In Our Mad and Furious City

by Guy Gunaratne

Start the beat blood.

  He presses play and the laughter simmers as I crouch into my seat breathing to the beat as it builds. I think about Square. I think about Yoos and them Muslims and how it felt to be on the ground, people laughing at me, my phone screen smashed.

  See Yoos get taken away. The bus, the world, the laughter all smokes away and all I hear is the folding rhythm of the music and the vibrations of the arch of my neck and under my jaw. I think about my nan there with me. I think about her voice, her fire, and our shared blood. I look up, I see the light-skinned bredda catch my eye and see he ain’t ready, still grinning at his joke about me pissing myself. Like he’s already won. He ain’t. Fuck him. I’m ready. The beat drops.

  Listen.

  Don’t give a fuck now and I’m gonna go hard

  Man come loud but he’s due for a parr

  Cuh’ I live for this shit, and he’s begging for a war

  I’m on the North Block rooftop spitting early

  Nobody sees me, nobody hears me

  Now you dons wanna laugh and you call for a verse

  But this donnie here, gonna leave in a hearse

  Like I live like a roach like daily

  See me coming, but you don’t wanna see me

  Acting like you in a ring with a misfit but I’m gifted

  And you dumb to my struggle so I’ll just list it

  Road dons always jacking me, burka always buoying me.

  Dickheads wanna battle me and my dad used to batter me.

  So who the fuck are you to me? Like rah

  You better cry from me son, you’ll go far

  I do this because my rhymes are knives

  My flows are veins and my lines are signs—to the future.

  I freeze your face like Medusa.

  Clench a wrist, put a fist where your teeth are

  Acting like a heavyweight but he’s bantam

  So when it’s over, his breddas may abandon

  But there ain’t no prize on the line, like zero

  I’ve a heart like a pikey, Irish hero

  In fact, in fact—cut the beat!

  On this bus, in the ring or on road

  Come cuss me about them Muslim mandem, I’m willing

  Cuh’ I don’t do this for your applause or your jaws

  My bars prove I’m top billing

  Cuh’ for me to battle you is a fucking honor killing

  The boy is blank. He’s getting fire with burns by his own man. Killed it. It takes a few seconds for the others to settle and roll back the jeers at the lad. The noise of all the countless hoots and crazed bluster subside while I come out of the crisp, shaking emotion. As I sit back down behind Selvon I see him proper turned around at me and staring, his white teeth in a wide grin like, go on son, go on myman.

  I merked him. I know I did. The whole bus knows it too and I know it. The back-seat lot are getting on him now. He who didn’t have nuttan in response to me. I ended him. The announcer says that we’re at Brent Cross. The back-seat hoodies all get up now with the sound of brushing bags and trainers. Still hooting. They offer me daps as they pass, telling me safe, safe, nice, respect, sick verse. I even give the light-skinned lad a touch with my fist as he passes me defeated. They all leave me and Selvon alone at the back of the bus. I turn to him with the glory in his eyes reflected in mine.

  Fuck you for making me do that yuno, I says.

  What you mean? You ended him blood!

  Yeah, you didn’t have to force me into it tho. Fucking surprise.

  He sits back and I see him shake his head, like unbelievable. He turns again and looks at me strangely as if he clocks me for the first time.

  Bruv. I knew you could spit but I never knew you could spit like that yuno.

  I shrug. He takes my shrug as if I don’t care. But I do care. My skin is straight on fire now and my heart feels like it’s beefing for another battle. I try not to show it. Years of school parrs and fear teaching me. All them mornings and rooftop versing has me primed for moments like that. Minor. I feel as if I’m a beast suddenly: a Balrog, a kraken, a chimera. Fuck the world if they don’t see it, ennet.

  Don’t act like that weren’t nothing Ardan, swear down. You can spit bruv. Why ain’t you doing anything with it? It’s talent like, you’re a fucking hero.

  What am I supposed to do bruv? Just cause I bodied a bredda on bus, now I’m the next Nas, yeah?

  No one said that bruv, but you’re good.

  Then Selvon looks around the bus. His face screws up like raggo. He reaches into his pocket like he’s on a mission.

