Mister mister, p.10
Mister, Mister, page 10
53. MIRIAM DEPARTS But, Mister, that was not the departure my Mother Sadaf felt most betrayed by. A little while later, after the worst of the winter months was over, the yellowing in the walls had receded and the rooms had returned to their regular funk, my Mother Miriam announced she’d met a man. She was getting married.
I’d remembered, having taken more notice of the comings and goings of the house, my Mother Miriam had been spending more time at the mosque. She’d been coming home later in the evenings. Sometimes dropped off by a stranger. I never caught sight of who it was from the window.
It was some young cleric, she said – and a convert at that – named John Muhammad, who’d asked. And she’d accepted. Imam Ghulam had blessed the union.
My Mother Sadaf cussed them all out when she heard and in her familiar hysterical pitch, Mister, threatened to never allow my Mother Miriam back to the house.
– American man? – Boh! – You stupid, stupid girl – it will be a bloody disaster!
– I just want a better life than this, said my Mother Miriam, I want to begin again. Begin with him – and I will!
– Begin again? Begin where? Stupid! Better you die and do your life over if you want to live again. You think you are any different? You are who?
I remember Mother Sadaf bringing her arms up suddenly, thundering toward my Mother Miriam with her thumb and forefinger pressed. My Mother Miriam managed to swing out the way sending my Mother Sadaf tumbling a few feet forward. She caught her breath and glared at her. The look on her face, Mister, it was as though my Mother Miriam had just committed the most egregious offence. She collected herself, nostrils flaring her great wide jaw jutting from under bluish lips.
– You are just the same as the others, she said, dusting her apron and smoothing her hair. Who were you when your mother left you? – Stupid! – And who – who raised you all these many? – Shame! – You had only me, me it was who fed you – ungrateful!
Mother Miriam turned to face her from the other side of the room.
– I am still young, she said. And yes, maybe stupid. But you are not my mother, Sadaf.
They didn’t speak again, Mister. I suppose my Mother Sadaf felt they were abandoning her as well as the house. I’d never seen her so incensed. She was like some maimed animal charging after them. She spent her hours outside, muddied in the soil, completely alone, and allowing nobody near, or to speak to her.
I remember how my Mother Miriam left. Although, for-give me, Mister – I won’t write how I felt about it. Sitting here now, I realise how painful it still feels to recall it. I was proper young. And it’s difficult, even now, honestly, to write it out of me…
All I’ll say is that my Sisi Gamal blessed my Mother Miriam for leaving. He understood she needed to leave – She saw her chance with this convert and took it. She told me I would see her again. And I believed her, Mister. She left alone on a Sunday.
Nothing else needs to be recorded about that sad day.
54. UPPER DECKS I came back to my recitation, reading and study – my only response to all the changes about me. And by then, Mister, the Millennium was approaching. I was nearly nine years old now, and I felt some need to deepen my learning before the new year. I also felt some anxious instinct to fill every empty room. I filled the silence with my muttered recitals, the echoes of my footsteps in the hallway, playing my father’s tapes. I chose the low tones of 1994 for my Mother Aneesa. Tangled strings from 1995 for my Mothers Shahnaz and Sofiyya. I went stalking about in circular patterns, swirling my wrists in the empty air. There was nobody there to watch me or question what I was doing. And nobody to rap me on the legs and tell me to straighten my crooked shoulders or anything.
All pretence, meanwhile, of attending proper school, had fallen away. I started skiving, Mister. I started spending entire days on them buses now, and trains, just circling the city alone. I’d use my lunch money to buy myself several bags of Ready Salted crisps and I’d sip on Sprites all day long without a bother. I’d watch the windows, Mister, looking down at them moneyed boroughs passing beneath me.
