Mister mister, p.16
Mister, Mister, page 16
I was among the next set of poets. A boy named Ahmed went first. Then Moazzam. The big lad went bold with it too. He made his chest large, filled his big cheeks and sent his short barrelling poem over everyone. He seemed disappointed with the limp claps he received. And then it started to drizzle, Mister. And when the next lad went up, the crowd were too busy with umbrellas and hoods to really listen. Ibrahim went after him. And I remember he’d chosen a poem we’d worked in class together. It had a buraaanbur style to it, a sort of lyrical Somali strain. He began as he’d done in class too, with a prepared introduction. He stood there for a full two minutes explaining how the poem was written in reverence to Ismail Mire – who fought in the expulsion of gaalo…He spoke the thing aloud rather than performed it. But it was too intricate, Mister. Too obscure a thing for that gathered lot. I remember when it ended, he was agitated too, his skinny elbows pointed as he stepped off the stage.
I was to follow Ibrahim, Mister. I’d decided on a poem I’d written the night before. It had a cast of hundreds of voices though nobody would know it. All plucked off the forum with them carping voices. It was a poem about the killing of Izz al-Din. All I remember was I’d approached the microphone with my arms raised, and then let my wrists fall to the sides as I started. My poem is to commemorate a martyr…I said, steadying my voice. I performed the poem, Mister. And it was over in a few minutes.
I wish there was more to it than that. I’d like to say that I’d left more of an impression. Some hint that I’d made a mark. I even picked out a man in the front row wearing a green jacket, and delivered my last syllable at him. His reaction only came when I rose sharply and stared hard as I closed – there was a flinch. I saw it.
Other than that, nothing. Polite claps from the back.
When I stepped down, Moazzam huffed and offered a rub of my shoulder. You did well, brother, he tutted, but the crowd was proper dead. We left the park in relief, honestly. And then we threw ourselves into the 240 bus and headed home happy to get out of the cold.
90. KUNYA I was very quiet on the way back. Moody impatience spilling into some harder feeling, I think. Ibrahim came and sat next to me and said he wanted a word. The lad was already thinking of the next event, the next move.
– Cous’, listen, he went, tonight was just a start of it…
– I know, I know, I said.
– I was thinking about a book – about publishing. We should all be published poets next term. And cous’, I think your stuff was among the strongest – and I can tell these things, cous’. I have an ear for it – wallahi, it’s true. Yours was the strongest.
I looked over at him and nodded thanks.
– You got more where that came from, yeah?
– Yes, I said.
91. ESTELLA LEAVES Sands were shifting. The sky was shaping around me. I had wondered, Mister, what my Sisi Gamal had been scheming during them past few weeks. In all that time I’d spent in the basement, I hadn’t seen him. I’d hear the old man busying himself in them upper floors. Talking to himself in my mother’s room, talking about a letter, I will write a letter…
Not long after that, I found out my Sisi Gamal had made arrangements on behalf of my mother. She was to be sent away. There was a care home that would look after her. All arranged, boy – at last! But – ach! – do not say a word about it to anybody! He’d done it all behind my Mother Sadaf’s back.
She was leaving the house. And honestly, I don’t know how I felt about it when he told me. I’d been praying, of course, and I felt as if my Allah had magically cast aside my mother. It was a selfish thought, Mister. But it’s how I felt at the time.
My Mother Miriam returned briefly to help my Sisi Gamal pack up for her. She arrived concealed, I remember, out of sight of my Mother Sadaf. I’d watched them both from the top of the stairs, quietly shuttling bags from her room to the landing. The day she was to depart, my uncle booked a cab for her. He said he was going to settle her down. And he flapped his hands once the cab arrived, and we bundled several bags, heavy black ones filled with my mother’s fabrics, into the driveway outside.
