White Teeth (58 page)

The second reason for Mo's conversion was more personal. Violence. Violence and theft. For eighteen years Mo had owned the most famous halal butchers in North London, so famous that he had been able to buy the next-door property and expand into a sweetshop/butchers. And in this period in which he ran the two establishments, he had been a victim of serious physical attacks and robbery, without fail, three times a year. Now, that figure doesn't include the numerous punches to the head, quick smacks with a crowbar, shifty kicks in the groin, or anything else that failed to draw blood. Mo didn't even phone his
wife,
no matter the police, to report those. No:
serious
violence. Mo had been knifed a total of five times (
ah
), lost the tips of three fingers (
eeeesh
), had both legs and arms broken (
oaooow
), his feet set on fire (
jiii
), his teeth kicked out (
ka-tooof
), and an air-gun bullet (
ping
) embedded in his thankfully fleshy posterior.
Boof.
And Mo was a big man. A big man with attitude. The beatings had in no way humbled him, made him watch his mouth, or walk with a stoop. He gave as good as he got. But this was one man against an army. There was nobody who could help. The very first time, when he received a hammer blow to his ribs in January 1970, he naively reported it to the local constabulary and was rewarded by a late-night visit from five policemen who gave him a thorough kicking. Since then, violence and theft had become a regular part of his existence, a sad spectator sport watched by the old Muslim men and young Muslim mothers who came in to buy their chickens, and hurried out shortly afterward, scared they might be next. Violence and theft. The culprits ranged from secondary-school children coming in the cornershop side to buy sweets (which is why Mo allowed only one child from Glenard Oak in at a time. Of course it made no difference, they just took turns beating the shit out of him solo), decrepit drunks, teenage thugs, the parents of teenage thugs, general fascists, specific neo-Nazis, the local snooker team, the darts team, the football team, and huge posses of mouthy, white-skirted secretaries in deadly heels. These various people had various objections to him: he was a Paki (try telling a huge, drunk Office Superworld check-out boy that you're Bangladeshi); he gave half his cornershop up to selling weird Paki meat; he had a quiff; he liked Elvis (“You like Elvis, then? Do yer? Eh, Paki? Do yer?”); the price of his cigarettes; his distance from home (“Why don't you go back to your own country?” “But then how will I serve you cigarettes?”
Boof
); or just the look on his face. But they all had one thing in common, these people. They were all white. And this simple fact had done more to politicize Mo over the years than all the party broadcasts, rallies, and petitions the world could offer. It had brought him more securely within the fold of his faith than even a visitation from the angel Jabrail could have achieved. The last straw, if it could be called that, came a month before joining KEVIN, when three white “youths” tied him up, kicked him down the cellar steps, stole all his money, and set fire to his shop. Double-jointed hands (the result of many broken wrists) got him out of that one. But he was tired of almost dying. When KEVIN gave Mo a leaflet that explained there was a war going on, he thought: no
shit.
At last someone was speaking his language. Mo had been in the frontline of that war for eighteen years. And KEVIN seemed to understand that it wasn't
enough—
his kids doing well, going to a nice school, having tennis lessons, too pale-skinned to ever have a hand laid on them in their lives. Good. But not good enough.
He
wanted a little payback. For
himself.
He wanted Brother Ibr
h
m to stand on that podium and dissect Christian culture and Western morals until it was dust in his hands. He wanted the degenerate nature of these people explained to him. He wanted to know the history of it and the politics of it and the root cause. He wanted to see their art exposed and their science exposed, and their tastes exposed and their distastes. But words would never be enough; he'd heard so many words (
If you could just file a report . . . If you wouldn't mind telling us precisely what the attacker looked like
), and they were never as good as action. He wanted to know
why
these people kept on beating the shit out of him. And then he wanted to go and beat the shit out of some of these people.

“Very impressive, Millat, hey? Everything we hope for.”

“Yeah,” said Millat, despondent. “I s'pose. Less talk, more action, though, if you ask me. The infidel are everywhere.”

Mo nodded vigorously. “Oh definitely, Brother. We are two birds from the same bush on that matter. I hear there are some others,” said Mo, lowering his voice and putting his fat, sweaty lips by Millat's ear, “who are very keen on action. Immediate action. Brother Hifan spoke to me. About the thirty-first of December. And Brother Shiva and Brother Tyrone . . .”

“Yes, yes. I know who they are. They are the beating heart of KEVIN.”

“And they say
you
know the man himself—this scientist. You in good position. I hear you are his friend.”

“Was.
Was.
”

“Brother Hifan says you have the tickets to get in, that you are organizing—”

“Shhh,” said Millat irritably. “Not everyone can know. If you want to get near the center, you've got to keep shtoom.”

