In Our Mad and Furious City

by Guy Gunaratne

  I listened. Abu Farouk spoke of the aggression we were subject to. The menace practicing their evil just a short distance from us. He spoke of the white protests. The thugs who had broken our windows and smashed our cars in calculated revenge for the soldier-boy. He spoke about those of us who had looked on in the past. Silent Muslims who, while witnessing everything around them splinter and crumble, had done nothing to prevent it. He taunted the crowd, shamed and scolded us for not acting, for our passivity in practicing Islam and never protecting it. A rumbling chorus rose from around me and anger rippled toward its head. Mosque had been burned, Abu Farouk said, because they had failed to protect it from the threat of the kuffar. The menace without. The white menace. The infidel Kemp. He should be hanged, he said. His thugs hanged too. They were being protected by the police, he said, and were due to hold another march this afternoon. The chorus grew louder and I felt the crowd pulse with him. The thugs must pay for this abomination, he said. We were not to be intimidated by their barbarism. The noise grew louder though it was only Abu Farouk’s voice I heard. He then thrust the Qur’an into the sky and called his followers to march together. The infidel would not get to August Road this day, he said. The Umma would march to meet them. We would go onward to the High Road and charge the white mob if necessary, and meet the savages in the street. A horrifying chorus rose. I remembered my father then. I thought of the beautiful world Abba described to me when I was young. How I had held his Qur’an and recited verse on his podium. I looked around and saw what it had all become. I stood invisible among them, too weak to pull away.

  FACES

  ARDAN

  What you mean you closed? You a cornershop ain’t you? Shopkeeper stares at me like I’m loopy. Max is sniffing his leg. He shakes Max off and I watch his two sons closing the metal shutters over the door and shop windows. Me standing there on the side of the High Street with Mum’s cigarette money, bemused like, with the leash in my other hand. The shopkeeper with his hairy eyebrows scratches his beard, points across the street.

  Ain’t you heard? Those crazy fuckers with the protests will be coming through here this afternoon lad. Don’t need a brick going through my bloody window.

  I look across the road and see a long line of cop cars parked across the curb. A stack of red cones piled up and ready for suttan.

  What? What you mean? I say again staring.

  You fucking deaf bruv? goes one of the shopkeeper’s sons by the van. They piling crates and bags of rice or suttan, getting ready to clear out.

  The police are letting the goons protest through here. Fuckers, the lot of them. They allowing them skinheads to pass right along this road. Our road. At least this side of Stones Estate. Even with what happened last night with the mosque, you believe that? Them feds are as racist as the marchers mate.

  All right, all right, come on. The shopkeeper closes the back of the van and they both get in, proper paro-faced.

  I pull back Max by the leash and I watch them drive off down the High Road and see the other shops are closed. Barely anyone on the streets yuno. I think of the flames last night. August Road Mosque and the police and the old man with no shoes screaming.

  Feeling of dread comes to me. Like things might be popping off here. Like the streets are anyone’s now. Look into the sky and I swear I can see lines crossing. Look down at the streets and the calm silence makes it feel like it’s the end of days fam. I look behind me and there’s South Block. I turn again and continue walking down High Road. See if there is anywhere else I can get my mum’s fags. Shops closed, roads quiet tho. Hear only the sound of my own feet on the pavement, scuffling along, until I hear voices growing behind the corner. I turn into Tobin Road, past a police car with two coppers inside watching me. I look up and in the middle of the road it’s full of people. Can’t see them properly from this far out but I know what they are. Skinheads. Bad-mind faces standing in small crowds, waiting. Men mostly, with banners, some in shirts and ties, others looking lairy, fixed, and blood-ready. They holding signs giving the name of that soldier-boy and saying Britain First.

  One man with the Union Jack around his neck laughing. There is some older man with a black baseball cap and suit. He’s standing in the sunlight staring back my way. My eyes meet his for a second. This ain’t no good, I’m thinking. This ain’t no fucking good.

  You lost boy?

