The Sitar

Official farewells consisted of a crude mix of genuine goodbyes and chorous ones. Jaya decided that she would need to visit Ms Datta today, even though it was minus two degrees outside, and she could see that water had frozen mid-fall from outside pipes, and the leaves on the ground were stiff from frost, the Sri Lankan shopkeeper had actually pulled his stall selling calling cards in to the shop (Mr Navanayagam, generally in all weathers, could be seen sitting at his steel stall outside his shop, protecting his wads of rubber-banded ‘Banana Rama: Call India for half a penny’, or ‘Hurry Hari: Call India for free!’ or ‘Bangla Blower: make money by calling home!’); even the skulking young boys seemed to be vandalising the bus stop slowly.

  Mrs Datta was good friends with Auntie Shamina (even though Shamina never ate anything from the house (‘smelling of their strange Hindu-pindu masalas, not for me! For the sake of Hazrat Fatima and her bur-gin daughters!) and would later phone Bangladesh to talk about the quaint Hindu widow whose daughter couldn’t speak a word of Gujrati (‘Devilry! That is why God makes them smell of rotting flowers; because they do not care for their heritage! O the plains of Saudi Arabia and their holy dynasties!’); nor did she even dare to look at the small statue of Ganesh on the windowsill (‘Idolatry! O Allah!’)). It made sense therefore, that Jaya should visit Mrs Datta and her daughter one last time before Bangladesh, which in it’s own way, was persecuting both of them.

  ‘Oh salaams to you, pretty one,’ Mrs Datta smiled as Jaya took off her shoes in the hallway (How her in-laws would scoff at how low she had stooped, forced to be amicable to this Daughter of Traitors with the blood of the Mughals in her!).

  ‘Mrs Datta,Can you PLEASE tell Auntie Shamina to stop coming over every Thursday with her tub of samosas and telling me that my womb is drying up and I need to pop out a baby soon?’

  Mrs Datta nodded slowly, sympathetically. Jaya sighed.. ‘Where is Ananya?’

  ‘She is in there playing Sitar Hero or such-such,’ she signalled to the living room.

  Ananya was looking at the television screen, rolling her hips and twitching her hands, singing to the twang twang of a sitar parodying a pop song, and pointing to the bindi on her forehead... ‘If you like it then you gotta put a dot on it, if you like it then you need to put a dot on it, ung thung thung, ungh mungh mungh,’ She pumped her hands in the air and lowered her body in increments, ‘All the single desis, now throw your rice up... Up in the mandir, eyein’ up my Bindi, turned my back, yea it’s like that, cuz he don’t speak no Hindi...ung thung mungh...’

  Jaya coughed politely.

  Ananya gasped and stood upright in the middle of the living room.

  Her bindi, dislodged by her sudden jolt, was now hanging off her eyelash.

  ‘Hello Jaya.’ Ananya forced a smile and turned off the TV. She gestured for Jaya to sit down.

  ‘Hey. Just thought I’d see you before I go to Bangladesh.’

  Ananya gasped. ‘Again? Don’t you go, like, every year?’

  ‘Yea...’

  There were a few moments of silence, while Ananya scoped Jaya’s face. Her brow slowly fell, and she nodded.

  ‘I get it. Listen-‘ She looked at Jaya, ‘just give me a call if... you know... you need anything. Anything.’

  Jaya nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And whatever you do on your... holiday... just make sure it’s what you want.’ She watched Jaya’s face carefully.

  The girls hugged, and Jaya left, the bindi still hanging off Ananya’s eyelashes.

  This deep voice that had been aquired, this language of the lettered, these gob-filling vowels and deliberate stutter were not self-taught. They seeped in by accidental osmosis. In an area where ‘ma’ and ‘yea’ and ‘yaa mee’ punctuated every sentence til they had become default conjunctives, Jaya, being more of a Balancer than a Reflector, ended up somehow, from nowhere, becoming a breath of insolent fresh air. It wasn’t intentional. It just happened.

