evening and gone home. But there was still some conscientious worker going round the treadmill of



his brain, ensuring one thought circulated in his skull: Why? Why get stoned, Millat? Why? Good



question.



At midday he'd found an ageing eighth of hash in a drawer, a little bundle of cellophane he



hadn't had the heart to throw away six months ago. And he smoked it all. He smoked some of it out



of his bedroom window. Then he walked to Gladstone Park and smoked some more. He smoked the



great majority of it in the car park of Willesden Library. He finished it off in the student kitchen of



one Warren Chapman, a South African skateboarder he used to hang with back in the day. And as a



result, he was so cai ned now, standing on the platform with the rest, so cai ned that he could not



only hear sounds within sounds but sounds within sounds within sounds. He could hear the mouse



scurrying along the tracks, creating a higher level of harmoniousrhythm with the crackle of the tan



noy and the off-beat sniff of an elderly woman twenty feet away. Even when the train pulled in, he



could still hear these things beneath the surface. Now, there is a level of cai ned that you can be,



Millat knew, that is just so very very cai ned that you reach a level of Zen-like sobriety and come



out the other side feeling absolutely tip-top as if you'd never sparked up in the first place. Oh,



Millat longed for that. He only wished he'd got that far. But there just wasn't quite enough.



"Are you all right, Brother Millat?" asked Abdul-Colin with concern as the tube doors slid open.



"You have gone a nasty colour."



"Fine, fine," said Millat, and did a credible impression of being fine because hash just isn't like



drink; no matter how bad it is, you can always, at some level, pull your shit together. To prove this



theory to himself, he walked in a slow but confident fashion down the carriage and took a seat at



the very end of the line of Brothers, between Shiva and some excitable Australians heading for the



Hippodrome.



Shiva, unlike Abdul-Jimmy, had had his share of wild times and could spot the tell-tale red-eye



from a distance of fifty yards.



"Millat, man," he said under his breath, confident he couldn't



be heard by the rest of the Brothers above the noise of the train. "What have you been doing to



yourself?" g|



Millat looked straight ahead and spoke to his reflection in the 1jp train window. "I'm preparing



myself "|p



"By getting messed up?" hissed Shiva. He peered at the photocopy of Sura 52. he hadn't quite



memorized. "Are you crazy? It's hard enough to remember this stuff without being on the planet



Mars while you're doing it."



Millat swayed slightly, and turned to Shiva with a mistimed lunge. "I'm not preparing myself



for that. I'm preparing myself for action. Because no one else will do it. We lose one man and you



all betray the cause. You desert. But I stand firm."



Shiva fell silent. Millat was referring to the recent 'arrest' of Brother Ibrahim ad-Din Shukrallah



on trumped up charges of tax evasion and civil disobedience. No one took the charges seriously, but



everybody knew it was a not-so gentle warning from the Metropolitan Police that they had their eye



trained on KEVIN activities. In the light of this, Shiva had been the first one to beat a retreat from



the agreed Plan A, quickly followed by Abdul-Jimmy and Hussein-Ishmael, who, despite his desire



to wreak violence upon somebody, anybody, had his shop to think about. For a week the argument



raged (with Millat firmly defending Plan A), but on the 26th Abdul-Colin, Tyrone and finally Hifan



conceded that Plan A might not be in KEVIN'S long-term interest. They could not, after all, put



themselves in an imprisonment situation unless they were secure in the knowledge that KEVIN had



leaders to replace them. So Plan A was off. Plan B was hastily improvised. Plan B involved the



seven KEVIN representatives standing up halfway through Marcus Chalfen's press conference and



quoting Sura 52, "The Mountain', first in Arabic (Abdul-Colin alone would do this) and then in



English. Plan B made Millat sick.



"And that's it? You're just going to read to him? That's his punishment?"



What happened to revenge? What happened to just desserts, retribution, jihad?



"Do you suggest," Abdul-Colin solemnly inquired, 'that the word of Allah as given to the



Prophet Muhammad Salla Allahu "Alaihi Wa Sallam is not sufficient?"



Well, no. And so even though it sickened him, Millat had to step aside. In place of the questions



of honour, sacrifice, duty, the life and death questions that came with the careful plotting of clan



warfare, the very reasons Millat joined KEVIN in place of these, came the question of translation.



Everybody agreed that no translation of the Qur'an could claim to be the word of God, but at the



same time everybody conceded that Plan B would lose something in the delivery if no one could



understand what was being said. So the question was which translation and why. Would it be one of



the un trusty but clear Orientalists: Palmer (1880), Bell (1937-9), Arberry (1955), Dawood (1956)?



The eccentric but poetic J. M. Rodwell (1861)? The old favourite, passionate, dedicated Anglican



convert par excellence Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (1930)? Or one of the Arab brothers, the



prosaic Shakir or the flamboyant Yusuf All? Five days they argued it. When Millat walked into the



Kilburn Hall of an evening he had only to squint to mistake this talkative circle of chairs, these



supposed fanatic fundamentalists, for an editorial meeting at the London Review of Books.



"But Dawood is a plod!" Brother Hifan would argue vehemently. "I refer you to 52:44: If they



saw a part of heaven falling down, they would still say: "It is but a mass of clouds!" Mass of clouds?