  I spin around and there’s some six-foot white man looking down at me. Max barks at him and he steps back. He looks normal tho. I see in his face he ain’t no police but he don’t look like no goon neither. Wearing a blazer and combed hair. Looks like a fucking estate agent.

  Does your old man know that you’re out young lad? he says looking at me and Max.

  No, I says.

  He wipes his nose with his suit sleeve then and looks up at crowd, searching. Then he looks back at me.

  All right, the march starts at eleven. Stay out of trouble all right? And grab a sign.

  He looks away and walks off past the car to join the crowds. Fuck off, grab a sign. Is he mad? I see him greet the man in the suit and they shake hands. The man in the suit points into the direction he had just come from. I look back to where they point and see Estate behind me. The police cars and cones, and there by the end of High Street, coppers in uniform taping up the road and blocking off the marching route. The street is empty. Empty all the way back until August Road meets the High Road by Estate. I begin to pace up, stepping away. I pull Max along into a run.

  YUSUF

  There were people in the windows watching us walk along August Road, many more running to join us from their doors. Those beside me were chanting and shouting curses. The smell of the burned mosque still in the air, filling our lungs and riling our hearts as we moved forward. Umma were old faces weary and bearded, young and fierce, familiar and not, eyes and fists lifted above our heads. Irfan was not among them.

  The Estate blocks loomed large ahead of us.

  The sun had disappeared behind the clouds. I looked behind me and couldn’t see how many we were or how far back we reached. It was as if we were all compelled, our voices one, our purposes bound together in waves as Abu Farouk’s oratory reached me in verses that rippled, while my hands were rocks by my side.

  News came through to the middle of the crowd. The kuffar police were holding us back. They were saying that we were to be diverted toward the Square. The police would not let us confront the infidel in the street, they said, instead we would make them come to us between the block towers.

  We crossed over to South Block entrance and we all looked toward Tobin Road where we saw the red and white banners in the distance. We heard their noise. The protesters were being held at the far end as we were being herded into the Square. The High Street between us was cordoned off and empty.

  Only the police were there, with high-visibility vests, and dogs, by the parked cars and guards at the gates.

  Keep moving! You cannot be in this area! Move!

  We were in the Square. Beneath my feet I could feel discarded cans and the crackle of needles as hundreds stomped the hard ground alongside me. The same ground I crossed yesterday where I played football in the sunlight with Ardan, Selvon, and them. I looked up at East Block at my home where Amma still lay in bed dumb to the havoc below.

  I was invisible now, I thought. If Amma were to look down at us, she wouldn’t even see me. I was just another among a sea of faces like my own. We all came to a halt in the middle of what was once our court, arms folded, the air thick with chanting. I looked around desperately to see if I could spot Irfan. The crowd was too dense to see. Others were craning their necks, to push onward. I looked down, deafened by the noise. I noticed the feet of the people next to me. They were wearing trainers under their kameez, the elder men, the gray-bearded fathers too. They all seemed ready for whatever came next, standing protected by an army of Muhajiroun whose heads were dotted about trying to scope the police and whoever else emerged beyond the gate. These brothers. Their arm
s raised and conjuring spells of retribution. Our verses resumed. I listened. I mouthed the words absently. I had lost all recollection of where my day began.

  CAROLINE

  I walk over past the kitchen, past the frying pan black with burned bacon, the empty box of Findus on the side. I waft away the burned smell and tighten my robe. There’s an almighty racket coming. A steady banging of a drum. I open the door and this drumming seems to shake the building.

  What’s all this noise? I says bending my arm through the door. Sure as anything Mary’s standing there in her slippers and worn face. I see now along the balcony how all the way to sixty-three they’re out in their night clothes. Just gawping and pointing at the commotion in the Square below.

  Arabs from that mosque, says Mary. She looks at me. Her face waxy with her hair all tangled. I think of my own hair, still wet.

  Fuming lot, she says, fuming.

  What do these want in the Square?

