This Green and Pleasant Land

by Ayisha Malik

  ‘You should report it, Bill,’ said John. ‘You don’t want to take any chances.’

  He gave him a knowing look but all Bilal could notice was Bruce, who had very little consolation to offer. Bilal had always trusted people and he’d rather not let one unfortunate incident mar a history of optimism. There were parts of his character that couldn’t falter. Yet maybe he’d been holding on to facts about himself that turned out to be a fiction of his own making.

  A memory seemed to pluck itself from his mind. A group of boys, jeering.

  ‘Go home, Paki.’

  His mum turning on them as if she were ready to take her shoe off and beat them. Then she had looked at Bilal – he’d been Haaris’s age – and instead grabbed his hand and marched home, face screwed up in anger as she swore under her breath. Kuthay de puttar. Zaleel maaray harami. The whole thing had felt so unsavoury to Bilal he seemed to have deleted it from his memory bank. Until today.

  Everyone left that evening, taking extra care to smile at Bilal, say goodbye, and pat him on the back to alleviate any potential feelings of displacement. Bilal paced his office, hands in his trouser pockets, head lowered. The present insult was trying enough, but it was the past insult, which he’d all but forgotten, that was troubling him. This going home nonsense had to be nipped in the bud. When he first came to Babbel’s End he was incessantly asked: ‘What are your roots?’ Bilal wasn’t often annoyed but he had to admit he had to take a few deep breaths when asked that question the thirteenth time.

  Roots.

  He strode outside the office and looked at the smudged graffiti again, ensuring this time that he imprinted it into his memory. Then he went back inside, picked up his phone and called Vaseem Bhai.

  ‘What’s up, bro?’ came the familiar voice. ‘No, bruvs. In the van not on top of it, you lallu. Sorry, doing a delivery.’

  ‘I need a favour, Vaseem.’

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Fine. You said the estate agent who sold your house was good, yes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, can you ask him what kind of offer we could expect if we …’

  This was impulsive. But to build a mosque he’d need money, and he had to start somewhere.

  ‘If I sold Mum’s house?’

  Bilal leaned back in his chair, taking a deep breath, not thinking about where Khala might live, the memories he would have to sell in order to buy new dreams. But everyone was so interested in this ‘having roots’ business. Bilal had no choice but to take the necessary steps in order to plant them.

  When he got home that evening Mariam was preparing dinner, darting between the oven and steaming vegetables.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve asked how much longer Khala’s staying?’

  Bilal sighed, caught between agitation and the anxiety of having been impulsive. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not easy with her in the house. I’ve got things to do and, you know, I do look after her.’

  It occurred to Bilal that Mariam was a little selfish. But he buried his annoyance – because he could only grapple with one annoyance at a time. He cleared his throat, watching his wife as strands of hair fell over her face, her cheeks flushed. Soon he was sure it’d be in indignation.

  ‘Mariam, I want to sell Mum’s house.’

  Mariam looked up, colander of broccoli in hand, her head almost popping out from her neck as she leaned forward. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s not enough to buy land, but it’s a start.’

  The steam from the broccoli rose and obscured her face. A protracted silence. ‘You want to sell your mum’s house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To buy land?’

  ‘The field behind St Swithun’s.’

  ‘Oh, right, of course. Naturally there should be a mosque behind a church.’

  ‘Mariam …’

  If Bilal were honest, he thought the whole thing was quite poetic.

  ‘This is getting out of hand,’ she said, throwing the broccoli in a dish.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he exclaimed, louder than he’d intended, making Mariam start.

  He told her about what happened at the office. Mariam looked at him hard for at least thirty seconds, pressing her lips together as if she didn’t trust what she might say.

  ‘Right.’ She grabbed the glasses and marched into the dining room. ‘Bring the plates.’

  He really wanted to lie in the grave.

  ‘What did the police say?’ she asked more gently, still clutching a glass in each hand.

  He swallowed hard, placing the plates on the dining table as he told her he hadn’t called them.

  ‘What?’

