In Our Mad and Furious City Read online

  But they don’t notice me anyway. Good.

  Now, when did I see Ma last? When the boy was six. That’s it, eight years after Father Orman settled on Pine Road by the Cricklewood Crown. Mustn’t forget that, must I? This place was meant to save me. Ma had sent me here to keep her girl out of harm’s way. Aye, how blessed am I? Just the daughter after all, a wee sister, not a fierce one like the others. And how’s that worked out? From one set of troubles to the next I suppose, seeing the violence out here in the open. Jesus, they might as well have sent me to Rome, the air is just as thick with prayer.

  It’ll be July soon, Feast of the Holy Blood. I won’t go back though, for Ma’s wake. I didn’t even go back for Damian’s. Sure as they’d remind me. And the money? Where would I find the money to go? I’d ask you Ma, how am I supposed to find the money to journey back to Belfast now? No look, the boys will manage without me. As they have done since you packed me off to Father Orman. I’ve the boy now anyway. And the laundry to do.

  I pass under the bridge where the launderette is tucked behind. I hear my steps against the tunnel walls and the empty road. I reach for my packet of cigarettes. The darkness always reminds me of her somehow. Ma, that aul doll. She would stand in the corner back when, wouldn’t she? She’d stand there and watch, her black eyes on me. Like I’d peek from behind my hair until she was satisfied I’d nodded asleep. In death as in life I’m sure, Ma will stand there in the shadows and watch.

  I push the door. The launderette is open. Aye, small mercies.

  ARDAN

  Last time I was up here was after Mehdi’s house party months ago. After them lot called me faggot for not fingering that Shelly girl. I just dussed out. Drank bare spirit that night as well, I was mad depressed and mangy. Came up here to look at the Ends at night because the view from West Block is as nice as it is dismal in the daytime.

  Looked like it was on fire, this place. Yellow windows and lights in distant black and planes flashing red and white in the sky. Looked sick. Wrote enough bars that night too. Bare rando lyrics that would just roll out of mind like a mad one. Easy, like. Easy-peasy to write anything when I’m up here. I can see them streets all spread out in front of me. I can breathe and allow any dumb fuckery that’s on my mind. But then daylight comes. Shows me everything don’t no one want to see. The Ends, Stones Estate, Neasden. This drab and broke-down place. Better if the sun stayed buried, ennet, leaving us to the blackness to disappear inside, still.

  I clock the sun peeking over East Block now, dragging shadows across Square below. Reminding me of where it is I’m at, breathing in the air from the scattered trees and the line of low smog bringing in the morning. People talk about Bronx. Like in Brooklyn and them American estates, them projects, they talk about them spots like it’s got some kind of road beauty. Even though they places of pain. Just cause bare rappers were born there, ennet, managing to turn their basic living into loot.

  But there’s a few hours when these Ends can rival that kind of romance too. The mornings for starters. When bodies wake up, start the day, and sort the grind. Then it’s them deepest nights when the lights sketch out the scene and the sounds of cars ripping wet streets and all you hear is buses gassing up and sirens fire.

  Rest of the day is bleak as fuck tho, standard.

  I look down at my Biro rolling between my finger and pad. I’m staring down at this new verse like I ain’t feeling it. No, I ain’t feeling these bars. I just wrote them and I know there ain’t nuttan there.

  I read them aloud:

  North Block rooftop spitting early

  Nobody sees me, nobody hears me

  So I drop my shoulders like

  The city gives the roads their light

  My fingers ease. Raise my head from my papers and itch my ears with the chewed part of the pen. Ah, bunn this. I turn around. Poke my pockets for the rest of the bars I wrote. Unfold the paper. I crush it, both my hands hard. I rip it. I throw it over the wall, watch the pieces fall into the dead Square below. Ain’t about them dead lyrics. I brush my hands off and rub my bleary eyes. My mouth feels gummy like I’m parched. There’s some flat Coke downstairs. I’ll go down in a mo and swig it.