  I’m not looking down at them but at the people on the East Block and West Block all out and watching along with us.

  Police at every entrance, penning them in.

  I push against the banister, looking down.

  So many people, I say. Mary’s not listening, just staring at them with her mouth like a boar.

  Trev says it’s arson, weren’t it, he reckons.

  Arson? I says, looking further down.

  Yeah, the fire at the mosque, she says.

  I see Varda stepping outside now. Her black hair oiled and shining. Varda’s a Hindu. Else she’d be out there wouldn’t she? Same part of the world. Her eyes are puffy below her thin eyebrows.

  What is this noise? Baby is sleeping and all.

  She pushes in to see. Mary and she natters. They natter and I’m losing grip again. I feel the hands go and my teeth go. I’ll leave them be in a moment. I’ll go back and fix it. Then it’ll fix me. I’ll find another glass in the casket, if not the tumbler some other glass. I’ll draw the curtains closed and dry my hair. Then I’ll fix it. Before Ardan is home. Before Ardan comes back. Aye, I’ll fix it then.

  A sound comes from the sky. The women all look upward. The clouds are beginning to cover the gray, but just there, a helicopter hovers. It makes a cutting sound like a knife as it flies under the clouds and in a circle.

  Bloody helicopter? TV is it? says Varda.

  So it is look, I say.

  Then I see a trail of smoke reach up from below. I look down at the Square. There is a fire in the crowd. Something’s burning. God, look at that.

  YUSUF

  Looked up at them. Unblinking faces, standing outside their doors, rows and rows of witnesses, all four blocks staring and pointing down and shouting back at us to fuck off like we were some mob spectacle.

  I looked around and saw the same Estate I seen a thousand times. The four blocks large, cold, and terrifying now as if we were gathered up in the center of a giant, closing fist. Chaos suddenly ringed in from all sides and I heard a commotion toward South Block.

  Skins! they shouted. They were nearing the gates, the scum. I could see their fists and placards over the lines of riot shields which were blocking off the exits. From the packed Square, we stood shoulder to shoulder, I heard snarls of ugly words, Urdu slang, naked language, infidel, criminals, bastards. Next to me a man ducked as things were thrown over our heads at the gates. Spinning shoes in the air, laces licking our faces in flight. The Muhaji led the surge forward. It was as if the chorus of anger around me moved toward the enemy.

  Then I saw smoke circling. Hoisted up was a burning flag. I stared at the Union Jack. The red ribbons and royal blue flames and flaring circles in the white. The smell of petrol filled the mist and a black smoke rose into the air above us. It was a thick dark message to the white faces at the gates, watching from the blocks, in the streets, on screens around the city.

  ARDAN

  Police got riot gear on. They line up there in a row but I can’t see their faces. Fuck they doing dressed in black and visors on and helmets? Them dogs too. I have to get back to Square but the path is blocked off by these riot feds. I turn around and I can hear that white march coming. They shouting, repeating the same thing over and over. Sounds like a football chant with them hooligan roars. They heading toward Estate now. And what are the feds doing? Fucking standing there just allowing it.

  I cut past the park and Rose Court. That’ll lead me down into North Block, the other side of Estate. I’ll get into Square and I’ll get home to Ma. I long the leash so Max can run free behind me. I’m running now and he follows me. I run away from the white faces and the black helmets and burn past the Poundshop and toward park.

  I feel it in my heart that suttan is badly wrong. Today, like no other day, I have it like a cold fear in me. Yesterday I felt more in my heart than any other time in my life and today it’s like it all being sucked away. Sucked away by the noise of this place, the road and the sick air that’s settled around it.

  I feel my chest panting as I run as fast as I can past the park. I think of all the things I felt were possible on that stage. Me with the mic, hoping that someone gave a fucking damn. I come home and Ma didn’t look twice. She weren’t hearing me. She weren’t seeing me. But she will. Swear down she will tho. One day. Just need to survive today. I look to the sky and I wish the clouds would darken and swallow these Ends whole. I wish the light left only the shadows for us to stay hidden in, until I can get out like Selvon said we could.

