14 More English than the English -1

In the great tradition of English education, Marcus and Magid became pen pals How they

became pen pals was a matter of fierce debate (Alsana blamed Millat, Millat claimed Me had

slipped Marcus the address, Me said Joyce had sneaked a peek in her address book the Joyce

explanation was correct), but either way they were, and from March '91 onwards letters passed

between them with a frequency let down only by the chronic inadequacies of the Bengal postal

system. Their combined output was incredible. Within two months they had filled a volume at least

as thick as Keats's and by four were fast approaching the length and quantity of the true

epistophiles, St. Paul, Clarissa, Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells. Because Marcus made copies of

all his own letters, Me had to rearrange her filing system to provide a drawer solely devoted to their

correspondence. She split the filing system in two, choosing to file by author primarily, then

chronologically, rather than let simple dates rule the roost. Because this was all about people.

People making a connection across continents, across seas. She made two stickers to separate the

wads of material. The first said: From Marcus to Magid. The second said: From Magid to Marcus.

An unpleasant mixture of jealousy and animosity led Me to abuse her secretarial role. She

pinched small collections of letters that wouldn't be missed, took them home, slipped them from

their sheaths, and then, after close readings that would have shamed F. R. Leavis, carefully returned

them to their file. What she found in those brightly stamped airmail envelopes brought her no joy.

Her mentor had a new protege. Marcus and Magid. Magid and Marcus. It even sounded better. The

way Watson and Crick sounded better than Watson, Crick and Wilkins.

John Donne said more than kisses, letters mingle souls and so they do; Irie was alarmed to find

such a commingling as this, such a successful merging of two people from ink and paper despite

the distance between them. No love letters could have been more ardent. No passion more fully

returned, right from the very start. The first few letters were filled with the boundless joy of mutual

recognition: tedious for the sneaky mailroom boys of Dhaka, bewildering to Irie, fascinating to the

writers themselves:

It is as if I had always known you; if I were a Hindu I would suspect we met in some former life.

- Magid.

You think like me. You're precise. I like that. Marcus.

You put it so well and speak my thoughts better than I ever could. In my desire to study the law,

in my longing to improve the lot of my poor country which is victim to every passing whim of God,

every hurricane and flood in these aims, what instinct is fundamental? What is the root, the dream

which ties these ambitions together? To make sense of the world. To eliminate the random. -

Magid.

And then there was the mutual admiration. That lasted a good few months:

What you are working on, Marcus these remarkable mice it is nothing less than revolutionary.

When you delve into the mysteries of inherited characteristics, surely you go straight to the soul of

the human condition as dramatically and fundamentally as any poet, except you are armed with

something essential the poet does not have: the truth. I am in awe of visionary ideas and visionaries.

I am in awe of such a man as Marcus Chalfen. I call it an honour to be able to call him friend. I thank you from the

bottom of my heart for taking such an inexplicable and glorious interest in my family's welfare. -

Magid.

It is incredible to me, the bloody fuss people make about an idea like cloning. Cloning, when it

happens (and I can tell you it will be sooner rather than later) is simply delayed twinning, and never

in my life have I come across a couple of twins who prove more decidedly the argument against

genetic determinism than Millat and yourself. In every area in which he lacks, you excel I wish I

could turn that sentence around for a vice versa effect, but the hard truth is he excels in nothing

apart from charming the elastic waistband off my wife's knickers. Marcus.

And finally, there were the plans for the future, plans made blindly and with amorous speed,

like the English nerd who married a nineteen-stone Mormon from Minnesota because she sounded

sexy on the chat line:

You must get to England as soon as possible, early '93 at the very latest. I'll stump up some of

the cash myself if I have to. Then we can enrol you in the local school, get the exams over and done

with and send you off post-haste to whichever of the dreaming spires tickles your fancy (though

obviously there's only one real choice) and while you're at it you can hurry up and get older, get to

the bar and provide me with the kind of lawyer I need to fight in my corner. My FutureMouse(c)

needs a staunch defender. Hurry up, old chap. I haven't got all millennium. Marcus.

The last letter, not the last letter they wrote but the last one Me could stomach, included this

final paragraph from Marcus:

Well, things are the same round here except that myfiks are in excellent order, thanks to Irie.

You'll like her: she's a bright girl and she has the most tremendous breasts .. . Sadly, I don't hold out

much hope for her aspirations in the field of' hard science', more specifically in my own

biotechnology, which she appears to have her heart set on ... she's sharp in a way, but it's the menial

work, the hard grafting, that she's good at she'd make a lab assistant maybe, but she hasn't any head

for the concepts, no head at all. She could try medicine, I suppose, but even there you need a little

bit more chutzpah than she's got.. . 50 it might have to be dentistry for our Irie (she could fix her

own teeth at least), an honest profession no doubt, but one I hope you'll be avoiding .. .

In the end, Irie wasn't offended. She had the sniffles for a while, but they soon passed. She was

like her mother, like her father a great reinventor of herself, a great make-doer. Can't be a war

correspondent? Be a cyclist. Can't be a cyclist? Fold paper. Can't sit next to Jesus with the 144,000?

Join the Great Crowd. Can't stand the Great Crowd? Marry, Archie. Irie wasn't so upset. She just

thought, right: dentistry. I'll be a dentist. Dentistry. Right.

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