You Don't Know Me: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Choice

by Imran Mahmood

  I learned to tune it out as much as I could. But I won’t lie to you, there was times when I had to bust a few faces. There’s only a certain amount a person can take before he snaps. I didn’t like to fight back all that much. Because apart from anything else it made me feel like every black dude who ever fought Rocky in them films. Everyone was always hoping that I would get my head kicked in. Mainly I just styled my way through as much of the shit as I could. If I could avoid a front-up, I would. You got to remember I was prettier than most of them boys so I had more to lose innit! Eventually though, after a few fights where I did a bit of damage, most people knew to leave me alone. People don’t just want to pick fights that they can win. They want to pick fights that they can win easily. And if that’s your thing then it ain’t me you’re looking for.

  Anyway there was this one boy, Curt, one of the only other black boys at the school. He was this big fat dopey kind of kid. He was like a type of boy you could say anything to and he would just give you this drooly grin. Didn’t matter what you said to him and it didn’t matter that the boy even at that age was the size of a house, he would just smile straight at you. And I don’t mean you could say just anything to him like call him a fat c—, sorry Judge.

  I mean you could say that his mum did tricks for a quid and he would still just let it go. He was just one of them peaceful type of guys. But that was the problem. You let someone take the piss a bit then you may as well let him take a piss all over you.

  Anyway these are just the lessons. It’s kind of like being in prison I guess. If you show even a bit of weakness, you will get taken apart. So you can imagine the shit Curt had to deal with.

  To me it looked like bad luck was going to follow Curt round for life. He wasn’t just over-sized and over-friendly, he was also a bit mixed up. His mum was a drug addict or an alcoholic or something and although we didn’t know it at the time, she probably was hooking on the quiet. There were days when Curt would come into school with bruises on his face. You couldn’t really see them that easy on him because he was so dark. But I could see them. I could always see them. On them days he wouldn’t smile as much. He would just have this look like he was guilty of something. He wouldn’t want to talk so much. He got a look on his face that even if you were a bit of an idiot you wouldn’t want to take the piss out of him too much on them days – it was too harsh to dark him like that.

  But those boys at our school didn’t care about a kid’s home life. I’m not saying they didn’t have their own shit to deal with. No doubt they did. But that somehow didn’t exactly make them go any easier on him. I used to watch them when they went for him. Some little stick-boy half his size would walk up to him and call him a nigger and Curt would just put his head down. Then the kid might jump up and slap him across the face. Still Curt would do nothing. There’d be all these kids laughing at him and jeering at him and I would be standing there thinking, ‘C’mon man, you’re twice the size of these fools. Fuck them up proper.’ But he never did. He just let it slide.

  It seemed like to me they were just trying to get him to react. Like they knew deep down that he could kill them in a second if he was pushed hard enough but it was like they just couldn’t help themselves. They wanted to see the Hulk breaking out of him. Anyway, they tried everything. They swore at him. They threw shit at him. They robbed him. Fucking whatever you could think of to do to a boy they did to him. Once they even chucked him into the Spit and tore all his clothes off him. Then when he was there crying in his pants, a hundred boys stood at the top of the well and spat fat green gobs down all over him. Some kid even tried pissing on him but couldn’t get much on him. Eventually when the teachers came, Curt just wiped himself down, put his clothes back on and carried on like nothing had happened. Yeah, he was crying a bit and whatever but he basically did nothing.

  I kind of liked Curt, man. In fact, he later became my best friend. You could even say my only real friend. But back then I didn’t know him all that well. He didn’t even stay in that school long because one day his mum was moved up to someplace out in North London and he had to go with her. But what I remembered of him from those days was how calm he tried to be and how no matter how much he tried to find peace, war just followed him. The boy was a magnet for trouble.

  Yeah. I know this sounds like I’m on a bus route diversion. But I am getting there I swear down. So, Curt. One of these days he was just sitting by himself as he usually did on the step waiting for break to be over so he could get back to the safety of lessons. I went over and decided to just chill with him for a while. Because I was so feisty, usually when people would see me and him together they left him alone. So as far as I saw it I was doing him a favour. I can’t remember what we were chatting about. We weren’t exactly tight and he weren’t exactly my boy then but we did have some shit in common.