– Owf…it is cruel to do it this way, said my Mother Miriam. Her eyes were wet and reddened, and she’d stopped in her tracks. She was a sister to Sadaf, she went on, Sadaf should have the chance to say goodbye –
– Ach! snapped my Sisi Gamal, you know what is cruel? It is keeping this woman inside with the door locked! While she gardens, seeding, digging, planting things that will not grow…
My Sisi Gamal hissed for us to hurry. My Mother Miriam wiped her cheek and carried on to the cab parked down the road. I rolled the luggage over the potholed drive. Most of my mother’s things fitted into a single bag, Mister. Them long reams of fabric – which my Mother Miriam insisted my mother would be lost without – took several careful trips up and down the stairs to gather. When we’d finished loading, my Mother Miriam took hold of my arm as if to steady herself, and walked with me.
It’s an odd thing to remember now, Mister. But even in that moment, even if she too believed we were doing it for the good of my mother, my Mother Miriam’s thoughts, as gentle and big-hearted as she was, were toward my Mother Sadaf – the woman who’d fed her, cared for her, but had also flicked, spat and cussed her out for her entire life until she’d left. Sadaf is not cruel, she said. It is the only way she knows how to love is to bully. Her forgiving words stirred me somehow as I watched my Sisi Gamal come pushing my mother out in a wheelchair.
The chair was an old wreck he’d retrieved from the clutter. I remember my mother sat bundled, feet wrapped in bedsheets and old clothes. She was leaving for good, I realised. It sent a turn in my stomach. Her breath showed in the cold. My Sisi Gamal lowered her into her seat and stepped into his own.
My Mother Miriam went to say goodbye. I hesitated behind, Mister. I stood by the bushes with my hands in my pockets. It was only when my Mother Miriam asked me over that I dared get closer. Estella’s face – them eyes clear under that white light, staring absently ahead of her – sent another lurch into my stomach, Mister. I moved past my Mother Miriam and crouched down by the door. I looked over her hands and noticed how pale and thin they were, delicate pink at her fingertips. I felt myself falling forward then, pressing my head against her, pulling her close with my arms. And as the swell of hotness came to my cheeks, I realised I felt no movement from my mother, no response. It was like holding a wooden doll, Mister. My need to hold on suddenly turned into revulsion. I staggered to my feet. I wanted to run back to the house, but I stayed and watched my Mother Miriam close the car door.
My breathing began to ease. I realised that a period of my life was ending, Mister. That sight of my mother, my Mothers’ house, them decrepit corridors behind me, even my uncle, who waved at us from inside the cab. Just for the first few months, he’d said to me when explaining why he was going along. I can find a small flat and get Estella settled. Better weather in the south…
My Mother Miriam and I stood silently for a while afterward, next to them overgrown bushes and peeling fences. She looked down at me, eventually, and saw my face.
– Mr and Mrs Stevens of Kettering, she said.
I looked at her, questioningly.
– Estella’s mother and father, Yahya. It was they who sent the money. They have always sent money for her. Never to see her, not once since your father…just letters, numbers, account names – Mr and Mrs Stevens of Kettering…I saw the letters once when I went to get your mother’s prescriptions.
My Mother Miriam looked so sad, Mister. And as she spoke it became very clear in my mind how my Sisi Gamal had never needed to work for his room, and his basement at the house. And how all three of us were allowed to stay on for so long. We’d been taken care of. Mr and Mrs Stevens of Kettering.
– I think she will be happy by the sea, said my Mother Miriam, saying happy like it was a borrowed word. She smiled, as she turned to touch my cheek.
– Go inside, she said to me. And listen – one day you will leave this house too. And you must promise me, Yahya, you must promise it will be you who chooses. No matter who says otherwise…my goat-boy, my boy…Sometimes the only thing to do is to abandon a dead thing.
She bit her lip, looking at me and then glancing up at the house behind me. I watched her turn and walk away into an unlit road. Her arms wrapped under a black shawl. It was the last time I spoke to my Mother Miriam. She was like a stranger. Her shawl, her scent, smelled nothing like her.
92. SALT I won’t go into how my Mother Sadaf reacted to being deceived about my mother. She’d been distracted when I told her. I said my Sisi Gamal had sent my mother away at last. And all she did was nod along wearily, mumble something, and hobble off, looking for a trowel out in the yard.
