Gravel Heart Read online

  The following morning, which was a Sunday, Uncle Amir rang my mother and passed the phone to me so that I could speak to her. He made the gesture casually, but I could see he was exuberant with excitement. After listening to my self-conscious mumblings for a moment or two – I had no previous experience of speaking on the phone and felt an instant discomfort with the disembodied voice – he took the receiver from me and gave my mother a full account of my arrival, piling on the clichés and laughing at my provincial awkwardnesses at the airport. After the phone call he asked me if my room was comfortable and watched me intently as I babbled my gratitude. That evening I had my first-ever encounter with a knife-and-fork. I gave everyone a start so I could follow their example but they were wise to me. Uncle Amir laughed out loud at my clumsiness while Auntie Asha suppressed her smiles. Even the children joined in with their giggles, Ahmed who was eight and was called Eddie and Khadija who was seven and was called Kady. I smiled too because even I knew about the unavoidable comedy of the knife-and-fork moment that initiated someone like me into the life of Europe.

  ‘Do you understand what it means to eat with a knife and fork?’ Uncle Amir elaborated after he had his chuckle. ‘It’s not about becoming a European stooge and giving up your culture. Some of the old folks used to think that using a spoon was a first step towards becoming a Christian. No, it’s not about losing anything. It is to begin thinking about food as a pleasure, as a refinement.’ Uncle Amir nodded vehemently after he said this, and waited until I nodded back in agreement.

  I understood quite quickly – within days – that Uncle Amir’s laughter and teasing were now accompanied by a tone that required obedience and a ready smile, and that he could effortlessly turn from raucous jokes to frowns when anything checked his wishes. In those moments, even Auntie Asha’s air of unguarded sophistication became watchful and her cheerfulness subsided. What’s up, mister? she would say, and if Uncle Amir wished to be cajoled out of his petulance he would offer a small smile and make a tiny joke to indicate the beginning of a return to benign times, but if he was not ready yet, he would make an exasperated gesture, waving her away, and continue with his glum looks until whatever had provoked him was put right and his equanimity was stroked into place. It was a manner calculated to intimidate and I duly lowered my head whenever I made eye contact.

  Having completed my studying arrangements to his satisfaction, Uncle Amir took me to Debenhams to select my wardrobe for me, reluctantly accompanied by Auntie Asha, who favoured Marks & Spencer. The clothes I had brought with me were quite unsuitable for the cold, Uncle Amir told me. Thin cotton shirts and Terylene trousers, what was I thinking of? You’ll freeze your balls off! Uncle Amir preferred that I understood little of what I saw in London, that I needed everything explained and decisions made for me. My opinion was not required on any issue. They bought me a thick light blue sweater, which came up to my chin and wrapped round my neck like a brace, and a navy blue raincoat made of thick raspy canvas-like material. It was two sizes too big to accommodate the woollies I would have on underneath. They bought two long-sleeved blue shirts, which looked shiny and cheap and felt slippery. They finished off with a pair of thick light-blue gloves, blue socks and scarf, and dark underpants. Auntie Asha liked blue. As they walked around the store, Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha discussed the clothes, held them against me, debated the colours and then chose blue, and explained all their decisions to me carefully if briefly.

  For the first few months, every day when I left for college Auntie Asha examined me to see that I had my full kit on, whatever the weather. I wasn’t used to the cold, Auntie Asha told me during the inspection, and if I did not take care I would end up with a bad chill, and then who was going to look after me? This was London and they were a working family. For the first few months I had no choice but to dress as if I was on an expedition. The sweater was too hot, the coat was too big and made me feel as if I was wearing something discarded by one of the giant Englishmen I passed on the pavements. I took off the gloves and scarf as soon as I left the house and stuffed them in my bag. I was a relation they were paying to educate and clothe, so it was only reasonable that they should be able to choose the clothes they were willing to buy for me. I was surprised, though, by the bluntness with which they did this. I realised that I had anticipated something like it but had not understood the deference and compliance that would be expected of me. I was grateful for their welcome and did not find their sense of entitlement to dictate to me unbearable to begin with but I wished they had allowed me to choose less embarrassing clothes. I knew that I would not be able to replace or wear out that raincoat for years, not so long as I was Auntie Asha’s and Uncle Amir’s poor relation. It felt like a badge of my neediness. Maybe any clothes would have embarrassed me at that time because the embarrassment lay deeper than what I wore, it was more to do with the overbearing shrillness of the strange air around me.

