CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The only thing on which everyone could agree was that the boy had been stabbed. Everything else was as hotly disputed as the price of brinjals on market day. Some said the fight was between two gangs, with as many as ten boys involved. Others said twenty or thirty or fifty while their opponents maintained it was only two, the stabber and the stabbed. It was said that the gangs had a long history of rivalry, dating back to their schooldays when they had all bunked off to attend noon-time raves in darkened warehouses, getting changed in the toilet, taking nips of whisky and drags of cigarettes and listening to Joi Bangla, Michael Jackson, James Brown, Amiruddin and Abdul Gani, making up new dances and hostilities, inventing their lives in a way that no one – especially not their parents – had imagined for them. Between these two gangs there was always tension, and the only surprise was that someone had not been stabbed sooner.

But this was all lies. The boys involved were members of the same gang, and they had fallen out over a girl. More lies. The issue was drugs. Or it was money. Indeed, it was drugs money. This, for a certain fact, was what led the boy to end up in hospital with a wound this deep in his thigh.

Some people were ignorant as donkeys! For the wound was to the chest and he was not expected to live, although only Allah would decide and it was not up to anyone to be expecting or not expecting, but it was difficult not to expect this kind of thing to happen because what else were gangs for but trouble?

Of course some people had only mustard plants growing between their ears and they would believe anything. As a matter of fact, and as the song said, in spite of their eyes they were blind. There were no gangs at all. The white press had made them up to give Bangladeshis a bad name. The Tower Hamlets Bugle was the worst offender (but all white newspapers were culprits); if you read that rubbish you'd think that our boys were getting as bad as the blacks. No, there weren't any gangs. Just boys who grew up together and hung around together.

The Bugle reported the identity of the victim as Haroon Zaman. The majority took issue with this report. The boy who lay at death's door – or on his right-hand side to protect his wounded left thigh – was actually Jamal Zaman. Or Jamal Shamser. Or, according to Razia who got it from Tariq, it was somebody called Nonny. And nobody seemed to know Nonny's real name, although many people pretended to have heard of him and agreed that he was a violent character, just the type to be fighting, and many others felt sorry for Nonny because he was such a meek boy, just the type to be picked on.

Chanu said, 'Do you know the problem with these boys?'

'Not enough studying,' said Bibi smartly.

'Too much roaming around,' said Shahana. 'Like goats.'

'Don't try to be clever.'

'Tell us, Abba.' Bibi stood up to speak.

'I don't know,' said Chanu. 'Apart from this: sometimes, when it seems that the world is against you, it is tempting to side with the world.' He picked up his car keys and Shahana reached for the television remote. 'Of course, if they studied more then they would be strong. Mental strength, that's the key.' He took the remote control from his daughter and gave it to Nazneen. 'They will sit with their books tonight.'

Razia and Nazneen stood with a little group of mothers outside Alam's High Class Grocery shop on Bethnal Green Road. On a pair of wooden trestle tables beneath the windows was a box of tomatoes that had ripened to a point beyond red, darkening now like old bruises, a hairy pyramid of coconuts, a heap of dark green knobbly korela, bitter even to look at, and a large glass jar filled with neem twigs. Nazma poked a tomato and wiped her finger on the fake grass mat covering the table.

'High class?' she said, and a wobbling indignation set up in her cheeks. 'In Bangladesh, a man calling his wares high class and selling rotten tomatoes would not be allowed to get away with it.'

'Oh yes,' said Sorupa. 'There are laws against that kind of thing.'

'Laws?' cried Nazma, as if she had never heard the word before. 'A scoundrel like that would never get to see the inside of a court.'

Sorupa was less sure now and, to compensate, spoke more emphatically. 'Never.'

'The people would take the affair in their own hand. One or two good thrashings is all you need. Is simple. Is quick. Is effective.' Nazma went over to the table with the korela. Nazneen imagined her rolling along on little round feet. Nazma picked up a vegetable and pinched it. Judging from the expression on her face she had squeezed out at least a dozen caterpillars.

Sorupa had by now got the idea. 'Is the best best system. Beat up the scoundrel on the double. No bribes to pay, no waiting around for police and lawyer and all that thing.' She extolled the virtues of the village justice system. What she lacked in material she made up for in her willingness to repeat herself.

