‘You’re right,’ said Robert, ‘I am a mess. I need to stop lying. I need to face up to what I am.’
‘I shouldn’t be too quick to do that,’ said Maisie – ‘you might not like what you are. I might not like what you are.’
‘You can’t go on lying to yourself,’ said Robert. ‘How can you expect people to take you seriously, if you don’t have any convictions about anything?’
‘Why do you want people to take you seriously?’ said Maisie. ‘One of the things I like about you is that you’re so ridiculous.’
This was not quite how Robert had planned the conversation. Conversations with Maisie had a habit of going astray like this. You would go in there planning to discuss, say, her habit of ogling men in restaurants or her inability to repay money she had borrowed, or her ability to disseminate confidences throughout the whole of Wimbledon about five minutes after they had been imparted to her, and you would end up discussing the state of affairs in Europe, the merits of Beethoven, or, more usually, your own deficiencies.
‘What I mean is,’ said Robert, ‘if I could be . . . you know . . . me . . . do you think you could, you . . . sort of . . .’
Maisie kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘I don’t think there is a real you, Bobkins,’ she said. ‘I think you’re just wonderfully insubstantial. That’s why I love you.’
As opposed to the Islamic loony now prancing around on the other side of the room, thought Robert bitterly. Maybe he could report Malik to some high-up official in the Islamic world. During the summer term the man had consumed about twenty pints of Young’s Special a week. Did he ever give to the poor? Not really. He seemed far rnore concerned to take money off the rich – especially if they happened to be Muslim. Did he believe any more than Robert did? Wasn’t religion simply a pose with him, as it was for so many so-called Christians?
And yet – and yet . . . there was something glorious about him. Watching him now, as he shepherded parents in from the garden for the start of the pageant, listening to his deep, authoritative voice, he seemed, to Robert, more English than he himself could ever be. He seemed to summon up an England of green lawns, elegant teas and beautiful women in long dresses, trailing parasols. An England that, these days, existed only in Merchant Ivory films. There was nothing squalidly European about him. He was imperial in scope.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ called the headmaster, ‘we are ready to begin our pageant, to which we have given the lighthearted title Islamic Wimbledon!’
There was laughter, and a smattering of applause.
From the stairs came Rafiq, with the two strangers Robert had noticed earlier. If Mr Malik noticed them, he showed no sign of it. They kept to the back of the crowd, hugging the wall in an almost furtive way. Opposite them were two or three other characters Robert could not remember seeing before at the school. One – a round, jolly, brown man of about fifty – was vaguely familiar. He kept shifting from foot to foot, as if in pain. Mr Malik was guiding parents to their chairs.
There had been much discussion about the music. Mr Malik had been keen for it to ‘bridge the gap between the musical traditions of East and West’, and the result was something that sounded suspiciously like the soundtrack from a commercial advertising Singapore Airlines.
As the lights started to fade, Mr Malik gave the signal to the school’s new music master, Mr Kureishi – a small, fat, serious man – who started to belabour an upright piano at the edge of the stage. Class 1 started to sing the opening chorus.
A few hundred years ago
In Saudi Arabia
A man was born—
A remarkable man,
With remarkable behaviour!
Mr Malik had tried a number of rhymes for the opening number. He had been unable to find one for ‘Mecca’, and had rejected a stanza that rhymed ‘keener’ with ‘Medina’. He himself was still not sure about ‘Arabia’ and ‘behaviour’, and he coughed loudly when the chorus reached this point in the song.
He was the seal of the prophets—
He really was an incredible guy.
He still has a great deal to teach us,
And if you listen I’ll tell you why.
Muhammad went up the mountain—
He was up there for more than an hour—
But when he came down he was different,
He had been through the Night of Power.
He received a Divine Revelation,
Which we still read to this day.
And if you read it regularly,
you’ll probably be OK.
At this point, Mahmud started to poke up the flag through the floorboards, and the offstage chorus went into the big number – the words of which were, mercifully, inaudible, but of a general philosophical nature.
