17 Crisis Talks and Eleventh-hour Tactics -1

"Mrs. Iqbal? It's Joyce Chalfen. Mrs. Iqbal? I can see you quite clearly. It's Joyce. I really think

we should talk. Could you .. . umm .. . open the door?"

Yes, she could. Theoretically, she could. But in this atmosphere of extremity, with warring sons

and disparate factions, Alsana needed a tactic of her own. She'd done silence, and word-strikes and

food consumption (the opposite of a hunger-strike; one gets bigger in order to intimidate the

enemy), and now she was attempting a sit-down protest.

"Mrs. Iqbal .. . just five minutes of your time. Magid's really very upset about all of this. He's

worried about Millat and so am I. Just five minutes, Mrs. Iqbal, please."

Alsana didn't rise from her seat. She simply continued along the hem, keeping her eye on the

black thread as it shuttled from one cog to the next and down into the PVC, pressing the pedal of

the Singer furiously, as if kicking the flank of a horse she wished to ride into the sunset.

"Well, you may as well let her in," said Samad wearily, emerging from the lounge, where

Joyce's persistence had disturbed his appreciation of The Antiques Roadshow. (Aside from The

Equalizer, starring that great moral arbiter Edward Woodward, it was Samad's favourite programme.

He had spent fifteen long tele visual years waiting for some cockney housewife to pull a trinket of

Mangal Pande's out of her handbag. Oh, Mrs. Winterbottom, now this is very exciting. What we

have here is the barrel of the musket belonging to ... He sat with the phone under his right hand so

that in the event of such a scenario he could phone the BBC and demand the said Winterbottom's

address and asking price. So far

only Mutiny medals and a pocket watch belonging to Havelock, but still he watched.)

He peered down the hallway at the shadowy form of Joyce through the glass and scratched his

testicles, sadly. Samad was in his television mode: garish V-neck, stomach swelling like a tight

hot-water bottle beneath it, long moth-eaten dressing gown, and a pair of paisley boxer-shorts from

which two stick legs, the legacy of his youth, protruded. In his television mode action escaped him.

The box in the corner of the room (which he liked to think of as an antique of its kind, encased in

wood and on four legs like some Victorian robot) sucked him in and sapped all energy.

"Well, why don't you do something, Mr. Iqbal? Make her go away. Instead of standing there

with your flabby gut and your tiny willy on display."

Samad grunted and tucked the cause of all his troubles, two huge hairy balls and a

defeated-looking limp prick, back into the inner lining of his shorts.

"She won't go away," he murmured. "And if she does, she will only return with

reinforcements."

"But why? Hasn't she caused enough trouble?" said Alsana loudly, loud enough for Joyce. "She

has her own family, no? Why does she not go and for a change mess them up? She has boys, four

boys? How many boys does she want? How bloody many?"

Samad shrugged, went into the kitchen drawer and fished out the earphones that could be

plugged into the television and thus short-circuit the outside world. He, like Marcus, had

disengaged. Leave them, was his feeling. Leave them to their battles.

"Oh thank you," said Alsana caustically, as her husband retreated to his Hugh Scully and his

pots and guns. "Thank you, Samad Miah, for your oh so valuable contribution. This is what the

men do. They make the mess, the century ends, and they leave the women to clear up the shit.

Thank you, husband!"

She increased the speed of her sewing, dashing out the seam,

progressing down the inner leg, while the Sphinx of the letterbox continued to ask

unanswerable questions.

"Mrs. Iqbal.. . please can we talk? Is there any reason why we shouldn't talk? Do we have to

behave like children?"

Alsana began to sing.

"Mrs. Iqbal? Please. What can this possibly achieve?"

Alsana sang louder.

"I must tell you," said Joyce, strident as ever, even through three panels of wood and double

glazing, "I'm not here for my health. Whether you want me to be involved or not, I am, you see? I am."

Involved. At least that was the right word, Alsana reflected, as she lifted her foot off the pedal,

and let the wheel spin a few times alone before coming to a squeaky halt. Sometimes, here in

England, especially at bus-stops and on the daytime soaps, you heard people say "We're involved

with each other," as if this were a most wonderful state to be in, as if one chose it and enjoyed it.

Alsana never thought of it that way. Involved happened over a long period of time, pulling you in

like quicksand. Involved is what befell the moon-faced Alsana Begum and the handsome Samad

Miah one week after they'd been pushed into a Delhi breakfast room together and informed they

were to marry. Involved was the result when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some

stairs. Involved swallowed up a girl called Ambrosia and a boy called Charlie (yes, Clara had told

her that sorry tale) the second they kissed in the larder of a guest house. Involved is neither good,

nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of

empires and expansion, of living in each other's pockets .. . one becomes involved and it is a long

trek back to being uninvolved. And the woman was right, one didn't do it for one's health. Nothing

this late in the century was done with health in mind. Alsana was no dummy when it came to the

Modern Condition. She watched the talk shows, all day long she watched the talk shows My wife

slept with my brother, My mother won't stay out of my boyfriend's life

and the microphone holder, whether it be Tanned Man with White Teeth or Scary Married

Couple, always asked the same damn silly question: But why do you feel the need .. . ? Wrong!

