The Study Circle

by Haroun Khan

  Ishaq watched as she swapped looks with his mother. Auntie Ruby had a dyed boy-cut, and was wearing a black pantsuit with a ruffled shirt that was white with black polka dots all over. She guided a hand through her hair and then pulled her suit tighter over her breast. He thought these people would really prefer someone like Zulfi.

  ‘That’s nice.’

  Auntie Ruby did not look assured, eyes briefly raised upward, making calculations at quantum speed. ‘Our daughter Firdaus is studying Pharmacology in Dubai. There are many good jobs in this sector. She gets top grades and it will be easy to get a job afterwards – until she has children, of course.’

  Firdaus gave an awkward grin as everyone chimed in with their requisite ‘mashallahs’. Ishaq noticed her cheeks turn red; he wanted to say something friendly but her mother kept on.

  ‘It’s important to make enough money to support a family, and you have to make sacrifices in life. Ishaq, we told your mum and dad to come with us to the UAE, but your dad insisted on staying here for you to get an English education. I think they suffered enough, in this area and place, to do this.’ Auntie Ruby looked around at the unassuming room, taking in the anaemic furniture.

  Ishaq looked at his parents. Quiet. No reaction. Looking smaller in their own home.

  ‘Firdaus has many families and successful matches interested in her and us, but your parents were very close and helped us a lot. Her father…’ Auntie Ruby looked at Amir Bhai, who was now licking his fingers again despite not eating anything, ‘…decided we should come and see you first.’

  What an immense favour they were doing. Such an endowment out of their colossal hearts. Firdaus was really pretty. Maybe she was smart and they could get on. Poets would have described her as almond-eyed, and she had pleasant curves at the hip and breast that showed through her kameez. Ishaq averted his gaze as he realised he was sizing her up her like a camel for sale. He repressed the urge to make a joke about checking her teeth. Hang on, maybe she was looking at him in the same way. Aware of his slouching he sat up straighter, and made a quick dig at his straggled hair.

  He could settle down with this girl. Have lots of babies to keep everyone happy, while they both worked away earning money for new mouths, and as a pension-policy for ageing parents. He did quite like the idea of an arranged union. It was a spin of the coin, either way. At least here they could discuss their values and aspirations in a sober way.

  Maybe he could move like this woman said. Live in a country where a clement eastern sun would annul his visibility. They could live in some suburb, where he could wash his saloon car on weekends. He could invite his polo-shirted, beige chino-wearing friends round for a barbecue, and they could discuss their amazing prospects for promotion. He could forget that the estate ever existed. It would all cloud into a hard-times origins mythology for his suburban children, who would smoke pot or dye their hair in their oh-so rebellious phase.

  He looked at Firdaus, as if a thought bubble would appear above her head and reveal what she was thinking. Did she have doubts? What hopes had she outside of ending up with some random ragamuffin from South London? Ishaq looked at the mother. He could not criticise anyone. The culture of British Muslims had changed: you were told to look primarily for character and piety in a partner. This exchange of security and obligation was an old-style transactional relationship. A trade of blood, based on an old bond or promise. Firdaus could be the most amazing person in the world but he couldn’t allow himself to be corralled into something suffocating. The values of security and social advancement seemed illusory. He didn’t believe in any such thing. Far too often he had seen life overtake such petty dreams. Economic success was an accident of birth as much as the result of any hard work. As for social mobility, it didn’t matter to him, all he could see was doing good and doing bad. There was nothing else.

  But maybe this family had it right. Maybe they just lacked subtlety. Maybe this was the outside world in totality. Everything was about swapping value. The drop of a name, the casual mention of a wage packet, showing-off your car, or posting to social media a ton of pictures that highlighted your amazing life. You did not get ahead by being a better man, instead you flourished by telling everyone how great you were and hoping they didn’t find out anything to the contrary.

  Five pairs of eyes settled on Ishaq, waiting for a word. He reached over to the table and poured himself a cup of tea with tender ceremony. He lifted it to his nose and savoured the aroma of the infusion. Putting his cup down, he pursed his lips and looked at the eager crowd.