As the flag waved around, to tentative applause, Mr Malik stepped into a spotlight and began. ‘People have come to Britain from many lands,’ he boomed, ‘and today the country is a melting pot! We are an integral ingredient of that pot!’
The audience were no surer of this than they had been of the song. The Islamic world, even in Wimbledon, thought Robert, was not quite ready for the fusion of styles unleashed on it by Mr Malik.
‘We must adapt,’ he went on, ‘and become one with the UK while remaining ourselves. This is the message conveyed to you by the Independent Islamic Wimbledon Day Boys’ School!’
As he spoke, various boys in various kinds of national costume trooped from the left and right of the stage; at the same moment, from beneath the stage, Mahmud started to poke a second flag up through the floorboards. It was, Robert noted with a mixture of horror and relief, the Union Jack. Some members of the audience applauded it.
Mr Malik raised his right arm. ‘The conflict between Islam and Christianity,’ he said, ‘is an old battle. And one that no longer needs fighting!’
At this point the Bosnian refugee leaped on to the stage on a small wooden horse, designed and built for him by his mother. From the other side of the acting space came the Husayn twins, tied together with a cardboard chain. ‘Confess your sins, Muslim dogs,’ said the Bosnian refugee, in slightly cautious tones, ‘and become Christians, or we slash you up!’ With these words he ran at the Husayn twins and started to belabour them with his plastic sword.
The boys stood this for as long as was decent, and then, after a particularly heavy blow to the head, the brothers grabbed the Bosnian refugee by both feet and up-ended him over the sand. ‘Die, Christian!’ said the fatter of the two twins.
This was not, as far as Robert remembered, in the script, but it seemed to be going down rather well with the audience. Mr Mafouz was clapping loudly.
But Robert’s eye was no longer seriously drawn to the stage. The fat man over to his right had leaned down to the floor. When he straightened up again, Robert saw that he was carrying something. It was impossible, from this distance, to see what he was wearing on his feet, but it seemed likely that he was one short of a full complement of shoes, because in his right hand he was holding a large, brown, elastic-sided boot. Robert recognized him now: it was the restaurant owner he had met on the day he had brought home Hasan – Mr Khan. Not only that: his was the round, jolly face he had seen in the window the day he had been hit on the head outside the room where he had been watching the Occultation of the Twenty-fourth Imam of the Wimbledon Dharjees.
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Now, as he looked around the hall, Robert could see that the whole place was full of single men wearing one shoe. When had they come in? Presumably during the opening sequence of Mr Malik’s pageant. It would not have been difficult to have removed the chairs from under the parents watching the curtain-raiser of Mr Malik’s production – their attention was concentrated on the stage with what looked like some degree of permanence. Macbeth spotting a character he had recently bumped off could not have showed more interest.
Dr Ali, over by the kitchen door, in the darkness, was rocking backwards and forwards on his haunches, muttering something to himself. It was po
ssible, thought Robert with some satisfaction, that he had finally got around to sentencing his employer to death. Serve the bastard right.
Robert looked around for Hasan. The little boy was no longer on his chair. Nor, as far as Robert could see, was he anywhere in the room. How had he managed to get out on his own?
Mr Malik, apparently unaware that his school was full of Twenty-fourthers, or that the Twenty-fourth Imam himself had started to display some of the talents referred to in Aziz’s manuscript (‘He shall come and go as he chooses, shall vanish and appear again’), was warming to his theme. ‘This,’ he said, indicating the Husayn twins, who were now beating the Crusader with his own sword, ‘is what happens when religious bigotry rules a nation. We see it in Northern Ireland. We see it in Tehran. We see it in Wimbledon!’
The audience did not like the direction this was taking. Mr Husayn started to mutter something to his neighbour. Two or three of the ladies present clicked their tongues loudly.
