White Teeth (17 page)

‘That is precisely what I want to know. What
is
all this about the Harvest Festival? What
is
it?
Why
is it? And why must my children celebrate it?’

The headmistress, Mrs Owens, a genteel woman with a soft face half hidden behind a fiercely cut blonde bob, motioned to Katie Miniver that she would handle this.

‘Mr Iqbal, we have been through the matter of religious festivals quite thoroughly in the autumn review. As I am sure you are aware, the school already recognizes a great variety of religious and secular events: amongst them, Christmas, Ramadan, Chinese New Year, Diwali, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, the birthday of Haile Selassie, and the death of Martin Luther King. The Harvest Festival is part of the school’s ongoing commitment to religious diversity, Mr Iqbal.’

‘I see. And are there many pagans, Mrs Owens, at Manor School?’

‘Pagan — I’m afraid I don’t under—’

‘It is very simple. The Christian calendar has thirty-seven religious events.
Thirty-seven
. The Muslim calendar has
nine
. Only nine. And they are squeezed out by this incredible rash of Christian festivals. Now my motion is simple. If we removed all the pagan festivals from the Christian calendar, there would be an average of’ — Samad paused to look at his clipboard — ‘of twenty days freed up in which the children could celebrate Lailat-ul-Qadr in December, Eid-ul-Fitr in January and Eid-ul-Adha in April, for example. And the first festival that must go, in my opinion, is this Harvest Festival business.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Owens, doing her pleasant-but-firm smile and playing her punchline to the crowd, ‘removing Christian festivals from the face of the earth is a little beyond my jurisdiction. Otherwise I would remove Christmas Eve and save myself a lot of work in stocking-stuffing.’

Samad ignored the general giggle this prompted and pressed on. ‘But this is my whole point. This Harvest Festival is
not
a Christian festival. Where in the bible does it say,
For thou must steal foodstuffs from thy parents’ cupboards and bring them into school assembly, and thou shalt force thy mother to bake a loaf of bread in the shape of a fish
? These are pagan ideals! Tell me where does it say,
Thou shalt take a box of frozen fishfingers to an aged crone who lives in Wembley
?’

Mrs Owens frowned, unaccustomed to sarcasm unless it was of the teacher variety, i.e.,
Do we live in a barn? And I suppose you treat your own house like that
!

‘Surely, Mr Iqbal, it is precisely the
charity
aspect of the Harvest Festival that makes it worth retaining? Taking food to the elderly seems to me a laudable idea, whether it has scriptural support or not. Certainly, nothing in the bible suggests we should sit down to a turkey meal on Christmas Day, but few people would condemn it on those grounds. To be honest, Mr Iqbal, we like to think of these things as more about
community
than
religion
as such.’

‘A man’s god
is
his community!’ said Samad, raising his voice.

‘Yes, umm . . . well, shall we vote on the motion?’

Mrs Owens looked nervously around the room for hands. ‘Will anyone second it?’

Samad pressed Alsana’s hand. She kicked him in the ankle. He stamped on her toe. She pinched his flank. He bent back her little finger and she grudgingly raised her right arm while deftly elbowing him in the crotch with her left.

‘Thank you, Mrs Iqbal,’ said Mrs Owens, as Janice and Ellen looked over to her with the piteous, saddened smiles they reserved for subjugated Muslim women.

‘All those in favour of the motion to remove the Harvest Festival from the school calendar—’

‘On the grounds of its pagan roots.’

‘On the grounds of certain pagan . . . connotations. Raise your hands.’

Mrs Owens scanned the room. One hand, that of the pretty red-headed music teacher Poppy Burt-Jones, shot up, sending her many bracelets jangling down her wrist. Then the Chalfens, Marcus and Joyce, an ageing hippy couple both dressed in pseudo-Indian garb, raised their hands defiantly. Then Samad looked pointedly at Clara and Archie, sitting sheepishly on the other side of the hall, and two more hands moved slowly above the crowd.

‘All those against?’

The remaining thirty-six hands lifted into the air.

‘Motion not passed.’

‘I am certain the Solar Covenant of Manor School Witches and Goblins will be delighted with that decision,’ said Samad, retaking his seat.

After the meeting, as Samad emerged from the toilets, having relieved himself with some difficulty in a miniature urinal, the pretty red-headed music teacher Poppy Burt-Jones accosted him in the corridor.

‘Mr Iqbal.’

