The limo was travelling slowly. As we passed the newer mosque a man of about forty walked off the building steps and out into the road behind us. He wore an impressive bushy beard which somehow complemented the clean white Arabic dishdasha thawb clothing and he looked physically fit.
I suppose the limo looked like an official Government vehicle or something. As I watched him he snarled towards us and ran his right forefinger across his own throat. The cut-throat gesture took me aback a little. Even at our slow speed we would be gone from him soon. “Fuck off,” I mouthed at him and gave him the finger. Well, that was my useful input to intercultural relations in Newham.
This was new to me, in the past all cultures and races have rubbed along together reasonably well in this area. Most of the minority groups normally complained about the police but in fairness so did most of the original whites. Conflict with the police in the East End was not a new phenomenon. The middle class socialist agitators who sometimes play their political games in the area don’t recognise this and often pointlessly seek to make political capital out of minority grievances.
Later that day I told my dad about this strange incident because he hadn’t noticed it.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Since the wars that followed nine eleven, we’ve had a few tossers trying to stir up trouble around here. They don’t get anywhere, the older Muslims try to stamp it out and keep a grip on their stupid young men. Our stupid young men sometimes try to provoke them as well. As long as we all keep talking it’ll be fine.” Peace prize for my dad. He’s a violent old sod but it’s always the violent old sods who keep the peace in the end, which is one of life’s little ironies.
Dawn left for home because she had to prepare for another work trip to another county prepared to pay too much for its early years educational services to be assessed. I spent some time in dad’s flat. He didn’t know much about mum’s parents. Sarah and Jack shared a grave in the East London Cemetery and that was all he knew. He suspected the lease had expired because he and mum looked for it some years ago and couldn’t find it. London has lots of dead and once you’ve been dead for long enough they nick your space and trash your headstone, charming.
I told my dad I was going home. I wasn’t but I didn’t want to complicate things. I’d told Dawn that I’d put up in a hotel and tour the area in the morning. The 2012 Olympics had left plenty of hotel space behind it. Surprisingly, most of the hotels still operated these few years afterwards. I suppose the nearby international railway station, City airport and the sports facilities helped. I had paid ridiculous London prices for a room for one night. A complete rip off but I just didn’t feel like crashing at my dad’s. He needed to be alone with his thoughts. He had my mobile number if he needed me.
That night I stayed in a hotel in the Romford Road. I’d decided to eschew the more modern post-games hotels for one that had been there a long time. Romford Road is a main artery that connects the east of London to the old market town of Romford. In today’s world it’s not as impressive as it probably once was. Now it is overshadowed by more recent motorway standard roads. To walk the Romford Road is to stroll a part of forgotten history. I imagine that all ancient cities are like this. The old main drags of London still carry thousands of vehicles but can now appear narrow and not very important.
For some reason the hotel boasted a sign declaring itself to be a ‘motel’. I remember when it opened in the early sixties. It was then probably just trying to emulate the increasingly popular American way of things and perhaps somebody thought this made it look modern.
I once read an article which suggested that we lost the war but were occupied by our friends instead of our enemies. The thrust of post-war history has certainly drawn us towards the United States of Amortization in a big way but I’m not convinced that we’ve completely bought the American way.
Within this country there are still plenty of signs of good old fashioned pluralism. Here we swing somewhere between left and right and mix and match the two as we think necessary. I suspect that a thousand years of class based bickering does not simply dissolve. Maybe that’s why we speak respectfully of both Karl Marx and Adam Smith.
Opposite the hotel/motel sits a leisure centre that was once just Romford Road baths. It was previously both a public bath house and a couple of Olympic size swimming pools that were drained and used to hold some of the dead during the blitz. Every Sunday when I was small, my dad would bring me here to swim. Swimming was considered an essential skill because of the proximity of the Royal docks. He mentioned the wartime use on more than one occasion, probably because as a lad he’d visited it on an errand when it was full of victims. Protecting the sensibilities of the young had low priority in the explosive deluge.
The area of my young life was huge. I considered the Ilford borders all the way to Bow flyover as my demesne. To the south the Thames and the docks created a natural border despite the semi-secret pedestrian tunnels under the river. That’s a lot of land and I’d never cover it all on foot in one day.
It was a safer world then, or maybe just a less overtly threatening world, young me had covered this area by foot and bus without a single thought for danger. The hunting predatory paedophile or the roaming street gang were unheard of. Well, not exactly unheard of, I had a couple of weird teachers and in the sixth form we all knew of one teacher who was in a sexual relationship with one of our classmates. We all considered it consensual and nobody informed any authority.
This was a school and area where it was not unusual for we sixth formers to visit the local pub with our teachers. I had more than one lesson accompanied by a pint of beer. It’s probably not worth mentioning smoking in the classroom. A different world.
The streets felt safe whether they were or not. I think that maybe we just accepted some incidents and situations that today would make excited prurient news.