This was Covent Garden, Regent’s Park and Russell Square. All these marbled parts my uncle never ventured to for da’wah. The faces outside were all so hopped up, it seemed to me, busy with life. I’d watch performers. The buskers, bards on thin legs singing on shop corners. I’d admired this lot, Mister, how they captured crowds of tourists and onlookers with some raised voice above the traffic. I’d watch them gold-painted men. The ones holding cardboard mugs, claiming spare change for charity. There were people everywhere skipping effortlessly, or else dead in the eyes and troubled. Now that I’d seen so much more of the city, my own end of East Ham seemed so much smaller. And without my Mothers to spit-comb my curls behind my ears, Mister, I realised I must have looked a proper beggar boy sat there, like some lost-in-the-city beggar boy. I even got off to wander. I felt how easy it would be for me to disappear among this lot – all these tourists, fiddlers and street performers.
Then again, it’s not like I was completely alone on them buses. I’d spy all them wet-faced boys, who’d clamber upstairs after school. I got back to East Ham and I’d watch the ones who’d sit in the seats around me. I’d stare at the back of their necks. I’d see how their collars were never clean, shirts always stained with browned sweat. I’d notice the good shape of their bodies when they bent down to take up their bags, or reached over one another to slap heads. All the talk was about girls. And a thousand other opinions about life. Some of these lot, I remember, snaffling crisps, and chugging back Cokes, sounded to me like proper fantasists. It was as if the world was about to roll over for them. As if any day now their entire lives would fall into place at their feet.
How could anyone feel this way about the world? This same bright-wide, Mister, which was only troubling to me and violent. It seemed almost boundless to them, and so much of it already theirs. I decided they were all posers. Fakers who were egging each other on about their place in it for laughs.
I withdrew into my reading. I’d sit there scratching my ears, slouched in my seat, muttering to myself and imitating these other lads under breath. I might not have been as upright as them, Mister. Not as carefree or unfettered. But I was quietly content with my lot. I knew, in the end, that I, Yahya – a little more pretentious, maybe, a mock-learned lad – stood whole universes apart from these others.
55. 2000 The Millennium had come. The few of us left, Mister – myself, my Mother Sadaf and Sisi Gamal – all apart from my mother Estella, who was still upstairs in her silence, were sat huddled in front of the television.
The ceremony had started. All them tailored Royals, Tony and Cherie, your mega-rich and glamorous, holding hands with your Queen. It was time for ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and fireworks for the nation. My Sisi Gamal had the machine ready to record.
Admittedly, I got quickly bored with it. I threw a heavy coat on and sat outside on the balcony. I spent the night with my head buried in some old poet instead, Mister, perched on my Mother Shahnaz’s chair. Even when the colours flew up, I was reading al-Maari or similar, under them banging skies come midnight. I could hear my Sisi Gamal shouting up at me, Boy – you’ll miss the whole thing…but I could see enough, Mister. And the fireworks allowed me to read much clearer in their light.
56. NITS! Events took a turn after spring. The pipes had frozen from the winter just gone. I remember my Mother Sadaf went about clattering the radiators after it, saying: Plumbing’s gone! Boy, you will have to go and shower at school…
They sent me out unwashed, Mister. My unkempt hair started bunching. A thick layer of grease causing itchiness. Soon I started getting sores all over. My neck became very tender with a rash. And after a couple nights of terrible sleep, Mister, I woke to find a redness all over my shoulders and back.
I was scratching my scalp and armpits so incessantly at school that the stout Mrs Chow the nurse – her with her puffed cheeks and painted-on eyes – took me aside one afternoon and called my uncle. I remember the old man brought his barrow with him. Some of the other lads saw and laughed. And when my Sisi Gamal dragged me out, clipping both ears, saying Stop scratching! Stop it, boy!, they were already hooting, breathlessly laughing from afar.
We got home to find my Mother Sadaf bent over a hedge.
– He’s got nits! Bloody nits! – ach! – those bastard children gave him the nits!
My Mother Sadaf looked up and threw her gloves.
– What nits?…What’s this?
She came over and started pulling at my roots. I felt her slowly tease my greasy knots and watched her pucker her lips. It was then that I knew I was in for it. I was infested. I listened to them go at it for a bit longer. My Mother Miriam belting me into the soil she was so cross. My Sisi Gamal blamed the school and other children. My Mother Sadaf blamed my Sisi Gamal – Nits might have jumped into his head at school, but – boh! – your filthy basement doesn’t help!
