Tracey usually said little, so when she did begin to talk about my Anwar the group listened but kept out of the discussion. This thing was suddenly between ‘minorities’.
‘Two things, Karim,’ she said to me. ‘Anwar’s hunger-strike worries me. What you want to say hurts me. It really pains me! And I’m not sure that we should show it!’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ She spoke to me as if all I required was a little sense. ‘I’m afraid it shows black people –’
‘Indian people –’
‘Black and Asian people –’
‘One old Indian man –’
‘As being irrational, ridiculous, as being hysterical. And as being fanatical.’
‘Fanatical?’ I appealed to the High Court. Judge Pyke was listening carefully. ‘It’s not a fanatical hunger-strike. It’s calmly intended blackmail.’
But Judge Pyke signalled for Tracey to go on.
‘And that arranged marriage. It worries me. Karim, with respect, it worries me.’
I stared at her, saying nothing. She was very disturbed.
‘Tell us exactly why it worries you,’ Eleanor said, sympathetically.
‘How can I even begin? Your picture is what white people already think of us. That we’re funny, with strange habits and weird customs. To the white man we’re already people without humanity, and then you go and have Anwar madly waving his stick at the white boys. I can’t believe that anything like this could happen. You show us as unorganized aggressors. Why do you hate yourself and all black people so much, Karim?’
As she continued, I looked around the group. My Eleanor looked sceptical, but I could see the others were prepared to agree with Tracey. It was difficult to disagree with someone whose mother you’d found kneeling in front of a middle-class house with a bucket and mop.
‘How can you be so reactionary?’ she said.
‘But this sounds like censorship.’
‘We have to protect our culture at this time, Karim. Don’t you agree?’
‘No. Truth has a higher value.’
‘Pah. Truth. Who defines it? What truth? It’s white truth you’re defending here. It’s white truth we’re discussing.’
I looked at Judge Pyke. But he liked to let things run. He thought conflict was creative.
Finally he said: ‘Karim, you may have to rethink.’
‘But I’m not sure I can.’
‘Yes. Don’t unnecessarily restrict your range either as an actor or as a person.’
‘But Matthew, why must I do it?’
He looked at me coolly. ‘Because I say so.’ And added: ‘You must start again.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Hey, Fatso, what’s happening?’
‘Same, same, big famous actor.’ Changez sneezed into the dust-ghosts he’d raised. ‘What big thing are you acting in now that we can come and laugh at?’
‘Well, let me tell you, eh?’
I made a cup of banana and coconut tea from the several tins I carried at all times in case my host had only Typhoo. I especially needed my own resources at Changez’s place, since he made tea by boiling milk, water, sugar, teabag and cardamom all together for fifteen minutes. ‘Man’s tea,’ he called this, or, ‘Top tea. Good for erections.’
Fortunately for me – and I didn’t want her to hear my request to Changez – Jamila was out, having recently started work at a Black Women’s Centre nearby, where she was researching into racial attacks on women. Changez was dusting, wearing Jamila’s pink silk dressing-gown. Tubes of brown fat gurgled and swayed as he dabbed his duster at cobwebs the size of paperbacks. He liked Jamila’s clothes: he’d always have on one of her jumpers or shirts, or he’d be sitting on his camp-bed in her overcoat with one of her scarves wrapped around his head and covering his ears, Indian fashion, making him look as if he had a toothache.
‘I’m researching a play, Changez, looking all over for a character, and I’m thinking of basing mine on someone we both know. They’re going to be privileged and everything to be represented. Bloody lucky.’
‘Good, good. Jamila, eh?’
‘No. You.’
‘What? Me, hey?’ Changez straightened himself suddenly and ran his fingers through his hair, as if he were about to be photographed.
‘But I haven’t shaved, yaar.’
‘It’s a terrific idea, isn’t it? One of my best.’
‘I’m proud to be a subject for a top drama,’ he said. But his face clouded over. ‘Hey, you won’t show me in bad light, will you?’
‘Bad light? Are you mad? I’ll show you just as you are.’
At this assurance he seemed content. Now I’d secured his assent I changed the subject quickly.
‘And Shinko? How is she, Changez?’
‘Ah, same, same,’ he said with satisfaction, pointing down at his penis. He knew I liked this subject; and as it was the only thing he could show off about we both got pleasure from the exchange.
‘I have been in more positions than most men. I’m thinking of composing a manual. I like it very much from behind with the woman on her knees as if I am riding high a horse like John Wayne.’
‘Doesn’t Jamila object to that kind of thing?’ I asked, observing him carefully and wondering how I’d portray the crippled arm. ‘Prostitution and so on?’
‘You’ve hit the nail exactly on the nose! At first they condemned me as a completely wrong man, a male exploiter pig –’
‘No!’
‘And for a few days I had to be exclusively masturbating twice a day. Shinko wanted to give up this game and become a gardener and all.’
‘D’you think she’d be a good gardener?’
He shrugged. ‘She has nimble fingers with weeds. But thank Christ Almighty in heaven, they realized Shinko was exploiting me. I was the victim and all, so it was soon back to business as usual.’ Then Changez took my arm and looked into my eyes. He became unhappy. What a sentimental creature he was. ‘Can I tell you something?’ He looked into the distance – through the window and into the next-door neighbour’s kitchen. ‘We laugh at one or two things about my character, yes, but I’ll tell you a not-laughing matter. I’d give up every position I’ve ever been in for five minutes to kiss my wife on her lips.’
Wife? What wife? My mind slid around at his words; until I remembered. I was always forgetting he was married to Jamila. ‘Your wife still won’t touch you, eh?’
He shook his head sadly and gulped. ‘And you and she? Stuffing regularly?’
‘No, no, for God’s sake, Bubble, not since the time you watched us. It wouldn’t be the same without you there.’
He grunted. ‘So she’s getting it absolutely nowhere at all?’
‘Nowhere, man.’
‘Good.’
‘Yes. Women aren’t like us. They don’t have to have it all the time. They only want it if they like the guy. For us it doesn’t matter who it is.’
But he didn’t appear to be listening to my observations on the psychology of romance. He just turned and looked at me with great fire and determination, and these were not qualities that God had rained down upon him. He smashed his good fist down on the table and cried, ‘I’ll make her like me! I know I will, one day!’
‘Changez,’ I said seriously, ‘please don’t count on it. I’ve known Jamila all my life. Don’t you see, she may never change towards you,’
‘I do count on it! Otherwise my life is terminated. I will top myself off!’
‘That’s up to you but –’
‘Of course I will do it. I will cut my throat.’