  And like so many things that startle people who vie for singularity, the colliding metamorphosing voiceaccentlanguage of an area that spat out something as anomolous as Jaya Chakra-Borty, made them feel anxious (disguised as concern). These types who used these morphers as an intellectual plaything. There was something going on that they didnt know about; it was hidden in their strange phonemes and tendency to drop great steaming superlatives in the middle of mild-mannered sentences, their pepperings of spirituality on discussions about share prices. So the onlookers would talk in didactics, hoping to gain the upper hand in expounding their newly discovered People to their own (it was ok to do this when a contrasted anomoly emerged; it served as a bridge), while keeping an eye on the crowd behind them who were growing disgruntled at being explained by an outsider. Anarchy brewed. The Explainer was out before the bridge was reclaimed by the swathes of home-made philosophisers, empowered by the twice diluted bumber sticker psychologies of Channel 4’s Big Brother and capitalisms ongoing cool-hunt to find the next insurgent lot of underdogs who are easily led by a false sense of empowerment and easily quashed when they became a liability.

  And as the shitted out detritus floating about on the streets of Britain, post-Enlightenment, just having missed the train of the cultural Pioneers, forced to make their mark only by attempting to improve on the last attempt (which is much harder than being the first at doing something), but pushed down by all the higher-ups who’ve gone through the over-inflated positive discrimination phase so now think it’s ok to judge only on merit, without realising that this godforsaken shit-fed generation haven’t matched the standards of Everyone Else yet and have been through so much over exposure by various Explainers that nothing seemed authentic anymore (and with no authenticity, the feeling of belonging was always assigned to somebody else to administer and do as they please with it). There was no sense of pride or shame about a choice of genetics in which they had no active part in, and when they were treated both in England and Back Home with the wry sense of hospitality given only to royalty, the interim ground became difficult to balance on. To survive meant to split yourself in two and, in the ever changing progression and degression and mish-mashing of the two up in the air having a scuffle and tearing each others hair out, it was impossible to know which side was which.

  And who said any of it was bad? Living only in one culture and existing in a single dimension, doomed to only ever be an onlooker (or a leech) while people teemed and spilled over with mushroom cloud thinking and a personal attachment to more than one string of consciousness, borne from the loins of old Indian vinyls in Southall, Top Class Number One saffron from Brick Lane, rollie smoking quiff wielding leather jacketed Pakistani Teddy boys and the general anarchy of sari clad housewives who defiantly continued to cook stinky curries and, knowing only a few words of English, used them like a rebellious artist making haphazard sentences that made sense to nobody but others like them.

  The bright colours and caricatures had ebbed away now, and things were almost monotonous. The occasional loop of an emotional rollercoaster made an appearance but it was temporary; a few wisps of a crisis and a religious dilemma here and there, yes; but other than that, they were a downtrodden bunch. Their parents were worried about mortgages or Housing Benefit, angina, and the dangers of the library staying open til 3am…

  And they, the young minstrels, shuffled on, shouldering the crudely constructed ideas of their community from the bygone era of the 70’s which unfortunately for them, had gone from being a superficial adornment to a memory. Something had seeped deeper than their skin, and it went beyond the clothes they wore or the tramp stamps some of the girls dared to sport.

  Watching illegally downloaded programmes on their mobile phones (they were happy to take the plastic films off them now) where it was now ok for a white man to black up to play a Pakistani, but a Pakistani still couldn’t white up unless it was for political reasons (and possibly realism), they yawned and daydreamed their way through class after class, occasionally absorbing a sentence and paying Gurmeet to do their hom
ework, because the hours they spent at the library were for flirting and school didn’t teach any real life skills anyway.

  Ruby Ansari Khan was one of the many this morning, trudging through the corridors of Balsall Heath Grammar School, her heels squeaking against the buffered floor, quite obviously a mere ghost of her former self, her head hung, her hands in her pockets. This time last week she would stomp through the corridors in her big black boots, her hair bouncing, shoving the freshies out of the way. But the hook she had chosen to hang her life on had had its double sided tape weakened and now it was only just hanging on.

