Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

I learned much simply by keeping one ear on the two men discussing the work as they went along, while I went about my own tasks. In fact, I think overhearing is quite possibly the only honest way to make the acquaintance of anyone. We may never know who someone is, but at least we have some sense of how he behaves with us, through our engagements with him. Eavesdropping is undoubtedly useful, where some or other information is sought, but the accidental eavesdrop, such as might be afforded on coming down the stairs in the morning in the home of a friend one is visiting — this kind of domestic eavesdrop can be illuminating in another way. Standing there in midstep, one knee cocked, one hand on the banister, while overhearing one’s friend talking to his wife, one gains an impression of something rare: how the friend relates to another in the world, in one’s absence. That self is never apparent in any direct conversation, for one cannot have a conversation without influencing the stance of one’s interlocutor. In conversation, I only see the man as he presents himself to me, as he responds within the present and history that there is between him and me. We are not each one person but number at least as many as those whom we know. What one hears upon eavesdropping might shock or titillate, since it is always illicit, always a stolen property, always guaranteed the character of the forbidden. Yet against the light of day, what one has heard may emerge as little more than the revelation of one’s own self, the reality that discloses itself only when regard for oneself and for how one is perceived is removed from the act of listening or watching. How else to account for that disturbing sensation of witnessing the independent existence of another human being whom one knows only in direct engagement? And how else to make sense of the disquiet than to confront the self-centeredness it exposes? If there is indeed honesty in that moment of eavesdropping, doesn’t it spring from one’s absence, which frees one to listen without the din of one’s own ego?

On day three, as I came up the stairs with a tray bearing three mugs of tea and a plate of custard creams, I heard Bill talking to Dave.

Paki-man is fitting in well. Gets stuck in, he said.

Nice boy, said Dave.

Speak of the devil, here’s our Paki-man, said Bill, seeing me standing in the doorway.

Now let’s have that tea.

They downed their tools.

Dave made eye contact with me.

Bill, I don’t think our new friend likes being called Paki-man.

No? Why’s that, then? asked Bill, as he dunked a custard cream in his tea.

I wasn’t sure if he was asking Dave or me.

I suppose, said Dave, some people might construe it as derogatory, offensive, even.

This was in 1987, before Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses was published, before people took to the streets to burn a book many had never read. My own father would say he refused to read a book that corrupted people with its filthy blasphemy.

So does that mean, responded Bill, that I should not use a word because someone might take offense?

Bill, said Dave, unless you were born yesterday, you must know “Paki” is rather a charged word. You don’t need a PhD in sociology to know that, do you?

Do you know about the Redskins? asked Bill.

I don’t suppose you mean the American football team?

Correct. I don’t mean the American football team, which, by the way, could be called an American American football team. I mean the Redskins band, I mean the Redskins movement, I mean left-wing skinheads.* A skinhead today is linked with far-right extremism — at least in the public imagination. See a skinhead on the street, and if you’re black — or brown like our friend here — you’d be shit scared, you’d feel threatened, maybe even insulted without a word being traded.

I see where you’re going with this, said Dave.

Exactly. The Redskins couldn’t be further from neo-Nazis politically, but by adopting the same appearance and dress as right-wing thugs, they undermine what skinhead means.

And, said Dave, completing Bill’s line of argument, if more people become aware of this, then a skinhead walking down the street is less likely to cause others to feel threatened.

Exactly.

So a word can mean exactly what you want it to mean, said Dave.

Exactly, Alice.

But, I interjected, you’ve just shown the opposite, haven’t you?

How’s that? asked Bill.

Well, the real skinheads, the original ones, wanted it to mean one thing, but if the band is effective in redefining the meaning of skinhead , then the original skinheads can’t have it their way. They can’t have skinhead mean what they want it to mean.

The two men exchanged looks, as if each sought confirmation from the other.

So maybe words, I continued, can’t mean exactly what you want them to mean. Not for long, anyway.

I suppose that’s right, said Dave.

Are you offended? asked Bill.

I’m troubled — I was troubled. I wasn’t sure where you were coming from, but I think that just watching where you were going with it has made me less troubled. Not troubled at all, in fact.

Not offended? asked Dave.

I didn’t like what I was hearing, not at first, but now I don’t mind at all, I said.

In fact, I couldn’t help smiling. Perhaps I was too young, with too limited an experience of the world to fully grasp how unusual the scene before me was, but it had an inherent comedy about it, the very different registers between their work and their banter. The conversation between the two men carried on and I pitched in once or twice. It ranged from the question of banning the use of certain words and the degree to which one ought to consider other people’s feelings, to questions of free speech and the cost of limiting one’s vocabulary.

When the custard creams were finished, I gathered the mugs onto a tray.

Then, abruptly, Bill turned to me: Hang on a moment! How exactly should I pronounce your name?

Zafar, I said.

Zafar, where are you from?

Willesden, I said.

Of course you are, said Bill, smiling at me. As English as Admiral Lord bloody Nelson himself, the Duke of Bronté of the Kingdom of Sicily. But where were you born?

Bangladesh.

The two men looked at each other.

Bill, he’s not a Paki, then, after all.

Indeed he is not, replied Bill. Zafar, our apologies are in order. A Paki comes from Pakistan. You, my boy, are from Bangladesh, and as anyone who watched George Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh will tell you, Bangladesh — or should I say East Pakistan, as it was then? — Bangladesh didn’t fight a bloody war with Pakistan just to have the likes of us calling its good people Pakis. You, in short, are not a Paki-man.

I was shaking my head with disbelief. It was presumptuous of me, but I wondered how two carpenters from Essex could know the story of a small country on the other side of the planet, a place dismissed by Henry Kissinger as an “international basket case.” They could not have known of the four happy years that I carried in me. I felt connected to these two men from the edge of London and to the world they inhabited because they knew about Bangladesh, knew even about its liberation war. Bill hadn’t described it as a “civil war”; it was never an internal war. Whether it was deliberate or not, I could have hugged him for that tiny accuracy.

As I started toward the doorway, tray of empty mugs in hand, Bill called out.

I’ve got it!

He glanced at Dave and then looked at me again.

Anglo-Banglo, he said. That’s what you are.

* * *

For five days, I listened to these two men working away, and in good spirits I did all the grunt work. I watched and learned.