‘Hmm?’

She extended a long, pale, lightly freckled arm. ‘Poppy Burt-Jones. I take Magid and Millat for orchestra and singing.’

Samad replaced the dead right hand she meant to shake with his working left.

‘Oh! I’m sorry.’

‘No, no. It’s not painful. It just does not work.’

‘Oh, good! I mean, I’m glad there’s no, you know,
pain
.’

She was what you would call effortlessly pretty. About twenty-eight, maybe thirty-two at most. Slim, but not at all hard-bodied, and with a curved ribcage like a child; long, flat breasts that lifted at their tips; an open-neck white shirt, some well-worn Levis and grey trainers, a lot of dark red hair swished up in a sloppy ponytail. Wispy bits falling at the neck. Freckled. A very pleasant, slightly goofy smile which she was showing Samad right now.

‘Was there something you wanted to discuss about the twins? A problem?’

‘Oh no, no . . . well, you know, they’re fine. Magid has a little difficulty, but with his good marks I’m sure playing the recorder isn’t high on his list, and Millat has a real flair for the sax. No, I just wanted to say that I thought you made a good point, you know,’ she said, chucking her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the hall. ‘In the meeting. The Harvest Festival always seemed so ridiculous to me. I mean, if you want to help old people, you know, well, vote for a different government, don’t send them cans of Heinz spaghetti.’ She smiled at him again and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.

‘It is a great shame more people do not agree,’ said Samad, flattered somehow by the second smile and sucking in his well-toned 57-year-old stomach. ‘We seemed very much in the minority this evening.’

‘Well, the Chalfens were behind you — they’re such
nice
people —
intellectuals
,’ she whispered, as if it were some exotic disease of the tropics. ‘He’s a scientist and she’s something in gardening — but both very down to earth with it. I talked to them and they thought you should pursue it. You know, actually,
I
was thinking that maybe we could get together at some point in the next few months and work on a second motion for the September meeting — you know, nearer the actual time, make it a little more coherent, maybe, print out leaflets, that sort of thing. Because you know, I’m really interested in Indian culture. I just think those festivals you mentioned would be so much more . . . colourful, and we could tie it in with art work, music. It could be
really
exciting,’ said Poppy Burt-Jones, getting really excited. ‘And I think it would be really good, you know, for the kids.’

It was not possible, Samad knew, for this woman to have any erotic interest in him whatsoever. But still he glanced around for Alsana, still he jangled his car keys nervously in his pockets, still he felt a cold thing land on his heart and knew it was fear of his God.

‘I’m not actually
from
India, you know,’ said Samad, with infinitely more patience than he had ever previously employed the many times he had been required to repeat this sentence since moving to England.

Poppy Burt-Jones looked surprised and disappointed. ‘You’re not?’

‘No. I’m from Bangladesh.’

‘Bangladesh . . .’

‘Previously Pakistan. Previous to that, Bengal.’

‘Oh, right. Same sort of ball-park, then.’

‘Just about the same stadium, yes.’

There was a bit of a difficult pause, in which Samad saw clearly that he wanted her more than any woman he had met in the past ten years. Just like that. Desire didn’t even bother casing the joint, checking whether the neighbours were in — desire just kicked down the door and made himself at home. He felt queasy. Then he became aware that his face was moving from arousal to horror in a grotesque parody of the movements of his mind, as he weighed up Poppy Burt-Jones and all the physical and metaphysical consequences she suggested. He must speak before it got any worse.

‘Well . . . hmm, it is a good idea, retabling the motion,’ he said against his will, for something more bestial than his will was now doing the talking. ‘If you could spare the time.’

‘Well, we can talk about it. I’ll give you a call about it in a few weeks. We could meet after orchestra, maybe?’

‘That would be . . . fine.’

‘Great! That’s agreed, then. You know, your boys are really adorable — they’re very unusual. I was saying it to the Chalfens, and Marcus put his finger on it: he said that Indian children, if you don’t mind me saying, are usually a lot more—’

‘More?’

‘
Quiet
. Beautifully behaved but very, I don’t know,
subdued
.’

Samad winced inside, imagining Alsana listening to this.

‘And Magid and Millat are just so . . .
loud
.’

Samad tried to smile.

‘Magid is so impressive intellectually for a nine-year-old — everybody says so. I mean, he’s really remarkable. You must be
so
proud. He’s like a little adult. Even his clothes . . . I don’t think I’ve ever known a nine-year-old to dress so — so
severely
.’