  The world had suddenly stopped revolving. It was swivelling on some other axis now, one that belonged to other people (whose existence she hadn’t really noticed before). She didn’t make her usual beeline towards Paul’s room, hoping he wouldn’t notice because she couldn’t bear to question his kindness. When life got so debilitating that all she wanted to do was lie in bed with the covers pulled over her because she had no idea what was happening to her, she had pulled out of the vacuum and arrived here, in school, where one more absence would see her on Report. But here wasn’t here anymore. Here was a series of empty yellow rooms that had miscarried and wasn’t full of potentially life-changing decisions. The world had stopped its express courier delivery of meaning.

  Why was it that one look was enough to crumble the foundation of someone’s belief? A girl Ruby had never met had changed the very fabric of all the construed ideas she had in her head. She couldn’t quite shake the feeling that her tell-tale brain was fibbing about the possible meaning of that look; but of course it didn’t even matter. Why had it affected Ruby so much? She didn’t WANT to be affected. She was perfectly happy being a bigoted racist, thank you very much.

  She fiddled with the chain around her neck and thought about how pleasurable it had felt when all that vomit slid up her esophagus last night. She was in a crisis. Her own empire had crumbled. She had built it on the foundations of failed Britain; failed by the courts, the media, the parliament. Structurally Britain’s democracy had worked to the disadvantage of the likes of her; democracy had become fused with free-market capitalism and hollowed out til there was only a useless vacuum, which she had filled with her own hatred of the establishment and, with the help of Paul, she was doing fucking well. She woke up burning with hatred for foreign students. Now she felt fractioned from the dispossessed. All those cock-wielding white bastards she was so willing to get on her knees for just seemed like pasty Turdy Toms. But was she one of the blackbitch lefties now? She felt ill. She felt as though she’d eaten too much junk food and it was swilling about in her stomach. She felt weak. But most of all, she felt like a loser. One of those that didn’t belong. She hadn’t burnt her bridges, no, she was far too discreet for that. But her mind hadn’t seen the bridge in the first place and the fog hadn’t lifted enough for her to take her first step. And why the fuck couldn’t she stop thinking about wheat fields? All she could picture was sitting in a wheat field with that girl. The Valley Girl. The girl with the valley of something etched in to her brow and free-flowing towards Ruby.

  It hurt, the racism that had fallen off her body. Like a phantom limb, she could still feel the pangs. It began as a dull ache at the beginning of the day but by the time double-History rolled by it was aflame with anguish. She was squirming. Mrs Grant had asked her why she was so quiet and why her brow was tightened with pre-occupation, but she withered in to the whiteboard when all she got was a scrunched up threatening face in reply.

  Who knew the anguishes of an ex-racist Pakistani schoolgirl? The sky was sepia-tinted for Ruby today, and the ground was crumbling. The council-issued grass didn’t put up a fight as she walked over it; even it had lost its springiness. Her chunky black boots today carried her over the concrete playground and the grassy fields and she came to rest in the last stretch of grass behind the Maths block. She dumped her cracked and ripped rucksack on the ground and sat on it, knees up, head hung, hands tucked under her buttocks.

  The process of rehabilitation could happen overnight, contrary to the weak-minded pycho-babblers of today’s society. These same idiots had fallen for the ‘You cannot fool all the people all of the time’ ideal, skipping along in their multicultural Britain false utopia, not knowing about the rot that had started beneath it all. The moist, hot undergrowth that had become a breeding ground for fat white skinheads with pierced cocks and irrational anger problems. She had been of them; fearful and resentful; but most of all, powerful. They snatched it. They fabricated it, they put it in bottles and threw it in to windows, and they sprayed it all over walls. They had pissed all over the happy inter-breeding millennial neighbourhoods with their libraries full of Czechs and Poles and Indians and Africans and the occasional White; the ‘cosmopolitan’ vibe of the early 2000’s was, to Ruby only yesterday, a fragment of the imagination of some artist somewhere, of some ignorant idealistic persons who had taken a freak microcosmic look at one or two neighbourhoods and proclaimed that multiculture was a success but oh! How they weren’t prepared for the uprising of the underground bacteria!

  Ruby and Paul had tittered in knowingness when Jack Straw had said that Paki boys saw white girls as easy meat; how true it was! Ruby had thought that it was true; Paul had questioned why the public debates centred around whether or not Pakistani boys did believe that; when it should have centred around whether or not White girls were easy. And then Angela Merkel and David Cameron had said multiculturalism wasn’t working and too much ghettoisation was occurring -yes, yes, yes, Ruby had said yesterday.

