7 wasn't the one -2

And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their

time, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very same

day. Sometimes at the very same moment. At least, that would explain how two weeks later, during

the old Druid festival of harvest, Samad can be found quietly packing the one shirt he's never worn

to mosque (To the pure all things are pure) into a plastic bag, so that he might change later and

meet Miss Burt Jones (4.30, Harlesden Clock) without arousing suspicion .. . while Magid and a

change-of-heart Millat slip only four cans of past their-sell-by-date chickpeas, a bag of variety

crisps and some apples into two rucksacks (Can't say fairer than that), in preparation for a meeting

with Me (4.30, ice-cream van) and a visit to their assigned old man, the one to whom they will offer

pagan charity, one Mr. J. P. Hamilton of Kensal Rise.

Unbeknownst to all involved, ancient ley-lines run underneath these two journeys or, to put it in

the modern parlance, this is a rerun. We have been here before. This is like watching TV in Bombay

or Kingston or Dhaka, watching the same old British sitcoms spewed out to the old colonies in one

tedious, eternal loop. Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition it's

something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to

island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and

round. There's no proper term for it original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be

better. A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals

that they can't help

but re-enact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from

one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign. It will take a few

replays before they move on to the next tune. And this is what is happening as Alsana sews loudly

on her monstrous Singer machine, double-stitching around the vacancy of a crotchless knicker,

oblivious to the father and the sons who are creeping around the house, packing clothes, packing

provisions. It is a visitation of repetition. It is a dash across continents. It is a rerun. But one at a

time, now, one at a time .. .

Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet the

young: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other's rationality; with the

knowledge that the other will find what they say hard to understand, that it will go beyond them

(not so much over the head as between the legs); and with the feeling that they must arrive with

something the other will like, something suitable. Like Garibaldi biscuits.

They like them," explained Me when the twins queried her choice, as the three of them rumbled

to their destination on the top of the 52 bus, 'they like the raisins in them. Old people like raisins."

Millat, from under the cocoon of his Tomytronic, sniffed, "Nobody likes raisins. Dead grapes

bleurgh. Who wants to eat them!"

"Old people do," We insisted, stuffing the biscuits back into her bag. "And they're not dead,

akchully, they're dried."

"Yeah, after they've died."

"Shut up, Millat. Magid, tell him to shut up!"

Magid pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and diplomatically changed the subject.

"What else have you got?"

Me reached into her bag. "A coconut."

"A coconut!"

"For your information," snapped Me, moving the nut out of Millat's reach, 'old people like

coconuts. They can use the milk for their tea."

Irie pressed on in the face of Millat retching. "And I got some crusty French bread and some

cheese-singlets and some apples '

"We got apples, you chief," cut in Millat, 'chief, for some inexplicable reason hidden in the

etymology of North London slang, meaning fool, arse, wanker, a loser of the most colossal

proportions.

"Well, I got some more and better apples, akchully, and some Kendal mint cake and some ackee

and salt fish

"I hate ackee and salt fish

"Who said you were eating it?"

"I don't want to."

"Well, you're not going to."

"Well, good, 'cos I don't want to."

"Well, good, 'cos I wouldn't let you even if you wanted to."

"Well, that's lucky 'cos I don't. So shame," said Millat; and, without removing his Tomytronic,

he delivered shame, as was traditionally the way, by dragging his palm along Irie's forehead.

"Shame in the brain."

"Well, akchully, don't worry 'cos you're not going to get it'

"Oooh, feel the heat, feel the heatl' squealed Magid, rubbing his little palm in. "You been

shamed, man!"

"Akchully, I'm not shamed, you're shamed 'cos it's for Mr. J. P. Hamilton '

"Our stop!" cried Magid, shooting to his feet and pulling the bell cord too many times.

"If you ask me," said one disgruntled OAP to another, 'they should all go back to their own

But this, the oldest sentence in the world, found itself stifled by the ringing of bells and the

stamping of feet, until it retreated under the seats with the chewing gum.

"Shame, shame, know your name," trilled Magid. The three of them hurtled down the stairs and

off the bus.

And the 52 bus goes two ways. From the Willesden kaleidoscope, one can catch it west like the

children; through Kensal Rise, to Portobello, to Knightsbridge, and watch the many colours shade

off into the bright white lights of town; or you can get it east, as Samad did; Willesden, Dollis Hill,

Harlesden, and watch with dread (if you are fearful like Samad, if all you have learnt from the city

is to cross the road at the sight of dark-skinned men) as white fades to yellow fades to brown, and

then Harlesden Clock comes into view, standing like Queen Victoria's statue in Kingston - a tall

stone surrounded by black.