Nazma quickly grew bored. 'I hear the boy who got himself stabbed has got punctured lung. I hear he getting involved in drugs.' She looked at Razia and opened her eyes as wide as they would go so Nazneen could see the whites top and bottom.

Nazneen watched the two women. Nazma's breasts, high and round as footballs, heaved beneath her thin black coat. They emphasized the slackness of Razia's chest, hanging low beneath her jumper.

Razia looked at the coconuts. She picked one up and weighed it in her hand, selected another and weighed that.

'Drugs,' said Nazma. She said it the way a parent might say 'monsters' to thrill a young child.

'Drugs,' said Sorupa.

Nazma looked annoyed. She clicked her tongue at Sorupa, who pretended not to notice.

'Of course you hear all sorts about boys getting mix-up in drugs these days. The parents can't control and they bring shame on the family. Anyone who had any sense would send them back to Bangladesh.'

Little light flakes, no bigger than Chanu's dandruff, began to fall on the tomatoes and other high-class items and on the women's heads. They landed and vanished without trace.

'Rain,' said Razia to Nazneen. 'We'd better go.'

'Snow,' said Nazma. 'Of course, some people can't see what's beneath their own nose.'

Sorupa brushed the air with her fingers, demonstrating clearly the fact of snow. 'Right beneath their nose.'

On Commercial Street there was a funeral procession. Four big black cars followed a hearse packed with lilies and chrysanthemums and presumably somewhere beneath them a coffin. Inside the cars, people were stuffed together as densely as the flowers. A red van with a picture of a pig on the side was caught up in the procession and kept swinging out into the other lane in an attempt to overtake. The pig sat as if on an invisible chair, with his fat little legs crossed, eating a pie. As Nazneen waited in the middle of the road she looked inside one of the funeral cars and a woman raised her head from checking her lipstick in a compact mirror and stared back at Nazneen. The woman had short blond hair cut in an efficient style around her jaw. She looked at Nazneen with a ready kindness, a half-smile on her lips, but in her eyes there was nothing. It was the way she might look at a familiar object, her keys that she had just found, the kitchen table as she wiped the juice her daughter had spilled, a blankness reserved for known quantities like pieces of furniture or brown women in saris who cooked rice and raised their children and obeyed their husbands. Nazneen lifted her hand and waved. The funeral procession pulled away with the red van trapped like a beating heart in a comatose body.

They walked over to Wentworth Street and Razia did not say a word all the way. Nazneen thought about Nazma and Sorupa and the little group outside Alam's. At the time she had not realized it, but none of the women had spoken to her. Had it been deliberate? Would she find that people hurried past her in the street? Would there be no more women popping round to borrow something for the kitchen, an eggcup's worth of misti jeera, a couple of sticks of cinnamon, just a pinch of saffron when an unexpected visitor stayed for dinner? It happened to other women. Only recently Hanufa had been frozen out when it was discovered she had been attending a massage course. It was un-Islamic behaviour and, apparently, the imam at the Jamme Masjid had preached against that very thing. Hanufa protested that it was a women-only course and that she was practising for the sake of her husband who suffered with a bad back. But it was too late. 'If she so damn proud of it, what the hell she creeping around behind our backs for?' Nazneen remembered that she too had not called on Hanufa, though she had not snubbed her deliberately. She turned this last thought over a few times, trying to decide if it was true. In the end she gave up and reflected that Hanufa would at least have the opportunity to snub her in return, Nazneen's crime being so much vaster than her own.

They walked along past the shoe stalls, where every shoe resembled an instrument of torture. At the fried chicken stand, a man patted chicken quarters with a kind of tenderness as though he was trying to rub them back to life. Nazneen saw that he was coaxing spices into the skin. A group of African girls tried on shoes, twisting their backs to look down at the heels.

Nazneen wanted to ask Razia if she was getting the Hanufa treatment.

'Shall we go into Yellow Rose? Or Galaxy Textiles?'

Razia shrugged.

'Let's try this shop,' said Nazneen, and pulled her arm.

