White Teeth by Zadie Smith

with no beginning

or end,

imagine,

if you can,

events in the world

happening

repeatedly,

endlessly,

in the way

they always have..

White teeth,

white clouds,

a solid block

of ice

appear untouchable

and yet,

heat

may crack it,

the interaction

creates change...

water for life,

disappears

into a dense fog

of nothingness.

Then

death

brings

its icy cold

breath

into emptiness,

the further interaction

creates change...

to its original form

of

white teeth,

white clouds

a solid

block of ice.

The continuity of life,

a sprawling tale

'...about how we all got here

-from the Caribbean,

from the Indian subcontinents...

and about what

here,

turned out to be.'

(Salman Rushdie)

On the outskirt of London

amid a restless hybrid

of voices,

tones

and textures,

on New Year's morning

of 1975

people are tired

of almost dying,

and yet,

life goes on

with a raucous energy

and confidence.

Archie Jones seals up the windows

of his car

and waits for the exhaust fumes

to fill his lungs,

failed marriage,

and a bag

full of kitchen appliances,

on his lap

this is what divorce is,

taking things you no longer want

from people you no longer love,

but dying is no easy trick...

For 18 years the butcher Mohamed

has been a victim

of serious physical attacks

and robbery,

without fail,

three times a year.

Knifed a total

of five times,

three fingers lost,

broken arms

and legs,

his teeth kicked out

and feet

set on fire.

He was a big man.

He gave as good as he got.

But he was one man

against army,

there was nobody who could help.

“Paki, why don't you go back to your own country?”

The culprits call after him,

teenage thugs and their parents,

the local football team

and mouthy, white-skirted secretaries

in deadly heels,

they are all white,

just like Archie Jones

trying to commit

such an unholy act

while parked

in front of his shop.

“ You must live life

with the full knowledge

that your action will remain.

We are creatures of consequence,

our forbearers knew it,

some day, our children will know it.

They will be born of our actions,

our actions will become their destinies.”

He pulls coughing Archie out of the car

throwing his bag after him.

Clara Bowden,

an unusually tall Jamaican woman,

raised as a Jehovah's Witness

sits in her room

just below street level

with bars on her window

and partial views

of feet,wheels, car exhausts

and swinging umbrellas,

such slight glimpses are often telling,

a lively imagination can squeeze

much pathos out of a frayed lace,

a darned sock,

a low swinging bag

that has seen better days,

its content spilling slowly

in front of her eyes...

She runs out and picks it up,

giving Archie a wide grin

that revealed

possibly

her one imperfection,

a complete lack of teeth

in the top of her mouth.

Archie sees her hither look,

tingled with sadness

and disappointment,

she doesn't have

a great deal

of other options

left,

she is 19 and he is 47.

Six weeks later they are married.

Nine months later

their daughter Irie

is born

as races mix

and bloodlines

half black

half white

watching her parents

through the grey-green eyes of loss.

And she grows

into a teenager

a stranger

in a stranger land,

unwilling to settle

for genetic fate,

waiting

for her transformation

from Jamaican hourglass

heavy

with the sand

to English Rose...

Her father, Archie,

his quiet fear,

his pigeon steps,

her mother

sneering

at his impotent indecision.

Only his friend,

Samad, the Iraqi,

has looked at him

with a great sympathy,

their wartime friendship

severed

by 30 years of separation

across continents,

but in the spring of 1973

a middle aged man

seeking a new life

with his 20-years old

Bangladeshi bride

seeks Archie out.

Archie is surprised,

does he remember him?

Oh yes,

he does...

the kind of friendship

an Englishman makes

on holiday

a friendship that crosses

class and colour

a friendship that survives

because the Englishman assumes

the physical proximity

will not continue,

and yet...

Samad Miah Iqbal is here to stay.

He works

as a waiter

for his younger cousin

in his Indian restaurant,

never seeing the sun,

never seeing his wife,

wanting desperately

to be wearing a sign:

“ I am not a waiter,

I have been a student,

a scientist,

a soldier once,

I have a wife,

we live in East London,

on the wrong side

of High Road,

I am a Muslim,

but Allah has forsaken me

or I have forsaken Allah,

I have a friend, Archie

I am 49

and I have twin sons

Magid and Milat.”

“ All I wanted was

two Muslim boys,”

Sadam said to Archie:

“ You teach them,

they don't listen,

you show them the road

and they take bloody path

to the Inn of Court.

You guide them

and they run away

from your grasp

to a Chester Sport Centre.”

Holding a five years old Magid

by his hand, he continued:

“ But if you could

begin

again,

you could take them

back

to the source of the river,

to the start of the story,

to the homeland...”

And that is

what he does.

One of them

is sent

to Bangladesh

to be raised by relatives

into a proper devout Muslim.

The people of Bangladesh

live under invisible threat

of random disaster

flood,

hurricane,

debris

and mud

everywhere,

but Magid

is not

the only one

who learns to hold

his life lightly.

While he watches

cyclone shaking things

from high places,

Milat on the other side

of the world,

is pushing his luck

along the towering wall

of the cemetery,

pot-smoking.

When Magid

returns

to England,

white-suited,

silly wig lawyer,

more English

than the Englishman,

his brother

becomes

the extremist

of Islamic faction

dedicated

to violent actions

and ridiculed

in the press.

Mr and Mrs Chalfen

have two

successful

scientific jobs

and two

whiter than white

well educated

sons.

This white

middle class

family

is asked

by school

to help

poor

and

disadvantaged...

Irie and Milat

are invited

for a lunch,

The proper lady

of the house

looks at them

the way

she has looked

at her delphinium.

There is damage here.

There is a quiet pain

in the first one,

in the second

there is

a deeper sadness,

a terrible loss,

a gaping wound.

A hole

that needs more,

than education and money,

that needs love.

She longs

to touch

the site

with her green finger,

close the gap,

knit the wound.

But they are foreigners

to her

as she is to them.

On the outskirt of London

amid a restless hybrid

of voices,

tones

and textures,

on New Year's morning

of 1995

people are tired

of almost dying,

and yet,

life goes on

with a raucous energy

and confidence.

Milat and Magid

stands face to face,

a loaded gun

between them.

“Do you really believe

there is a type of man

who kills and a type of man

who doesn't?”

Milat asks his returned twin brother,

“His family threatened,

his beliefs attacked,

his way of life destroyed,

his whole world coming to end,

he will destroy everything

that stays in his way.”

“It has long been my intention

to make the life of my people

easier,

new laws are required

to deal with our unlucky fate.

The English fight fate to the death.”

Magid looks Milat

closely into eyes.

“So we both say, it has to be!”

Milat points his gun at him.

“It doesn't have to be.”

Irie appears from nowhere

and grabs the gun.

“Nothing does.”

Milat steps forward

shading his violet eyes

from a fading hatred

in his heart.

Magid embraces him,

his tensed

high cheekbones

released

in a beautiful smile.

Irie kisses them both.

Their past,

present

and future

is linked

as races mix

and bloodlines,

like attracts like,

the feeling of belonging

nowhere

that comes to people

who belong everywhere.

They are all,

she has got,

they need her,

and she gives herself

to them,

body and soul.

Nine months later

their daughter Beauty

is born

as races mix

and bloodlines

half black

half white

and half brown

watching her parents

respectable Mr and Mrs Chalfen

through the violet eyes of loss,

her high cheekbones released in half smile,

unaware,

that just beyond

the corner,

on the wrong side

of High Road,

one or two,

of her real fathers live.

That is how

Beauty

gets to be

the new 'English Rose'.

That is how

we all get here,

between rocks

and ice

and hard places....

This story has no end,

or does it?