Samad had been surprised, yes surprised, that it was Harlesden she had whispered to him when

he pressed her hand after the kiss that kiss he could still taste and demanded where it was he might

find her, away from here, far from here ("My children, my wife," he had mumbled, incoherent);

expecting "Islington' or maybe "West Hampstead' or at least "Swiss Cottage' and getting instead,

"Harlesden. I live in Harlesden."

"Stonebridge Estate?" Samad had asked, alarmed; wide-eyed at the creative ways Allah found

to punish him, envisioning himself atop his new lover with a gangster's four-inch knife in his back.

"No but not far from there. Do you want to meet up?"

Samad's mouth had been the lone gunman on the grassy knoll that day, killing off his brain and

swearing itself into power all at the same time.

"Yes. Oh, dammit! Yes."

And then he had kissed her again, turning something relativelychaste into something else,

cupping her breast in his left hand and enjoying her sharp intake of breath as he did so.

Then they had the short, obligatory exchange that those who cheat have to make them feel less

like those who cheat.

"I really shouldn't '

"I'm not at all sure how this-'

"Well, we need to meet at least to discuss what has '

"Indeed, what has happened, it must be discu '

"Because something has happened here, but '

"My wife .. . my children

"Let's give it some time .. . two weeks Wednesday? 4.30? Harlesden Clock?"

He could at least, in this sordid mess, congratulate himself on his timing: 4.15 by the time he

got off the bus, which left five minutes to nip into the McDonald's toilets (that had black guards on

the door, black guards to keep out the blacks) and squeeze out of the restaurant flares into a dark

blue suit, with a wool V-neck and a grey shirt, the pocket of which contained a comb to work his

thick hair into some obedient form. By which time it was 4.20, five minutes in which to visit cousin

Hakim and his wife Zinat who ran the local pounds + sop shop (a type of shop that trades under the

false premise that it sells no items above this price but on closer inspection proves to be the

minimum price of the stock) and whom he meant inadvertently to provide him with an alibi.

"Samad Miah, oh! So smart-looking today it cannot be without a reason."

Zinat Mahal: a mouth as large as the Blackwall Tunnel and Samad was relying upon it.

"Thank you, Zinat," said Samad, looking deliberately disingenuous. "As for a reason ... I am not

sure that I should say."

"Samad! My mouth is like the grave! Whatever is told to me dies with me."

Whatever was told to Zinat invariably lit up the telephone network, rebounded off aerials, radio

waves and satellites along the way, picked up finally by advanced alien civilizations as it bounced

through the atmosphere of planets far removed from this one.

"Well, the truth is .. ."

"By Allah, get on with it!" cried Zinat, who was now almost on the other side of the counter,

such was her delight in gossip. "Where are you off to?"

"Well... I am off to see a man in Park Royal about life insurance. I want my Alsana well

provided for after my death but!" he said, waggling a finger at his sparkling, jewel-covered

interrogator who wore too much eyeshadow, "I don't want her to know! Thoughts of death are

abhorrent to her, Zinat."

"Do you hear that, Hakim? Some men worry about the future of their wives! Go on get out of

here, don't let me keep you, cousin. And don't worry," she called after him, simultaneously reaching

for the phone with her long curling fingernails, "I won't say one word to Alsi."

Alibi done, three minutes were left for Samad to consider what an old man brings a young girl;

something an old brown man brings a young white girl at the crossroads of four black streets;

something suitable .. .

"A coconut?"

Poppy Burt-Jones took the hairy object into her hands and looked up at Samad with a perplexed

smile.

"It is a mixed-up thing," began Samad nervously. "With juice like a fruit but hard like a nut.

Brown and old on the outside, white and fresh on the inside. But the mix is not, I think, bad. We use

it sometimes," he added, not knowing what else to say, 'in curry."

Poppy smiled; a terrific smile which accentuated every natural beauty of that face and had in it,

Samad thought, something better than this, something with no shame in it, something better and

purer than what they were doing.

"It's lovely," she said.

Out in the street and five minutes from the address on their school sheets, Me still felt the

irritable hot sting of shame and wanted a rematch.

"Tax that," she said, pointing to a rather beat-up motorbike leaning by Kensal Rise tube. "Tax

that, and that," indicating two BMXs beside it.