Some months later, my uncle returned to meet my Mother Sadaf at Forty Road. It was May, as I recall it. Only giant mounds of brickwork remained. Splintered beams and concrete left behind. The council had given permission to pull the house down at last. It was gone, Mister. When we came to see it one last time there was nothing.
Neither of us said a word. We only looked. The allotments at the back had been cordoned off from the main site. My Mother Sadaf swatted away the Caution tape and walked right in through the wire fencing. I followed her around the plaster and broken roofing. What was left of the house was piled into different lots. As we walked through I recognised parts of what remained. Old prams, boxes, picture frames and footstools. Everything lay on the grass alongside broken cement. The gardens behind were mulched over and trampled. Metal piping had been strewn all across them ruined beds.
From there, my uncle and I let my Mother Sadaf walk ahead. See her trudge on with her sunken neck into them weeds and rotten vegetables, Mister. This woman who raised countless strange roots and turned them into even odder soups. I watched her walk out inspecting the ruin. She spat. Kicked a few overturned pots and walked on.
We’d been worried about what would happen to my Mother Sadaf now that the house had gone. She was never going to join my Sisi Gamal down south, that much was clear. When he offered, she said the sea would bring only wet air – bad for my bones…and so on.
I watched now as she produced a small box from her pocket. It held what looked like white powder or dust. She emptied the contents over a patch of soil.
It was salt, I realised.
I watched her sprinkle spoiled cabbages with it. The wilted mint beds too, and the crushed flowerpots and torn leaves. She dusted her palms, spreading the last. Everything the house had meant for the old woman, Mister – for all of us, over so many years – was now an empty waste. And my Mother Sadaf, socks hitched up to her swollen knees, was reminding us now, in the only way she knew how, that there was no use crying over such unforgiving soil.
She didn’t say goodbye as she left. Only walked past us both, Mister. Brushing her palms at the earth, fixing the knot in her scarf, and kicking the dirt up as she went.
93. ENDINGS (MYTH) The memory of that day – seeing the old woman salting the earth, stomping the ground in them ugly boots, and then turning away – has stayed with me. Like some half-demented fairy, my Mother Sadaf vanished completely after that. To have recorded her name with her voice – with all her cusses and stuttered bohs – brings me a bit of satisfaction, Mister. I feel I’ve laid her to rest on these pages, here.
The memory itself reminds me also, that sometimes life moves from one stage to the next quickly and haphazardly, and at other times with so much finality and purpose.
It reminds me that stories, like silences, have a way of enveloping a person. My Mother Sadaf knew the significance of that. She knew how rituals, gestures and actions make up a person. I knew it too, I think, even then, having learned most of my truths from her. I knew a consequence would arrive to replace this period of my life. I was confident that I’d sent the right intentions into the world. Some new and shattering occasion would be just around the corner. An event, say, that would send me hurtling into a new and louder life. And it did arrive, Mister. I only had to wait another month before another vision became reality.
94. 7 JULY This day I remember perfectly, Mister – you needn’t ask if I do. Bent metal burning. Rubber tyres. An old childhood memory of a rhyme: wheels of the bus go round and round…These pictures were on telly in an endless repeat. Tavistock Square. Aldgate Station. It was only a few weeks into that summer. Right down in them tunnels there, in the Tube, near them da’wah spots Sisi Gamal and I used to stand and recite.
This was Edgware Road. Near the station. Where everyone saw them thin lines of blackened ash rise into the air.
I’d moved to my new dormitory a week before. I was now at the Ibn Rabah, Mister, my uncle said he’d talk to them muftis and took care of it.
I remember sitting, Mister, crossed leg-over-leg on that carpet just watching the telly report – blip! – four British-born lads – backpacks strapped to shoulders – three separate blasts – fifty-four dead – blip! – London streets filled with debris, bodies fleeing, sounds of sirens, trains, reporters filming at the scene. It all sounded so familiar to me. Like a memory. Like I’d seen it all before. It was a strange, unsettling feeling, Mister.