My Mother Sadaf took me into her bathroom and drowned me under a bucket of soapy mixture. She mixed whatever chemicals she found under the sink and I was soaked and kneaded and towelled, her calloused fingers cutting into my skin. I was naked on the bathroom floor, Mister, and so embarrassed. She scrubbed my head and back, doused my hair with what smelled to me like drain cleaner and detergent – Be still, stop moving! – slippery little mutt…
I might have shouted that it hurt, Mister, but no use. If I screamed, my Mother Sadaf would have slapped me harder. If I went to pull away, she’d hold me back with a forearm at the neck. After that, my uncle sat me down on that toilet. Held my arms crossed, Mister. Telling me to set my head straight and went at my curls with his clippers.
How I cried, Mister! Threw my arms up, spat at my uncle’s feet. My Sisi Gamal did his best to calm me. Stop! Stop! Recite the Antar and Abla…hold still!
Eventually, the old man released me wrapped in a towel. I ran up as far as I could, into the upper floors with my towel, Mister, past my mother’s room, and I sat in an empty space running my fingers over the sore spots.
I found a small dirty mirror left behind by one of my Mothers. I peered at my skin, all puckered and torn, scratched and bleeding. I cried not for the loss of hair, Mister, but for the way my Mother Sadaf and Sisi Gamal had got at me. Jumped me like some child, some nobody worth nothing. I also knew my Mother Sadaf had planned to march me to them school gates in the morning. No chance of skiving off. I’d have to face the entire school looking like I’d been thrown into a bag of razors.
57. BOUKIE-HEAD I tried to make a go of it. Determined to put up a front of indifference. See me, shoulders pressed, chin to the ceiling. I was copying the boys I’d seen in school – them, with their backpacks half slung, all rolling arms, full of confidence. But then, all it took was them same lads to catch full sight of me, all them Waynes and Gavins and burly Craigs, gurning and hurling cusses: Look at the faggot now – what a freak!, and for others to turn in their seats to stare: Raas, look at the state of you! Oi-oi, you ugly boukie-head!, for my confidence to flounder fast.
All day they threw things, Mister – beats, spit-paper, erasers. Sent messages with my own face scrawled on crumpled paper. I felt myself recoil. I could feel the slant in my shoulders give in, and my head sink into my chest. I felt my legs tense again into their usual bow. I realised no amount of studied composure would have made me into something acceptable to this lot, Mister. By the end of that day, I think I just gave up trying…
I remember sitting there allowing the words I’d heard to fall into my mouth. I began repeating them to myself even louder – faggot, boukie-head, stinking freak…I don’t know why it made me feel better to do that, but it did. Easier to sit, body limp and slouching, curled into the ugliness they’d assigned for me. Even when some Chinese girl, Janet or Jane or Joana, noticed what I was doing and asked if I had fucking Tourette’s, I didn’t hide or shy away from her. There was no leave me alone or don’t speak to me…I only repeated the words, stirred under breath: fucking Tourette’s, boukie-head, freak…as if some instinct had set in, Mister. I’d have to imitate my bullies to survive them.
58. THE TRACE…THE TREMBLE…Fair to say, this was a humiliation the depths of which I’d hardly known, and it affected me deeply. I remember wandering about the house during these weeks. My Mother Sadaf was usually out among her weeds. Sisi Gamal out for da’wah. I felt so alone and unhappy, Mister, and I think I ended up seeking answers in my old Mothers’ house which still stood, for me, as the sump of collected mystery. I began searching, wandering, drifting about, hardly sure what I was even looking for…
I wandered the upper floors just as I’d done as a boy, revisiting them abandoned nests and hidey-holes, lifting broken headboards and dirty sheets. I threw aside the leather belts I’d hung from the ceiling beams, kicked open old bunkers I’d once so carefully constructed. All around me were relics of the little mutt, Mister. I even crept into my doe-mother’s room. I crawled underneath her bed, pulling boxes of clothes and coloured fabric. I even went through her dressing tables. Prising opened jammed drawers filled with yarn, pin cushions and playing cards. Nothing more. As for all them faces, them framed portraits and foxed mirrors, none of it helped ease my rising doubts.