  Haaris came sauntering in and looked between Bilal and Mariam. ‘Why’s Mum about to break the glasses?’

  They both paused.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Bilal, attempting a smile.

  Mariam put the glasses down as gently as the force of her emotions permitted and walked out of the room. Bilal went to follow when Haaris took one of the glasses and observed it.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, distracted by Haaris’s sullen face.

  Haaris shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

  Bilal went to leave when Haaris said: ‘Why a mosque?’

  ‘Not you too.’

  Haaris looked so innocent it hit Bilal, quite forcefully sometimes, how much he loved him.

  ‘Why not a mosque?’ replied Bilal.

  Haaris continued staring at the glass. ‘Hmm. You know I’m basically holding sand in my hands?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Bilal, hearing the clanging of dishes from the kitchen. ‘How’d you know that?’

  Haaris put the glass down. ‘Education.’

  Bilal smiled, despite himself.

  Haaris slipped his small hands into the pockets of his jeans, looking at the floor. He was petite for his age, lithe like an elf as he stood there. Bilal stepped closer and found himself putting his arm around him.

  ‘All okay at school?’

  Bilal swallowed hard, peering down at his stepson’s face with his perfectly straight nose and thick lashes. Were things changing for Haaris too? Would he find out what had happened at the office? Worse still, what if someone told him to go home? And would all this push him closer to his dad?

  ‘Well?’ said Bilal.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Haaris, unconvincingly, eyes still lowered, putting his arm around Bilal too.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Don’t be like Mum.’

  Bilal squeezed Haaris’s arm and told himself that trials and tribulations were all character-building stuff. Of course, there was a fine line between character-building and character-breaking, but Haaris had Mariam’s genes. He brought Haaris into a rare hug – rarer still was Haaris hugging him back. Mariam walked in and Bilal was sure he felt a pause in her step when she saw them. Her eyes darted around the room, her hands fidgeting over the dining table.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said and left the room.

  This time he followed her into the passage.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Mariam, turning around, whispering loud enough for her not to have bothered. ‘Suddenly a mosque is important?’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re so against it. You actually pray – more than I ever have, at least.’

  Mariam paused, biting the skin on the inside of her mouth.

  ‘All I care about is Haaris fitting in.’

  Bilal nodded. ‘And what about him standing out?’

  Mariam flashed him a look. ‘Says the man who’s made an art of trying to blend in.’

  Bilal looked at her, the hurt visible on his face.

  ‘Listen, forget all that,’ said Mariam. ‘I just … I don’t …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want him to end up like Teddy.’

  ‘What?’ He scratched the back of his head. He didn’t want to sound insensitive but what did Teddy have to do with it?

  ‘You don’t understand
what I saw,’ she said, barely audible. The anger had drained from Mariam’s face. ‘It’s like someone just scooped out Anne’s soul.’

  His wife wasn’t prone to hyperbole, so naturally the statement disturbed him.

  ‘It’s an awful thing to have happened, but she’s getting better, isn’t she?’ said Bilal. ‘She’ll never get over it, I know. But still.’

  Mariam looked worried, staring at the ground. He hadn’t seen her this agitated before and went to hold her. She looked up at him.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to her any more. My friend of eight years, who’s the only one I laughed with in this place. And all that she’d been through with her mum … and then this.’

  Bilal rubbed her arm, telling her that she had time to make up for it. Nothing was too late.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Mariam said. ‘I’m embarrassed, Bilal. Not only of that, but …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That I’m grateful it wasn’t Haaris.’

  ‘But that’s just human. Teddy was always troubled. Haaris sprints around, giving us random facts and trying to beat us at Scrabble. You’re being hard on yourself.’

  She pulled away. ‘Not hard enough.’

  He sighed. His wife had always been complicated.

  ‘Oh, hey,’ said Mariam as Bilal turned around to see Haaris looking at them. ‘We’ll be through in a minute.’

  ‘You know a cold dinner is depressing,’ said Haaris.

  ‘Bring in the rest from the kitchen, we’re coming,’ said Mariam.

