The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureishi

  ‘Excellent, Changez. Please don’t shout. My father would be proud of you. You’re –’

  There was movement. I heard Jamila say, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘My heart is beating,’ he said. ‘I will kiss you goodnight.’

  ‘OΚ.’

  There was a sucking noise, followed by a complacent, ‘Goodnight, Changez. Thanks for looking after Leila today.’

  ‘Kiss me, Jamila. Kiss my lips.’

  ‘Um. Changez –’ There were physical sounds. I could feel his bulk in the room. It was like listening to a radio play. Was he grabbing her? Was she fighting him off? Should I intervene? ‘Thanks, Changez, that’s enough kissing. Haven’t you been serviced by Shinko lately?’

  Changez was panting. I could imagine his tongue hanging out; the exertion of assault was too much for him.

  ‘Karim stirred me up, Jammie. I’ve got to explain this to you. That little devil bugger –’

  ‘What’s he been saying?’ Jamila asked with a laugh. ‘He’s got problems, we all know that. But he’s a sweet boy, too, isn’t he, his little hands pawing things, his eyebrows fluttering about – ’

  ‘He’s got tremendous personal problems, as you say quite rightly. I am beginning to think he is totally perverted too, the way he likes to squeeze my body. I explain to him, what am I, an orange? I say – ’

  ‘Changez, it’s late and –’

  ‘Yes, yes, but Karim for once was saying something with meaning.’

  ‘Really?’

  Changez was desperate to say this, but he paused for a few seconds and held his breath, unsure whether he was making a mistake or not. Jamila waited for him.

  ‘He said you’re a female lesbian type and all. Jamila, I couldn’t believe my hearing. Rubbish, you bastard, I told him. I was ready to blow him off the earth. That’s not my wife, is it?’

  Jamila sighed. ‘I didn’t want to have this conversation now.’

  ‘That’s not what you can be doing with Joanna, is it?’

  ‘It’s true at the moment that Joanna and I are very close – very fond of each other.’

  ‘Fond?’

  ‘I can’t think that I’ve liked anyone as much for a long time. I’m sure you know how it is – you meet someone and you want to be with them, you want to know them deeply. It’s passion, I suppose, and it’s wonderful. That’s how I feel, Changez. I’m sorry if it –’

  He shouted, ‘What’s wrong with your only husband here and available that you are turning to perversion? Am I the one single normal person left in England now?’

  ‘Don’t start. Please, I’m so tired. I’m so happy at last. Try and accept it, Bubble.’

  ‘And all you here in this house, you good types, talk of the prejudice against this Yid and that black burglar bastard, this Paki and that poor woman.’

  ‘Changez, this is offensive, this is –’

  ‘But what about ugly bastards? What about us? What about our rights to be kissed?’

  ‘You are kissed, Changez.’

  ‘After the exchange of pounds sterling only!’

  ‘Please, let’s go to bed. There are plenty of people who will kiss you. But not me, I’m afraid. Not me. You were imposed on me by my father.’

  ‘Yes, I am not wanted.’

  ‘But you’re not ugly inside, Changez, if you want that patronizing assurance.’

  He was only half listening; and he was far from exhausted.

  ‘Yes, inside I look like Shashi Kapoor, I know that for sure,’ he said, beating his hand on his knee. ‘But some people are really ugly pig-faces, and they have a terrible time and all. I’m beginning a national campaign to stop this prejudice. But it should start stopping with you, here in this damn house of the holy socialists!’

  There was more noise, but more sartorial than physical this time. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look, look, aren’t I a man at least?’

  ‘Oh, cover it up. I’m not saying it isn’t exquisite. God, Changez, some of your attitudes to women are antique. You’ve got to sort yourself out. The world is moving on.’

  ‘Touch it. Give yourself a holiday.’

  She snorted. ‘If I need a holiday I’ll go to Cuba.’