  But today her phantom racist limb burnt. It itched and scratched and stung. It was gone, but in its place were a thousand unanswered questions. A few answers emerged. She had read today that in Britain, a Muslim was more likely to marry a non-Muslim, than a Christian was to marry a non-Christian. And, as the day went on, she became accustomed to finding answers in the same way she had found anger hidden in secret places within.

  Economic progression and money -those two hefty symbiotic estates that relied on each other so desperately and starved laymen out- were best encouraged by immigrants. Cheap labour, good work ethic –these things could only come in abundance from the oppressed. From those that had fled hot climates, and persecution. Only someone who knew what they didn’t want anymore, could give Britain what it knew it did want. Ruby wondered about it all; about how she still knew the lies existed, and how there were always forces working behind the scenes waiting to crush the underdog. She listened, for the first time in a long while, to what was going on in her own head, and not to the diatribe of bollocks that she was fed by everyone else. She, like many others, had forgotten to listen to her gut instinct. Not the animal instinct which had made want to lynch Blacks and Asians; but the gut, human instinct that made her look at the bigger picture, not at the distraction placed in front.

  She played with the grass for a while; the girl with the valley brow still on her mind. Perhaps the girl represented something that should have existed in the future; a girl who looked at Ruby wondering what she was doing cheering on a racist attack. Maybe valley girl had expected Ruby to be over it –to be over the racially-profiled resentment that had erupted since the 70’s. To move on from the tension over the small matter of race. Perhaps the girl expected Ruby to be more sophisticated, more discreet, more elegant.

  She smiled. Goodness; there was an idea. Valley girl, most likely a lesbian, teaching her about sophistication. About inclusiveness. After all her years calling them barbarians and savages and leeches, here she was imposing a completely opposing idea on to a girl who Ruby didn’t even know at all. And perhaps, somewhere along the line, Ruby had gotten so carried away with perception, given it so much credence, that here was the backlash.

  As she had thought, rehabilitation happened overnight. This morning, she had come to school with a completely different perspective. Now she knew she was a fighter; but now her fight had evolved. She was looking at lifting boundaries now, she was go
ing to take away those niggling distractions that fucked up everyone’s vision. And Paul; well, she’s suspected he was far too nice to carry on being a thug. No self-respecting skinhead would befriend a brown girl anyway, unless he was curious about the Others. And she had faith that his curiousity would lead him to the same place as she had found.

  She sighed, deep and long, and opened her eyes. She thought of her mother. Her mother who was scared of her own daughter.

  Ruby Khan stood up, flung her rucksack over her shoulder, and finished off the day at school.

  The evening she spent at home that night, talking to her parents, entertaining guests and avoiding making trays of tea, was one of thousands.

  ‘They haven’t killed Osama Bin Laden; Bin Laden didn’t exist in the first place.’ Asif sucked on his cola cube and watched the TV screen intently.

  ‘Brother Asif, they have killed him, it has been all over the TV.’

  Asif rolled his eyes. ‘Yes I know that. But I’m talking metaphorically.’

  Munir looked confused.

  Asif took a deep breath. ‘Bin Laden was a creation of the US; he was a symbol. The experts said so themselves, he was no longer operationally important. So why was the US military still hunting him? Would they spend all that money on shooting down a symbol? Probably not; otherwise they’d shoot down every Muslim icon. They created all this hype around him, and they used him as a figure to whip up anti-Muslim hatred around the world. And now that everyone hates the Muslims, they’ve discarded of him. He was a Frankenstein they created.’

  ‘Well to be honest, even though he wasn’t operationally important, they needed him dead. They don’t care about these practicalities; it seems nobody cares about the truth anymore. The French frogs banned the niqab even though there’s only about 3 people in the country who wear it. They banned a symbol; they sent out a message saying ‘we hate the Muslims’.

  Munir sat back, satisfied. He and the Brotherhood had been upset when news had gotten out that Bin Laden had been killed. They hadn’t prayed for him, because they had their doubts about who he was, but they were upset that somebody who could plan a mean bombing strategy could die after running for so long.