  ‘In one of our history lessons we had a parable, a story that was given by a man who became Muslim amongst other things. He split oppressed people into House Negroes and Field Negroes. A slave owner owned both. House Negroes had the better food, a roof over their heads and served their master well. They got sad when their master was sad and happy when their master was happy. They didn’t want anything to happen to their master as they were scared of what would replace him, and then what would happen to them.

  ‘Field Negroes, on the other hand, had little food, and rags for clothes. They lived and toiled under the elements, suffering beatings from their master. They hoped he would die, as anything was better than how they were living now. But they knew the truth of their situation, and of their evil master, and once they had that truth they could not live without it. They couldn’t swallow it and pretend it did not exist.

  ‘Now I don’t know what’s better, and what I’ll end up as, but at the moment I’m more like the Field Negro, and I have no intention of becoming someone’s House Negro. I respect your family’s achievements, but my parents worked and provided for us and that’s enough for me. I don’t really care about being rich, or living in a suburb and sending my kids to an expensive university so they can repeat the same cycle of constantly repaying debt all over again. I may be a young idiot who doesn’t know anything but I’d rather take my chances out in the sun and rain and keep feeling them beating down on me. Your daughter looks wonderful and I hope that you find a suitable match.’

  Ishaq stood up and walked out.

  The toilet seat down, he sat, not doing the act but definitely feeling it. Gone way too far. He felt his face tingle as he imagined his parent’s awkwardness as they explained their ungrateful son. Their shame at dishonouring a guest.

  He adjusted his cheeks as they deadened on the hard surface, and then listened to the vibrations of pipes as a tap was turned on next door. No real escape, even here. The bathroom didn’t have any outside facing windows. Early on they couldn’t afford a shower, so Ishaq would take a bucket bath, ignoring the bangs and shouts from his sister. On those rare occasions when another member of the household was not screaming for the bath, he would lay there pontificating, allowing the warm suds to envelope him. Each flat was a mirror image of the next, so the bath and toilet rooms that were on the left side of their flat were adjoined by the bath and toilet rooms on the one next door. In a daze from the humidity he would sometimes hear the conversations of the couple next door. Their voices palpitating through rusting tubes.

  He had lived next to them for his whole twenty years, but did not know their names. The husband was in his seventies. A full head of white hair, that crowned and flowed backwards like a lion’s mane. Outside of the flat he wore hobnailed boots, woollen trousers that had seen numerous attempts at patching, a gingham shirt and scraggly tie, topped off with a black, gentleman’s blazer. To Ishaq it looked like his clothing had come out of a time capsule, just like the man himself, who shared a slightly musty impression with his attire. Led by thick, black-rimmed glasses, he used to march everywhere with a battered leather bag and a fierce frown. It took time to dress like, care that seemed at odds with their frayed state.

  All the kids used to be terrified of him. Energetic whispers in each other’s ear about him killing people in the war. Not a clue which war, just THE war. Some said he was an old gangster who mixed it with the Krays, back before YouTube and when telly was in bl
ack and white; that he used to dish out ‘Chelsea smiles’ using tools in his bag. The kids used to be in rapture disseminating the method. The key to such a grin was the making of small incisions on the corners of the victim’s mouth. You would then beat the wretch pitilessly in the stomach, until they couldn;t stop their face muscles contracting and make obscene ripping tears through their cheeks up to their ears. Ishaq remembered a posse of seven and eight year olds mimicking the action with a plastic knife, taking turns to be perpetrator and then victim. One girl brought her mum’s rouge lipstick down and, as they got a victim to laugh and convulse, they would draw long red lines showing the lengthening cut.

  His wife was delightfully mad. Ishaq would spy her out of a kitchen window, peeping through gaps. She would sometimes pose and pirouette to imaginary tunes on the balcony and, bashful, curtsey to an invisible admirer. Her grey arrow-straight hair reached her knees and she wore flowing garments, dark dresses and wintry cardigans. The other kids thought she was a witch. Once, Ishaq asked his mother whether it was true and received a rare show of real anger. Mum shouted at Ishaq, saying that they were an old couple trying to get on and that he should know better than to indulge in gossip. As she did with other neighbours, Mum was always dropping-off food or sweets to them whenever she made too big a batch, which was often. Ten-year-old Ishaq would keep his head dipped outside the door, lingering until he saw his mum come out safe, ready to flip his head back in like a Pez dispenser if the man came out, instead.