It is not a rock concert. At least with Rodwell there is some attempt to capture the poetry, the



remarkable nature of the Arabic: And should they see a fragment of the heaven falling down, they



would say, "It is only a dense cloud." Fragment, dense the effect is far stronger, accha?"



And then, haltingly, Mo Hussein-Ishmael: "I am just a butcher stroke-corner shop-owner. I can't



claim to know much about it. But I like very much this last line; it is Rodwell .. . er, I think,



yes, Rodwell. 52:49: And in the night-season: Praise him when the stars are setting.



Night-season. I think that is a lovely phrase. It sounds like an Elvis ballad. Much better than the



other one, the Pickthall one: And in the night-time also hymn His praise, and at the setting of the



stars. Night-season is very much lovelier."



"And is this what we are here for?" Millat had yelled at all of them. "Is this what we joined



KEVIN for? To take no action? To sit around on our arses playing with words?"



But Plan B stuck, and here they were, whizzing past Finchley Road, heading to Trafalgar



Square to carry it out. And this was why Millat was stoned. To give him enough guts to do



something else.



"I stand firm," said Millat, in Shiva's ear, slurring his words, 'that is what we're here for. To



stand firm. That is why I joined. Why did you join?"



Well, in fact Shiva had joined KEVIN for three reasons. First, because he was sick of the stick



that comes with being the only Hindu in a Bengali Muslim restaurant. Secondly, because being



Head of Internal Security for KEVIN beat the hell out of being second waiter at the Palace. And



thirdly, for the women. (Not the KEVIN women, who were beautiful but chaste in the extreme, but



all the women on the outside who had despaired of his wild ways and were now hugely impressed



by his new asceticism. They loved the beard, they dug the hat, and told Shiva that at thirty-eight he



had finally ceased to be a boy. They were massively attracted by the fact that he had renounced



women and the more he renounced them, the more successful he became. Of course this equation



could only work so long, and now Shiva was getting more pussy than he ever had as a kaffir.)



However, Shiva sensed that the truth was not what was required here, so he said: "To do my duty."



"Then we are on the same wavelength, Brother Shiva," said Millat, going to pat Shiva's knee



but just missing it. "The only question is: will you do it?"



"Pardon me, mate," said Shiva, removing Millat's arm from where it had fallen between his legs.



"But I think, taking into account your .. . umm .. . present condition .. . the question is, will you?"



Now there was a question. Millat was half sure that he was possibly maybe going to do



something or not that would be correct and very silly and fine and un-good.



"Mill, we've got a Plan B," persisted Shiva, watching the clouds of doubt cross Millat's face.



"Let's just go with Plan B, yeah? No point in causing trouble. Man. You are just like your dad.



Classic Iqbal. Can't let things go. Can't let sleeping cats die or whatever the fuck the phrase is."



Millat turned from Shiva and looked at his feet. He had been more certain when he began,



imagining the journey as one cold sure dart on the Jubilee Line: Willesden Green-" Charing Cross,



no changing of trains, not this higgledy-piggledy journey; just a straight line to Trafalgar, and then



he would climb the stairs into the square, and come face to face with his great-great-grandfather's



enemy, Henry Havelock on his plinth of pigeon-shat stone. He would be emboldened by it; and he



would enter the Perret Institute with revenge and revisionism in his mind and lost glory in his heart



and he would and he would and he



"I think," said Millat, after a pause, "I am going to vomit."



"Baker Street!" cried Abdul-Jimmy. And with the discreet aid of Shiva, Millat crossed the



platform to the connecting train.



Twenty minutes later the Bakerloo Line delivered them into the icy cold of Trafalgar Square. In



the distance, Big Ben. In the square, Nelson. Havelock. Napier. George IV. And then the National



Gallery, back there near St. Martin's. All the statues facing the clock.



"They do love their false icons in this country," said AbdulColin, with his odd mix of gravity



and satire, unmoved by the considerable New Year crowd who were presently spitting at,



dancing round and crawling over the many lumps of grey stone. "Now, will somebody please



tell me: what is it about the English that makes them build their statues with their backs to their



culture and their eyes on the time?" He paused to let the shivering KEVIN Brothers contemplate



the rhetorical question.



"Because they look to their future to forget their past. Sometimes you almost feel sorry for them,



you know?" he continued, turning full circle to look around at the inebriated crowd.



"They have no faith, the English. They believe in what men make, but what men make



crumbles. Look at their empire. This is all they have. Charles II Street and South Africa House and



a lot of stupid-looking stone men on stone horses. The sun rises and sets on it in twelve hours, no



trouble. This is what is left."



Tm bloody cold," complained Abdul-Jimmy, clapping his mit tened hands together (he found



his uncle's speeches a big pain in the arse). "Let's get going," he said, as a huge beer-pregnant



Englishman, wet from the fountains, collided into him, 'out of this bloody madness. It's on Chandos



Street."



"Brother?" said Abdul-Colin to Millat, who was standing some distance from the rest of the



group. "Are you ready?"



Till be along in a minute." He shooed them away weakly. "Don't worry, I'll be there."



There were two things he wanted to see first. The first of which was a particular bench, that



bench over there, by the far wall. He walked over to it, a long, stumbling journey, trying to avoid an



unruly conga line (so much hashish in his head; lead weights on each foot); but he made it. He sat



down. And there it was.

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