The world has become much more ostentatiously mawkish in general with roadside shrines, ersatz morality about other people’s foibles and crowds of noisily distressed strangers and emotional displays common as hordes of strangers arrive to enjoy the grief at any scene of disaster or murder.
I considered crowd behaviour at the funeral of Diana to be disrespectful and undignified but maybe that’s just me being old and reserved. Nonetheless, it was that event that first made public the changed response to disaster; traditional reserve had been replaced by, or drowned out by, a noisier more demonstrative demand to be heard. Those of us who disagree with such behaviour are vilified not for our more traditional view but because we dare challenge the self sanctioned right of others to impose their unrelated snivelling on other people’s grief. Respectful silence says much more.
I know of at least one instance of a horrible child murder where the crowds, unconnected rubber necking gushers relishing the exaggerated blubbing, ignored police requests to disperse and as a result trampled some important evidence.
I decided to start at the Ilford end, just where the Romford Road touches the new north circular ring road, one of the modern fast roads that replaced the old routes. These major motorways act as effective borders and the local cultures change noticeably as they are crossed. The large Ilford area retains a significant Jewish/Anglo/Black/Asian mix that rumbles along more or less comfortably.
The other side, moving deeper into my old lands, quickly develops into a large Asian Hindu/Muslim culture tacked onto the remains of the original white working class and black communities that still continue in pockets. The general area is growing whiter now with significant but isolationist eastern European communities.
A confusing variety of languages touch one’s ear in this place. This mix hides a score of petty conflicts between cultures but somehow manages to maintain an underlying acceptance of diversity that enables it to function. What trouble there is tends to be internal to the hundreds of discrete cultures that make up the area. Each of them tries to maintain its
own integrity and this can cause conflict within them as children seek to grow into a greater mixed culture.
This end of the tour had a larger number of older buildings than there are as one moves closer to the old dockland and industrial zones of Stratford and Plaistow. Those areas were more heavily bombed in the second world war and now sport labyrinths of sixties concrete replacement housing blocks, now slowly being replaced themselves by modern rickety mass housing.
I’ve met people who have expressed surprise that rebuilding took place so long after the destruction. The fact is that rebuilding London continued into the seventies and some in the eighties.
The war damage was immense; I was basically brought up in the shattered shell of the old London with bomb sites and shored up buildings everywhere. As I grew, the new world grew up around me. I was raised in a culture that was moving on, the new towns and suburbs provided new places that bled the occupants from this part of London. Nowadays, Romford, Basildon, Crawley and Harlow are closer to the culture that I knew than the area I was now in. The London working class diaspora spread across the south east and further.
As I began my tour I tried to imagine the missing, Dave’s twenty five million. More, really, if you include the losses from all wars in which this bellicose land has involved itself. I expect all of them seemed necessary and proper at the time; protect trade, impose influence on distant regions, defend the proper values etc. Wars are the way of humanity, it seems. Every search for peace or disarmament appears to have resulted in war. As we became capable of indulging this frightening instinct with industrial grade weapons, the fighting defeated our attempts to explain and justify it and horrified even us.
Millennia ago isolated human families came into conflict and alliances with other families. As time passed the families amalgamated and merged cultures and thus became clans.
The clans came into conflict and alliances with other clans. As time passed the clans amalgamated and merged cultures and thus became tribes.
The tribes came into conflict and alliances with other tribes. As time passed the tribes amalgamated and merged cultures and thus became nations.
The nations came into conflict and alliances with other nations. As time passed the nations amalgamated and merged cultures and thus became continental blocs.
The continental blocs will also come into conflict before amalgamating and merging into a unified global governance. We’ll probably still find something to fight about even then. So many ghosts, an incalculable number overall. I dare not even count the losses from plagues provoked by human activity, the post first war flu killed thirty million all on its own.
On that cheery thought I decided that at this point I was unable to see the ghosts. I’d half expected to see the nebulous forms of people in places where they should have been. I saw nothing of the sort but that did not detract from the idea. Maybe as I strolled I’d see them but I’ve never been particularly prone to ghostly and creepy imaginings. This would be a long arduous day, I made regular stops for water and snacks.
From this end of Romford Road I could see the edge of the cemetery where my mother’s funeral took place. Her place of rest is just the other side of the railway line that runs parallel with the road at this point. I could just make out some grave stones. This was the only point of note on the long hike toward East Ham.
About half way along, I changed my route onto the Wanstead Flats. This ancient common land has endless football fields and is used by dog walkers, runners, hikers, flashers and anybody else. The ponds on this large piece of green space are where I used to net sticklebacks as a kid, when I wasn’t adventuring on the many bomb sites. I’m told that at night the land is given over to doggers and other miscreants. I think this might not be true, the local population of white nominal Christians, black actual Christians and any colour devout Muslims is unlikely to put up with that. The occasional murder victim crops up on them, too; that must spoil their leisure pursuits.
I didn’t spend long on the flats, instead I started to walk down to the Forest Gate area, in particular a crossroads called Manor House although if there ever was a real manor house it’s long since gone. From there I could walk down to West Ham park.