Millat looked Mo up and down. The kurta-pajamas that he somehow managed to make look like a late seventies Elvis flared jumpsuit. The huge stomach he rested on his knee like a friend.

Sharply, he asked, “You're a bit old, aren't you?”

“You rude little bastard. I'm strong as a bloody bull.”

“Yeah, well, we don't need strength,” said Millat tapping his temple, “we need a little of the stuff upstairs. We've got to get in the place discreetly first, innit? The first evening. It'll be crawling.”

Mo blew his nose in his hand. “I can be discreet.”

“Yeah, but that means keeping shtoom.”

“And the third thing,” said Brother Ibr
h
m ad-Din Shukrallah, interrupting them, suddenly louder and buzzing the PA system, “the third thing they will try to do, is to convince you that it is human intellect and not Allah that is omnipotent, unlimited,
all-powerful.
They will try to convince you that your minds are not to be used to pronounce the greater glory of the Creator but to raise yourselves up equal to or beyond the Creator! And now we approach the most serious business of this evening. The greatest evil of the infidel is here, in this very borough of Brent. I will tell you, and you will not believe it, Brothers, but there is a man in this very community who believes that he can improve upon the creation of Allah. There is a man who presumes to change, adjust,
modify
what has been decreed. He will take an animal—an animal that Allah has created—and presume to change that creation. To create a new animal that has no name but is simply an abomination. And when he has finished with that small animal, a mouse, Brothers, when he has finished he will move to sheep, and cats, and
dogs.
And who in this lawless society will stop him from one day creating a
man
? A man born not of woman but from a man's intellect alone! And he will tell you that it is medicine . . . but KEVIN makes no complaint against medicine. We are a sophisticated community who count many doctors among us, my Brothers. Don't be misled, deluded,
fooled.
This is not medicine. And my question to you, Brothers of KEVIN, is who will make the sacrifice and stop this man? Who will stand up alone in the name of the Creator, and show the modernists that the Creator's laws still exist and are eternal? Because they will try and tell you, the modernists, the cynics, the
Orientalists,
that there are no more beliefs, that our history, our culture,
our world
is over. So thinks this scientist. That is why he so confidently presumes. But he will soon understand what is truly meant by
last days.
So who will show him—”

“Yes, shtoom, yes, I understand,” said Mo, speaking to Millat, but looking straight ahead as in a spy movie.

Millat looked around the room and saw that Hifan was giving him the eye, so he gave it to Shiva, who gave it to Abdul-Jimmy and Abdul-Colin, to Tyrone and the rest of the Kilburn crew, who were stationed by the walls as stewards at particular points in the room. Hifan gave Millat the eye once more, then he looked at the back room. Discreet movement began.

“Something is happening?” whispered Mo, spotting the men with the green steward sashes, making their way through the crowds.

“Come into the office,” said Millat.

“OK, so, I think the key thing here is to come at the issue from two sides. Because it
is
a matter of straight laboratory torture and we can certainly play that to the gallery, but the central emphasis
has
to go to the antipatent argument. Because that's really an angle we can work. And if we lay our emphasis there, then there are a number of other groups we can call upon—the NCGA, the OHNO, et cetera, and Crispin's been in touch with them. Because, you know, we haven't really dealt in this area extensively before, but it's clearly a key issue—I think Crispin's going to talk to us about that in more depth in a minute—but for now, I just want to talk about the public support we have here. I mean, particularly the recent press, even the tabloid element have really come up trumps on this . . . there's a lot of bad feeling regarding the patenting of living organisms . . . I think people feel very uncomfortable, rightly, with that concept, and it's really up to FATE to
play
on that, and really get a comprehensive campaign together, so if . . .”

Ah,
Joely. Joely, Joely,
Joely.
Joshua knew he should be listening, but looking was so
good.
Looking at Joely was
great.
The way she sat (on a table, knees pulled up to chest), the way she looked up from her notes (kittenishly!), the way the air whistled between her gappy front teeth, the way she continually tucked her straggly blond hair behind her ear with one hand and tapped out a rhythm on her huge Doc Martens with the other. Blond hair aside, she looked a lot like his mother when young: those fulsome English lips, ski-jump nose, big hazel eyes. But the face, spectacular as it might be, was mere
decoration
to top off the most luxurious body in the world. Long in all its lines, muscular in the thigh and soft in the stomach, with breasts that had never known a bra but were an utter delight, and a bottom which was the platonic ideal of all English bottomry, flat yet peachy, wide but welcoming. Plus she was intelligent. Plus she was devoted to her cause. Plus she despised his father. Plus she was ten years older (which suggested to Joshua all kinds of sexual expertise he couldn't even
imagine
without getting an enormous hard-on right now right here in the middle of the meeting). Plus she was the most wonderful woman Joshua had ever met. Oh, Joely!