  At first I didn’t notice that anything was wrong. I don’t think anyone did really. There was noise, sure, but there was always people shouting at break like they was in a prison. What I do remember though is seeing Mark Warner. You know those thirteen-year-old boys who were thirteen in years but had faces like twenty-year-old men? He was one of them guys. He had a face that looked like it had never seen one happy day. Thing about him, though, was that he was one evil fighter. Yeah he was thin as a rope, but he was so fast that when he was fighting you didn’t see the hands even move. They just blurred right in front of the other boy’s face until that boy’s face was on the ground. It was a weird thing to watch because you hated him up for it but at the same time there was something about it that had you glued to it. You couldn’t take your eyes off him.

  So Warner was there with his big fists and his busted face. He was just walking past with this wide ‘I own the world’ walk when he sees us and stops. ‘Fucking black queers,’ he goes or something. Now when shit like this happens to me these days, which if I am honest with you ain’t too often, no one, I don’t care who he is, gets away with it. You best be packing if you coming at me with that shit. Back then though, as I said, I only picked the fights I could win and trust me I weren’t ever going to be in no mood to be dancing with Warner. So I look at the ground and just under my breath I goes, ‘Fuck off,’ and carry on talking to Curt.

  I didn’t even see it coming. All I know is that in the next second I’m on the deck and my face is beating like it’s been hit by a baseball bat. I get up and my instincts take over. Before I have even had time to think about it I’ve taken a swing at Warner and then suddenly there is a crowd around us. I was like a hundred metres from connecting with my punch. My arm swings past his head and I almost go on the ground again. Warner though, he goes off like a machine. Punches coming at me like pistons. They are all so fast that it feels like I’ve just run into a brick wall. I go down immediately and then he is on me, his knees on my arms and his fists trying to ruin my face. I reckon another second or two and I would have been eating through a straw for life. I can’t see nothing. All I can do is keep turning my head away and try and drown out the punches and the shouting crowd.

  Anyway, just as I felt like I might go under, Warner just flies off me, backwards, his hands still moving but hitting nothing but air. It takes me a minute to work out what has happened. It’s Curt. He just pulled him off me like he was picking up an angry cat. Warner struggles free and then when he sees it’s only Curt, he turns on him. ‘C’mon you fat nigger,’ he goes and starts beating away at him. Curt does nothing at first. He just kind of ducks and takes the punches like he has been doing all his life. But then Warner shouts out, ‘Fucking waste man!’ and something just snaps.

  Curt’s eyes suddenly come to life like someone just turned on the ignition. He blocks Warner’s punches with one arm and then with the other arm he swings straight at his head. He doesn’t use his fist. He uses his whole arm. And that boy went down. I mean he crashed. You could even hear the crack as his head hit the pavement. The crowd starts going mental. People are shouting out Warner’s name and saying things like, ‘Ar
e you going to let that jungle bunny show you up?’ and all this. Warner staggers back to his feet and somehow, I don’t know where he gets the strength from, he takes another go at Curt. Curt don’t even think this time round. He catches Warner’s fist with one hand then twists it round until the boy is screaming out. Then he puts the other hand on the back of his elbow. Then just like that he snaps it.

  A few weeks after that Curt left the school. Like I said, I think his mum for some reason had to move and he went. But for years after that I used to think back to that day. What made him do it? We weren’t mates then. I didn’t even really talk to him that much. If anything I felt sorry for him because he was weak. So why did he do it? I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have stepped up for him. In fact I know I wouldn’t have. I never did before. But I think I know now what it was. He could take all the shit, the coon, the nigger and whatever. He could even take the beatings and the humiliations. But what he couldn’t take was being called that. ‘Waste.’