  I clock Max sniffing around the roof, flicking his mutty tail like he’s on a mission. That dog always calms me. It’s just the tiredness, ennet, pressing me down and making me feel like a pauper. Fingers feel rinsed and my head is dense with wrangled wording. I ain’t slept, ennet, and my mouth is dry and my skin is dry around my eyes. I collect my other papers in a rough order, bars first and loose notes. I take my phone, stop the recording, stash it away. Back pocket. That’s enough for today.

  I give a stretch and I feel the cool air touch my bare stomach under my shirt. I look out over the view. Estate looks contained, small from up here. The court is barren and the other blocks only got a few lights switched on still. The morning tempo is changing and the sky is graying up. The sounds is what I like. Ends noise. I listen and hear some distant po-po go by, doors clatter closed, and leaves rustle. A bird crows at me. My eyes catch it flying off. I follow it over to the windows in the opposite block. East Block railings running across red doors. I look to my right and all the green ones on South Block, to my left blue doors on North. All these colors are washed away now and streaky. All four blocks look like they about to crumble any day. I squint to see if I can make anyone out in one of them windows. I wonder if they can see me. Making circles and spitting rhymes up here. Probably not tho. If they did they probably think I’m some crackhead or suttan. Might as well be, ennet, hiding out, like, on a rooftop on my jays.

  I look over past East Block. There’s the High Road and the striped police tape that runs near it, whipping up every time a car goes past. The only bit of bright color in these Ends, that police tape, swear down. I switch my eyes over to South Block. See the spire of the mosque some ways behind it. I lean forward against the metal piping on the wall and crane my neck at the long drop below. West Block entrance. Seven stories down. I make a spit. Brown phlegm trails out my mouth. I watch as it falls past the open balconies and hits the concrete below. Up here I’m left alone. It’s me with only the sky and its phases. The Square and the people down there, they don’t know me. I owe them nuttan. Invisible, ennet, how I like.

  I hear a sound of someone running.

  My eyes move down to the Square below and I search for feet on concrete. A runner in a gray hoodie, big frame. He comes in through South Block arches.

  I see him. It’s Selvon.

  He’s proper on his training gas this summer. Head down and massive. I go to call his name but don’t. I think about Selvon. What’s he going to do? Stop in his tracks and say wa-gwan to me? No, Selvon ain’t the sort. He ain’t the type to chat breeze when he’s on suttan. Instead I just clock him as he runs past West Block.

  Watch if he steps on my spit.

  He don’t.

  He goes on. Known this bredda since year seven yuno. Face still looks like it’s carved out of stone. Never smiles and never slips. Whereas me? Slipped too many times this year, for real. Can’t keep my mouth shut, ennet. Say the wrong thing, wrong time. At school, if you slip you get darked out. Man learns that early. I think about them boys who are bottom of the order at school, boys like James T. or Hamdi. They get darked out every day for their hair or their accent and whatever shit music they listen to. Only reason it’s not as bad for me is because I’m safe with Selvon and them. Plus I listen to grime so I’m fine. Selvon tho. He’s off-Estate but don’t act like it. He’s just Selvon. More of a ghost around here than I am, still. Even though he’s dark as a cunt.

  I watch him reach the corner of East and sprint past West Block entrance below me. Running like a mecha. Then he stops by the gate, nearly smashing into it. Selvon never slips tho. He just mimes on like he don’t feel the pressing. As if he don’t feel the fuckery from all sides of the Square, the Ends, this city. He’s blessed not to care about the world he’s in. Rest of us are casualties, ennet.

&nb
sp; I push off the wall and call Max to me. His duppy head turns, he sees me and trots over. I’ll grab that Coke now and text Yoos in a bit. I need to scrape the mud from my creps before I go footie tho. Ma will be out. I’ll go back, drink suttan, and then cotch, read comments, walk Max around the block, and then go footie. That’s all the day demands.

  Come we go Max, come. I whistle and he comes.

  YUSUF

  I hadn’t slept for more than an hour even. I could hear him crying through the wall. Kept seeing him in my dreams, my brother, lying there in the room next to mine in his loopy, medicinal funk. It had been four weeks now. He had arrived home with his eyes hollowed out and shameful. But by now Irfan was a husk, abandoned to his room, drugged up with pills, and silenced with prayer. My amma was down the hall wrapped in her duvet, same place she’s been ever since. She was not coping well with my brother. None of us really were.