  In the third week in September, three weeks after my arrival in London and fully kitted out, I started college. I made my way there in fear and trembling, London terrified me so much. The streets confused me. I could not make them out from each other. The buses and taxis and cars roared past and churned up my gut. The rush of people and vehicles muddled my sense of direction and panicked me. It humbled me that I recoiled with so much anxiety. I felt as if the city despised me, as if I were a tiresome and timorous child who had wandered unwelcome out of the dust and rubble of his puny island shanty into this place where boldness and greed and swagger were required for survival.

  *

  Uncle Amir’s and Auntie Asha’s fabled London life turned out to be frantic and I had to play my part in it and bustle about just like everyone else. It made me think of the way I had lived with my mother for all those years, how quietly we went about our days and nights. Homesickness probably made the memory of it seem even calmer. We hardly ever spoke crossly to each other, or not until the later years when I turned saboteur to make plain my feelings about her lover, and even that we resolved somehow. She hid or locked away whatever she thought I would destroy, if she could, and I did not have the spitefulness to carry the matter through, and reprieved necessary household objects from my rage. In any case I could not sustain the anger and after a while I felt I was being perverse, punishing her for her betrayals and lies. As I shared the anxious, frantic lives of Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha, I thought back to the accommodating way my mother lived with me and I missed her.

  Dear Mama,

  Salamu na baada ya salamu, I hope you are well and sister Munira is well. I hope you received the letter I sent you several days ago. I am enclosing a picture of Hyde Park, which I cut out of a magazine. I haven’t been there yet, but I hear it’s not far and we’ll go there one of these days. This is how it looks when it’s warm, so that’s something to look forward to.

  It is now October and I started college last week. Everything is going perfectly except that it is getting so cold. This morning I was woken by cramp in my calves and when I am outside I cannot prevent my teeth from chattering. I used to think it was a joke that your teeth would do that, but it’s true, they do, and there is nothing you can do about it. Chatter, chatter, chatter, whatever you do.

  London is full of people from everywhere in the world. I just had not expected to see that, Indians, Arabs, Africans, Chinese, and I don’t know where all the European people come from but they are not all English. That is only from what I’ve seen in the few streets I have walked through and this is a huge city. When a double-decker bus goes by and you see the faces through the window, it is like a glimpse of a page in an illustrated children’s encyclopaedia under the title People of the World. Everywhere you go, you have to push your way through crowds and hold on to your possessions. Maybe not in Hyde Park because it looks so roomy, but more or less everywhere else.

  I walk to college almost every day. I make myself do that so I will lose my fear of the streets but also because I prefer it. It takes me about forty minutes to get there, bu
t it’s better than struggling with all those people on the buses or the underground. To be honest, I think I’m scared of that press of people. It gets so crowded on the underground that I feel as if I can’t breathe. Trains that travel under the ground! We are so backward! It is not really far and the walk is more peaceful. You just cannot imagine how enormous this city is. Remember how it used to take me ten minutes to ride to school. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn into you-know-who, talking about London as if it is a place of magic. Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha send their regards. They are looking after me very well and have made me feel as if I am at home. I think of you and Baba. Who is taking his lunch basket to him?

  Love,

  Salim

  I tried not to mind their impatience. At first Auntie Asha treated me like a guest and took my side against Uncle Amir or the children. That only lasted for a few weeks. Afterwards I could not be sure how she would be with me. When she called for me by shouting my name as she sometimes did, I had to drop whatever I was doing and run to her, to avoid her accusing me of disrespect. I was not used to that tone or to the raised voices and the hectoring words and being blamed for so much that was not my doing. Do you think you have a servant in this house? she would say when I had not been quick enough to carry out an instruction. Sometimes she talked to me with confiding affection, as if I were a younger brother. At other times she spoke to me as if I were a lazy servant, or rebuked me for a mishap to the children as she would an inattentive ayah. Then for a while she would not speak to me at all, as if in the grip of a deep resentment.