  To him, this went back to everything. It went back to his mum who was selling herself for a pipe. It went back to all the men that came and used her and left. It went back to his mum waking up with the shakes in her own sick and him having to clean her up and put her into bed. It went back to her telling him every fucking day that he was alive that she wished she had had him aborted. That he was a waste man. It went straight to his insides. I doubt even he knows why he reacted like that but I tell you something, if you called him ‘waste’ today he wouldn’t stop at your arm.

  I will say one thing though. That fucker deserved getting his arm broken. He had that shit coming to him and in my book it’s not ‘you get what you pay for’, but ‘you pay for what you do’. Every time.

  Anyway when then this QC talks about ‘You’re waste man’ as if it means you are about to be wasted, I have to laugh. It might be all just words to him but down on the ground this shit matters. It ain’t just words, man.

  I was going to start off by saying I never said those words to the dead boy anyway, but do you know what? I admit it. I did say that to him. That was me. But it did not and does not mean what he, Mr QC, wants it to mean. I called him a waste man. And he was a waste man, no matter whether he is dead or not. Where I come from, he was a waste man: an idiot, a waste of space, whatever. If I was a Mafia made guy or something, maybe I would have meant he was a dead man. But I ain’t so I didn’t. Mr Prosecutor needs to stop watching TV and get real for a few minutes.

  This is what I mean about these evidences. You need to be looking at this shit properly. Because he ain’t doing the job properly. He could be. But he ain’t. He’s trying to, what did he call it, pull the wool over your eyes. Shit yeah. That is exactly what he is doing right there. He is getting a big blanket and putting it over your heads. You don’t think he could have found out what ‘waste man’ means before making a murder case on it? Course he could have. He probably even did. Nah. But he don’t want you to know that.

  Luncheon adjournment: 13:01

  3

  14:05

  So where are we now with these evidences? Number three? This is easier than I thought.

  A couple of months before he was shot a witness saw the dead boy having an argument with a black boy about my age and about my height wearing a black hoodie with white Chinese-style writing on the back. Actually there’s a bit of number five evidence there too. A black hoodie with Chinese writing on the back was found in my flat by the police.

  You know what I’m going to say because you heard me say it to the prosecutor in this room. A black boy my height and age could be any one of the black boys in that area alone. How many twenty-two-year-old, five foot eleven black boys are there who are living in Camberwell right now? Hundreds? Thousands? More than thousands? It is a black area. What is it that most white people say? ‘I don’t even see colour.’ Ha! Well I tell you now, if you went down there tonight, you’d see a lot of colour on a lot of twenty-two-year-old, five foot eleven boys. Of course none of them would be as pretty as me, but you see what I am saying?

  Then as well, how many black boys would there be who are from a different area but who are just visiting that area for one reason or another on a Saturday? So what I am saying is, is that a proper evidence or is it just one of them things? If that was the only evidence maybe I wouldn’t even be here. Maybe you would say to yourselves, this is just a piece of rubbish that ain’t worth nothing. And if you did say that I would agree with you. So can we throw that one away?

  It’s the hoodie though innit? That’s what’s getting you. A black hoodie would be one thing but one with white Chinese writing on it – that’s too much of a coincidence, innit?

  But is it though? If you look at it, you will see a label on that hoodie. When you go into your retiring room or whatever, take it out of the bag and have a look at the label on it. Do you want to know what it says? I will tell you what it says because I have had a look at it. It says ‘XXL’ and then in small writing it says this: ‘Made in Taiwan’. Now that might not seem to be a big deal but if you think about it, it could be a big deal – or a medium deal at least. I ain’t an expert or nothing but I am guessing that when the sweatshop that made this hoodie made this hoodie, they didn’t make just one. They made ten thousand maybe. ‘So what?’ you might say. But ain’t no Taiwanese people buying them hoodies. They’re made for here. You can tell that because the washing label, or whatever you call it, is in English.