  What you doing? I ask him as he starts thumbing his phone.

  There’s that girl from Estate. Missy. I was going to link with later, ennet. She’s with that music label. Jamie Bars comes through there on the regular. She could probably get you in front of him yuno.

  Jamie Bars? Serious?

  Yeah. You down? Selvon says it while already bringing his phone to his ear. My eyes are fixed to it, silent. I watch him as he speaks into the palm in low tones. My tongue is dry and my mind on a rage. I lost myself. I lost myself in the flow and bars. He pushed me to do it but I did it tho. The beat went and I went with it. Natural selection in verse, some rhythmic pillar behind me. For that moment I was made more than I am, lost to all things but my own fervor. I glance out the window to see if those hoodies are still out there ripping the lad for the caning I just gave him. Gadzooks fam, what glory.

  Selvon ends his call, smiling. I feel Max stir by my feet and we get up as the bus turns a corner.

  YUSUF

  Oh-la—Yusuf-bhai I promise you will very much like Manoj. You can play tennis with him, nah? When you come to Lahore for shaadi?

  Yeah, I don’t play tennis though, so.

  But he will teach you, nah?

  Irfan’s wife Muna, who was not unpretty, came from a notable family in Pakistan. I never much liked Muna, but she didn’t deserve what happened either. I remember the first few times we met I noticed her hair would alternate between a lighter brown and black like a mood ring. She wore a stud on the left side of her nose which danced when she spoke. It was distracting.

  It will be ever so perfect, Yusuf-bhai.

  She used to say that a lot. Muna had a Pakistani accent which Irfan probably took as exotic but for me she sounded stush. Her own brother Manoj, who she insisted I would like to get to know but never did, was some professional tennis player back home. This was a big deal for my family, ennet. For the community. Since Irfan was the elder son of an imam, his and Muna’s match was arranged. And since Abba had died only a few months before, it was all down to Amma and a few mosque aunties to do the arranging.

  There were other things that annoyed me, though. Muna would be short with waiters when our families went out to restaurants. Stuff to make you cringe. She’d be proper dramatic when telling stories about boys leering on buses. Would fuss around my brother as if he were some invalid, trying to cut his vegetables at the table, referencing him in stories with a wave of her hand like he was some annoyance. Amma would swoon at the way Irfan would take her shoulders when she went off on one. She’d go, Already he is acting like her husband, look!

  I would roll my eyes like a brat myself. There was some constructed sensitivity about Muna and I could never bring myself to warm to her. But I knew all this was my own way of being protective of Irfan. And in the end he had nothing and nobody else to blame for her leaving except himself.

  Everything had been going as Amma had hoped at first. Muna began to come over for Sunday lunches where there would be a rice curry banquet. One time they came over to celebrate my brother’s promotion to assistant manager at the phone shop he worked at. Amma would ask me to go out and fetch finger food and two-for-one bottles of Diet Coke. Muna never drank regular, she was afraid of the calories. For a time it felt as if the formality of the table and my mother’s excitement at the wedding molded us into a proper family again. Every weekend marked one week less to the elder son’s wedding. I woul
d sit, the younger brother in my role as a comedic drum, trusting the tempo to Amma fussing with the dishes. We listened to her talk about the plans, the pageants. And if only Abba were here to see such a beautiful bride. I guess the wedding talk became one of the ways we softened my father’s passing. The empty chatter disguised our longing for a fifth seat at the table. This was all despite our last memories of Abba, who had become so drawn into his shadow in the days before the accident.

  I can see now that things had been arranged in haste. As soon as my mother saw that Muna’s family were inclined to send her to England, she began to set dates and give word to traditional tailors in Pakistan, sari makers and caterers and event handlers and whatnot. She had been worried that Muna wouldn’t fancy Irfan. He wasn’t bad-looking but could be shy on first impression, he wore thick glasses and was dark-skinned. He was never fair enough for Amma, who would scrub his arms extra hard when we took baths together as children. Despite his darker skin and defensive manner that I don’t imagine was pierced during the short time they were together, Muna and Irfan were engaged for four weeks and were happily married until May, when it was clear that something had spoiled.

