White Teeth

‘What thing?’

‘About camels – when we were walking.’

‘Oh, you mean, “Men are like camels: there is barely one in a hundred that you would trust with your life.” ’

‘Yes!’

‘That’s not comedy, that is the Bukhārī, part eight, page one hundred and thirty,’ said Samad. ‘And it is good advice. I have certainly found it to be true.’

‘Well, it’s still fu

She sat closer to him on the bench and kissed his ear. ‘Seriously, I like you.’

‘I’m old enough to be your father. I’m married. I am a Muslim.’

‘OK, so Dateline wouldn’t have matched our forms. So what?’

‘What kind of a phrase is this: “So what?” Is that English? That is not English. Only the immigrants can speak the Queen’s English these days.’

Poppy giggled. ‘I still say: So-’

But Samad covered her mouth with his hand, and looked for a moment almost as if he intended to hit her. ‘So everything. So everything. There is nothing fu

Poppy moved to the other end of the bench and leant forward, her elbows resting on her knees. ‘I know,’ she began slowly, ‘that this is no more than it is. But I won’t be spoken to like that.’

‘I am sorry. It was wrong of me-’

‘Just because you feel guilty, I’ve nothing to feel-’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. I have no-’

‘Because you can go if you-’

Half thoughts. Stick them all together and you have less than you began with.

‘I don’t want to go. I want you.’

Poppy brightened a bit and smiled her half-sad, half-goofy smile.

‘I want to spend the night… with you.’

‘Good,’ she replied. ‘Because I bought this for you while you were next door buying those sugary sweets.’

‘What is it?’

She dived into her handbag, and in the attenuated minute in which she scrabbled through lipsticks and car-keys and spare change, two things happened.

1.1 Samad closed his eyes and heard the words To the pure all things are pure and then, almost immediately afterwards, Can’t say fairer than that.

1.2 Samad opened his eyes and saw quite clearly by the bandstand his two sons, their white teeth biting into two waxy apples, waving, smiling.

And then Poppy resurfaced, triumphant, with a piece of red plastic in her hand.

‘A toothbrush,’ she said.

8 Mitosis

The stranger who wanders into O’Co

O’Co

But come 4.15 and still no sign of him, a desperate Samad had chewed every fingernail he possessed to the cuticle and collapsed on the counter, nose squished up against the hot glass where the battered burgers were kept, eye to eye with a postcard showing the eight different local charms of County Antrim.

Mickey, chef, waiter and proprietor, who prided himself on knowing each customer’s name and knowing when each customer was out of sorts, prised Samad’s face off the hot glass with an egg slice.

‘Oi.’

‘Hello, Mickey, how are you?’

‘Same old, same old. But enough about me. What’s the fucking matter wiv you, mate. Eh? Eh? I’ve been watching you, Sammy, since the minute you stepped in here. Face as long as shit. Tell your uncle Mickey.’

Samad groaned.

‘Oi. No. None of that. You know me. I’m the sympathetic side of the service industry, I’m service with a fucking smile, I’d wear a little red tie and a little red hat like them fuckwits in Mr Burger if my fuckin’ head weren’t so big.’

This was not a metaphor. Mickey had a very large head, almost as if his acne had demanded more room and received pla

‘What’s the problem?’

Samad looked up at Mickey’s big red head.

‘I am just waiting for Archibald, Mickey. Please, do not concern yourself. I will be fine.’

‘ ’Sbit early, i

‘Pardon?’

Mickey checked the clock behind him, the one with the palaeolithic piece of encrusted egg on the dial. ‘I say ’Sbit early, i

Samad sighed. ‘We have much to discuss.’

Mickey rolled his eyes. ‘You ain’t starting on that Mangy Pandy whateverthefuckitis again, are you? Who shot who, and who hung who, my grandad ruled the Pakis or whateverthefuckitwas, as if any poor fucker gives a flying fuck. You’re driving the custom away. You’re creating – ’ Mickey flicked through his new bible, Food for Thought: A Guideline for Employers and Employees Working in the Food Service Industry – Customer Strategy and Consumer Relations. ‘You’re creating a repetitive syndrome that puts all these buggers off their culinary experience.’