Both twins had always been determined to choose their own clothes, but where Millat bullied Alsana into purchases of red-stripe Nike, Osh-Kosh Begosh and strange jumpers that had patterns on the inside and the out, Magid could be found, whatever the weather, in grey pullover, grey shirt and black tie with his shiny black shoes and NHS specs perched upon his nose, like some dwarf librarian. Alsana would say, ‘Little man, how about the blue one for Amma, hmm?’, pushing him into the primary colours section of Mothercare. ‘Just one blue one. Go so nice with your eyes. For Amma, Magid. How can you not care for blue? It’s the colour of the sky!’

‘No, Amma. The sky isn’t blue. There’s just white light. White light has all of the colours of the rainbow in it, and when it is scattered through the squillions of molecules in the sky, the short-wave colours — blue, violet — they are the ones you see. The sky isn’t really blue. It just looks that way. It’s called Rayleigh scattering.’

A strange child with a cold intellect.

‘You must be
so
proud,’ Poppy repeated with a huge smile. ‘I would be.’

‘Sadly,’ said Samad sighing, distracted from his erection by the dismal thought of his second son (by two minutes), ‘Millat is a good-for-nothing.’

Poppy looked mortified at this. ‘Oh no! No, I didn’t mean that at all . . . I mean, I think he’s probably a little intimidated by Magid in that way, but he’s such a personality! He’s just not so . . . academic. But everybody just
loves
him — such a beautiful boy, as well. Of course,’ she said, giving him a wink and a knock on the shoulder, ‘good genes.’

Good genes?
What did she mean,
good genes
?

‘Hullo!’ said Archie, who had walked up behind them, giving Samad a strong thud on the back. ‘Hullo!’ he said again, shaking Poppy’s hand, with the almost mock-aristocratic manner he used when confronted with educated people. ‘Archie Jones. Father of Irie, for my sins.’

‘Poppy Burt-Jones. I take Irie for—’

‘Music, yes, I know. Talks about you constantly. Bit disappointed you passed her over for first violin, though . . . maybe next year, eh? So!’ said Archie, looking from Poppy to Samad, who was standing slightly apart from the other two and had a queer look, Archie thought, a bloody queer look on his face. ‘You’ve met the notorious Ick-Ball! You were a bit much in that meeting, Samad, eh? Wasn’t he, eh?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Poppy sweetly. ‘I thought Mr Iqbal made some good points, actually. I was really impressed by a lot of what he said. I’d like to be that knowledgeable on so many subjects. Sadly, I’m a bit of a one-trick pony. Are you, I don’t know, a
professor
of some kind, Mr Iqbal?’

‘No, no,’ said Samad, furious that he was unable to lie because of Archie, and finding the word ‘waiter’ stopping in his throat. ‘No, the fact is I work in a restaurant. I did some study in younger days, but the war came and . . .’ Samad shrugged as an end to the sentence, and watched with sinking heart as Poppy Burt-Jones’s freckled face contorted into one large, red, perplexed question mark.

‘War?’ she said, as if he had said wireless or pianola or water-closet. ‘The Falklands?’

‘No,’ said Samad flatly. ‘The Second World.’

‘Oh, Mr Iqbal, you’d never guess. You must have been ever so young.’

‘There were tanks there older than us, love,’ said Archie with a grin.

‘Well, Mr Iqbal, that is a surprise! But they say dark skin wrinkles less, don’t they?’

‘Do they?’ said Samad, forcing himself to imagine her taut, pink skin, folded over in layer after layer of dead epidermis. ‘I thought it was children that kept a man young.’

Poppy laughed. ‘That too, I’d imagine. Well!’ she said, looking flushed, coy and sure of herself, all at the same time. ‘You look very good on it. I’m sure the Omar Sharif comparison’s been made before, Mr Iqbal.’

‘No, no, no, no,’ said Samad, glowing with pleasure. ‘The only comparison lies in our mutual love of bridge. No, no, no . . . And it’s Samad,’ he added. ‘Call me Samad, please.’

‘You’ll have to call him Samad some other time, Miss,’ said Archie, who always persisted in calling teachers Miss. ‘Because we’ve got to go. Wives waiting in the driveway. Dinner, apparently.’

‘Well, it was nice talking to you,’ said Poppy, reaching for the wrong hand again, and blushing as he met her with the left.