  ‘This is all the excuse they need to tear up Pakiland, bro,’ Hanif shook his head.

  Junaid’s eyes were bloodshot. ‘Yea man. Eh, you know what brother Asif? You know how you said the US would chop down every Muslim icon or leader they could? Well if you thing about it, they have haven’t they? Bin Laden; dead. Gaddaffi; dying. Mubarak… well I’m sure something happened to him. And all that shit in Syria; all that war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Look at the people on the US’s top Most Wanted list man; they all got beards ennit!’

  Hanif piped up. ‘I heard Bin Laden wasn’t even a proper Muslim. And some one even said he was paid by the US to pose as this terrorist. You know, money and weapons and safety and all that; he got all these promises.’

  ‘Cha man; how’d you know that?’

  ‘Coz yea: Bin Laden was allegedly a Wahabi ennit?’ Hanif dramatically scoped his eyes around each of them. ‘But did you know that Wahabi’s are so strict that they not even allowed to take pictures ennit? And have you seen the amount of home videos Bin Laden has of himself?’ Hanif shook his head. ‘Something dodgy agwan there bro,’

  ‘You know, after all that,’ Asif exhaled smoke from their hookah pipe, ‘Bin Laden never did admit to doing those twin tower attacks.’

  The brothers nodded, and continued watching Al Jazeera play the same 30 seconds of footage over and over again, as an ‘expert’ continually droned on and on and journalists were live-linked from several different countries explaining what link they had with the deceased nomad. Of course, none of them believed anything they heard in the media. They were busy trying to figure out why the US had so hastily disposed of the body without a post mortem or without public closure; they refused to believe that no member of Bin Laden’s own family in Saudi Arabia would accept his body. And they believed that the family was paid blood money to shut up about it. The Brotherhood also believed that the Saudi’s were a bunch of white-arse licking cunts and, while they were at it, thought it apt to spend the morning of the 29th April 2011 watching the Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton, in case there were any signs of Freemasonic powers present at the ceremony. They spotted several, actually.

  So yes, being in the home of one of the Brothers would have caused a media field day; but they were upset at his death. They were upset when they heard any Muslim had died.

  ‘You know Brother Hanif, you’re right. The US military will take this as an excuse to tear up Pakistan; they’ve been saying he’s been hiding there for ages but the Paki’s denied it. But you know what? The US will take this as an excuse to tear up anywhere. They’ve egged themselves on; they’ve got the world feeling triumphant about being anti-Muslim.’

  ‘But brother Asif, why are they so against the Muslims in the first place?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe it’s because of all the fact that Muslims have all the oil; that they own all this art, all the buildings, all the powerful establishments. Because they’re fighting for Palestine.’

  ‘But the jews are surely more powerful?’

  ‘Maybe. But they don’t have their hands on oil, do they?’

  The brothers again nodded slowly in consensus.

  ‘There’s more at work here than we see, brothers. Allah give theme guidance.’

  They sat in silence nowadays, when they weren’t talking about Freemasons, or watching Al Jazeera. None of them talked about what happened in London, and none of them felt the need to every bring it up again. In a strange way, failure had brought them together. A failed mission usually humiliated those involved and broke groups up, not wanting to be constantly reminded of their shortcomings. But this group, they had come together. They gave each other consolation; that this was not the end of the line. That Islam would be heard. And with Bin Laden gone, they felt strangely free to take their own direction now. Perhaps the pressure to bomb had disappeared from their own psyche now. Perhaps, after Bin Laden had been shot down, and Jaya had appeared from nowhere, the Brotherhood had been wise enough to see the signs Allah had given them to change their ways of protest.

  Junaid had given up smoking marijuana, Hanif was reading more books and Munir was watching less porn. Asif had gotten a job and was helping Amma pay bills, and had finally taken over the washing and re-plastering of the kitchen. He helped her with everything now; she had even applied for a computer course. So far, she had missed 3 lessons but, she beamed with her pan-stained teeth, she knew Asif would read the modules and translate them in to Bengali after dinner.