  Perhaps my presence disturbed the balance of my uncle’s and aunt’s lives, intruded into their ease. Both of them had a wounded way of speaking as if the whole world was against them whenever the smallest thing went wrong. But they weren’t like that all the time, and I tried to fit in as required. I reminded myself to be grateful. I went to college every day and attended all my classes. I looked after the children when required, gave them milk and biscuits when I was told to, and sat with them when their parents went out. They were sophisticated children, who knew already that their lives were going to turn out eventful and fulfilling.

  One sunny weekend day we walked to Hyde Park, which was even closer to where we lived than I realised. I chased about with the children while Auntie Asha looked on, smiling and applauding our antics, and Uncle Amir took photographs. He got me to sit for some quieter shots to send home to my mama: here is the young man having family fun in the famous Hyde Park in London where everything is the most famous in the world. When he got the photographs back a few days later Uncle Amir frowned at the quiet ones he had taken of me. I was grinning widely in every one of them

  ‘That grin has obliterated any sign of personality or style,’ he told me. ‘You look like a buffoon. Why are you grinning like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think cameras make me nervous,’ I said.

  Uncle Amir looked at me with astonishment. ‘Stop talking like a child,’ he said.

  ‘Whenever anyone points a camera at me, I smile like that,’ I said.

  ‘That is not a smile, that’s a grin,’ Uncle Amir said. ‘Next time I take a photograph of you, I want you to compose yourself so that your personality comes through, not your teeth.’

  Another sunny day was not long in coming and I was instructed to fetch my books and spread them out on the patio table, then seat myself there unsmiling and hard at work. That was how Uncle Amir wanted me to look. That was what he wanted my mother to see he had brought about.

  After several weeks I found evening work in a supermarket and discovered unexpected satisfaction in stacking shelves and mopping floors. I did not at first understand that it was because it offered an undemanding escape from the stifling atmosphere in the house. I did not know the uses of all the products I stacked on the shelves. Everything was new and sometimes surprising, but the strangeness was also familiar in an unanticipated way. What a good idea, I would think, as I learnt the use of this or that. I had to take myself to the store and bring myself back late in the evening, working out the way, catching the bus, learning to live. When I received my first pay, I briefly forgot how tiring the work was. To have money I had worked for! It was such a delicious feeling of freedom, so ridiculous, as if I now had a life of my own. During vacations I worked in a warehouse as well and later in a launderette, turning myself into a migrant helot to show Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha that I deserved the good fortune they had granted me.

  In December it snowed.

  Dear Mama,

  I stood on ice today. I woke up in the morning to a deep hush, and went to the window to look out at the back garden, and everything was changed. All the neighbouring roofs were covered with snow and everywhere looked so clean. It made me think of the angel on the Makkan hillside, cleansing the shepherd boy’s heart with driven snow. The pavements were covered too, which was beautiful to walk on at first, crunchy and almost silent, but the snow soon became dirty and perilous from so many feet and from the wash of cars driving by. But that first moment when I stood on ice, I will never forget that. The crisp air made breathing easier. I think today was the happiest day I have had here.

  I did not send that letter because I did not know how to continue after those few lines, and when I returned to it the mood was gone. Uncle Amir took a photograph of me in the snow in the back garden, and I sent her that and wrote on the back: I stood on ice. I had bought myself a fat spiral-bound notebook with thin pages that were perforated along the margin. It was my letter-writing pad, which I kept hidden in a drawer. I abandoned several letters because I had lost the thread of my thoughts or had been too frank or homesick and unhappy. I left the unsent letters in the notebook so it also became a place where I captured solitary and gloomy reflections, sometimes deliberately. One day Uncle Amir came into my room as I was in the middle of writing, and in my surprise I was slow to close the notebook. He playfully snatched it from me and started to read aloud in a mock-confiding voice. He must have realised that he was reading something intimate because he stopped and gave the book back to me. ‘It’s not wise to write things down,’ he said, scowling disapprovingly. ‘You can never unwrite them.’

