Zadie Smith - White Teeth

‘OK, OK, lady, five minutes, only. I have three catsuits to do this morning come hell or high water.’

Alsana opened the door and Joyce walked into the hallway, and for a moment they surveyed their opposite number, guessing each other’s weight like nervous prize fighters prior to mounting the scales. They were definitely a match for each other. What Joyce lacked in chest, she made up in bottom. Where Alsana revealed a weakness in delicate features – a thin and pretty nose, light eyebrows – she compensated with the huge pudge of her arms, the dimples of maternal power. For, after all, she was the mother here. The mother of the boys in question. She held the trump card, should she be forced to play it.

‘Okey-dokey, then,’ said Alsana, squeezing through the narrow kitchen door, beckoning Joyce to follow.

‘Is it tea or is it coffee?’

‘Tea,’ said Joyce firmly. ‘Fruit if possible.’

‘Fruit not possible. Not even Earl Grey is possible. I come from the land of tea to this godawful country and then I can’t afford a proper cup of it. P.G. Tips is possible and nothing else.’

Joyce winced. ‘P.G. Tips, please, then.’

‘As you wish.’

The mug of tea plonked in front of Joyce a few minutes later was grey with a rim of scum and thousands of little microbes flitting through it, less micro than one would have hoped. Alsana gave Joyce a moment to consider it.

‘Just leave it for a while,’ she explained gaily. ‘My husband hit a water pipe when digging a trench for some onions. Our water is a little funny ever since. It may give you the running shits or it may not. But give it a minute and it clears. See?’ Alsana gave it an unconvincing stir, sending yet larger chunks of unidentified matter bubbling up to the surface. ‘You see? Fit for Shah Jahan himself!’

Joyce took a tentative sip and then pushed it to one side.

‘Mrs Iqbal, I know we haven’t been on the best of terms in the past, but-’

‘Mrs Chalfen,’ said Alsana, putting up her long forefinger to stop Joyce speaking. ‘There are two rules that everybody knows, from PM to jinrickshaw-wallah. The first is, never let your country become a trading post. Very important. If my ancestors had followed this advice, my situation presently would be very different, but such is life. The second is, don’t interfere in other people’s family business. Milk?’

‘No, no, thank you. A little sugar…’

Alsana dumped a huge heaped tablespoon into Joyce’s cup.

‘You think I am interfering?’

‘I think you have interfered.’

‘But I just want the twins to see each other.’

‘You are the reason they are apart.’

‘But Magid is only living with us because Millat won’t live with him here. And Magid tells me your husband can barely stand the sight of him.’

Alsana, little pressure-cooker that she was, blew. ‘And why can’t he? Because you , you and your husband, have involved Magid in something so contrary to our culture, to our beliefs, that we barely recognize him! You have done that! He is at odds with his brother now. Impossible conflict! Those green bow-tied bastards: Millat is high up with them now. Very involved. He doesn’t tell me, but I hear. They call themselves followers of Islam, but they are nothing but thugs in a gang roaming Kilburn like all the other lunatics. And now they are sending out the – what are they called – folded-paper trouble.’

‘Leaflets?’

‘ Leaflets . Leaflets about your husband and his ungodly mouse. Trouble brewing, yes sir. I found them, hundreds of them under his bed.’ Alsana stood up, drew a key out of her apron pocket and opened a kitchen cupboard stacked full of green leaflets, which cascaded on to the floor. ‘He’s disappeared again, three days. I have to put them back before he finds out they are gone. Take some, go on, lady, take them, go and read them to Magid. Show him what you have done. Two boys driven to different ends of the world. You have made a war between my sons. You are splitting them apart!’

A minute earlier Millat had turned the key ever so softly in the front door. Since then he had been standing in the hallway, listening to the conversation and smoking a fag. It was great! It was like listening to two big Italian matriarchs from opposing clans battle it out. Millat loved clans. He had joined KEVIN because he loved clans (and the outfit and the bow tie), and he loved clans at war. Marjorie the analyst had suggested that this desire to be part of a clan was a result of being, effectively, half a twin. Marjorie the analyst suggested that Millat’s religious conversion was more likely born out of a need for sameness within a group than out of any intellectually formulated belief in the existence of an all-powerful creator. Maybe. What ever . As far as he was concerned, you could analyse it until the cows came home, but nothing beat being all dressed in black, smoking a fag, listening to two mammas battle it out over you in operatic style:

‘You claim to want to help my boys, but you have done nothing but drive a wedge between them. It is too late now. I have lost my family. Why don’t you go back to yours and leave us alone?’

‘You think it’s paradise over at my house? My family has been split by this too. Joshua isn’t speaking to Marcus. Did you know that? And those two were so close…’ Joyce looked a bit weepy, and Alsana reluctantly passed her the kitchen roll. ‘I’m trying to help all of us. And the best way to start is to get Magid and Millat talking before this escalates any further than it has. I think we can both agree on that. If we could find some neutral place, some ground where they both felt no pressures or outside influence…’

‘But there are no neutral places any more! I agree they should meet, but where and how? You and your husband have made everything impossible.’

‘Mrs Iqbal, with all due respect, the problems in your family began long before either my husband or I had any involvement.’

‘Maybe, maybe, Mrs Chalfen, but you are the salt in the wound, yes? You are the one extra chilli pepper in the hot sauce.’

Millat heard Joyce draw her breath in sharply.

‘Again, with respect, I can’t believe that it is the case. I think this has been going on for a very long time. Millat told me that some years ago you burnt all his things. I mean, it’s just an example, but I don’t think you understand the trauma that kind of thing has inflicted on Millat. He’s very damaged .’

‘Oh, we are going to play the tit for the tat. I see. And I am to be the tit. Not that it is any of your big-nose business, but I burnt those things to teach him a lesson – to respect other people’s lives!’

‘A strange way of showing it, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘I do mind! I do mind! What do you know of it?’

‘Only what I see. And I see that Millat has a lot of mental scars. You may not be aware, but I’ve been funding sessions for Millat with my analyst. And I can tell you, Millat’s inner life – his karma, I suppose you might call it in Bengali – the whole world of his subconscious shows serious illness.’

In fact, the problem with Millat’s subconscious (and he didn’t need Marjorie to tell him this) was that it was basically split-level. On the one hand he was trying real hard to live as Hifan and the others suggested. This involved getting his head around four main criteria.

To be ascetic in one’s habits (cut down on the booze, the spliff, the women).

To remember always the glory of Muhammad (peace be upon Him!) and the might of the Creator.

To grasp a full intellectual understanding of KEVIN and the Qur’ān.

To purge oneself of the taint of the West.