On the second floor, I pulled out old forgotten albums filled with faded holidays. Photos of sunny landmarks, people dressed in fine clothes draped across sofas, big hats, wine glasses pinched with fingertips. Memories of people I didn’t recognise.
I went into the basement at last, and sat on my heels as I usually did with some book open in front of me. I leaned back and rubbed my sore patches against a row of my uncle’s spines. I felt very tight in the chest. It felt, honestly, like I hated everything in the world in that moment. My own school had turned on me. My teachers had never even acknowledged me there. My bullies had torn at me all week. Even my Sisi Gamal and Mother Sadaf had left me humiliated and bruised.
I looked around at the towering shelves and suddenly something else rose out of me.
I got up and took a swing at them. I sent books and pages flying. I got up and went over the loose pages that fell, trembling with a rising anger. I picked up a heavy tome and hurled it hard at a corner. Entire rows came cascading down. Falling binders missed my head by inches. I spat at them angrily. Swearing at them for falling. I started frantically searching the back shelves then, wanting names that sounded unfamiliar. Stuff I’d yet to read or hadn’t been pushed onto me by my Sisi Gamal. Everything looked so ordered and fixed. All the same narrow set under that same yellow light. And now I felt my chest tightening further. I went into the shadows, into the corners beneath that low ceiling, and peered in. And there – under some far leaning shelf – I saw boxes stacked against the furthest wall. Behind the clutter. Behind all my uncle’s shelves, tucked furthest back. There were so many left unopened.
As I stepped closer, I realised the smell from the ground was growing fouler. The putrid damp had eaten at these boxes. Puddles had formed under the lowest stacked. Faint whitish spots had bloomed over their sides. These boxes had been left to bleed into filthy water. I crept forward, Mister, ducking under beams. I rolled my sleeves and covered my mouth. And then I lifted a lid to look inside.
Books. Just more books.
But different bindings on them. Some were bound with black tape. And the labels too, were written in unfamiliar handwriting – a long, beautifully girlish hand with flowing y’s and curling q’s. Kneeling then, in the stink and frothing puddles, I looked closer at the back of each label. The same initials were written on every parcel – M.B.
I couldn’t have known it then, Mister. But I had the irrepressible feeling that whatever I’d been looking for had finally found me.
59. FATHER’S BOOKS And I’d like to have said, Mister – given where I’ve ended up – that I recall some strum of fate when I lifted that lid. In reality, I held my breath, and went on my tiptoes to see, half terrified at the stench.
These were my father’s books. Each cardboard box filled with what my uncle might have dismissed as junk and written English nonsense. I realised they were the same books my father had read upon arriving in Britain. Adventure stories with rowdy titles and garish covers. He’d been obsessed with these stories of battlers and big lives – and here they all were, stacked on top of each other, like some hidden library too crude or otherwise meritless for my uncle to bother with.
The volumes themselves were in okay shape. A little eaten and damp but otherwise good. Most were cheap paperbacks with frayed edges. Others bundled in no obvious order. I went and opened another box. Some of these were better kept. I whispered aloud the beginnings of long titles, lifting them one by one:
The History and Remarkable Life…
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous…
Travels into Several Remote Nations…
The Life and Times in Four Parts…
Bound with these tattered novels were little pamphlets from poets I’d never heard of. There was a dog-eared copy of Briggflats by Basil Bunting. Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake. I mouthed these names for the first time, Mister, and set them down to read on. Some names really made me laugh – Dickens, Godwin, Gooch – names like cheesemakers and slave owners. Made me think of fox puppets and flags. And Ford Maddox Ford, William Carlos Williams – names like American cowboys or cops.
I flicked through a few more and found little scribbled notes in margins like little insects. I remember thinking to myself: no wonder my father lost himself to the bright-wide, Mister – just look at what he read!
There must have been a dozen boxes tucked away in that basement. English novels, American poets, European works with never-ending titles. I was so eager to read them all, Mister, hear them all in my head. I wanted to hear them like I’d heard them Abbasids and Umayyads and the rest of my uncle’s lot.
