Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

We stroked one another; I began to relax, able, at last, to consider what I had seen earlier, and how Mustaq’s people had obtained the television documentary in which Ajita’s father had appeared, made in the mid-70s, just before the strike.

Tatty old buildings and old-fashioned cars on empty roads; workers with 70s layered and feathered hair, wearing wide-lapelled jackets and brown flares; everyone smoking, as people did then, on buses, trains, aeroplanes, even on television. A voice-over: the upper-class “Communist” explaining the exploitation-“As always it is the workers who bear the burden of others’ ambition.”

There he was, the old man, Ajita’s father, with his son’s mouth, and looking younger than me, with darker hair, and with a touching enthusiasm and belief in the opportunities and equality here. A man talking about his family and wanting to do well in England.

In the background of one of the shots inside the factory, I could see Ajita and Mustaq-not yet twenty-talking with an employee. At one moment the father turned to the camera and seemed to gaze through it innocently, into my eyes, those of his killer-as if he already knew I was waiting for him with a knife.

The mousetrap had slammed down on me: the whole picture had darkened in front of my eyes until I believed there was a fault with the TV. But the weakness had been in me, and I couldn’t take anymore.

Lucy and I were almost asleep when the Harridan barged into the room. She recognised me and moderated her tone.

“But this ain’t no knockin’ shop,” she said as we were hurried downstairs.

“No,” I said sleepily. “At least there you’d know the price.”

“Why, what has happened?” I asked on the telephone. “Is it serious?”

There had been a power surge, I was told by a patient who phoned to explain why she would be late. The Underground system had broken down; the buses had stopped anywhere. The city had come to a standstill. Outside, apparently, it was chaos.

Between patients I sat in front of the TV, waiting for news. The truth was slow to emerge, but we learned it later that day. Four explosives, hidden in plastic food containers in backpacks, had been set off by suicide bombers in central London, three on the tube and one on a bus in Tavistock Square. The number of dead and injured was yet to be counted.

That beautiful London square was where Ajita, Valentin and I had attended many philosophy lectures. We drank wine and ate sandwiches there, on the grass, discussing the idiosyncrasies of the lecturers. It was where Dickens wrote Bleak House, and Woolf Three Guineas; where Lenin stayed, and the Hogarth Press published James Strachey’s Freud translations in the basement of number 52. There is also a plaque to commemorate conscientious objectors in the First World War, as well as another for the victims of Hiroshima, along with a statue of Gandhi.

My patients referred to the events as “our 9/11.” The hospitals began to accept the legions of injured even as unspeakable infernos blazed beneath the city. That day and night we were haunted by TV images of sooty injured figures with bloodied faces, devastated in their blamelessness, being led through dark, blasted tunnels under our pavements and roads, while others screamed. Who were they? Did we know any of them?

Two days later I learned that the Mule Woman-who Henry’s son, Sam, still saw occasionally-had been killed in the King’s Cross bomb.

Henry was on the phone continually. I didn’t mention my little passion for the Mule Woman, but in my mind I went over the evening we’d spent together. Henry insisted we go together to “the Cross” to lay flowers. “Oh, England, England,” he moaned. I had never heard him use those words unironically. He was very gloomy and agitated about the deaths, and also about the attitude of Lisa.

“I can’t bear to hear what she has to say.”

“Like what?”

“‘Why would a young articulate kid, from a decent family, well-educated and intelligent, with everything in front of him, become a zealot destroying thousands of lives? I’m thinking of Tony Blair, of course.’” He went on: “It must be the first joke she has made. Otherwise, she is almost triumphalist over the bombing. Not only does she claim to have predicted it, not only does she see it as just retribution, but she seems to think Bush-Blair will learn his lesson at last. And if he doesn’t, there’ll be more bombs.

“But I am different, Jamal. For years when we were young and not so young we worshipped revolutionaries, anyone who had the courage to act authentically. We weren’t the only ones. Nietzsche, Sartre and Foucault-who idealised the Iranian revolution-were our exemplars. But there’s nothing glorious about any of it to me, now.

“For our convenience, wars are usually held far away. But remember the Falklands, and how foul this land was with jingoism-the pubs covered in flags, the landlords crowing? This is worse. Like you, I am bitterly disillusioned and confused, Jamal. Didn’t we grow up on radical Third World movements, from Africa and South America-and now the rebels, the oppressed, are killing us, from the far religious Right! Don’t you ever feel you don’t know what’s going on in the world?

“How can I stop thinking about the horror of those bomb-blasted trains, the ruined bodies, the cries and moans and screams, which segue, in my head at least, into the diabolical killing of civilians in Baghdad-severed heads, blood underfoot, children eviscerated, limbs blown into trees. Could only Goya grasp it? Why are we making this happen?”

He wanted to do something. Henry and Miriam were planning to visit the Mule Woman’s parents in the country, if Sam gave permission. “We’re going to weep with them,” Miriam informed me. “Will you join us?”

“I’m already weeping.”

In the week after the attacks Henry insisted I join him on long walks about the chaotic, almost apocalyptic capital, taking pictures and looking at others who were also frightened, dismayed, angry. Police cars and ambulances rushed about; the sound of the sirens was abysmal. All day and night police helicopters thrashed above the damaged metropolis.

During those demon days, it was difficult for me to work. Many tubes were closed and buses not running. Patients turned up late or not at all. It was tough and unpleasant to move about. Huge police in body armour-looking like pumped-up characters from video games-cradled machine guns at railway stations and outside the tubes.

I was aware of others’ eyes on me as I entered tube trains wearing a backpack. Opening it to take out my book was invariably entertaining. Dark-skinned people were searched at random; an innocent man was pursued through a tube station and shot-was it six, seven or eight times?-in the head at point-blank range, by our defenders. Everyone was frightened, the patients disturbed. If there was a bang outside, they jumped on the couch.

Not that I saw any signs of hatred, or even of antagonism, myself. Mosques were not torched, though they were protected by the police; Muslims were not attacked. Nor were there any flags, as there would have been in the US. Being bombed didn’t stimulate British patriotism. The city was neither united or disunited. Londoners were intelligently cynical and were quite aware-they always had been-that Blair’s deadly passion for Bush would cost them. They would wait for Blair to go-after many more deaths-and then they would sweep the front step.

Henry was incensed that Blair refused to accept that his own “massive acts of violence” had anything to do with the murderous response; another example, according to Henry, of Blair refusing to bear responsibility for what he had done. Henry called it “moral childishness.”