  I see the entrance of North Block up ahead now and it’s open and clear. I run straight for it. I check back and see Max bombing behind me like it’s a game. Like I’m playing a game with him running. I reach the entrance but stop by the gate. I see it all now.

  There’s another crowd in Square. Darker faces. Shouting and chanting and crushed together in the small space between the four blocks above them. Men in robes and some drum beating somewhere. All the people from August Road, look. I see suttan like fire in the distance above their heads. The windows of the lower walls shattered. I cup my ears at the noise. The fucking noise drowning out my own breath.

  YUSUF

  The sound of hard glass against bone. My ears ringing. The pain shooting through my head and neck. I couldn’t see what had been thrown, only my cut and bleeding hands against the concrete ground. It was a bottle, its broken pieces around me. Looking up I saw only smoke and bodies above. Manic faces flying past me. I shouted for help but I couldn’t hear my own voice in the noise, nobody could hear me. I touched my forehead then, bleeding. My eyes blurry. I heard the voices of others near me crouching behind the bins, scared and angry. The Muhajiroun were wild-eyed and pushing into the crowd, charging into the fog.

  I got to my knees in pain, wanting to crawl out of there if I could. Some were clawing their way toward the fight, others trying to push away. I got to my feet, keeping my head down, felt it dripping now, and moving past bodies, faces still screaming. I searched around to find the edges of the Square but the chaos and noise stopped me.

  Smoke filled my sight, stinging my eyes, my nose running. My hands grasped out at the air as if I were blinded. I opened my eyelids to see into the white. Watching the faces pass invisible in the mist, one figure came closer. Was it him? He stood, seeming to watch me, as people ran past. I reached out to touch him but my hands went through him like an apparition.

  Irfan, I heard myself say, Irfan—

  My sight was beginning to cloud. The figure of my brother faded into the hundreds of others, their backs to me, fists up and pounding. Gone. The chaos was all I had left. These Ends. This place taunting me with my brother’s face, my fear. This place which now was being torn down around me. This Square. I was alone, jostled by the crowd with my hands up, smoke surrounding.

  FURY

  SELVON

  My marge comes home in her church clothes, flustered with sweat around her neck. She reaches for me and she thanks God I’m home. She asks about Dad. I tell her he’s fine, upstairs sleeping. She finds me standing the
re watching the TV images of police barricades and glass shattering.

  Where you been Mum? This is a madness.

  She keeps saying the same thing: Look what the world come to, my son. Look!

  She holding her face like she can’t believe what she’s seeing on TV. Even though it’s all happening the same time out the window. I touch her on her shoulders and she leans into me. The whole Estate looks like it’s at war or suttan. Them helicopter shots of the crowd are mad, I see smoke coming from Square. And then the long tail of the racist march just spread all over the road, some of them climbing on traffic lights and cars.

  I think about calling Yoos. Maybe Ardan. See if they’re safe.

  I reach for my phone and start thumbing for Ardan’s name.

  ARDAN

  Suddenly there’s another commotion. The noise from the Square rises mad and smoke covers the crowd. That white mob rush the gate like they see suttan happening. Standing there under West Block with their arms out, like proper wide boys. All eyes on them now and Max suddenly jumps out from behind me and runs under the police line and into the Square.

  Max! I shout after him.

  And then it’s me who jumps the lines. The feds don’t even see me do it, I just run into the smoke and the mass of people crammed into Square. I can’t see him. I can’t see Max and everyone is coughing and screaming. I can’t even hear my own calls for his name and I’m searching the ground trying to get people off me but it’s too tight in here to even fucking move, fam. Behind me the feds are pushing into the Square with their riot shields. Bottles come flying and I’m ducking as if they bullets. People are covering their mouths with their shirts and helping them old people to the other side. There’s blood on their faces. Somewhere Max is running searching for me searching for him.