  The clock said 4:46 a.m. when the doorbell rang. It rang three times until I got up for it. I crept down the stairs feeling a strange sense of discomfort at having to open doors during early hours. My eyes retreated as I flicked on the yellow light of the landing. I peered through my near-sleep at the bobbled glass window and the shuffling figure waiting outside. I unhooked the white chain and the cold air snapped through my pajamas. My brother stood there sullenly in a hoodie, muddy trainers, and those large baggy jeans that I associated with our early teenage years together. He had red eyes like some demon vandal, thick tears clouding his bleached cheeks, and his lips cracked with harsh breath. His car keys were still clutched in his hand. I could see that he had been tarred with something ugly that night. My first impulse was to call for Amma but she had already thundered down the stairs with shuddering lungs, fully awake. My brother stepped inside and began babbling about some problem. His problem, his problem, he kept repeating, that needed fixing. He kept saying that he was sorry, that he was so very sorry for it all, and that Muna was gone.

  We took him upstairs, where my mother cradled him in her arms and I held his shoulders. Slowly he began to make himself understood. He told us that Muna had gone to the police. She had found something on his computer. Images of depravity, a hard drive heavy with pornographic images of teenage girls. It was the quantity of obscene material, amassed over so many years, that had shocked her. And that some of the girls, he didn’t know for sure, some of them might have been underage.

  Irfan told us everything. He told us that before his marriage, during the time he was living at home and studying, he had become increasingly closed off from the outside world. We held him close as we listened. He said it was something he had carried with him since he was thirteen. He was twenty now and it had become so entwined within that these urges were a part of his every waking moment. He wasn’t in control, he said, likening his obsession to a scorpion feeding on his thoughts. He told us that Muna had forced herself to pore through everything, clicking open every folder and playing every file, her world shattering with every frame of dirty, seeping, scalding sex. Videos of young girls’ flesh, legs from under skirts, his way of getting close to them. She knew everything now. His fetishes and more. His three-year email affair with a chat-room girl in Lahore, his collection of homemade videos from supermarkets and parks. Material he would share and distribute across forums with other anonymous, tarnished men. An entire other life like, laid bare to us now and appalling, a perversion, a compulsion, fattened in some Internet cavern of dark pornography.

  It was so terrifying to our mother. I wondered whether she’d survive another bereavement. Each word brought home how deep a fracture the world had made in her son. But we both sat quiet and listened wanting to show him that we were there for him, tell him that it wasn’t his fault, though I knew there was no one else to blame. Out of love for him we cursed the world outside, the phantom away in the air, the pollution of a society that made such things possible. Inside I was angry. Even as I sat comforting him, reaching out to touch him in an urge to protect, I felt my hand flinch for a moment as I stroked his hair. He was the eldest, the bright-eyed mathematician. How had he fallen? Let himself fall and lose out to this scattered and self-abusing fool? A missing man who had forgotten how to reason and fight for himself. Though I loved him, I was ashamed.

  * * *

  Two months later, we were walking away from August Road. The light caught Irfan’s face as we walked past Tesco Express and the betting shop. We passed bus stops filled with clinging children, a pack of Afghani kids squabbling with their mum. The sun was low and orange behind the cornices. We hadn’t spoken since we left mosque but Abu Farouk’s words were still ringing with both of us. My nose down, my eyes hidden behind stinging tears, I heard my brother weep inside his hood, the stabs of small, wet cries. He’d been shamed, ennet, and now everything was open.

  Look how we cry together, I remember thinking. When was the last time we cried together? Echoes of our childhood came to mind. I remembered both of us walking home as kids after being accosted by some hollow-eyed white boy from around Estate. We ran home sobbing and never told Amma what had happened.

  We turned a corner into Gladstone Park. It was sunset and North Block of Estate was visible from the hill. I was mad tired. I wondered whether the sun’s evening glow had enough to replenish us or whether the daylight would give in and disappear behind the hill leaving the coolness of the air to chill our skins and ease us into the night. We turned together then and paved steps gave way to crunching grass beneath our trainers as we made for the top of the hill.

