L text 6

I'd never seen anyone dying before, but I was sure Anwar qualified. Anwar was staring at my kebab as though it were a torture instrument. I chewed speedily to get rid of it.

'Why didn't you tell me he's sick ?' I whispered to Jamila.

But I wasn't convinced that he was simply sick, since the pity in her face was overlaid with fury. She was glaring at her old man, but he wouldn't meet her eyes, nor mine after I'd walked in. He stared straight in front of him as he always did at the television screen, except that it wasn't on.

'He's not ill', she said.

'No ?' i said, and then, to him, 'Hallo, Uncle Anwar. How are you, boss ?'

His voice was changed : it was reedy and weak now. 'Take that damn kebab out of my nose,' he said. 'And take that damn girl with you.'

Jamila touched my arm. 'Watch.' She sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned towards him. 'Please, please stop all this.''Get lost !' he croaked at her. 'You're not my daughter. I don't know who you are.'

'For all our sakes, please stop it ! Here, Karim who loves you--'

'Yes, yes !' I said.

'He's brought you a lovely tasty kebab !'

'Why is he eating it himself, then ?' Anwar said, reasonably. She snatched the kebab from me and waved it in front of her father. At this my poor kebab started to disintegrate, bits of meat and chilli and onion scattering over the bed. Anwar ignored it.

'What's going on here,' I asked her.

'Look at him, Karim, he hasn't eaten or drunk anything for eight days ! He'll die, Karim, won't he, if he doesn't eat anything !'

'Yes. You'll cop it, boss, if you don't eat your grub like everyone else.'

'I won't eat. I will die. If Gandhi could shove out the English from India by not eating, I cna get my family to obey me by exactly the same.'

'What do you want her to do ?'

'To marry the boy I have selected with my brother.'

'But it's old-fashioned, Uncle, out of date,' I explained. No one does that kind of thing now. They just marry the person they're into, if they bother to get married at all.'

This homely on contemporary morals didn't exactly blow his mind.

'That is not our way, boy. Our way is firm. She must do what I say or I will die. She will kill me.'

Jamila started to punch the bed.

'It's so stupid ! What a waste of time and life !'

Anwar was unmoved. I'd always liked him because he was so casual about everything ; he wasn't perpetually anxious like my parents. Now he was making a big fuss about a mere marriage and I couldn't understand it. I know it made me sad to see him do this to himself. I couldn't understand it. I know it made me sad to see him do this to himself. I couldn't believe the things people did to themselves, how they screwed up their lives and made things go wrong, like dad having it away with Eva, or Ted's breakdown, and now Uncle Anwar going on this major Gandhi diet. It wasn't as if external circumstances had forced them into these lunacies ; it was plain illusion in the head.

Anwar's irrationality was making me tremble, i can tell you. I know I kept shaking my head everywhere. He'd locked himself in a private room beyond the reach of reason, of persuasion, of evidence. Even happiness, that frequent pivot of decision, was irrelevant here—Jamila's happiness, I mean. Like her I wanted to express myself physically in some way. It seemed to be all that was left to us.

The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi, chapter 4, pp. 59-60.