They went inside and ran their hands over lengths of cherry-red silk, mauve and turquoise cottons, and peacock-blue satin. Razia said, 'Maybe we should leave it for today.' And sounded so much like a person who could never be tempted by anything again that the sales assistant did not even attempt to delay them.

Although it was early it was beginning to get dark and as they walked the lights went on in windows and pulled them up to the panes without them even willing it. They looked at trays of gold rings, rack upon rack winking lewdly under the spotlights. At Best Buy Trading Ltd they were arrested by three mannequins all draped in hot pink crepe de chine. The mannequins were posed like dancers, their arms bent in ways that suggested movement, gayness, maybe even abandon. But their faces remained detached, giving no clue to the ecstasy below. For the actions of their bodies, there was no accountability.

Nazneen longed for Razia to speak, to roll her eyes and begin puff puff-ing to turn herself into Nazma. She did an excellent imitation of Nazma. After every few words she inserted a puff puff, and though Nazma did not in fact puff, this lent an essence of Nazma to the speech: the bumptiousness of the woman and, somehow, the roundness. Sorupa she also had to perfection. The way she pressed her lips flat against her teeth in self-righteousness, and the way she nibbled them and looked away when Nazma slapped her down.

Nazneen wanted Razia to slip into these other voices, to become the old Razia once again. She studied her friend. Nothing lit up her eyes today. Not anger, not fear, not pain. How long had it been since mischief starred in those deep gold flecks?

She remembered another day when they had come shopping together for fabric and how bursting with secrets she had been. She blurted out everything about Mrs Islam, and it had felt good and Razia said she would help, but now Razia was devoured by her own troubles and Nazneen could not say, but what about this help you said you would give to me? Everything she had suspected about Tariq, it was all true but what could be said about it now? Should they wring their hands and cry every time they met and poke around every little bit of pain?

Then there was Karim.

A few times she had imagined conversations with Razia. She played them out, reading both the parts, trying a new phrase here and there. He will never give me up. Razia tucking her feet under her bottom and leaning over to squeeze all the juice out of the story. It consumes us. It's not something we can control. Razia shaking her bony shoulders; the intensity – even at this remove – enough to make her shiver. The most astonishing thing of all. . . She never knew what she would say then, but the phrase kept coming to her. With narrowed eyes and her sideways look, Razia attempted to tease it from her. The most astonishing thing of all. . .

They did not speak of him. It was not possible.

With all those secrets between them, how easy it was to talk. Talk flowed like the Meghna: the fast-flowing gush of new gossip; the hiss and splash of their various moans and complaints; disturbances around the rocks of the more serious stuff, always family; a widening and a narrowing, running deep and coming shallow; even in silent stretches the currents between them never stopped and the whole vast outpouring tumbled endlessly into the sea of their friendship. And now the river had met a dam, built out of truth and knowledge and need. These things had stopped up their mouths.

They paused outside a new shop.

'Fusion Fashions,' said Razia, reading out the name.

Inside, a white girl stood in front of a mirror turning this way and that in a black kameez top with white embroidered flowers and a sprinkling of pearls stitched near the throat. The trousers were not the usual baggy salwaar style but narrow-hipped and slightly flared at the bottom. The girl picked up a stack of green glass bangles from a shelf and attempted to get one over her hand.

'She'll never get it on like that,' said Nazneen.

A similar outfit was displayed in the window, only this version was red with black embroidery and black beads. Razia looked at the price tag. She shook her head and sighed as if the evils of the world had been revealed to her.

'Look how much these English are paying for their kameez. And at the same time they are looking down onto me. They are even happy to spit on their own flag, as long as I am inside it. What is wrong with them? What is wrong?'

Chanu was out, driving ignorant types and collecting parking fines. He had taken to keeping the penalty notices in an envelope addressed to the local council. On each of the slips he had written: gone away to address unknown, return to issuer. The girls were sitting on the sofa and Bibi had the remote control on her lap. Every time she touched it Shahana kicked her on the ankle.

'Amma, Shahana keeps kicking me.'

'Shahana, don't kick your sister.'

'She keeps trying to change the channel.'

'I haven't done anything.'