Alsana had to explain it to them through the screen. You blockhead; they are not wanting this, they

are not willing it they are just involved, see? They walk IN and they get trapped between the

revolving doors of those two v's. Involved. The years pass, and the mess accumulates and here we

are. Your brother's sleeping with my ex-wife's niece's second cousin. Involved. Just a tired,

inevitable fact. Something in the way Joyce said it, involved

wearied, slightly acid suggested to Alsana that the word meant the same thing to her. An

enormous web you spin to catch yourself.

"OK, OK, lady, five minutes, only. I have three cat suits 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 Teach 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-do key 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. Whatever. 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,

Magid, Mil Ut and Marcus 1992, 1999

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.

1. To be ascetic in one's habits (cut down on the booze, thespliff, the women).

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

3. To grasp a full intellectual understanding of KEVIN and the Qur'an.

4. To purge oneself of the taint of the West.

He knew that he was HE VIN 's big experiment, and he wanted to give it his best shot. In the

first three areas he was doing fine. He smoked the odd fag and put away a Guinness on occasion

(can't say fairer than that), but he was very successful with both the evil weed and the temptations

of the flesh. He no longer saw Alexandra Andrusier, Polly Houghton or Rosie Dew (though he paid

occasional visits to one Tanya Chapman, a very small redhead who understood the delicate nature

of his dilemma and would give him a thorough blow job without requiring Millat to touch her at all.

It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: she was the daughter of a judge and delighted in

horrifying the old goat, and Millat needed ejaculation with no actual active participation on his

side). On the scriptural side of things, he thought Muhammad (peace be upon Him!) was a right

geezer, a great bloke, and he was in awe of the Creator, in the original meaning of that word: dread,

fear, really shit-scared and Hifan said that was correct, that was how it should be. He understood

this idea that his religion was not one based on faith not like

the Christians, the Jews, et al. but one that could be intellectually proved by the best minds. He

understood the idea. But, sadly, Millat was far from possessing one of the best minds, or even a

reasonable mind; intellectual proof or disproof was beyond him. Still, he understood that to rely on

faith, as his own father did, was contemptible. And no one could say he didn't give one hundred per

cent to the cause. That seemed enough for HE VIN. They were more than happy with his real forte,

which was the delivery of the thing. The presentation. For instance, if a nervous-looking woman

came up to the KEVIN stall in Willesden Library and asked about the faith, Millat would lean over

the desk, grab her hand, press it and say: Not faith, Sister. We do not deal in faith here. Spend five

minutes with my Brother Rakesh and he will intellectually prove to you the existence of the Creator.

The Qur'an is a document of science, a document of rational thought. Spend five minutes, Sister, if

you care for your future beyond this earth. And to top it off, he could usually sell her a few tapes

(Ideological Warfare or Let the Scholars Beware), two quid each. Or even some of their literature,

if he was on top form. Everyone at KEVIN was mightily impressed. So far so good. As for

KEVIN's more unorthodox programmes of direct action, Millat was right in there, he was their

greatest asset, he was in the forefront, the first into battle come jihad, cool as fuck in a crisis, a man

of action, like Brando, like Pacino, like Liotta. But even as Millat reflected on this with pride in his

mother's hallway, his heart sank. For therein lay the problem. Number four. Purging oneself of the West .

Now, he knew, he knew that if you wanted an example of the moribund, decadent, degenerate,

over-sexed, violent state of Western capitalist culture and the logical endpoint of its obsession with

personal freedoms (Leaflet: Way Out West), you couldn't do much better than Hollywood cinema.

And he knew (how many times had he been through it with Hifan?) that the 'gangster' movie, the

Mafia genre, was the worst example of that. And yet ... it was the

hardest thing to let go. He would give every spliff he'd ever smoked and every woman he'd ever

fucked to retrieve the films his mother had burnt, or even the few he had purchased more recently

which Hifan had confiscated. He had torn up his Rocky Video membership and thrown away the

Iqbal video recorder to distance himself from direct temptation, but was it his fault if Channel 4 ran

a De Niro season? Could he help it if Tony Bennett's "Rags to Riches' floated out of a clothes shop

and entered his soul? It was his most shameful secret that whenever he opened a door a car door, a

car boot, the door of KEVIN's meeting hall or the door of his own house just now the opening of

GoodFdlas ran through his head and he found this sentence rolling around in what he presumed was

his subconscious:

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.

He even saw it like that, in that font, like on the movie poster. And when he found himself

doing it, he tried desperately not to, he tried to fix it, but Millat's mind was a mess and more often

than not he'd end up pushing upon the door, head back, shoulders forward, Liotta style, thinking:

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Muslim.

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