  They both stood there, quiet for a while, before Bilal said: ‘You know, you didn’t ask me how I felt.’

  ‘About Teddy?’

  He shook his head. ‘When I saw the graffiti.’

  Mariam paused. ‘No, I didn’t. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Well? How did it feel?’

  He stared at her, barely believing the day he’d had.

  ‘Well. Shit, quite frankly,’ he replied.

  ‘Hello! Guys, where’s Khala?’ said Haaris, coming back out of the kitchen with the bowl of salad.

  ‘I’ll get her,’ said Mariam, giving Bilal a sorry smile and turning away.

  Five minutes later they hadn’t come in so Bilal looked in Khala’s bedroom. There he saw Mariam, folded into Khala’s arms, neither of them looking as if they were going anywhere.

  Shelley hadn’t been able to sleep properly – yet again – and Arthur’s body clock still woke him up at four-thirty in the morning. He was listening to the dawn shipping forecast as she tapped away at her PC keyboard.

  She was not the type of woman to forget about one problem just because another, bigger one had reared its unseemly head. She had done her neighbourly duty, given due warning – multiple times – but if Tom was not going to trim his bush then she had no option but to lodge an official complaint to the council.

  ‘Anyone would think I enjoyed this,’ she muttered, squinting at the screen.

  Arthur increased the radio’s volume. Shelley read the letter to herself, half-hoping her husband would ask what she was doing. She glanced over at him, sitting on the sofa, his head back and eyes closed. How easy it was for his main concern to be the weather around the isles.

  ‘Well, that’s done,’ she said, louder than usual. ‘I didn’t want to, but no-one can say I’ve been unreasonable.’ Arthur didn’t move. ‘This isn’t coming out of the blue,’ she added.

  ‘Were you going to make tea?’ he asked.

  Oh, yes, of course. He spoke to her when he wanted tea or had lost his slippers.

  ‘Yes. I suppose you want some.’

  ‘Is there toast?’

  What did he think? That the bread magically toasted itself?

  ‘Just butter?’ she asked.

  He nodded. Shelley walked into the kitchen, wondering what it would take for Arthur to ever just … get up. She looked outside the kitchen window. A few stars still flickered in the emerging morning sky, the warmth of summer now over. Mrs Pankhurst’s curtains were still closed and would be for another two hours, at least. Shelley had tried to speak to her a few times since the pub meeting but she was always rushing off somewhere. Some people just didn’t care about preservation, or the natural order of things. They lived in an age of flippancy. No-one sought longevity, or got attached to things because they didn’t last the way they used to. Shelley and Arthur had had their stove for twenty-one years but the moment she had to get a new one she knew she’d be counting down the days to its demise. Shelley buttered her husband’s toast as she thought of profound matters of conservation and the gravity of loss in the face of all this newness.

  ‘Islam and mosques are hardly new,’ Mrs Pankhurst had said at the pub meeting, just after Bilal and Richard had walked in.

  Shelley dipped the knife into the butter again (Arthur was the slathering type).

  ‘They’re new to Babbel’s End,’ Copperthwaite had replied with feeling.

  Shelley wielded the butter knife absentmindedly, uneasy that she might be seen as a woman who lived in a bubble. She might not be well travelled but anyone who’d been married to her husband would acknowledge that she knew the tumults of living.

  ‘Why shouldn’t we have something new?’ Mrs Pankhurst had said.

  Everyone looked at her, a wave of loud grumbling.

  ‘But-but-but,’ Mr Pankhurst stuttered, shocked at the notion of anything new. More so that his wife should suggest it. ‘It would change the whole look! It’s unthinkable.’

  ‘This is England,’ another had replied.

  ‘Isn’t Bilal English?’ Mrs Pankhurst had leaned forward, a challenging glint in her eye.

  They had all looked at each other. Even Shelley didn’t have an answer to this one.

  ‘He’s Pakistani, isn’t he?’

  ‘He was born here though, eh?’

