Hanif Kureishi: The Black Album

RiazThank you. I too have learned.

Chad( to Shahid ) I am hearing every moment of your soul cry. Call me Chad.

They embrace .

( To Riaz .) We need to sort things for the meeting.

RiazHat’s papa doesn’t want us to meet in his café any more.

ChadBut Tahira’s bringing all the petitioners there!

RiazTell her to delay until we find another place — I have too many petitions and letters to work on for everyone to meet in my room.

ShahidYou can meet here.

Riaz( delighted ) Al-hum du’lilla — you are a Pakistani at heart!

ShahidI’ll just put my books and Prince collection away and –

Chad( quickly ) You say Prince?

ShahidYeh, I’ve got all his records — even the Black Album .

ChadNo way, man — I mean brother — that bootleg.

ShahidPicked it up in Camden Market.

ChadRight. Right. It good for bootlegs.

ShahidWant it?

ChadNever! We are slaves to Allah! He the only one we must submit to.

ShahidIt’s only music.

RiazOnly those who purify themselves can escape it.

Chad( to Shahid ) The brother mean your soul — you got to clean yourself inside from all that white shit.

ShahidPrince is black.

ChadThere’s more to life than entertaining ourselves! Brother, you got a lot to learn.

Riaz gets up .

The brother need fresh air. We all do. Phew.

RiazWe are pleased to have you with us.

They leave .

Shahid returns to his computer. Music. The college bell rings .

Morning. A run-down, inner-city further education college. Noisy class. Wolf whistles and comments fly as Deedee strides through the room .

DeedeeOur subject today is the Black struggle in America –

Various excited comments fly around the class .

— as reflected in popular culture.

She clicks on a slide: a photo of young Emmett Till. Comments fly around on the look of this young, fresh-faced Black young man .

Fifteen-year-old Emmett Till — a boy living in Chicago in the 1950s. One day, he went to visit his relatives who lived in a small town in Mississippi. On the High Street, he saw a young white woman –

Someone in class lets out a wolf whistle .

Stop that! He did it for a dare. That night, the woman’s husband and brother paid him a visit. They took him to a warehouse, broke his wrists and ankles, gouged out his left eye and shot him through the head. Then, they tied his neck to a seventy-pound fan used for winnowing cotton and dumped the body in a nearby river — where it was found by fishermen three days later. This is what Emmett Till looked like after his trip to the South.

She clicks on another slide — photo of Emmett Till in his coffin .

Emmett Till’s mother wanted the whole world to see what had been done to her baby. So she insisted on an open coffin at his funeral.

TahiraHow did the whites react?

DeedeeMany accused her of being eager for publicity –

TahiraThat’s blaspheming, right?

DeedeeOnly in the sense that it blasphemed the reality of what happened to her son.

TahiraSo the blasphemers were racists?

DeedeeYou could say that.

She starts another set of slides, depicting the Civil Rights movement and popular Black musicians, writers, sportsmen and other artists .

I want you to focus on the extraordinary creativity that emerged from America by artists questioning segregation.

ShahidHow’s the music of Prince relate to the Black struggles, miss?

TahiraPrince? He’s a total dushman!

HatYeah — he ain’t apna.

DeedeeGood question, Shahid. We’ll make that the assignment for next week — how Black musicians responded to racism.

TahiraWhy you shoving us always to music and them fripperies — what about the Nation of Islam?

DeedeeLet’s have an essay from you on Malcolm X and how the Nation of Islam helped in the Black struggles, Tahira — when you can get your head out of Khalil Gibran. The rest, concentrate on Black musicians. On my desk by next week. And as the mathematicians say, go forth and multiply.

Hat( emulating a move of Michael Jackson’s ) Thriller! I’m bad!

Tahira whacks him. Laughter from the class as they disperse while Deedee picks out Shahid .

DeedeeWhy do you like Prince?

ShahidWell, the sound.

DeedeeAnything else?

ShahidHe’s black.

DeedeeAnd half white, half man, half woman –

ShahidHalf size –

DeedeeFeminist –

ShahidBut macho too.

DeedeeHe can play soul and funk –

ShahidAnd rock and rap.

DeedeeHow are you coping?

ShahidNever been so alone before. But I’ve run into people who excite me. Your lectures fire me up to spend the time reading and writing.

DeedeeYou’re a good student.

Shahid( diffident ) Could you — have a look at something I’ve written? About a friend?

Deedee( offhand ) How sad! ( Beat .) Some of my other students are coming by later to eat and talk — why don’t you join us? You can pore through my Prince videos.

ShahidI’d like that. Thank you.

Deedee pulls from her bag a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and hands it to Shahid .

DeedeeHave you read this?

Shahid( taking it ) Oh wow! Just the writer I’ve been talking about with my friends! Thanks.

He heads off to the canteen with the book. She lingers, watching him as he joins Riaz, who is in discussion with Brownlow, flanked by Chad, Hat and Tahira .

RiazCommunism has been a good idea to bring into the world, Dr Brownlow. But its repressive championing of atheism goes against fundamental human impulses, don’t you think?

ChadRight. Atheism only a tiny minority thing. Like transvestism.

BrownlowY-y-you are confusing the p-p-practice with the ideal. That’s like equating the Ch-Ch-Church with the Bible.

RiazThe idea can only be as good as the practice. You have to admit Communism everywhere has failed to wipe out the base human disease of racism. Without God people think they can sin with impunity. There is no morality.

ChadOnly extremity, ingratitude, hard-heartedness, like Thatcherism.

RiazCapitalism in a nutshell, will you agree, Dr Brownlow?

BrownlowOh, wh-wh-wholeheartedly! Her destruction of the working classes is one of the crimes of the century.

ChadThey been saying God dead. But it being the other way round. Without the creator no one knows where they are or what they doing.

RiazAllah-u-Akbar!

Deedee leaves .