Millat and Magid jumped into action. The practice of 'taxing' something, whereby one lays

claims, like a newly arrived colonizer, to items in a street that do not belong to you, was well

known and beloved to both of them.

"Cha, man! Believe, I don't want to tax dat crap," said Millat with the Jamaican accent that all

kids, whatever their nationality, used to express scorn. "I tax dat," he said, pointing out an

admittedly impressive small, shiny, red MG about to turn the corner. "And-dat' he cried, getting

there just before Magid as a BMW whizzed past. "Man, you know I tax that," he said to Magid,

who offered no dispute. "Blatantly."

Me, a little dejected by this turn of events, turned her eyes from the road to the floor, where she

was suddenly struck by a flash of inspiration.

"I tax those!"

Magid and Millat stopped and looked in awe at the perfectly white Nikes that were now in Me's

possession (with one red tick, one blue; so beautiful, as Millat later remarked, it made you want to

kill yourself), though to the naked eye they appeared to be walking towards Queens Park attached

to a tall natty-dread black kid.

Millat nodded grudgingly. "Respect to that. I wish I'd seed dem." "Tax!" said Magid suddenly,

pushing his grubby finger up against some shop glass in the direction of a four-foot-long chemistry

set with an ageing TV personality's face on the front.

He thumped the window. "Wow! I tax that!"

A brief silence ensued.

"You tax that? asked Millat, incredulous. "That? You tax a chemistry set?"

Before poor Magid knew where he was, two palms had made a ferocious slap on his forehead,

and were doing much rubbing for good measure. Magid gave We an et to Brute type of pleading

look, in the full knowledge that it was useless. There is no honestyamongst almost-ten year-olds.

"Shame! Shame! Know your name!"

"But Mr. J. P. Hamilton," moaned Magid from under the heat of shame. "We're here now. His

house is just there. It's a quiet street, you can't make all this noise. He's old."

"But if he's old, he'll be deaf reasoned Millat. "And if you're deaf you can't hear."

"It doesn't work like that. It's hard for old people. You don't understand."

"He's probably too old to take the stuff out of the bags," said Me. "We should take them out and

carry them in our hands."

This was agreed upon, and some time was taken arranging all the foodstuffs in the hands and

crevices of the body, so that they might 'surprise' Mr. J. P. Hamilton with the extent of their charity

when he answered the door. Mr. J. P. Hamilton, confronted on his doorstep by three dark-skinned

children clutching a myriad of projectiles, was duly surprised. As old as they had imagined but far

taller and cleaner, he opened the door only slightly, keeping his hand, with its mountain range of

blue veins, upon the knob, while his head curled around the frame. To Me he was reminiscent of

some genteelelderly eagle: tufts of feather-like hair protruded from ear drums, shirt cuffs and the

neck, with one white spray falling over his forehead, his fingers lay in a permanent tight spasm like

talons, and he was well dressed, as one might expect of an elderly English bird in Wonderland a

suede waistcoat and a tweed jacket, and a watch on a gold chain.

And twinkling like a magpie, from the blue scattering in his eyes undimmed by the white and

red surround, to the gleam of

a signet ring, four argent medals perched just above his heart, and the silver rim of a Senior

Service packet peeping over the breast pocket.

"Please," came the voice from the bird-man, a voice that even the children sensed was from a

different class, a different era. "I must ask that you remove yourselves from my doorstep. I have no

money whatsoever; so be your intention robbing or selling I'm afraid you will be disappointed."

Magid stepped forward, trying to place himself in the old man's eye line for the left eye, blue as

Rayleigh scattering, had looked beyond them, while the right was so compacted beneath wrinkles it

hardly opened. "Mr. Hamilton, don't you remember, the school sent us, these are '

He said, "Goodbye, now," as if he were bidding farewell to an elderly aunt embarking on a train

journey, then once more "Goodbye', and through two panels of cheap stained-glass on the closed

door the children watched the lengthy figure of Mr. Hamilton, blurred as if by heat, walking slowly

away from them down a corridor until the brown flecks of him merged with the brown flecks of the

household furnishings and the former all but disappeared.

Millat pulled his Tomytronic down around his neck, frowned, and purposefully slammed his

little fist into the doorbell, holding it down.

"Maybe," suggested Irie, 'he doesn't want the stuff."

Millat released the doorbell briefly. "He's got to want it. He asked for it," he growled, pushing

the bell back down with his full force. "SGod's harvest, in nit Mr. Hamilton! Mr. J. P. Hamilton!"