Mr Malik went for safe ground. ‘Those who believe and do good,’ he went on – ‘the merciful will endow them with loving kindness!’
Fatimah Bankhead was nodding in the gloom, and Mr Mafouz, too, was looking appreciative. Something told Robert that the headmaster had managed to find another line in the Koran that wasn’t about chucking people into hell-fire and making them chew dust for the foreseeable future. Malik had got them on his side once again.
‘If this school is to survive,’ he went on, ‘and if the things it stands for are to survive, then it must adapt! We must learn to live in peace with our neighbours!’
The Husayns had now got the Bosnian refugee up against the far wall and were thwacking him in the kidneys with a piece of wood. Malik turned towards them, managing to give the impression that all this was part of a carefully arranged plan, and said, ‘Look! Look where hatred and bigotry leads!’
Robert could still not see where Hasan had gone, but he did see the janitor. Aziz was leering, wickedly. In his right hand he held a rather grubby trainer, and he was shaking it at the oblivious headmaster as Malik continued his speech. He looked pleased to have got it off, thought Robert. It must be torment for these guys to have to lace up a whole pair of feet every time they wished to pass themselves off as normal people.
‘We are making our own rules,’ went on Malik, ‘and, we must not allow others to dictate them to us. Our prosperity, and the prosperity of our children, depends on it!’
The Bosnian refugee was having trouble breathing. He had collapsed on the ground, and the Husayn twins, having appropriated his horse, were busy riding it round the stage, waving at the audience.
‘Let us see them!’ called Malik. ‘Let us see the children of many lands!’
At this point the plan was for the entire school to process across the stage, carrying flags of many nations and waving their exam certificates. They were then to turn to the audience, waving lengths of green silk and go into a non-representational routine, devised by Mr Malik, entitled The Dawn of Islam in Wimbledon. But, as the first wave of boys hit the side of the stage, the Twenty-fourther over to Robert’s right – the fat man, restaurant owning Mr Khan – raised his elastic-sided boot and yelled, ‘The Prophet said, “Do not go with only one shoe!” ’
Heads in the audience turned. They wore the polite expression of people who assumed that this was part of the show.
The Twenty-fourther was answered from across the hall and all along the stairs – quite a few more of the sect seemed to have crept in during the blackout that had preceded Mr Malik’s speech. ‘We go with one shoe to show the shame of breaking Islamic law!’ they yelled.
Mr Mafouz, who was obviously still convinced that this was part of the pageant, started to applaud vigorously. The boys, who were supposed to file off the stage in order, stopped to peer out past the lights at this interruption, with the result that the next wave of boys collided with those milling around on the sand.
At this moment, Mr Khan the restaurant owner yelled, ‘Down with Malik! Down with Shah! Down with the Wimbledon Independent Boys’ Islamic Day School!’
The other Twenty-fourthers, waving their right shoes above their heads, answered with the skill born of long practice, ‘Down with Malik! Down with Shah! Down with the Independent Boys’ Islamic Day School (Wimbledon)!’
The audience were now definitely convinced this was part of the headmaster’s grand design. Mr Mahmud could be heard telling his wife that these people represented narrowness and intolerance in the Islamic world, and that they would shortly be vanquished by the rightly guided headmaster.
Before this happened, however, Rafiq, who had up to this point been seated with the staff and parents, leaped to his feet and, in full sight of the assembly, yanked off his right shoe. He seemed to be wearing wellington boots, and he had clearly not changed his socks for some days, because the people near him started to scrape their chairs across the floor in an effort to escape. ‘Mr Khan here has been betrayed by the man who bears the name of Shah!’ he yelled. ‘That Shah is a hypocrite Muslim! He has not given his promised support to The Taste of Empire tandoori restaurant. Especially on Wednesdays!’