I set about writing as quickly as I could. Words came once I heard them names on the news – names, again, Mister. But not of the victims this time. What caught my ears were the names of them four Bradford boys. The bombers. With their mugs like mine and my brothers’. All four names were mispronounced, I remember. Every newsreader on the telly got them wrong, even that Moira Stewart fumbled beside them blurry shots of them boarding them buses and trains.
I can’t tell you why these names sent a tremor through me, Mister. Ibrahim messaged me about it later, and I couldn’t even tell him why, when I heard the names of the bombers, I’d felt inspired. I could hear the excitement in his voice, Mister. How he kept telling me: You’ll go viral for this one, cous’ – didn’t I tell you – didn’t I say…I used Al-Bayn to post them, Mister. Because it was Al-Bayn, made of the collected mass off them forum voices, that I heard read out the poem in my head. I’ll write just a fragment here. I know you’ve read it before. A poem as tribute to four unmourned men:
Let British tears salt British soil instead!
As we sing the names of our martyred dead:
Mohammed Siddique Khan!
Shehzad Tanweer!
Hasib Hussain!
Germaine Lindsay!
For in His name Their names are:
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
I remember the same murmur at the mouth as I’d finished it. I posted the poem straight away. And then I just looked out the window and peered, waiting to see if the sky had changed – and it had. The clouds had parted. There were shades now of some impressive new light. And can I say, Mister, despite the mess that followed – all the noise that has landed me in it, into this here hot water – I saw no other way of reflecting the bright-wide back on to itself.
So – chop-chop – Al-Bayn it was who’d send me off into fame and misfortune. And I think I’d understood also, Mister, that my bristling, teeming-under-the-skin, flower-bud Yahya was no more. I was no longer goat-boy, Mister.
And I would never, could never, go back.
II
2010–15
Al-Bayn
To fame, then – notoriety, and disagreeable celebrity. For what did it mean, Mister, to see the sight of my own irregular face, to hear my own indecent speeches suddenly cast back at me now, refracted again, into so many circulated recordings, photographs and imitations?
Five barrelling, spinning years had passed since the posting of that last poem. That ode to the 7/7 martyrs made my name. I daresay by then my Al-Bayn had become the most widely read poet in your Great Britain. Had I known where I’d end up, I might have preferred obscurity…As it was, I was self-styled and out there now – with my curls pinned back, tucked under a short cowl, wearing a sort of black keffiyeh, and a thicker, blacker beard, dyed dark, combed and pointed at the end. I’d assumed the form, you could say, of an improper poet: Al-Bayn.
In truth, I was a stranger to myself in these intemperate years. I began to reject my fame almost as quickly as I’d found it. For when it arrived, Mister, fame came like a flood for me. Nearly swept me away with it. Fame nearly drowned me. First for my words, then my kunya, and then my body. I’d have gone under had I not found a way to escape…
95. AL-BAYN! AL-BAYN! So – my youth lay behind me now, while the years of adventures and bold escape to come – the next period of my life, Mister, spent beyond your British borders, out in exile and so on – lay ahead of me still, and waiting. But before I get into that, I’ll write to you about the year preceding, the year that ended with my abandoning your Great Britain for good.
How quickly them poems started circulating. I was republished and reprinted many times during the five years since. People read me in little pamphlets, Mister, press magazines and papers. I began hearing my name – repeated endlessly. Out on the streets, strangers would come up, yell at me: Al-Bayn! Al-Bayn! Al-Bayn!
And so, imagine me – once the slack-jawed idiot-boy born to a mardy household – catapulted now into a celebrated figure of sorts. And as the years passed, many of the faces I’d known, and had known me by my first name, had become lost to me. Moazzam and Hass, for instance. Both left after finishing studies. Them lads never got to see my fame arrive, or my rise into notoriety. And after my Sisi Gamal had also sped away with my mother, Mister – that doe face sat in the back of the cab, and him waving out the back of it – my days had become so busy I had no time to visit. My uncle, too, had stayed for the entirety. Choosing instead to live by the sea, to be close to her, and be shot of East Ham, at last.