'Just wait until you're in Bangladesh,' said Shahana. 'You'll be married off in no time.'

Bibi said, 'But. . . but. . .'

'And your husband will keep you locked up in a little smelly room and make you weave carpets all day long.'

Bibi jumped up. 'What about you? You're older than me. You will have a husband before me.'

Shahana hugged her knees. 'That's what you think.'

Nazneen switched the television off. 'But you would like to see where your mother grew up?'

The girls wriggled a bit and did not answer.

'You would like to see Mumtaz auntie?'

'Tell us a story about Mumtaz auntie,' said Bibi. She sat cross-legged now on the sofa to show that she was ready.

'Only the one about the good jinni.' Shahana pursed her sweet pink lips. 'All the other stories are boring.'

So Nazneen told about the good jinni.

Mumtaz had inherited the jinni from her father who kept it in an empty medicine bottle with a lead stopper. On her father's death, the jinni agreed to become Mumtaz's jinni only on the condition that it was released from the bottle and allowed to live freely. Mumtaz covered the bottle with cheesecloth and smashed it with a hammer, crying 'Oh, jinni, I give you freedom and you will give me wisdom.'

At first it had seemed that the jinni had not kept its end of the bargain. Mumtaz called it and it did not answer. She went out and wandered among the banana trees, having learned as a child that jinn were partial to bananas. Still, it did not answer. She searched among the sugar cane, the elephant grass and the chilli plants. She stood beneath the plane trees and called. She looked in the cow pen, the well and underneath the lily pads in the pond. The jinni had tricked her.

After checking inside her bedroll and among her jewellery boxes and shaking out her hair in case it had become caught in her tresses, she resigned herself to the loss. Perhaps, she thought, the jinni has given me wisdom after all: never trust a jinni.

Barsa came and the rains that year fell hard enough to split a grain of rice in two. Sarat turned the land to gold and the snowy cranes flew in from the north to stand on withered legs in the deep green paddy. One cantankerous old fellow took to walking around the village pond like a retired schoolteacher with his arms folded behind his back, keeping a beady eye on the children, little brown fish who splashed and screeched, and whom he would dearly love to discipline. Hemanto brought jasmine, lotus, water lilies and hyacinth, krishnachura, kadam and magnolia and everywhere the smell of drying rice stalks. That year one of the cows gave birth to three calves and it was taken as an auspicious sign and many marriages were hurried through even before their proper season.

It was Basanto before the jinni made itself known to Mumtaz. Cleaning a large and particularly bloody hilsha fish she was thinking about a problem that one of the village women had set before her. The woman had three sons and five daughters and could scarcely feed so many mouths. Yet her husband still wanted to sleep with her and make more mouths, more empty bellies. What should she do? How could she deny her husband? And how could she magic more food from her cooking pot? Mumtaz gripped the fish guts and pulled. A spurt of blood landed on her sari. 'What should I tell her?' she said aloud.

The jinni replied, 'Tell her that she should gather together all her children, the oldest to the youngest, and stand them in a line before her husband. She should say to him, "First you must choose which one will die. Kill the child and I will give you another. We cannot keep any more children alive, so you must choose the ones to die. For every child you kill, I will replace him."'

Mumtaz was pleased with the answer and she decided at once to tell the woman exactly what the jinni had said. But she was cross with the jinni and berated it, saying, 'Why did you go away from me?'

'But I did not go away,' said the jinni. 'It is only now you have decided to listen to me.'

From that day, Mumtaz was able to call the jinni whenever she chose, and people came to consult her on many important matters. Although she claimed to converse with the jinni casually, just as a daughter chats to her mother while she is mixing cow dung and straw or lighting a fire, for these special sessions Mumtaz sat in a purified room and burned candles and incense. She dressed in white and put a white veil across her mouth and nose. And to draw the jinni to her she muttered some special charms, spoken at the speed of a butterfly's wing and impossible to decipher.

Nazneen begged to be told the charms but Mumtaz said only that first she must get her own jinni.

'Will I be elected to the council?'

'What should I name my child?'

'An enemy has sworn to put the evil eye on me. How can I protect myself ?'