And then that slow process of disappearance began to rewind as he reconstituted himself via the

atoms of a staircase and a dresser until he was large as life once more, curled around the door.

Millat, lacking patience, thrust his school information sheet into his hand. "SGod's harvest."

But the old man shook his head like a bird in a bird-bath. "No, no, I really won't be intimidated

into purchases on my own doorstep. I don't know what you are selling please God let it not be

encyclopedias at my age it is not more information one requires but less."

"But it's free!"

"Oh .. . yes, I see .. . why?"

"SGod's harvest," repeated Magid.

"Helping the local community. Mr. Hamilton, you must have spoken to our teacher, because she

sent us here. Maybe it slipped your mind," added Me in her grown-up voice.

Mr. Hamilton touched his temple sadly as if to retrieve the memory and then ever so slowly

opened his front door to full tilt and made a pigeon-step forward into the autumn sunlight. "Well.. .

you'd better come in."

They followed Mr. Hamilton into the town house gloom of his hall. Filled to the brim with

battered and chipped Victoriana punctuated by signs of more recent life children's broken bikes, a

discarded Speak-and-Spell, four pairs of muddy wellies in a family's variant sizes.

"Now," he said cheerily, as they reached the living room with its beautiful bay windows through

which a weeping" title="a.掠过的 n.扫除；清除">sweeping garden could be seen, 'what have we got here?"

The children released their load on to a moth-eaten chaise longue, Magid reeling off the

contents like items from a shopping list, while Mr. Hamilton lit a cigarette and inspected the urban

picnic with doddering fingers.

"Apples .. . oh, dear me, no ... chickpeas .. . no, no, no, potato-chips

It went on like this, each article being picked up in its turn and chastised, until the old man

looked up at them with faint tears in his eyes. "I can't eat any of this, you see .. . too hard, too

bloody hard. The most I could manage is probably the milk in that coconut. Still... we will have tea,

won't we? You'll stay for tea?"

The children looked at him blankly.

"Go on, my dears, do sit down

Me, Magid and Millat shuffled up nervously on the chaise longue. Then there was a click-clack

sound and when they looked up Mr. Hamilton's teeth were on his tongue, as if a second mouth had

come out of the first. And then in a flash they were back in.

"I simply cannot eat anything unless it has been pulverized beforehand, you see. My own fault.

Years and years of neglect. Clean teeth never a priority in the army." He signalled himself clumsily,

an awkward jab at his own chest with a shaking hand. "I was an army man, you see. Now: how

many times do you young people brush your teeth?"

Three times a day," said Me, lying.

"LIAR!" chorused Millat and Magid. "PANTS ON FIRE!"

"Two and a half times."

"Well, dear me, which is it?" said Mr. Hamilton, smoothing down his trousers with one hand

and lifting his tea with the other.

"Once a day," said Me sheepishly, the concern in his voice compelling her to tell the truth.

"Most days."

"I fear you will come to regret that. And you two?"

Magid was midway through formulating some elaborate fantasy of a toothbrush machine that

did it while you slept, but Millat came clean. "Same. Once a day. More or less."

Mr. Hamilton leant back contemplatively in his chair. "One sometimes forgets the significance

of one's teeth. We're not like the lower animals teeth replaced regularly and all that we're of the

mammals, you see. And mammals only get two chances, with teeth. More sugar?"

The children, mindful of their two chances, declined.

"But like all things, the business has two sides. Clean white teeth are not always wise, now are

they? Par exemplum: when I was in the Congo, the only way I could identify the nigger was by the

whiteness of his teeth, if you see what I mean. Horrid

business. Dark as buggery, it was. And they died because of it, you see? Poor bastards. Or rather

I survived, to look at it in another way, do you see?"

The children sat silently. And then Irie began to cry, ever so quietly.

Mr. Hamilton continued, Those are the split decisions you make in war. See a flash of white and

bang! as it were .. . Dark as buggery. Terrible times. All these beautiful boys lying dead there, right

in front of me, right at my feet. Stomachs open, you know, with their guts on my shoes. Like the

end of the bloody world. Beautiful men, enlisted by the Krauts, black as the ace of spades; poor

fools didn't even know why they were there, what people they were fighting for, who they were

shooting at. The decision of the gun. So quick, children. So brutal. Biscuit?"

"I want to go home," whispered Irie.

"My dad was in the war. He played for England," piped up Millat, red-faced and furious.

"Well, boy, do you mean the football team or the army?"