He pointed at the school’s principal benefactor, the tall man in the elegantly cut suit who still bore an uncanny resemblance to the Duke of Edinburgh. This Mr Shah was looking at Mr Khan in a hurt and puzzled manner. ‘My dear man,’ he began to say – ‘if this is part of our business disagreement—’
But, before he could finish, Rafiq heaved his wellington boot at the members of the school now threshing around on the stage under the lights. His example was followed by many of his companions. A hail of plimsolls, trainers, leather shoes, mountain boots and sandals rose up in the air and rained down on boys, parents and teachers.
Robert could see that Mr Malik, who still seemed remarkably unworried by all this, was signalling to someone at the back of the hall, behind him. And then the lights went out.
For a moment everything was quiet. This is it, thought Robert, Molotov cocktails! Next to him a woman was whispering something, although he could not hear what it was or what language she was speaking. Suddenly, high up above the stage, as high as that afternoon on the other side of the Common, a light flicked on and Hasan stood before them. At first Robert thought he was hovering above the blacked-out room; then he saw that he had been slipped over the banisters of the stairs and was perched, perilously, on the edge of one of the steps.
He was dressed all in white, in a long, flowing garment of bright silk. On his left foot was a golden sandal. His right foot was naked. He stretched out his hands over the faces of the crowd and began to speak. ‘Bow down,’ he began:
Bow down and listen to my words!
You are led by the wicked!
You are led by transgressors!
We wear one shoe
To show your leaders have lied to you.
Bow down.
Bow down and listen to my words!
Quite a few people actually did start to bow down. Robert himself, now fairly well trained in the act of Islamic prayer, felt a strong urge to make, head first, for the parquet floor. The little boy’s voice was so eerily still! His face so withdrawn and delicate! His shoulders seemed to beg some invisible presence for mercy!
My father stabbed the seducer Hasan.
I am the son of Hasan b. Namawar.
I am the rightful Twenty-fourth Imam,
And I return to punish.
Bow down.
There is fire in my fingers.
Bow down!
Rafiq, observing the early success of this performance, joined in well. ‘Bow down!’ he yelled. ‘Bow down! Do not serve the hypocrites! Bow down!’
Behind Robert a woman started to hiss. Whether it was fear or anger or pleasure that made her do so was impossible to tell. All over the hall, people were murmuring and hissing and breathing in sharply. This, thought Robert, was entirely reasonable. As apparitions go, Hasan was certainly in the Angel Gabriel class. At a school Open Day
he was a guaranteed sensation.
Hasan’s fingers quivered as he stretched out his hands over the audience, but whether it was in a blessing or a curse was impossible to tell. His sightless eyes sought the light as he went on:
Do not listen to the seducer.
Do not listen to those who would lead you.
Do not listen to those who betray the Law.
I am the Twenty-fourth Imam.
I come to destroy all this.
I come to destroy this school!
People were getting quite emotional. Apart from Mr Mafouz, who was heard to announce that this was the best damn show he had seen since The Bodyguard, most of the parents seemed entirely convinced by Hasan’s performance. One or two were openly crying. As the little boy’s voice rose to a shriek the Twenty-fourthers came in, like Elvis Presley’s backing group, perfectly on cue.
Destroy this school!
Bow down!
Destroy this man!
Destroy the seducer Malik!
Bow down!
There is fire in his fingers!
Bow down!
In the gloom, Robert could see that Rafiq was fumbling with something underneath his jacket. Aziz the janitor, now up on the stairs, seemed to be holding something, and, with a shock, Robert realized it was a lighted match. They really are, he thought – they really are going to burn the place to the ground.
It was then that the lights came on – not just a single lamp, but a whole battery of arc lights ranged along the stage. It seemed, at first, like a deliberate theatrical effect, which indeed it probably was. And, if the Twenty-fourthers had a developed sense of theatre, they were mere amateurs compared to the man who now strode to the centre of the stage – Mr Malik, the one and only headmaster of the Boys’ Independent Day Islamic Wimbledon School. His voice rose over Hasan’s as he stretched his huge hands up towards the boy. ‘Who has done this evil thing to you?’ he said.
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