Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

Ajita was late; I didn’t mind. I had become used to writing in cafés, which London was full of now-Henry called London “a city of waitresses.” Lately I had been reading everything about Islam, tearing articles out of the newspapers and keeping them in a file. Like many people, the entire time I had a debate going on in my head.

“You didn’t recognise me,” said Ajita, when at last she turned up, dressed like all the girls in a summer dress and flip-flops with a bag. “This might sound strange to you,” she said. “But I’ve been wearing the burqa and sitting over there, watching you send texts and talking to Josephine so warmly.”

“That was you?”

“There’s a verse in the Koran about it, which goes something like: ‘Tell thy wives and daughters to draw thy cloaks close around them.’”

“And that’s it?”

“It’s enough for the Hairy Men. I’ve been walking about the city in the burqa. The West End, the East End, Islington. To see how people regard me.”

“And?”

“There has been some curiosity and many hostile looks, as though people wonder whether I’m carrying a bomb. A man even said, ‘Your bomb looks big in that.’”

“Ha ha.”

“I am happy to be stopped by the police and searched, arrested even, like at the airport. I want to know what they think of us now. Don’t you get harassed?”

“The last time I went through Heathrow the guy at passport control said his wife had loved my last book.”

She said, “But this is what my father predicted. We would be victims, cattle, rounded up. We were never safe here. Now they have found good reason to hate us, to persecute us. I want to know what my people have to go through-”

“Your people?”

“Yes, the women you can’t see. People stare at you, they grunt and sigh-women mostly. The men don’t notice.”

I said, “Ajita, I liked you partly because of your colour-because it was like mine. But I’ve never thought of you as a Muslim.”

“Miriam and I have been talking about it.”

“You have?”

Henry had been talking about Ajita, and Miriam wanted to know her better. With my encouragement, Miriam had rung her at Mustaq’s and invited her for tea. I didn’t go, but I guessed they’d had plenty to say to each other. Miriam had shooed away the children and neighbours, and the meeting went on late into the evening.

Miriam had attempted to talk about me. She had shown Ajita photographs of Josephine and given her an account of our trip to Pakistan. Being Miriam, she’d also tried to find out what was between Ajita and me, but Ajita had given her nothing.

Miriam had told Ajita what she had told me: that the area where she lived was becoming more racist, with the victims this time being the Muslims. Muslim-or Mussie-was a new insult, along with ham-head and allahAllah-bomb. In our youth it had been Paki, wog, curry-face, but religion had not been part of it.

“I like Miriam’s,” Ajita said. “The noise, the animals, the whole family thing. Why have I never been able to create anything so lively?” She went on: “When we were together, you never talked to me about Miriam. You hardly mentioned her.”

When Miriam and Ajita had talked, Bushy drove her home. Apparently, on the way, Ajita wanted to see the Cross Keys. Bushy, being protective, refused to take her in. She yelled at him, resenting the fact that people wanted to save her from everything. She wasn’t fragile, for God’s sake: hadn’t she already seen the “worst things”! “I want to be included!” she said. “Everyone protected me. Dad tried to keep me at home so I’d be safe, and look what happened to me there!”

Bushy agreed to park outside and fetch Wolf for her. When he came out, the Harridan came out too, wiping her hands on her pinny, saying, apparently, “I would never have employed her!” Out of Wolf’s earshot, of course.

Now Ajita said to me, “You know what I did to Miriam? I tested her. One afternoon I went across London on numerous public transports. You know,” she said with incredulity, “they go so far!”

This diminutive covered woman, drifting through the dangerous city, watching carefully, while not being seen herself.

“I went to her house anonymously. It’s awful wearing the bag on the tube. It is hot in there, and it is difficult to see out. But Miriam came to the door and invited me in-before I revealed myself. She is the only person I can talk to now.” Then she said suddenly, “I know why you didn’t want me.”

“You do?”

She tapped her nose. “I know where your heart is.” Then she put her finger across her lips. “Miriam knows.”

“Miriam doesn’t know everything,” I said. “Ajita, you go across London, you wear the black bag, and what does it prove?”

“We were a secular family, Jamal. Father never went to the mosque or had a beard or moustache. What use would religion be to him? But I feel ignorant, Jamal. My parents deprived me of our family past. We know nothing of Muslim culture, of Western culture-which Father ignored-or indeed of African culture. We were only rich trash, and probably still are.

“You acquired a culture for yourself, Jamal, through reading and study. At least you are connected to the history of psychology and all that.

“So now I am studying. There is an Algerian woman who comes to the house. Azma speaks good English, and she’s teaching me the Koran. She talks of her life, politics, the condition of our people, my brothers and sisters, the oppressed of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Chechnya. I wouldn’t blow up anyone myself, but this is a war.” She said, “What did you think of the DVD I showed you?”

“I was moved and upset by it.”

“And?”

I said, “What does Wolf think?”

“Wolf? Yes, okay, I see. Did he tell you?”

“No.”

“Mustaq then. He had no right to. Oh well, it was bound to come out. Maybe I should have told you straightaway.” She bit at her nails. “Did you always know?”

“Why would it be a secret?”

“I thought you might feel left out.” She looked at me with some annoyance. “But you’re not even thinking about that, are you?”

“No, I have my own preoccupations.”

“About your wife?”

“I’m not sure she would call herself that now.”

“How come?”

When Ajita and I had finished our meal and were walking together, I told her that Josephine had been working as a secretary in a college department of psychology. It should have been obvious to me that she would be taken up by someone from there, particularly as I had so little time for psychologists. I had wondered if this new relationship might have unsettled Rafi; it was unsettling me. I had already guessed something was going on when I wanted to take Rafi to the pictures and discovered he’d already seen the film.

“You have?” I said. “But it’s one of your favourites, a black gangster picture featuring hair-trigger niggaz and hos. Your mother would never watch that.”

“I saw it with Eliot.”

“Who?”

“Mum’s friend.” His eyes narrowed. “Mum said she never minded you going to bed with your clothes on, so you could get up and go out straightaway, but she didn’t like you wearing trainers in bed. She said you always had a musty smell.”

“She’s a fussy woman.”

A little later I began to understand even more: I had to meet him.

Normally Rafi would come to my house on his bike, but as he couldn’t carry his weekend bag too, I had to go fetch it. It wasn’t only that he considered his parents to be his servants but that at times he still wanted to be a baby, which he was, with adult gangster elements overlaid: one moment he’d be in tears, and the next he’d be pumping his arse up and down on my head, wanting to “burst” it because I was “a bastard.”