Tabish Khair - How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position

“Nothing, Ravi. They were all lovely young ladies. They were just not my type.”

“You mean there is no one in this fucking country who has ever moved your fancy? You know you are one picky Paki, pardner!”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“What is it that you mean, then?”

“Have I told you this joke about the man who was looking for a perfect girlfriend?”

“Don’t switch the topic, bastard!”

“Listen. Ok? There is this man. He never dates a girl more than once. He goes on a date and never calls up that girl again. His doting mother is worried. She wants to be upgraded to granny. Go on, son, she urges him, find me a daughter-in-law soon. I will, I will, mom, the son replies, I am just waiting for my perfect woman. One evening he returns from a date and announces that he has found his perfect woman and that, actually, he is going to see her again the next night. Hallelujah, exclaims the mom. The next night she lights candles and stays up. The son is back early, looking morose. What’s wrong, son, says mummy, seeing her promotion to granny receding, I thought you had found your perfect woman. I did, mom, replies the son, but you see, she is looking for her perfect man.”

“So, who is this perfect woman of yours who rejected you, you poor Paki?”

“No perfect woman, Ravi; like houries, they do not exist… but of course, one meets women one likes who are obviously not interested.”

“Nah!” he replied, shaking his head. “There are ways out of such dilemmas, mostly.”

“For you, perhaps…”

“For everyone. Now you name me one woman you like, even vaguely, and who you think is not interested.”

I named one of his colleagues in the history department, a recently divorced mother of one.

“Ms. Linen Marx!” exclaimed Ravi. “Never dreamed you fancied Miss Linen Marx!”

Ravi always called her Miss Linen Marx because she wore only cotton and linen garments and was, according to Ravi, the only Danish academic under fifty who had actually read Karl Marx.

He mulled over my revelation.

“I see,” he hummed and hawed, “I see… Yes, bastard, that might be a hard nut to crack.”

There, I retorted.

“For you, bastard. Because you see, O Eng Lit Type, thou typically dost not usest thine imagination…”

But he let the matter rest after that. Or so I thought.

Great Claus had not forgotten his promise to thank us with a “pucca mughlai dinner” for the night he had spent in Ravi’s room. That month, he finally found a weekend evening—I think it was a Sunday—when Karim was not working and Ravi and I were free.

It was uncommon to find Ravi free in the evenings now. He was usually with Lena. Sometimes, when they went out in a group, I would join them. But, by and large, our evenings out were getting to be rare. Not that I minded: he was so obviously in love; both of them were. And I was trying to complete an academic study: a book on the impact of English Romanticism on Urdu literature in the nineteenth century. With tenure not in sight, I knew that I would have to start applying for jobs soon—and I needed a second scholarly book to stand a chance anywhere outside Denmark.

But that Sunday evening, all three of us were free and, as arranged, we knocked on Claus and Pernille’s door at six o’clock sharp. We were carrying a bouquet and a box of chocolates between us. As Karim was going to be there, we could obviously not have brought a bottle or two of wine. Claus insisted on cooking halal and not serving alcohol in the presence of Karim: it was not the first time Claus and Pernille had hosted a dinner for him. I am certain Karim would not have eaten with people who took such matters lightly.

We had been to Claus and Pernille’s flat before, but only for a drink or a coffee. This was the first time we were able to lounge around and look at the flat. It was a tastefully furnished place, with sleek metal and glass furniture and a large shiny kitchen that drew sincere praise even from Ravi. There were batik hangings on the walls and expensive reproductions of paintings. Even I could identify one of the limited-edition reproductions—the large-skulled and bloat-bellied man in a watery setting was unmistakable—as a painting by Michael Kvium. Ravi, who knew more about Danish art than I did, located other names—including an original canvas by Martin Bigum, whom I had not heard of.

Pernille and Claus had the kind of flat one associates with younger yuppie types, singles or willfully childless couples: immaculate, full of modern shiny furniture and expensive art objects. It seemed discrepant: they were people who had reared two children and, in their dress and appearance, looked like typical parents in their fifties. It was not the first time I wondered at the difference between what we seem to be and what we are to ourselves. Or is this too something that I think of now, penning down this account with all the advantages of hindsight?

Though Claus made an effort to be hearty (and he had cooked up a tropical storm of north Indian dishes from a cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey), the dinner was less than cheerful. Their twin daughters made an appearance, but just at the dining table. They had always struck me as among those surprising kids that Danish families produce: the ones who do not seem to feel any need to rebel against their parents or their values. Denmark, Ravi and I agreed on this, is particularly good at this—and though Ravi considered it a frighteningly conservative aspect of the country, I was not so sure. It is rare today to find parents and children sharing a space not riven with tensions and silences. Surely there must be something to admire in that.

But the dinner was shot through with tension. Much of it was aimed at Claus. The daughters hardly spoke to him over the table, and Pernille’s remarks to him were sometimes laced with acid. Claus’s usual repertoire of jokes—always well-meaning but seldom hilarious—fractured on the stone of his family’s refusal to be humored and Karim’s lack of interest in punch lines.

“Why doesn’t the West eat with its fingers?” asked Claus, serving the Mughlai Murgh. He answered the question in the next breath: “Because its hands are not clean.” His daughters and wife did not even look up from their plates; Karim managed a feeble smile only in order to emulate our effort.

Even Ravi, with the elegant magnanimity that enabled him to turn other people’s embarrassment into jokes aimed at himself, could not always save the situation. We left early.

Going down the stairs, Karim Bhai, who knew more about our neighbors than he appeared to, commented on the matter.

“I don’t understand Claus,” he remarked, “I do not understand why he is behaving like this.”

I was surprised. It had appeared to me that poor Claus had been at the receiving end all evening, and that he had treated his family with much consideration despite the provocations. Karim Bhai obviously knew more, but he was not the type of person who would gossip. And Ravi, who might have drawn the information out of him on some earlier occasion, was too happily lost in Lena now to have much time for the inquisitive aunts in himself.

We still had a lot to discover, and not least about Karim Bhai.

Why does this memory come back to me, almost entirely, exactly in this part of my attempt to recollect and understand what really happened to all of us?

I think I have already said that I almost never attended Karim Bhai’s Quran sessions on Fridays. But sometimes I waited for Ravi to finish with them, and once or twice—when we had appointments elsewhere—even went in to fetch him. This must have been one of those times. I am not absolutely certain, but I remember Karim Bhai—he always sat in the left corner of his sagging sofa—and a crowd of serious young faces around him. And I can, at this moment, distinctly recall what he was saying, as I waited for Ravi to get up and leave with me.