Brick Lane (53 page)

'Don't push me, brother.'

'If you're still standing, I ain't pushing.'

For long seconds they engaged in a combat of killer looks and deadly self–belief.

'Shall I put it to the vote?' asked the Secretary, stepping in between them. He showed his little milky teeth. 'Erm, what is the motion?'

'No motion, no vote,' said Karim. 'Anyone who wants to form their own group can get out now. And take their leaflets with them.'

The Questioner glided to the very edge of the stage. The tips of his trainers stuck over the end. He wanted to get close to his crowd. He wanted to walk on air. 'All around the world we are being destroyed. Let's not fight about leaflets.'

He sidled a little further forward and Nazneen could see the deep tread of his undersoles. There was a general rearrangement of backsides on seats. 'I will show you something.' He reached inside his jacket and took out his bundle of papers. After some shuffling he held up a photograph, the size of one of Chanu's writing tablets. It curled at the edges and it glazed over where the light hit it, but Nazneen could see that it showed a child.

'This is Nassar, aged one year. Weight, nine pounds and four ounces. Ideal weight, twenty-two pounds. The photograph was taken in Basra, December 1996.' He stooped and handed the photograph to Nazneen. 'Pass it around.'

The child lay on her back in a short white dress with red sleeves. Nazneen put her fingers over the baby's wasted legs. She knew that the baby had never walked, never crawled. She looked at the shrunken face and the large dark eyes that demanded much of her. Only the hair belonged on a baby, fine and wispy and softly curled.

The Questioner held up another photograph. 'Some more Iraqi children. Mashgal, Adras and Misal. All under one year. This was taken in 1998.'

Nazneen relinquished Nassar and she held Mashgal, Adras and Misal. The photograph was black and white. Three babies on a blanket, and between them they had nothing but their small bones and a thin covering of skin. They all reached for something that had moved beyond them, and the urgency in their eyes told Nazneen that they did not know that they should give up hope.

'Since the sanctions against Iraq began, over half a million Iraqi children have died as a direct result. This is a conservative estimate.'

The Questioner riffled through his sheaf of papers. He squatted for a moment and pulled out a few sheets. 'This is Noor. Six years old. This is what you can see of Noor after an American AGM-130 missile hit the Al Jumhuriya neighbourhood of Basra on 25 January 1999.'

It appeared at first to be a black and white shot. From the grey half-tones of ash and rubble, a girl's face in profile, a beautiful stone carving. It took time to decipher a shoulder and a sleeve sunk in the dust. The girl's hair was scraped back and a scratch of little pebbles pinned it flat against the debris. It was a beautiful picture, not of life ended but a study in life-lessness. It was only when she noticed the hands at the corner, a father's hands that would cradle the small head, that Nazneen realized the shot was in colour and understood what it meant.

'She was only a Muslim girl. One more, one less, who cares? We should keep quiet about these things,' said the Questioner. 'We should print nothing and do nothing. If a few Muslim children die, who cares? If it's a few hundred, a few thousand, half a million, a million, who cares? We should not write about our brothers in Iraq, or in Chechnya or anywhere else, because we do not care about them. To us, they ain't nothing.'

The hall, which had been mute, found its voice. Chairs scraped as people got to their feet, the walls echoed in two languages, the tiled floor rang out. Everyone talked at once and no one would stand for any more.

Nazneen watched Karim. He was pulling on the back of his neck, as if attempting to remove his head. Though the photographs had brought her close to tears, she found herself wondering what he would do.

The Questioner pulled back from the edge of the stage. He stood in the centre because now the stage was his. Holding up his hands for calm, he waited until the noise had subsided. 'Listen, I am only the Treasurer. I'm not allowed to talk. Some people say, "Throw him out. He's too radical for us."'

At this there was a little upsurge of dissent.

Karim spoke up. 'No one's talking about throwing out. We came together to get radical, man. But what are you going to do about all these things? I say, let's get our own neighbourhood straight first.'

This raised a little popular support among the audience, signalled by way of a couple of hoots and one raised fist that Nazneen discerned from the corner of her eye.

'Bingo and beer?' said the Questioner. 'Will we be killed by bingo and beer? Or half-naked women?'

This occasioned some laughter. The Questioner moved to capitalize on his advantage. He tossed down a final photograph to Nazneen. His small, heavy-lidded eyes appeared almost triangular. 'This is what the sanctions do. This is the price that the sick and the old and the children are paying with their lives.'

With the end of her sari, Nazneen wiped away the tears that finally came.

But the crowd was becoming restless. The photograph was passed round very quickly and returned to the edge of the stage.

'Why do you think they call themselves Lion Hearts?' Karim had moved to the left of the stage. He leaned against the wall. 'Do you know what it means?'

The Questioner had not sensed the change of mood in the hall. 'I'm going to read you something now.' He fished around inside his jacket. Though it was warm he had not removed it. It served, evidently, as a travelling office. The lining, Nazneen noticed, was of the same material as the gusset of Chanu's underpants. It was patched with a network of pockets.

He quoted now.
'There is one crime against humanity in this last decade of the millennium that exceeds all others in magnitude, cruelty, and portent. It is the US-forced sanctions against the twenty million people of Iraq.'

'But what can we do?' called someone from behind Nazneen. 'How are we going to fight the Americans?'

Karim's wall looked comfortable. He tested his jaw-line with his fingertips. With a shiver, Nazneen remembered the mole.

'Let's fight the ones on our doorsteps first.' This was shouted from the back.

'We know what Lion Hearts means.'

The girls in burkha stood as one creature and spoke as one voice. 'We get called names. We want to make them stop.'

'Let me finish, let me finish,' said the Questioner.
'If the UN participates in such genocidal sanctions backed by the threat of military violence
–
and if the people of the world fail to prevent such conduct – the violence, terror and human misery of the new millennium will exceed anything we have known.
This is what the former US Attorney General says. It is the new millennium now.'

'If it's violence you're advocatin', I shall have to renounce me vows to Allah.'

Nazneen turned round to see the black man on his feet. He had removed his skullcap and was holding it against his expansively robed chest.

Someone shouted, 'Apostate!'

'Who you callin' a postate?' He had a finely sculpted head, black as Nazneen's cast-iron frying pan, and in his white garb he looked like a king. 'I ain't no postate,' he grumbled.

'Brothers,' said the Questioner, 'let's keep our heads.'

The two girls in burkha rose. 'And sisters,' they said.

The Questioner glared at them. 'The Qur'an bids us to keep separate. Sisters. What are you doing here anyway?'

In defiance, they remained standing.

'There is always the Quakers,' said the black man. He resumed his seat.

For a time, Nazneen lost hold of the conversation. She stared down into her lap at the backs of her hands, at the green-blue veins that raised the skin, the freckles scattered between the tendons. Words brushed against her now and again, like moths at dusk, there and gone, barely noticed but troubling. She twisted her hands together. And she longed to be in the flat, Karim with his magazine, she with her sewing. He would walk around and fill up the space. He would walk around as if he were learning to fill the space. Each time he came now he inhabited the flat a little more.