  I heard him whisper something under his breath as we approached. I was lost in my own thoughts of him and hesitated in asking.

  You all right? I said speaking to the side of his hood. He didn’t reply but stopped walking and stood still for a moment. I saw him shivering and went to touch him but he backed away.

  Irfan, I said, but again my brother backed off me. He looked at me then, his eyes raw and unlit. There was a sense about him as if he wasn’t in full control of his nerves, his limbs, his mouth.

  It’s cool bro, just speak. Anything, I said.

  I took hold of his hand. He looked down at it as if my touch had centered him somehow, bringing him back, and then just as instantly his eyes were away again. His lips holding back his fight, his love for me, and his heart filled instead with an unknowable fear.

  Not my fault Yoos. Not my—

  He was looking for a way out, snatching at it, hoping that I as his brother would be the one to offer it to him.

  Irfan calm down now yeah? I’m right here, just talk to me normal.

  I saw him take a breath and fix his eyes on the ground as if the intensity of my face, filled with obvious love, was too much for him to take.

  It’s like the imam said, he said—

  My brother’s hands touched mine then. He felt cold, foreign, and distant even though the tip of his nose was only an inch from my own. There was a deep sadness in him that, despite all that had happened, I only saw in that instant. It was like he had returned to me for only a brief time, to speak with the world he once knew but would soon be banished from.

  In that moment on top of the hill, with a cool breeze whispering and the leaves bringing in the night, the glow of the city lit our faces. The spires of mosque were below in the distance like a bright temple. Those golden points of light. Abu Farouk had told us that his sickness was not of his own making. As if his heart was lent this horror by the city, by its impurity, by the West. But it was not the truth and I knew it.

  I looked into his eyes and I could already see the lie spreading. I thought of all the secrets he had surrounded himself with up until now. After all the tears my mother and I had shed for him, it was that man Farouk who had offered another fantasy, tha
t he was now clinging to. No, I thought. I had to speak the truth to him now, finally.

  Irfan, listen yeah? This imam, the mosque. It’s got nuttan to do with us bruv.

  I held on to him as my father would have. I held him straight trying to catch his eyes in mine. I thought of Amma and the pain and hurt Irfan had put us through. I thought of Muna.

  There is no one out here except you bro. You did this. You have to take it man. Take the responsibility, like, even though it’s hard.

  He looked up at me then, his eyes terrified and entreating. I had to make sure he heard me.

  It was you who did this bruv. No one else.

  I felt his hands let go of my arms. I moved toward him. I tried to keep my tone gentle as I knew that my words could pierce him open. He backed off still, his face creasing up with confusion and pain. I wouldn’t let it go.

  It weren’t the West bruv. We are the fuckin West, Irfan. It was you.

  F-Fuck you. You left me. You abandon me. Abandon me like—

  No, wait—

  His eyes were streaming, his strength collapsed now, my words lost to the winds swirling around him. His teeth flashed at me as he stumbled backward, his hood falling off his head. Out of his mouth came a howl, the sound of a dying animal or a heart breaking. My brother was submitting me to his hate, his anger at what seemed to be the first truth he had ever heard. It tore me up to watch him and I did nothing as he turned and ran. He was lost to me. I watched him run away into the city.

  I stood there alone facing the blocks of Estate, the mosque’s tall spire, and the lights of the distant buildings blinking alive and plunging all that surrounded it into a deep black. They looked like stars, those windows. It made me remember this one mad theory that our science teacher had told us once. He told us that we might be living in a binary star system, where our sun had a partner star, both caught in a cyclical, celestial bind. The twin stars would spin closer together over centuries, only to be propelled far into the distant light and then emerge again, settled and dark, a millennium older. In that moment, my brother and I were two stars. His was the darker star, entangled with the lonely spaces of the universe. I was the lighter star, grateful for his return but knowing I would enjoy only a few short epochs by his side until he was to be thrust away again by some unbearable gravity, the force trying to push us apart, to undo the knots and fling him out into the dark once more. It hurt to ask myself what form he would return in, having gathered the dust from wherever he went in his darkness. Whether he would ever return at all.