  Asif had decided that the 2012 Olympics would be his next platform for protest, but nowadays, he preferred sit-ins, banner protests, and even the occasional stink bomb through letterboxes.

  Munir cocked his head, his brow furrowed. ‘Obama’s the good guy though, right?’

  Asif looked at him, wondering how Munir had every managed to get himself involved with the Brotherhood, knowing as little as he did, and even isolating them from the white boys at school through his over-zealous assertion of their unity (‘Why can’t I call him brother? You lot go around calling each other squire’).

  Asif took a deep breath and shook his head: ‘Look at Guantánamo. With a stroke of a pen, the day after Obama took the oath he should have said, “We’re getting the hell out of here.” Same thing with Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no reason for them to be in a war. “They’ll all come here if we don’t go there.” That is bollocks. Go halfway around the world to kill and die? Why? Now the veterans can’t get jobs. I see stories every day about soldiers being liberated from Iraq only to end up unemployed. Yea the fucking tools deserve it in my opinion, but where is Obama? How can he continue Bush policies that were so mean? People reckoned Obama would be a peaceful president, but there he is, as evil as any of them. Not a liberal at all, man. They’re all just puppets. Even I thought he?
??d be cool, just cuz he’s black an’ that. But no.’

  ‘Awww shit, man, so even Obama’s fucked?’ Munir looked incredulous. ‘So… who can we trust then?’

  ‘Well, no president has ever told the truth about why we’re in the wars. I think oil has a lot to do with it. I think there’s an Israel connection. British government feels compelled to protect Israel, ennit. That’s why they’re so busy fuckin’ up Muslim leaders man. Like, I think it was wrong to hang Saddam Hussein. He should have been put before an international court for war crimes and everything else. But for us to just bypass the law and have him hanged was wrong. And the same with Bin Laden; why just ditch him like that man? No trial, no nothing. Fucking bullshit. We’re funding a war that’s illegal and we keep on ploughing our money in to it, man. That’s how Israel was created, aided and abetted by U.S. money and weapons. To steal an occupied people’s country is illegal under international law. The Israelis know that, but their massive military force has always overwhelmed the poor Palestinian people. And those Jews, man: they own most of the world. Did you know they most of Brick Lane? Yea, man. And in America they own Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street –all owned by the Zionists.’

  Munir piped up. ‘Yea man! And they’re all Freemason’s and shag their own sisters an’ that, ennit bro?’

  ‘Well I don’t know about that…’

  ‘Yea man, I’m talking propa knowledge, bro. They do some sick shit man, you don’t know.’

  ‘Hold on a minute bro,’ Hanif sat up. ‘Do you know that some Palestinian behavior over the years, including hijacking and suicide bombing, has been wrong and has added to the problem?’

  There was silence. Asif coughed. ‘Brother Hanif, in an ideal world, passive resistance and world disarmament would be great. Unfortunately we don’t live in that world. But who wouldn’t fight for their country? What would any American or Briton do if their land was being taken? Remember Pearl Harbor. The Palestinian violence is to protect what little remains of Palestine. The suicide bombers act out of despair and desperation. Three generations of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes—by Israelis—and into refugee camps.’

  ‘But brother, a Muslim should be the first to call peace.’

  ‘They have, several times.’

  ‘Yea, but the Freemason’s keep on shagging their sisters.’

  They all looked at Munir.

  ‘Brother, tell us more about these Freemasons…’ Asif leaned forward.

  ‘Ok. You see right, they’re everywhere; everyone who’s a powerful leader is a ‘mason; like, the president, and the Queen. And they got, like, this secret handshake an’ that. And they’re pavin’ way for the new world order.’

  ‘And how do you fight them?’

  ‘Wiv intellect,’ Munir tapped his nose, corrected himself and then tapped his temple. ‘You got to know where they hide, where they meet, where they have power, what their ways are of spreading their secret message. They’re making way for the Dajjaal, man -the One Eyed Heretic.’

  The boys drew back and inch, suddenly afraid.

  ‘So you’re saying, Brother Munir, that the way to fight this fight, is through intellect?’

  Munir nodded regally.

  ‘Well then: we best get started ennit.’