  I learnt to live in London, to avoid being intimidated by crowds and by rudeness, to avoid curiosity, not to feel desolate at hostile stares and to walk purposefully wherever I went. I learnt to live with the cold and the dirt, and to evade the angry students at college with their swagger and their sense of grievance and their expectations of failure. I learnt to live with the chaotic languages of London, which did not speak to each other, and to cope with English that was broken and wrong, missing articles or in the wrong tense. I tried but could not join in the city’s human carnival. I feared the silent empty streets at night, and always hurried home when I left work, crossing the street as soon as I glimpsed a group of people on the pavement ahead. I made unexpected friends: Reshat whose parents were from Cyprus, who made me laugh with his endlessly dirty talk, and Mahmood from Sierra Leone, whom we called Mood for short, who never seemed to run out of smiles and goodwill. They were my college friends. My time after college and work belonged to Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha. My college friends teased me about that, saying that my father was an ambassador and he lived in Holland Park and would not allow me to play with the poor of the Third World. I told them Uncle Amir was not my father and he was not an ambassador, but they took no notice. Reshat clowned around as the self-important ambassador, stomping up and down, shouting obscenities about immigrant riff-raff in London slums.

  ‘I will report the fuckers to the Special Branch if they don’t stop trying to turn you into a drug-pusher and a pimp,’ he shouted, pushing out his belly and pouting his lips.

  I laughed too but I thought there was something unhinged about Reshat. Sometimes Lizard, another of Mood’s friends, joined us. He was doing a diploma or something in Quantity Surveying. He did not seem too eager to talk about that or about anything else. His face was often dead-pan, on the brink of a
sneer, but even he could not resist Reshat when he was on his manic high-horse. Mood said Lizard had been to juvenile prison for hurting someone in a fight but he was not really as scary as that sounds. I asked why he was called Lizard and Mood said he did not know, but Yorubas were big on lizards. People like Lizard made me realise how sheltered my life had been, and that made me feel as if I had been denied something rather than spared, that I was somehow inadequate.

  The newness and the strangeness did not last but nor did they completely go away, and despite the chores and the labours I took on, I could not disguise from myself that I had no interest in what I was studying. I thought I could study without being interested but I had not anticipated the anxieties of living in an alien and hostile city without the company of other students like myself or the nagging persistence of my mother. I had not understood the difficulty of speaking in the company of strangers. Uncle Amir kept me under surveillance but he was busy and often tired and too easily satisfied with my garbled accounts of my progress. At some point during or after dinner he would ask for a report on my day, and seemed to take as much pleasure as I did in every small victory. If we were on our own, he would make a joke about girls at college and whether I had managed to get a phone number out of one of them. I could just imagine the frowns and the glares if I said yes. Is that what you have come here to do, spend your time doing filthy things with English girls?

  I did not tell him that so many of the books he saw me carrying around were novels I had borrowed from the college library, not instructive texts on accountancy and management. It was in that library that I had run into Virginia Woolf and Joseph Conrad and John Dos Passos for the first time, and there was a deep pleasure in the unhurried way I was able to read them and have them lead me to others I knew nothing about.

  Sometimes Uncle Amir had to go out in the evenings to attend a diplomatic event, and then he came home and showered and changed into formal clothes, whistling and teasing his children as he looked forward to the function. He looked glamorous in his dinner jacket and bow tie, like a ballad singer on a Saturday Night special on TV. He was so very pleased with himself that I imagined him able to walk into a room and just not see anybody without even trying, having eyes only for himself. Auntie Asha went with him sometimes, but she did not look forward to these events as he did. He had no time to keep an eye on me at such times, so altogether it was not too difficult to evade his scrutiny. Also in the first year I did well, which would have reassured him, but when I returned after the first summer vacation my college life went to pieces. Somehow or other I was able to disguise this decline for several months, and in moments of optimism I was even able to reassure myself that dedicated cramming in the later stages was sure to rescue the situation.