  ‘Touch it, touch it, or –’

  ‘Let me warn you,’ she said. And not once did she raise her voice or show any sign of fear. There was irony, of course, as always with Jamila, but complete control, too. ‘Anyone can be removed from this house by a democratic vote. Where would you go then, Bombay?’

  ‘Jamila, wife, take me in,’ he moaned.

  ‘Let’s clear the table and take it into the kitchen,’ she said softly. ‘Come on, Colonel Changez. You need rest.’

  ‘Jamila, I beg you – ’

  ‘And I wouldn’t let Joanna catch you waving that mushroom about. As it is, she suspects all men of being rapists, and seeing you doing that she’d know it was true.’

  ‘I want love. Help me –’

  Jamila continued in her detached way. ‘If Joanna saw you doing this – ’

  ‘Why should she see? For a change it’s just you and me together for a few precious moments. I never see my own wife alone.’

  I was shifting about uncomfortably. This voyeur stuff was getting to be too much for me. In the past I’d been happy to look in on others’ love-making. I’d virtually watched it more than I’d done it; I’d found it educational, it showed solidarity with friends, and so on. But now, as I lay there behind the sofa, I knew my mind required more fodder – bigger ideas, new interests. Eva was right; we didn’t demand enough of ourselves and of life. I would demand; I would get up and demand. I was about to declare myself when Jamila suddenly said, ‘What was that noise?’

  ‘What?’

  She lowered her voice. ‘It sounded like a fart coming from behind the sofa.’

  ‘A fart?’

  I sat up and looked over the top of the sofa. ‘It’s only me,’ I said. ‘I was trying to sleep. I didn’t hear a thing.’

  ‘You bastard,’ said Changez, becoming even more agitated. ‘Jamila, I am calling the police on this damn snooper! Let me dial 999 immediately!’

  He was trembling and puffing and spitting even as he secured his trousers. He shouted, ‘You have always mocked my love for Jamila. You have always wanted to stand between us.’

  In fact, it was Jamila who stood between Changez and me to stop him attacking me. She escorted me upstairs to a room where I could lock the door, safe from Changez’s anger. In the morning I got up early and tiptoed through the sleeping house to the front door. On my way there I heard Leila Kollontai start to cry, and then I heard Changez talking softly to her in Urdu.

  A few days later I went to see Dad again. There he was, sitting in one of Eva’s armchairs in his pyjamas, with a pallid young man on the floor in front of him. The man was intense, weepy, despairing. Dad was saying: ‘Yes, yes, this whole business of living is very difficult.’

  Apparently these kids from Dad’s classes were always turning up at the flat, and he had to deal with them. This he considered to be ‘compassionate activity’. He was now saying that, for the sake of ‘harmony’, each day of your life had to contain three elements: scholarship, compassionate activity and meditation. Dad was teaching this several times a week at a nearby Yoga Centre. I’d always imagined that Dad’s guru business would eventually fall off in London, but it was clear now that he would never lack employment while the city was full of lonely, unhappy, unconfident people who required guidance, support and pity.

  Eva took me into the kitchen to show me some soup-bowls. She’d also bought a Titian print of a young man with long hair who looked like Charlie when he was at school. Long-stemmed tulips and daffodils sat in jugs on the table. ‘I’m so happy.’ Eva told me as she showed me things. ‘But I’m in a hurry. They’ve got to do something about death. It’s ridiculous to die so young. I want to live to be one hundred and fifty. It’s only now that I’m getting anywhere.’

  Later, I sat down with Dad. His flesh was h
eavy, marked, and fatty now, the upper half of his face composed of flaccid pouches sewn together in a sort of tier under the eyes, unfolding one by one like an Italian terrace down his cheeks.

  ‘You’ve told me nothing of what’s happening in your life,’ he said. I wanted to stagger him with my soap opera news. But when I want to stagger people I usually can’t; staggered is the last thing they are. ‘I’m in a soap opera,’ I said, in Changez’s voice. ‘Top pay. Top job. Top person.’