  I prayed though. Prayed for my abba to be alive. For his hands to come lift us away from Irfan’s wreckage. Abba would have dealt with it in the only way he knew how, ennet, switch from being just our father to also being imam. He’d have us recite scripture. Find our way together with prayer under mosque. But he had been dead a year and three months now. I missed the mornings most, when the sound of his bare feet woke us, when he opened the door to bring us tea and toast before school. Abba would’ve known what to do with Irfan.

  Under this cloud I left, swiping my boots still caked in mud from park. I made the decision to sneak out that morning. If only until afternoon. I needed to get out, ennet. I was sullen and deprived of my breddas and easy banter. I decided to walk down to chickenshop and join the football in Square. I would text Ardan in a bit and see what he was on for the rest of the day and I’d return and make sure everything was okay.

  The front door closed quiet behind me and I rested my head against the red paint. I hesitated, asking myself whether I should leave at all. I’d miss morning prayer. Amma would be worried for sure. And Irfan hadn’t woken up. Allow it though. I’d only be gone a few hours. Mosque could wait. I felt the morning breeze offer me some lightness and new air. I turned to leave.

  Up ahead I saw four, five faces, all Muhajiroun, standing sentry wearing kameez and trainers and soft topi. I fumbled for my own cap and covered my head. Should have known. The new imam had both Irfan and me under the watch of this lot. These Muhajiroun breddas had been in and out of our flat on orders from mosque, checking up on us and chatting with Amma. And now with blood soaking up the streets and bricks being thrown into shop windows, there was even more reason to keep us under Muhaji eyes.

  I recognized Murtaza and another was Yasir.

  As-salaamu alaykum bruv, Murtaza went, nodding at me solemnly. He had pockmarked skin and Yasir had his black eyes on me.

  Wa alaykum as-salaam, I said looking down. I walked past casual. Once I got to the banister I glanced back on the sly and saw them talking. I’d have to avoid that lot when I got back from footie. Our lives were not our own, that much was clear. I headed down.

  Stones Estate blocked off the light on Market Street. The surrounding shops, the colors of the signs and billboards looked rained on and faded. Road was empty save for the market keepers and early-morning faces. Their heads like rock, backs bent forward like mine. I looked past the bus stop and saw the tip of the white arch of Wembley Stadium bending the sky behind it. The white looked out of place next to the brown and the gray.

  I felt like everything was changing around me that summer. As if I’d caught the Ends in the middle of a depression. Everything was spilling into everything else and it was difficult to make out familiar marks. I wanted to look past all the new road signs and the plastered-over billboards, ads that sold dreams for other people. I noted the things we youngers could only see, the road knowledge that proved still useful. The barbershop on Broadway where Rodrigo would give you a cut for pennies if he knew you. The French lad on Minster Road who sold long boxes of fags out the window. The one cash machine near the Polish shop where you could get notes out in fivers. Every corner still had marks of battle. I knew the places to dodge and the safer routes to and from Estate. The bridge for example, a no-go. How many times did I get rushed under that bridge? Older hoodrats would dive out and rush you before you knew what was what. On occasion you’d get the shotters but mostly it would be the usual dickhead who’d want your phone or pocket change. Me being so slight, easy pickings for those olders. I remember once when two mean-bodied Somalis from South Block grabbed Ardan and me as we were walking to school. We were only year sevens. Didn’t know anything at the time and hid our coinage in our socks.

  They made us jump.

  Jump boy! they would say and we’d jump. They’d tell us to jump again and listen to our loose change jingle and watch our cheeks flush red. Made us un-sock and hand over the pees, made us wipe clean the sock stink before doing it. This was routine for us. It wasn’t that I was nostalgic about that sort of thing, but now the Ends seemed darker and more corrupt. The city’s edges, the everyday scrapes that had given us tense hearts as youngers, it had all gathered some new foul manner I couldn’t place.

  Abba used to say that we would leave Estate as soon as he was done being imam. Things weren’t so clear anymore. Not now he was gone. The mosque where he spent most of his time was no longer a place I saw as ours. And with Irfan’s issues at home and these marches that everyone expected would spread across the city, it felt like anything could happen. Nothing was left so sure.