  ‘It’s all about links, isn’t it? You send me to any country to live and I tell you, England will always be in my blood,’ said Copperthwaite.

  ‘But your children would no longer be English,’ replied Mrs Pankhurst as the crowd’s eyes narrowed. Copperthwaite’s frown contracted because he had no children, and the sadness of it never quite left him.

  ‘Well, if I had, they damn well would be. They’d be white.’

  Why had this conversation turned into a debate about identity? She had no time for that kind of pseudo-intellectualism. People started greying the edges of things that were quite clearly black and white.

  ‘Listen,’ replied Mr Pankhurst, while his wife glared at him. ‘I’ve no problem with Bill but by God—’

  ‘Don’t you?’ said Mrs Pankhurst pointedly to her husband.

  He looked equally defiant ‘A mosque, Linda? You must be joking.’

  Mr Pankhurst’s face had gone red, his eyes as narrow as everyone else’s, his fist in a ball. Everyone’s head turned from one Pankhurst to the other.

  ‘I most certainly am not,’ she replied.

  ‘Linda,’ he’d exclaimed, banging his fist on the table.

  Silence.

  ‘We’ll talk about this when we get home,’ she said, furiously crossing her arms, eyebrows raised in defiance.

  Shelley was undeterred. In numbers there was power. A few dissenters were nothing in the grand scheme of things – and even Mr Pankhurst was siding with Shelley. She didn’t enjoy the idea of married couples arguing but she did feel more beneficent towards Mrs Pankhurst for at least the next half hour.

  She walked back into the living room as Arthur looked at the plate she handed him.

  ‘I wanted two slices.’

  For a moment Shelley considered taking the toast, putting it in her mouth and eating the whole thing while Arthur stared on. But her body – or mind – wasn’t designed to make movements so contrary to its usual practice. So, instead, she walked back into the kitchen and buttered his second slice, while she watched for the first ray of sunrise.

  MARIAM WOULD NOT TAKE it lying down. If Bilal didn’t want the dram
a of calling the police, she’d have to take matters into her own hands. (Which was more than she could do about Bilal wanting to sell his mum’s house. What would happen to Khala? What other impulse was going to take him? Was he even the man she’d married?) When he’d gone to sleep she took her laptop into her study and typed out:

  We Will Not Go Home. We Are Already Home.

  ‘You can go to hell,’ she mumbled as she banged at her laptop’s keys.

  She didn’t write that into this particular article because that might’ve been unprofessional. The whole incident had been offensive to Mariam on several counts, not least the graffitist’s unimaginative words. This was followed, in a close second, by her exasperation at Bilal, who thought a hate crime could be ignored. She sat back and folded her arms. No – in fact, her exasperation came a close third. Second was that these unimaginative words had rendered her speechless. This sweeping, general statement, personalised for her and her family, for her eleven-year-old precocious son, had momentarily stifled her voice. And all the while Saif was already on her case about faith and culture and things like belonging (and didn’t she want him to say that she still belonged to him?). Then there was Khala, who’d hugged her. Just like that, without explanation or reason. And Mariam had sunk into her comforting arms with no thoughts of feeling suffocated. She wouldn’t be silenced a moment longer and banged out each word to the beat of her thumping heart.

  Words have power. They’re absorbed into a person’s mind and can shift the sands of perspective. But so does action. As for the question of going home – the writing might be on the office door, and spray paint may leave its mark, but it can’t crack the foundations upon which a home is built.

  Mariam looked at the screen and read the words several times. She took a long, deep breath as she typed in Jenny’s email address and pressed the send button.

  ‘That will show them,’ she said.

  Whoever they were.

  Bilal and Haaris had already left for work and school when Mariam woke up the following morning. She checked her email on her phone, but it was still early. There was something about the stream of words she’d poured out the night before that gave Mariam a hankering for more words. Ones that didn’t have to do with broken church bells and village fetes. She sat at the kitchen table and, without even making coffee, began to write. What she was writing she had no idea, but sometimes words formed the ideas rather than the other way around.