  One time, while bathing, Ishaq could hear clear words. He could hear him encouraging his wife to take a wash. She would moan, kicking up soft protestations while he tried coaxing her into washing her hair. Gently admonitions, then encouragement, then pleading. The hollow tap of bucket or tub to wash his wife. He heard them gently chat as he brushed. The sorrow in his speech as he struggled to get her to eat enough, gently chiding her, his voice near breaking. Ishaq felt shame that day. It was the first time he thought of white English people as truly human like himself and his family. All he had ever encountered was racist, violent people who wanted to stamp his kind out. Who acted brutally to people like himself and to each other. It was novel that they were also capable of being gentle and loving, like his own.

  Every argument on the estate seemed like the proverbial bald guys fighting over a comb, but with consequences so serious that it felt like a cosmic joke. Stabbings over disputes concerning pennies, massive family eruptions where the mother tries to nick the daughter’s man, fistfights over the wrong look and a bump of shoulders. It was a competition to reach a new depth. Ishaq thought this new world must be as incomprehensible to the old man as it was to him. The old certainties were long gone and this new England was so terrifying that you can only stare it down with ferocity.

  One morning, Ishaq awoke to find ambulances and police below. The medics went to the man’s flat. The old woman had departed in her sleep. Disconsolate, his defiance cracked and finally crumbling away, the old man was led away by one of the medics. He was never seen again. A month later, a Ghanaian family moved in.

  Ishaq heard the front door shut downstairs. He listened out for movement. After a few minutes cloistered away, with the only accompaniment being the low-pitched buzz of his throbbing ears, he opened the bathroom door and gingerly occupied the landing. Peering over the bannister all of the shoes were gone, including those of his parents, and their coats. They must have escorted the guests back to their car and were hopefully walking off any anger.

  Ishaq navigated his way down the stairs on the tips of his toes, taking two steps in his stride to avoid the squeak. He opened the front door and a slash of razored light came carving into the hallway. No one was on the balcony, so he walked out and leant on the metal balustrade. Filled with expanses of clotted rust and flaking paint, he poked at it with his normal expectation of seeing it give way. It didn’t. Looking around, and down towards the car park, he was satisfied that he was in the clear. He sealed his eyes. He felt the air cool them, and took in a heady breath.

  Bang. Ishaq heard a boom, his shoulders jumped and the balls of his feet nearly left the floor. His ears steered him to the sound of the gunshot. Two small school-age figures were jockeying on old mopeds, one backfiring sooty pestilence into the air, their steeds’ whinnying enlarged by the tinny sound of their exhausts. He could tell that the boys had drilled holes in them to mimic the bigger sound of proper, grown-up bikes.

  ‘Hahaha. Gunshot.’

  Ishaq looked to his left and saw laughter emanate from a delighted Mujahid.

  ‘Assalmu alaikum. How long have you been there?’

  ‘Long enough. You thought you were in some gang warfare, right? Dadadada, hahaha.’ Mujahid shook both hands to simulate a machine gun, before returning to a rapid laugh. ‘You’d be useless in Jihad. That’s man’s work.’

  Ishaq bounced forward and grimaced as Mujahid slapped his back. ‘Well, I suppose I won’t be declaring Holy War on Clapham Common anytime soon.’

  ‘Haha, I like that about you, always funny. Maybe too funny though, heh?’ Mujahid paused. Ishaq was still looking at the bikes so Mujahid pushed his shoulder so that he pivoted towards him. ‘Hey, I saw that shawty come in with her whole clan. Proper dressed-up. Is that some arranged marriage ting?’