The road down to the crossroad takes one past a sixties built church. I think it’s Methodist and the congregation is largely older black people. I’m not aware of anything interesting about it except the statue of a man on the wall. I mean quiet literally on the wall, feet planted on the brick and body leaning far forward defying every sensible physical and gravitational law. The arms are held out wildly as if waving, there is a bible in one hand. This figure intimidated me when I was young, I always feared it would leap off and chase me. I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen off.
The site on which the church sits was once a bomb site and before that a pub. The blitz had a curious tendency to destroy the pubs, maybe the Nazis were financed by German brewers looking to take the trade. That’s a bit unfair on German brewers but it makes as much sense as any other explanation or excuse for the war. It’s been suggested that the early Nazis were in fact financed by loans from the Rothschild’s banks. If that’s true it must be one of the nastier historic business errors. I doubt that they were ever repaid but I don’t imagine the Nazis were much worried about their credit score.
The other side of the crossroads is a Victorian church, Anglican I think. It’s almost always locked and barred and I’ve never seen anybody going into it. As kids we considered it creepy.
A little further on are the mosques that we drove past in the funeral car. The time of day that I walked towards them must have been outside of the normal prayer times, there was nobody about except standard pedestrians plodding about their everyday business.
Remembering the incident of the cut-throat gesture I lingered in front of the steps when I reached the more modern mosque. I slowly climbed the steps and peered inside through the glass doors. It just looked like any office block foyer boasting light not quite white plaster board walls, except the posters were in Arabic.
“Hello sir, can I help you?” I was a little embarrassed at jumping visibly as the small Asian man spoke. I don’t know how he’d suddenly appeared beside me without me noticing. He was about fifty and dressed in casual western clothing, a tweed jacket and mole skin trousers but wore an incongruous tall red woollen cap. He spoke with a London accent revealing a slight Pakistani lilt.
“No, not really,” I replied. “I’m just curious that’s all. If I’m in the way I’ll go.”
“You’re not, you are welcome. Are you curious about Islam, the architecture or something else?”
“I’m Christian,” I don’t think I’ve ever before defined myself by religion. “Well, sort of Christian, C of E.” We both chuckled softly. “It’s just a casual general curiosity, really.” I told him about the cut throat incident. In reply to his concerns I assured him I wasn’t there looking for anybody to cause trouble with, I was just passing and curiosity got the better of me. I’m a big and heavy guy and this small man apparently remonstrating with me must have looked comical to any observer.
The man told me his name was Charlie, which I considered an unlikely name for him but that’s just my own prejudice; I’d expected a Pakistani name or Arabic sounding at the very least. He pushed the door open and invited me in. As we entered I heard a door open further down along the foyer.
“Hey, Charlie,” said a vaguely familiar voice. “Oh, it’s Mr Aitchsmith, isn’t it?” Walking towards us was Taz Khan, the young man from my dad’s awkward pension interview.
Charlie looked pleased to see him. “I didn’t realise you were here. This chap had an unfortunate encounter with mad Shafi a few days ago.” Charlie explained that Shafi, no other names and this one appeared to be just an abbreviation of something, was a man sometimes subject to paranoid schizophrenic episodes who frequented the mosque. I was a bit taken aback by the la
ck of political correctness in their description of mad Shafi. I kind of sympathised with him but still, cut-throat gestures to funeral goers is a bit much. Charlie explained that Shafi was harmless and anyway at the moment he was hospitalised for his own and others safety. I chose not to juxtapose ‘harmless’ with ‘hospitalised for safety’. Let it go, it’s not important.
“I remember you and your dad,” Taz explained. “He made me laugh so he stands out a bit. I am surprised to see you here, though. I’m sorry about Shafi, when he’s up to it I’ll advise him not to make death gestures to strangers, it’s not good for public relations especially the way things are now.”
It turned out that Taz was on the board of trustees for the mosque and he and Charlie basically ran the place between them. Charlie seemed to be the theologian of the team, he led payers and generally did all the cleric stuff, Taz dealt with the finances and kept the administration running smoothly.
I explained what I was doing that day. They both offered condolence for my mother and invited me to tour the mosque. I declined with thanks, I was grateful and interested but today was not the day for me to explore comparative religions; I was looking for ghosts.
The thought struck me that they have their ghosts here, too. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Muslims died fighting in Europe and Asia. At that point they were not part of European or Brit home culture but the effects are the same, lots of non people not existing. There are people not in this mosque who should be. It’s the same worldwide, kill one person and the spreading tentacles of their line just stops; we never get to see the growth that should have been.
On the South Downs, near where I now reside in my retreat, there is a monument to the Indian fallen. It’s hidden away from population centres just as the Indian troops were; Indian army groups waiting for deployment into Europe were, in both wars, camped on the South Downs away from the local people. It was felt at the time that large numbers of Indians, Empire subjects, would be too much for the local population’s sensitivities.
Twenty Five Million Ghosts Page 15