  ‘Don’t always laugh in my face like an idiot,’ Dad said.

  ‘But I’m not. I wasn’t.’

  ‘You’re still a liar too, I see.’

  ‘Dad –’

  ‘At least you’re doing something visible at last and not bumming,’ he said.

  I flushed with anger and humiliation. No, no, no, I wanted to shout. We’re misunderstanding each other again! But it was impossible to clarify. Maybe you never stop feeling like an eight-year-old in front of your parents. You resolve to be your mature self, to react in this considered way rather than that elemental way, to breathe evenly from the bottom of your stomach and to see your parents as equals, but within five minutes your intentions are blown to hell, and you’re babbling and screaming in rage like an angry child.

  I could barely speak, until Dad asked me the question which was so difficult for him and yet was the only thing in the world he wanted to know.

  ‘How’s your mum?’ he said.

  I told him she was well, better than I’d seen her for years, good-tempered and active and optimistic and all. ‘Good God,’ he said quickly. ‘How can that possibly be? She was always the world’s sweetest but most miserable woman.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s seeing someone – a man – now.’

  ‘A man? What kind of a man? Are you sure?’

  He couldn’t stop asking questions. ‘Who is he? What’s he like? How old is he? What does he do?’

  I chose my words carefully. I had to, since I’d noticed that Eva was behind Dad, in the doorway. She stood there casually, as if we were discussing our favourite films. She hadn’t the taste to turn away. She wanted to know exactly what was going on. She didn’t want any secrets within her domain.

  Mum’s boyfriend was not remarkable, I said to Dad. At least, he was no Beethoven. But he was young and he cared for her. Dad couldn’t believe it was so simple; none of it satisfied him. He said, ‘D’you think – of course, you don’t know this, how could you, it’s none of your business, it’s none of mine, but you might have guessed, or heard it from Allie or from her, especially with your great big nose poking into other people’s businesses non-stop – do you think he’s kissing her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I’m sure of it. And he’s injected her with new life, he really has. It’s terrific, eh?’

  This practically assassinated him there and then. ‘Nothing will ever be the same again,’ he said.

  ‘How could it be?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, and he turned his face away. Then he saw Eva. He was afraid of her, I could see.

  ‘My love,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing, Haroon?’ she said angrily. ‘How can you even think like this?’

  ‘I’m not thinking like it,’ Dad said.

  ‘Stupid, it’s stupid to regret anything.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do, you see. And you won’t even acknowledge it.’

  ‘Please, Eva, not now.’

  He sat there trying not to mind her, but the resentment was going deep. All the same, I was surprised by him. Was it only now, after all this time, that he realized the decision to leave our mother was irrevocable? Perhaps only now could he believe it wasn’t a joke or game or experiment, that Mum wasn’t waiting at home for him with curry and chapatis in the oven and the electric blanket on.

  That evening I said I’d take Dad, Eva, Allie and his girlfriend out to dinner to celebrate my new job and Dad giving up his. ‘What a good idea,’ said Eva. ‘Maybe I’ll make an announcement, too.’

  I rang Jammie at the commune and invited her and Changez to join us. Changez took the phone from her and said he’d come out if he could but wasn’t sure about Jamila, because of naughty Leila. And anyway, they’d been out at the polling booths all day, working for the Labour Party at the election.

  We got dressed up, and Eva persuaded Dad into his Nehru jacket, collarless and buttoned up to the throat like a Beatle jacket, only longer. The waiters would think he was an ambassador or a prince, or something. She was so proud of him, too, and kept picking stray hairs off his trousers, and the more bad-tempered he looked, because of everything being wrong, the more she kissed him. We took a taxi to the most expensive place I knew, in Soho. I paid for everything with the money I’d got by trading in the ticket to New York.

