My name is Karim
Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost. I am often
considered to be a funny kind of Englishman, a new breed as it were,
having emerged from two old histories. But I don't care - Englishman
I am (though not proud of it), from the South London suburbs and
going somewhere. Perhaps it is the odd mixture of continents and
blood, of here and there, of belonging and not, that makes me
restless and easily bored. Or perhaps it was being brought up in the
suburbs that did it. Anyway, why search the inner room when it's
enough to say that I was looking for trouble, any kind of movement,
action and sexual interest I could find, because things were so
gloomy, so slow and heavy, in our family, I don't know why. Quite
frankly, it was all getting me down and I was ready for anything.
Then one day
everything changed. In the morning things were one way and by bedtime
another. I was seventeen.
On this day my
father hurried home from work not in a gloomy mood. His mood wad
high, for him. I could smell the train on him as he put his briefcase
away behind the front door and took off his raincoat, chucking it
over the bottom of the banisters. He grabbed my fleeing little
brother, Allie, and kissed him; he kissed my mother and me with
enthusiasm, as if we'd recently been rescued from an earthquake. More
normally, he handed Mum his supper: a packet of kebabs and chapatis
so greasy their paper wrapper had disintegrated. Next, instead of
flopping into a chair to watch the television news and wait for Mum
to put the warmed-up food on the table, he went into their bedroom,
which was downstairs next to the living room. He quickly stripped to
his vest and underpants.
'Fetch the pink
towel, ' he said to me.
I did so. Dad spread
it on the bedroom floor and fell on to his knees. I wondered if he'd
suddenly taken up religion. But no, he placed his arms beside his
head and kicked himself into the air.
'I
must practice, ' he said in a stifled voice.
'Practice for what? ' I said reasonably, watching him with interest and suspicion.
'They've called me for the damn yoga Olympics, ' he said. He easily became sarcastic, Dad.
'Practice for what? ' I said reasonably, watching him with interest and suspicion.
'They've called me for the damn yoga Olympics, ' he said. He easily became sarcastic, Dad.
He
was standing on his head now, balanced perfectly. His stomach sagged
down. His balls and prick fell forward in his pants. The considerable
muscle in his arms swelled up and he breathed energetically. Like
many Indians he was small, but Dad was also elegant and handsome,
with delicate hands and manners; beside him most Englishmen looked
like clumsy giraffes. He was broad and strong too: when young he'd
been a boxer and fanatical chest-expander. He was as proud of his
chest as our next-door neighbours were of their kitchen range. At the
sun's first smile he would pull off his shirt and stride out into the
garden with a deckchair and a copy of the New
Statesman.
He told me that in India he shaved his chest regularly so its hair
would sprout more luxuriantly in years to come. I reckoned that his
chest was the one area in which he'd been forward-thinking.
Soon, my mother, who
was in the kitchen as usual, came into the room and saw Dad
practising for the yoga Olympics. He hadn't done this for months, so
she knew something was up. She wore an apron with flowers on it and
wiped her hands repeatedly on a tea towel, a souvenir from Woburn
Abbey. Mum was a plump and unphysical woman with a pale round face
and kind brown eyes. I imagined that she considered her body to be an
inconvenient object surrounding her, as if she were stranded on an
unexplored desert island. Mostly she was a timid and compliant
person, but when exasperated she could get nervily aggressive, like
now.
'Allie,
go to bed, ' she said sharply to my brother, as he poked his head
around the door. He was wearing a net to stop his hair going crazy
when he slept. She said to Dad, 'Oh God, Haroon, all the front of
you's sticking out like that and everyone can see! ‘She turned to
me. 'You encourage him to be like this. At
least pull the curtains ! '
'It's
not necessary, Mum. There isn't another house that can see us for a
hundred yards - unless they're watching through binoculars.'
'That's exactly what they're doing, ' she said.
'That's exactly what they're doing, ' she said.
I pulled the
curtains on the back garden. The room immediately seemed to contract.
Tension rose. I couldn't wait to get out of the house now. I always
wanted to be somewhere else, I don't know why.
Hanif
Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia,
pages 3-5
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