Mumtaz spoke her mantras and swayed around in her little white tent. When she gave the answer she suddenly lay down on her side and it was understood and accepted by all that having channelled a spirit through her body, she should now be allowed to rest.

Everyone, that is, apart from Amma. 'A fraud, nothing but a fraud.' She sucked on her big teeth and wiped the corners of her mouth with her sari.

The girls were getting ready for bed. Nazneen went to the bathroom with them and sat on the edge of the bath.

Shahana pulled Chanu's daaton from the toothbrush mug. 'In Bangladesh, you'll have to brush your teeth with a twig. They don't have toothbrushes.'

Chanu had been delighted to find the neem twig in Alam's High Class Grocery. He chewed the end until it splayed, rubbed it vigorously around his mouth and declared it to be excellent for massaging the gums.

'You know, Bibi, they don't have toilet paper either. You'll have to pour water on your bottom to clean it.'

Bibi looked distressed. 'What about you? You'll have to do it too.'

Shahana put on her inscrutable face.

Then she attacked her sister with the daaton, trying to force it into her mouth.

Nazneen separated the girls and shooed them into the bedroom. She stood in the middle of their room like a referee while they got into bed. She was still thinking about jinn.

There was another story, which she had never told the children.

Nazneen was maybe eight or nine years old, just tall enough to look down the well without standing on tiptoe. This was the year that Amma became possessed by an evil jinni. The jinni prevented Amma from washing and made her smell like a goat. It arranged her hair in knots and tangles and mockingly inserted sprigs of jasmine behind her ears. For days at a time she did not speak. Worst of all, at the jinni's bidding, Amma began attacking her own husband, stabbing wildly at his eyes with bamboo sticks that she spent hours on end whittling to a fine point. Sometimes, when the jinni let his guard down or was perhaps sleeping, Amma was returned to her usual state. She took a bar of Sunlight down to the pond, swam and washed. She began cooking again and resumed the endless litany of complaints against the servants. And she took up her usual commentary on life.

'What can I do? I have been put on this earth to suffer.'

Abba said, 'And she suffers so well.'

'The jinni may come upon me again,' said Amma. 'Whenever he wishes, he uses up my body, my strength, my soul.'

And Abba rolled his eyes. 'Let us hope he does not wait too long.'

But when the jinni returned he was ever more mischievous and before long Abba was compelled to call in the fakir.

Exorcisms were a spectator sport in the village. A crowd gathered and it was a bigger and more excitable crowd than formed even for Manzur Boyati, the most highly esteemed of storytellers. The fakir was an impressive sight. He was tall and straight as sugar cane and his beard was at least twenty inches long, twisted into two halves like a woman's braids. Immediately they arrived, his assistants commandeered the kerosene stove and set about boiling up potions which, in Nazneen's view, should have frightened the jinni away by their smell alone. The fakir examined Amma from a distance. Amma lay on her bedroll, spasms running obligingly through her arms and legs. The fakir seemed satisfied.

'Who is willing to help this cursed woman?' demanded the fakir. His eyes were cloudy as old marbles and yet he seemed to focus on each person in the room, individually and all at once.

'I will be the volunteer,' cried a servant boy from Nazneen's house, and scrambled to the front. The crowd relaxed and there was much scratching of noses and backsides.

The servant was a moody young boy who kept a half-starved mongoose tied to a palm tree and amused himself by goading it to bite his hand. The mongoose, though essentially a pacifist, would sometimes be persuaded to play this game and was rewarded with a swift kick that lifted it several feet in the air.

'Sit,' barked the fakir and pushed down on the boy's head.

The boy curled his upper lip but sat down on the ground with his legs crossed. The assistants daubed his head and shoulders with their emetic pastes. Then the exorcism began. As a warm-up exercise the fakir and his two helpers walked in circles around the servant boy, half singing and half speaking verses, words which locked into each other as tightly as bones in a hand, moving around, flexing and curling but never breaking the chain.

Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna
Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna
Node chode, hater kache

Faster and faster went the chanters, faster and faster flew the words. The white cloths tied around the fakir's waist and arms streamed behind him, making visible his huge energy with which he would fight the evil jinni.

Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna
Who talks, not showing up
Who talks, not showing up
Moves about, near at hand

The servant boy disappeared in a vortex of wheeling limbs.

I search for him
In the sky and the earth
Myself, I do not know
I search for him
In the sky and the earth
Myself, I do not know
Who am I?
Who is he?
Who am I?
Who is he?

Abruptly the singing stopped. The assistants anished and the fakir threw his arms wide and bellowed.

'Oh, evil jinni, leave that woman's body! By the command of Allah, leave her. Sky! Water! Air! Fire!' He paused for a moment and added 'Earth!' for good measure. 'Torment her no longer.'

He let his arms fall by his side. His belly heaved, moved around in strange shapes, as though a baby had shifted inside him.

All heads looked towards Amma who now lay quietly on her mat with her face turned down.

At once the servant boy, who had volunteered his body as the jinni's next receptacle, began to grimace and leer. He let slip an obscenity and pressed his jaw and the top of his head. The fakir turned to him.

'Why did you abuse that poor woman?' the fakir said, addressing himself to the jinni.

The servant boy jumped to his feet. He bared his teeth like a frightened monkey and scratched the air. 'She came out in the bushes,' he said in a strangled voice. 'She walked under the tamarind tree and stepped on my shadow.'

The fakir rushed at the boy and wrestled him into a headlock. He was a big man, and the boy bent as easily as a dog's tail in his grip.

'Be gone from this place,' roared the fakir, and his glassy old eyes were terrifying. 'If I see you around here again, I will destroy you.'

'No need to get nasty,' squeaked the boy, whose head was turning an impressive shade of purple.

'Out! Out! Out!' shouted the holy witch doctor. He released his victim, who fell unceremoniously to the floor.

The fakir adjusted the ends of his beard and yawned. The jinni saw his chance, and the boy sprang at his opponent, grabbed the two braids hanging from the fakir's chin and wound each deftly around his fist.

'Come on then, you swine. You defiler of goats.' He swung the fakir along by his beard, causing him to stumble and come to his knees. 'Come on then, you shit-eating lover of corpses.'

The fakir was suffering. His eyes were ready to pop and his brow shed water.

The crowd was impressed by the strength of the jinni. It promised to be a good show. Nobody even thought of talking, though many people nudged each other to ensure all aspects of the spectacle were being fully appreciated.

'He's faking,' cried the fakir. 'Somebody stop him.' He got to his feet.

'You will never be rid of me,' shrieked the boy. 'She stepped on my shadow under the tamarind tree and disturbed my rest.' He again whirled the fakir round by his beard and, as an innovation, flapped his tongue at the same time.

Nobody moved to intervene. The assistants squatted by the kerosene stove, smoking beedis and working strictly within their job descriptions.

'Are you going to let him kill me?' screamed the fakir.

'Don't blame the boy,' called someone from the audience. 'You put the jinni on him.'

'He's faking,' the fakir protested. 'Can't you see he's faking?'

For a little while longer the servant boy tortured the holy man, until a delegation from the crowd separated them and sat on top of him. The boy began to shake his arms and legs and roll his head to and fro.

The fakir sought access to the boy, in an attempt to exorcise some of his own rather vengeful demons. This prompted much debate.

'Why do you think he was pretending?'

'Didn't you, just a few minutes ago, see that the jinni had possessed him?'

'If he is faking, let us tie him to a tree and thrash him. But don't expect money for exorcism that has failed.'

It was dangerous ground for the fakir. At stake was this week's only income (and expenses had already been incurred), his pride, his desire to bash the boy's brains out, and his reputation.

For the boy, who feared he might have gone too far, the situation was also tricky. His chosen strategy was to foam at the mouth.

Amma lay completely forgotten and out of the way.

'Look,' said a villager. 'This boy is possessed. See how the bubbles come at his mouth.'

Abba took a back seat in the proceedings. Although he had to be seen to do the right thing in calling the exorcism, he had an aversion to holy men who took his money and he preferred not to be involved.

Abba declined to give a verdict one way or the other. There was further discussion and very nearly a fight among the crowd. Eventually, however, a compromise was reached whereby the fakir was permitted to reengage the boy in a headlock in return for a solemn promise to rid him of the evil spirit.