  The restaurant was on three floors, with duck-egg blue walls, a piano and a blond boy in evening dress playing it. The people were dazzling; they were rich; they were loud. Eva, to her pleasure, knew four people there, and a middle-aged queen with a red face and potbelly said, ‘Here’s my address, Eva. Come to dinner on Sunday and see my four Labradors. Have you heard of so-and-so?’ he added, mentioning a famous film director. ‘He’ll be there. And he’s looking for someone to do up his place in France.’

  Eva talked to him about her work and the job she was currently doing, designing and decorating a country house. She and Ted would have to stay in a cottage in the grounds for a while. It was the biggest thing they’d been asked to do. She was going to employ several people to help her, but they would only be self-aware types, she said. ‘Self-aware but not self-conscious, I hope,’ said the queen.

  Inevitably, little Allie knew some other people there, three models, and they came over to our table. We had a small party, and by the end of it everyone in the place seemed to have been told I was going to be on television, and who was going to be the next Prime Minister. It was the latter that made them especially ecstatic. It was good to see Dad and Allie together again. Dad made a special effort with him and kept kissing him and asking him questions, but Allie kept his distance; he was very confused and he’d never liked Eva.

  To my relief, at midnight Changez turned up in his boiler suit, along with Shinko. Changez embraced Dad and me and Allie, and showed us photographs of Leila. She couldn’t have had a more indulgent uncle than Changez. ‘If only you’d brought Jamila,’ I said. Shinko was very attentive to Changez. She spoke of his care for Leila and his work on Princess Jeeta’s shop, while he ignored her and brayed his loud opinions on the arrangement of items in a shop – the exact location of sweets in relation to bread – even as she praised him to others.

  He ate massively, ol’ Changez, and I encouraged him to have two helpings of coconut ice-cream, which he ate as if it were about to be taken from him. ‘Have anything you like,’ I said to all of them. ‘D’you want dessert, d’you want coffee?’ I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they could no longer see me as a failure. I wanted to do more of this. It was as if I’d suddenly discovered something I was good at, and I wanted to practise it nonstop.

  When everyone was there, and nicely drunk and laughing, Eva stood up and knocked on the table. She was smiling and caressing the back of Dad’s head as she strained to be heard. She said, ‘Can I have some quiet. Some quiet, please, for a few minutes. Everyone – please!’

  There was quiet. Everyone looked at her. Dad beamed around the table.

  ‘There’s an announcement I must make,’ she said.

  ‘For God’s sake make it, then,’ Dad said.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. She bent to his ear. ‘Is it still true?’ she whispered.

  ‘Say it,’ he said, ignoring the question. ‘Eva, everyone’s waiting.’

  She stood up, put her hands together and
was about to speak when she turned to Dad once more. ‘I can’t, Haroon.’

  ‘Say it, say it,’ we said.

  ‘All right. Pull yourself together, Eva. We are getting married. Yes, we’re getting married. We met, fell in love, and now we’re getting married. In two months’ time. OK? You’re all invited.’

  She sat down abruptly, and Dad put his arm around her. She was speaking to him, but by now we were roaring our approval and banging the table and pouring more drinks. I raised a toast to them, and everyone cheered and clapped. It was a great, unsullied event. After this there were hours of congratulation and drinking and so many people around our table I didn’t have to talk much. I could think about the past and what I’d been through as I’d struggled to locate myself and learn what the heart is. Perhaps in the future I would live more deeply.

  And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn’t always be that way.

  About the Author

  Hanif Kureishi is the author of novels (including The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album and most recently Something to Tell You), story collections (Love in a Blue Time, Midnight All Day, The Body), plays (including Outskirts, Borderline and Sleep With Me), and screenplays (including My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic and Venus). Among his other publications are the collection of essays Dreaming and Scheming, The Word and the Bomb and the memoir My Ear at his Heart.

  By the Same Author

  plays

  PLAYS ONE (The King and Me,

  Outskirts, Borderline, Birds of Passage)