter we thought we’d go to Venice by train, for the adventure. Having become averse to travelling, the Kureishi family had taken its previous holiday in Watford and we were home in twenty minutes; indeed we could have commuted. Not only that, on checking into the Watford hotel we discovered Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard and John Terry playing Scrabble in a side-room. The England captain charmed our ten-year-old son, asking him his name before giving him his autograph. The kid was smart enough not to let on that we were Manchester United supporters.

This time, after taking the Eurostar to Paris and the Metro to the Gare Bercy, we joined the night train. I took two sleeping pills and, wearing all my clothes, slipped under the thin blanket on the bunk bed, thinking how lovely it was to lie there watching the landscape and the lights speeding by. An hour later I woke up to find the train had stopped in a station and a crowd of French clubbers were staring into our cabin.

Every time I peered down at my partner in her bunk, her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling. The restaurant car had been splendid, but we did wonder at the level of hygiene in the tiny cabin; it was not unlike sleeping in a public toilet with a great view of the Alps. Indeed, if you did happen to peer into the train toilet, you could see the ground below.

But we did wake up in Venice, the train almost tipping us into the Grand Canal. I’d never been here in the winter, and it was a different beauty, stark and fresh. The sun was bright and near the Rialto, not far from one of my favourite shops, the Beatles’ Memorabilia emporium, people were eating outside wearing sunglasses.