The fakir was most thorough. Everyone agreed he threw himself into the job with great energy.

Amma did get better. There were no more days when she did not wash and she restricted herself to attacking her husband with only her sharpest of instruments, her tongue. At the time, Nazneen had been thrilled equally by the spectacular show and by her mother's recovery. Though she had heard later, eavesdropping near the barber's shop, that the servant boy had been boasting how he humiliated the big man, she still believed – of course – that the jinni had been vanquished from Amma. How it happened was a mystery, and it was not a mystery to be solved but merely treasured.

Now, as she folded away a pile of clean laundry, she began to wonder what had really happened that day, and why it was that Amma believed only in bad jinn and not in the good.

* * *

Of Karim she saw very little. He was busy regrouping the Bengal Tigers, planning the March Against the March Against the Mullahs, foreseeing catastrophe for the ummah (local and global), and taking religious instruction from his Spiritual Leader. When they did spend an hour or so together, Karim brought up wedding plans.

'Just a very small affair. Very small, but very, like, religious.'

Nazneen smiled. It was so ridiculous.

'I'm finding out about divorce. How you do it properly.'

She tightened the muscles of her pelvic floor, afraid all of a sudden that she would wet herself. If she stayed here, then what alternative would she have but to marry Karim? The thought flooded her with so many conflicting emotions it was a wonder she retained control of any of her bodily functions. She tried to single out a thought, any thought, and take charge of it. The children. How could she present the girls with a new father like that? And what would they think? How terribly it would scythe at their young minds, one question repeating itself over and over: by what means did our mother ensnare this boy?

The worst thing was she did not know what would happen. What was the point in fearing this and that, if only this and not that would happen? If Chanu filled more suitcases and bought the tickets and bid her leave, then would that determine the end? Would Karim, set on his course, prevent her from going? What if going home turned out to be just another one of Chanu's projects? A short while ago it seemed certain, but how could she be sure? She reminded herself: she had only to wait for everything to be revealed.

Instead of appeasing her as usual, this thought rankled. Why should she wait? She felt as strongly as if someone, standing beside her in the kitchen, had taken a piece of paper, written down the answers and then set light to the page while she watched. She stood at the kitchen worktop making onion bhajis for the children, who would eat them smothered in tomato ketchup. In her frustration, she forgot she was in the middle of chopping chillies and rubbed her eye. Immediately a sensational pain exploded her eyeball. It was enough to make her cry out. She turned on the tap and twisted her head beneath it. To the curative powers of cold running water, the chilli-burn was immune. Nazneen gasped as the water ran up her nose.

She focused on the pain, rising up to meet it head on, boring into it, challenging it to do its worst. The burn was fierce and it unleashed in her an equal ferocity. Suddenly her entire being lit up with anger. I will decide what to do. I will say what happens to me. I will be the one. A charge ran through her body and she cried out again, this time out of sheer exhilaration.

The pain subsided slowly. A shadow of pain remained long into the night. The exhilaration also drained away, leaving only its ghosts behind. What would she decide? What did she want?

Her first thought was that she would go to Dhaka with her husband and her children. It would be the right thing to do, and she would be with Hasina again. Doubts assailed her on all sides. The children would be miserable. Shahana would never adjust. What would happen to Chanu in Dhaka? If his dreams fell apart, what net would catch them all? How would they live? How would they eat? Would it not be better to stay here and send more money to Hasina and help her that way? Maybe even bring her over here. But if Chanu went ahead and left without them, then what? Would she marry Karim? Did she want to marry him? It would be difficult for the girls. And it would be impossible simply to spurn him. Perhaps it would be best to go to Dhaka.

Unbidden, a memory of Karim came, entering her as he entered her, tearing apart her passive soul.

In the night, while her family slept, she performed wudu and took down the Qur'an. She read from the sura The Merciful.

'He has let loose the two oceans: they meet one another.

Yet between them stands a barrier which they cannot overrun. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?

Pearls and corals come from both. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?'