  So, ten thousand hoodies maybe. One for every one of them thousand twenty-two-year-old black males walking around that area on that day and nine thousand spare. And so what if one of these hoodies got found in my flat? If you went into the flats of all them people who bought one of these hoodies, do you know what you would find? You would find one of these hoodies. And you might find most of them or half of them or maybe even only a tenth of them would be black males my age. Why? Because it’s people my age who wear hoodies. He, Mr Prosecutor, don’t wear a hoodie on a Saturday night, I guarantee that. He’s wearing some tweed suit or whatever. It’s young people wearing them. People like me. So that’s a thousand people it could have been apart from me. And you only have to look at me. Do I look like I am XXL to you? And this is me after a year of going to the gym every day, a straight-up-and-down medium all day long. So what you like about this number three evidence then?

  Break: 14:30

  4

  14:40

  So what I was trying to say was that this barrister for the prosecution, he likes to try and confuse you, but you can’t let him do that. You have to clear away his smoke and look at the thing he’s trying to say, properly. He likes smoke because when there’s smoke your natural thing is to shut your eyes. Another thing he likes to do though is to add up all the tiny pieces of evidences and make a great big thing out of them. He takes a little piece here and another tiny piece here and says to you, ‘Look at how big all these pieces are when you add them up.’

  When I was a little kid we had this massive bucket at primary school with all these Lego pieces in it. This wasn’t the racist school I was later put in. This was quite a nice place as I remember it. The walls were yellow. I remember that. And the chairs. I remember the little tiny chairs. Anyway Lego. I love Lego because, one, you can make anything out of it and two, it’s indestructible. That’s why all schools have them I reckon. That shit just doesn’t break which means it’s been there for ever. You probably all had a go at Lego. You probably all loved it. You probably even wondering why you ever stopped playing with it. You probably can’t even think of one bad thing to say about Lego. But I can.

  The bad thing about maybe all Lego and definitely this Lego at my school was that there was never enough of the right Lego. There was never enough of the pieces you needed to make your thing, rocket-ship, house, car, whatever. You’d be making your house out of red Legos and then there’d be no red ones left because some snotty kid would have taken it. So then you’d move on to the blue pieces and when they ran out, the yellow ones. But even wh
en you’d used all the normal Lego bricks there still wouldn’t be enough. So then you’d have to use some next pieces, like those thin long pieces and even some of them flat grey triangle ones. Then finally when you were finished, your house or whatever would have all these crazy things on it like wheels instead of windows and random pointy bits in the walls. And you’d say, ‘Miss, look at my house!’ But it wasn’t any house anybody had ever seen before. It was like some crazy nightmare house. And I knew, even then, when I was five or whatever, that when you put pieces together they have to be the right pieces. They have to fit or else it’s not a real thing. It’s an almost thing. Or a thing that nearly looks like the thing.

  That’s what he, this QC, likes to do. It’s enough for him for the evidence to nearly look like a thing.

  So anyway where was I? This is proper hard. It looks easy on the TV. You say a few words. You make the jury believe you, you cry, the jury cry, the jury say ‘Not Guilty’. In my mind that was what it was going to be like. After I wrote out that bit at the beginning, Palmerston and all that shit and when I realized that I was in deeper than I thought, I wrote some ideas down of what I need to say. I reckoned I could just spit it out like some bad lyrics you get me? But this shit is hard. I got like fifty points I need to make but each one is taking long and I keep getting lost. So although it looks like I’m just chatting random shit but I’m not. It’s all important. I’m just like finding it hard to keep tracks of all these little things I know I have to say but that I don’t know how to say. And then there’s also this other thing … And the more I think about it, the more I think I definitely need you to know it – laters though. It will make more sense, later.

  Where was I? So yeah, this is what I wanted to say. The prosecutor is just doing all this mashing things together and making it into something that it ain’t. So he is saying that one day I am having an argument with the boy and I say something to him, and next minute he winds up being shot in the head. He says that I must have shot him because I had some beef with him, or whatever, but that there is just another one of his sneaky things he likes to come out with. You have to look at it though. You have to use your senses. What is the motive? Why was I supposed to have shot him? What, because of the waste man thing? No one shoots no one because of some random argument he’s had or there wouldn’t be any kids left in London.