  Anyway. That’s why I had to seek my breddas for peace. As I approached the chickenshop, Ray’s Chicken Paradise, I realized I hadn’t eaten properly in weeks. This chickenshop shut late, like at four a.m. That would be late enough for the drunken club crowd to stagger in with their busy hunger. For us Estate lot though, we’d pack the place all hours. Regular civilians had to push past our uniforms and lairy clamor. The oil made greasy streaks of our ties while we ran our mouths outside about the week’s hallway cataclysms. Salty chicken and chips was our staple, ennet. There was the number-six bucket or the number-four, a burger and chips, or the number-eight, fried long sausage and spicy wings. It was the first stop after school.

  Stepping through the chickenshop that morning felt different. I saw glass splinters in front of the window, cardboard taped against shattered glass. Remnants of St. George’s drapery scattered all over the road outside. The place was open though, and manned. I stepped inside and nodded at the brown face behind the counter. I recognized him. His name, at least the name everyone called him, was Freshie Dave. His name tag said something like Devshi Rajagopalan. To save expense us youngers would just call him Freshie Dave. He spoke in a clipped Indian accent—fresh off the boat. I guess the name stuck, ennet.

  All right brother? he goes, leaning his bony elbow on the end of his mop. Bum fluff mustache and dark rings around his eyes.

  What’s going on here bruv? I nodded at the swept scene out front.

  Ahm, it happen during off hours. Bloody racist those guys.

  This made me glance over at the glass and cardboard. With everything that was going on with Irfan these anti-Muslim marches had somehow felt peripheral. But standing there, seeing the shards of swept glass and hearing Dave talk about it, it felt closer. I had seen it on TV, obviously, white faces holding up white placards, their open mouths and shuffling feet. It seemed at odds to me, almost dumb funny, having grown up in Estate where we told crude racist jokes for fun. That was a youngers’ game though, Freshie Dave and his sort were the front line now. They had come here on student visas with their silly smiles and were now serving up fried fat to sons of England. I’d have seen those white faces in here bare times too, ordering their own portions of chicken and chips. And they weren’t just racists, those faces. I knew that much. Nothing could be explained away so easily.

  Why they smash a chickenshop window? Bit random, I said.

  Our owner a Paki too. Got our faces, no?

  Dave offered this as kinship, plugging his thumb at my
face and his own.

  To Freshie Dave there was no difference between me and him. Pakistan was the linkage. That faulty logic revealed the gulf between us.

  This ever happen before? I asked flatly.

  He shrugged. First time for me. But no matter anyway, man. We open. We always open. Freshie Dave swept his hands on his apron and went back behind his counter. Chickenchips?

  Yeah chickenchips, please. I leaned in, hands in pockets fingering my change. Three pounds forty this would be and a feast. A proper English breakfast. My trainers gave out a squeak against the newly mopped lino while Dave was out back shunting fries into a small paper bag.

  You want mayo yeah? Salt?

  Nah, don’t worry. Yeah saltvinegar.

  I watched the back of his head and saw only differences. Bollywood music, Pakistani cricket, ear warmers, and international phone cards. That shit had nothing to do with me mate. Home for me was Estate. Pakistan was some place in fragmented memory, involuntary smells and misplaced colors. A world away. I thought of Pakistan as being stuck in dusty rooms, mounds of strange food, vague relatives, mosquito bites, and half-understood Urdu, proper periphery. The last time we were there was with Abba. I remember how boring and foreign it all was. Irfan and I spent it mostly sagging about in trishaws, unwilling to adjust to the dry air.

  But then I think more on it.

  There were nice parts to Pakistan too. Bara Gali, Nathia Gali, and Shogran, when I was small we’d visit all the usual sites. There’s even a photograph that exists of me aged six, standing with my brother who was eight, with two uncles posing with tall trees and colossal mountains in the distance. We were standing on a split glacier, a huge ice shelf with the clearest water I had ever seen trickling through a system of veins underfoot. I remember the glacier but could never remember when the photograph was taken nor who the uncles were. But the mountains, the underground stream, and the resemblance between myself and my brother, the smiles he and I used to share, reminded me of how similar we once were and how separated we became in the end.