She thought of her husband, sitting on the sofa that evening, serenely picking his toenails. When he had come home he had kissed her on the forehead and told her, 'In all these years, I have never – not once – regretted my choice of bride.' She thought of her daughters. What beautiful gifts from God. For once she felt calm. None of her Lord's blessings would she deny. She began to read again.

'Mankind and jinn, We shall surely find the time to judge you! Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?'

The March Against the Mullahs was due to take place on 27 October. Lion Hearts leaflets began fluttering through the letterbox (Nazneen 'used them up' for shopping lists); they littered the courtyard, and drifted over the grassy mound of Altab Ali Park.

All over the country, our children are being taught that Islam is a great religion. But the truth is clear. Islam burns with hatred. It gives birth to evil mass murders abroad. In our own towns, it spawns vicious rioters.

Chanu read each leaflet with care. He remained calm.

Karim became excited. 'Man, they are going to live to regret it. They don't even know what they're saying. Islam lays down clear rules of engagement for war. It ain't permitted to kill women, children, innocent men or the elderly. It ain't permitted to kill other Muslims. How many Muslims died in New York?' He stood by Nazneen's net curtains and worked his legs as if limbering up for a race, or shaking out a cramp. His mobile phone rang. He looked at it and turned it off and Nazneen knew it was his father.

'They should get their facts straight.' He folded his arms and looked beyond Nazneen. In his panjabi-pyjama, fleece, big boots and skullcap he looked like he could be on his way to a mosque; or to a fight. Islamic terrorists. Islamic terrorists. That's all you hear. You never hear Catholic terrorist, do you? Or Hindu terrorist? What about Jewish terrorist?' It seemed that just as Chanu had lost an invisible audience, Karim had gained one. He orated to the assembly. 'But let's think about it. . .'

Nazneen tried to, but she drowned in the sea of his anger. While her husband talked less and less, Karim talked more and more. The more he talked, the less sure he seemed.

'You know that lad who got stabbed?'

'Is he out of hospital?' said Nazneen.

'All these people going around talking about gangs, all they're doing is feeding the racists. The newspapers love it. But the truth is there are no gangs.'

Nazneen opened her mouth and closed it. Not so long ago, Karim had used the word freely. And what about the boys who came to the meeting, didn't they nearly start a fight there? And every evening they patrolled the estate, 'roaming around like goats', as Chanu said.

'It's just a bunch of lads, mucking around, playing up. All right, getting in a bit of trouble. But they're good lads. When we march, they'll show. Support us. When the Bengal Tigers march we're all on the same side. And if there's going to be any trouble we won't be the ones starting it, but we'll finish it all right.'

September 2001
Allah have release her from suffering. Give thanks to Him the Most Merciful the Most Kind.

Sister I tell you how nice is this Lovely? She have prove her name. I went to her say how is plan for start Charity? She show me fingernails have paint little star on each say do they look all right? I know it meaning the Charity is not yet start. I say what this place have need is Charity for helping childrens catch by acid attack. Name is come to mind Acid Innocents. No hesitate whatsoever she asking name of Monjus boy. Within two three minute she ring newspaper give all details to newsman. Main important detail is Lovely her own self is pay for Khurshed operation.

I tell to Monju. Even face is melt still you see how it change her. She close good eye and rest for while. Almost is too much. Is like give feast to starving man.

When she open eye she say something I cannot hear. I must put ear against mouth. Before I go I must confess. She say this. Something so wrong I done and I never tell to anyone. This is what she say. I look inside the good eye and see she must speak or have no peace.

What she tell me when Khurshed two years old baby is scream and scream many hour and one time she losing all presence of mind and slap hard on legs. She say only week before was operation to leg region. Maybe is she who make leg damage need more further operating. She say this.

Have you ask doctor? I tell her. Have you ask doctor? I shout for her to hear me. No. She did not tell to anyone.

Then I go away and walk around hospital. I come back I put my face to hers and I shout. The doctor has say No. It is not for you but the acid has damage him.

The trouble go out of her eye. I see a bit like the old Monju. She whisper from very small mouth hole nearly close up now. These secret things will kill us. Do you have any secret? You want to tell to me? I keep it safe for you! I think she try for smiling.

Next day I go for telling her newspaper man come make photograph with Lovely. But that day sister my friend is gone.