Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

Miriam had thought we could live in Pakistan a while, get a job, save a bit, hang out on the beach and deal hash, and so on. But in little less than a month, the whole thing had become impossible. We were too alien; there was no way we could fit in. There were American and British wives living there, but they had gone native, wearing the clothes, doing the accent, trying to learn the language in order to speak to the servants.

Outside, if Miriam wasn’t covered, she was jeered and hissed at. They even pinched her. She picked up fruit from stalls and threw it at people. I was terrified she’d get into a fistfight or worse. I kept my head down, but Miriam, being a modern woman of the most extreme kind, fucked them all up. Our grandmother, the Princess, had already gone to her, placed her hand on her forehead and said, “I’m going to recite a small prayer which will drive out the devil and the evil spirits which possess you. Satan be off! Give us victory over those who disbelieve!” The following morning she had two sheep slaughtered. The meat was distributed among the poor, who were asked to pray for Miriam’s quick recovery.

It all blew up at Papa’s flat one morning when I heard a commotion in the sitting room. There were raised voices. Then I heard what sounded like a large object being thrown across the floor. I guessed the large object might be Papa. When I ran in, followed by the servant, Miriam was sitting on Papa, rather as she used to sit on me, screaming at him. He was trying to protect his face as well as trying to strike her. She was strong and difficult to pull off. There was something she wanted to tell him.

“He’s been abusing me!” she said as we held her, trying to pin her arms behind her back. Papa was dusting himself down. Then I saw that she had spat at him, that her spittle was on his face. He took his handkerchief and cleaned himself.

She said, “He says I kiss the arse of whitey! He calls me ‘a rotten girl’ and a dirty slut who can’t behave! Yet he left us there in London! He abandoned us! What could be worse than that!”

“Get out,” cried Papa in a weak voice. He went into another room and shut the door.

It was the last time we saw him.

Dad must have spoken to Yasir. When we got back to his house, we were informed that we were leaving later, around one in the morning. We were not given any choice. The servants were already packing our bags. No one said goodbye or waved. We weren’t allowed to say goodbye to the girls.

The funny thing was, we spotted Miriam’s lover, the pilot, going through the crew lane in the airport. Later, during the flight, he came to collect her. Apparently she “guided the plane.” A packed 747 with Miriam at the wheel, sitting on the pilot’s knee with, no doubt, her hand in his fly.

Mother had wanted us to see Father “in his own environment.” She thought it would be informative. It was. We could no longer idealise him. In most ways he was worse off than us. He couldn’t save us, nor us him. He couldn’t be the father we had wanted him to be. If I wanted a father, I’d have to find a better one.

By the time we returned to London, Miriam and I weren’t speaking. I hated her and didn’t want to see her again. I didn’t want to be the little brother anymore. Usually I’m quite passive, if not evasive. I go along with things to see what’s happening, not wanting to make things worse by tossing my chilies into the stew. But I had said to Miriam, as we left Papa’s, that she had ruined the whole trip.

“No wonder Papa thinks you’re an idiot and a bitch,” I explained. “You can’t control yourself for five minutes! These people have their own way of life, and you just pissed all over it! There can be few people in this world who are more selfish than you!”

She was so sullen and freaked, traumatised, I supposed, that she couldn’t even hit me. It occurred to me that she’d either damage herself in some way or go back on the smack.

We rode back into London on the tube. The little houses and neat gardens sitting there in the cold looked staid, cute, prim. Saying nothing, hating everything, we both had furious eyes. This was our land, and it was where we had to live. All we could do now was get on with our lives-or not. At Victoria Station the two of us parted without speaking. I went home to Mum, and Miriam went to stay with someone who had a council flat in North Kensington.

I knew that, whatever happened, I needed to get a job. Luckily, I had a friend from university who was working in the British Library, and he said he could get me something there.

The one person I didn’t expect to see again was Najma, but she did turn up a year later in Britain and rang Mother, asking for me. For a moment, in my confusion and with Mum’s lack of clarity-“an Indian girl phoned”-I thought it was Ajita. I began to cry with relief. She hadn’t forgotten me, she was coming back.

Najma had married a Pakistani who came here to study engineering, and the two of them were living in Watford with twins. I went out to see them a few times.

One kid had a fever, and the other was perhaps a little backward. The couple had been racially harassed, knew no one and the husband was out all day. Najma would cook for me; she knew I loved her food, and we’d sit together, chastely, while she talked of everything she missed “back home.” Exiled, she continued to curse the West for its immorality while blaming it for failing to dispense its wealth to her family with the alacrity her fantasies demanded.

I took the husband out for a drink and had to listen to him complaining about the excessive price of prostitutes in Britain.

I could only say that Britain might turn out to be more expensive than he thought.

Henry had been getting into trouble, and the trouble was spreading, drawing us all in.

On my answering machine there was a message from his daughter, Lisa. Soon there were two messages. She didn’t want to see me, she had to see me. As insistent as the rest of her family, like them she expected to get her way. I was busy with patients and with Rafi, but being stupidly curious, I invited her for tea.

I’d always enjoyed hearing of her adventures from Henry, and over the years I’d run into her occasionally, usually with her brother. As a child she’d always been surrounded by artistic and political people, picketing the Sunday Times building at Wapping in 1986 and staying at Greenham Common at the weekends. She’d had an expensive education before going to Sussex University to read sociology.

With such a pedigree, how could she do anything else but drop out just before her finals in order to live in a tree situated on the route of a proposed motorway? Henry could hardly object. Hadn’t he taken her to march with E. P. Thompson and Bruce Kent against nuclear weapons? Nevertheless, when she did climb down from the tree, Henry took it for granted she’d return to “ordinary” life. He or Valerie would ring one of their friends, and her career would begin.

But she became a social worker at the lowest level, visiting mad, old alcoholic men and women on her bicycle, refusing to “section” people because it entailed forcibly taking them into psychiatric care. She left home to live on a druggie single-mother estate. Her flat was at the top of the block, with an extensive view over Richmond Park, and she filled it with Palestinians and other refugees. On occasions she threw paint at McDonald’s or raided shops for pornography, filling up bags with the stuff. “I hope it’s going to the unemployed,” murmured Henry.

These actions weren’t considered far-out among the bohemian young, for whom unconventional behaviour was compulsory. Henry considered her a successful extension of himself. But he did worry, saying, “My daughter is still the sort of person who might seek a position as a human shield. How come she took the sins of the world on her shoulders? Where did this guilt and masochism come from? As long as her fury is directed at herself, everyone’s fine. When it’s coming towards you, you better watch out!”