  Ishaq saw Mujahid smiling in his overly familiar and sardonic way. He thought that Mujahid liked to feel that he was all-knowing and in control but that his slightly taunting manner was just a shield. Ishaq was never quite sure what his game was, and he didn’t want to know. It was that unwritten rule. You mind your own business. Ishaq heard that he somehow had other flats too. Mujahid would disappear for days, and then turn up smoking fetid weed on the balcony, leaving a pathway of raised voices from behind his door. He seemed to take an inordinate joy in the glowering looks of Ishaq’s parents, and those of the neighbours as they passed by, and showed proud defiance to people who weren’t all that interested in defying him, or anyone. Ishaq made sure that he never gave him that satisfaction. They had only had a couple of minor altercations about the smoking, before and after he went to jail and conversion. And here he was again, with an oversized spliff, smoking the evening away.

  ‘Something like that.’

  Mujahid managed to break out an even bigger grin. ‘She looked fine. That family looked like they have a few quid too.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mujahid. I didn’t force them to a cashpoint to check their bank balance.’ Ishaq looked away, hoping that his withdrawn demeanour would end this. However, it only spurred further interest.

  ‘Man, you look upset by it. You against this arranged marriage stuff? It’s the Islamic way, too.’

  When Ishaq was younger he knew Mujahid to be a small-time dealer. Mujahid converted to Islam at a time when many well-meaning brothers instantly suggested the name Bilal, for Afro-Carribean converts. Ishaq couldn’t decide whether it was funny or distasteful when brothers, mainly Arab, always mentioned the name Bilal to those converts. Bilal’s story, like many of the other companions of the Prophet, was inspiring, but Ishaq always thought that shouldn’t mean you had to foist the name on any random guy who converted to Islam. Bilal ibn Rabah was an early convert and a famous follower of the Prophet Muhammad. A slave of Abyssinian descent, he had been emancipated due to the prophet’s decrees regarding the excellence of manumission. Bilal had a strong and steady voice and became the first Muezzin or caller to prayer. Of Jamaican parentage and a decade older than Ishaq, this man had taken the name Mujahid instead, someone who struggles for Allah and Islam. A strong name, a soldier’s name. Ishaq wasn’t so enthused about this soldier’s name but, as Mujahid said, ‘I chose my name myself. Didn’t let anyone choose it for me.’ Ishaq agreed; everyone has a right to their own naming.

  ‘Hey, Issy. You had posh company today. All those colours.’ A third voice forced its way between them. Mujahid and Ishaq looked over the balcony to the ground and saw a white woman with tissued skin and permed, fox-red hair. Her hands trembled as she held a c
ouple of coffees in a cardboard holder.

  Mujahid shouted, ‘Pauline, Ishaq is having an arranged marriage.’

  ‘Oh, she was pretty, but oh Issy, you’re not like that, are ya, luv? You could find a nice girl round here, not some random bint.’ Pauline shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked up at the two dim figures.

  Ishaq looked at this woman, who nowadays could barely shuffle along, just active enough for her daily Venti Decaf Vanilla Latte run, an ersatz facsimile of the ferocious woman his childhood knew. A failed madam, she turned tricks until she fell in love with one of her clients, Dr Habib. Ishaq went to school with her daughter and she told him that the doctor freely gave her mum prescriptions for all sorts. He was always visting for a ‘check-up’. Even as a kid Ishaq connected the dots, but there was a genuine fondness. Even now after he passed away, Pauline mentioned his name often, and wistfully. Ishaq remembered how he and the other kids used to wait for Dr Habib’s visits and then stand outside, tongues playing lasciviously, making lustful noises and using their hands all over their bodies, moaning, ‘Oh Dr Habiiibbbb.’ How she would rush out swinging a broom, heedless of what contact was made.

  ‘It’s not like what he’s saying. Anyway how are you?’ shouted Ishaq.

  ‘Good, hanging in there. The medication makes me slow. Lucy is up in Enfield, she just had her second. She asks about you every time I go up. You should give us a knock when she’s down.’ Pauline paused for Ishaq to answer, ‘…anyway, give my regards to your mum.’ They watched as Pauline limped off, scraping the stone paving in her fluffy bunny slippers.

  ‘You think it’s right, shouting people’s business?’ Ishaq turned so that they were nearly toe to toe. Mujahid looked like he had gone rat-catching but had caught something far juicier instead. ‘And talking about business, what are you doing with Shams?’