The Road from Damascus

by Robin Yassin-Kassab

  ‘You’re one of us, boy. Why you going in there?’

  ‘To hear the… to see what… doesn’t mean I agree or disagree…’ Sami, feeling an answer was required, watched guilty-browed over his shoulder the expectant, hurt face of his bearded brother.

  Tom pulled him on through institutional doors. The crowd behind them chanted their public slogans with personal urgency, as if this was the last chance for them to make a point. The sound became wordless crackling and crows’ screeches as they made distance into the hall.

  It was a full audience which Sami surveyed. In the front row, university VIPs and athletic cameramen in leather and straps. In the rows behind, excited students pretending not to be, and tweedy academic and writerly types including Dr Schimmer, and then a mix of colours and styles and snarls, some very natty, some very grungy. Some niqab girls had infiltrated. There were Africans wearing all their wealth, and brown and yellow intellectuals with thin spectacles and folded legs, and Indo-Pakistanis from rich to poor. At the very back a white but dreadlocked pair sat together, or at least side by side, with each a pair of big headphones muffling their already muffled skulls. Sami and Tom bustled into place at the front of the mixed-up rows, behind Dr Schimmer.

  Just in time. A reedy, jaundiced fellow stood and pushed air at the audience to win a partial hush.

  ‘Our guest today requires no introduction. Nevertheless…’

  Polite laughter tinkled from the rows in front of Sami.

  ‘Nevertheless, a very brief introduction must be made. Rashid Iqbal is one of this country’s leading cosmopolitan intellectuals. Rashid’s groundbreaking novel, Taboo Buster, was described as “a continent finding its voice”. This voice, at once powerful and subtle, demands to be heard. No stranger to controversy, Rashid has recently called for the hijab, or Muslim headscarf, to be banned from British educational establishments. A similar debate is, of course, taking place in France. It is on his more general theme, against religion, that we will hear him talk today. So, before my brevity becomes long-winded, I give you Rashid Iqbal.’

  The same section of audience heartily applauded the round, brown man in brown corduroy who rose the short distance to his feet, supporting himself with arms braced on the table beneath him. He had a bulging square face like too much dough risen out of the mould, its creases of experience ironed out by self-satisfaction, and low-hooded crab eyes on stalks, and worm hairs sprouting not only from ears and nostrils but from the mushroomy grey nose itself, from the temples, from the highest contours of his cheeks.

  Jaundice waited for the clapping to subside, then continued.

  ‘Responding to Rashid will be our own Daoud Jenkinson, a historian at the university, a convert to the Islamic religion, and a founder member of the British Muslim Committee. Daoud’s latest book, Secular Fundamentalism: A Panic Discourse, has been described as “a timely riposte to contemporary fanaticism”. So, therefore, thank you, Daoud.’

  The speaker took to his seat amid dimmer clapping from the front and, behind Sami, a fast crop of whooping. Daoud, a beak-nosed man in a faded, wide-lapelled three-piece suit, squinted his acknowledgement past a sparse and pointy beard.

  Rashid Iqbal, still precariously on his feet, inflated above the table.

  ‘To begin with,’ he began, ‘two images.’

  Pause One.

  ‘The suicide bomber.’

  Pause Two.

  ‘The book burner.’

  A pause more pregnant than the previous.

  ‘I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, Homo Religiens. Willing to kill for no other reason than his belief.’

  Pause.

  ‘His belief in a world that does not exist.’

  Pause.

  ‘A belief not based on evidence.’

  Pause.

  ‘This vengeful father in the sky.’

  He stretched out his arms in welcome or entreaty and smiled benevolently.

  ‘Have we not, by this point, had enough of him?’

  Into his swing now, Rashid Iqbal dropped the dramatic timing.

  ‘Where does it come from, such blind, destructive belief? From misery, of course. As Freud and Marx taught, religion is illusion and opiate. Opium. It is painkiller for sick, for hurting people. A man or woman who has no problems is a man or woman who has no god.’

  His voice reached Sami’s ear as a stick tapping on hollow wood. There were echoes from the lobby, a rising hysteria, words as intense and thickly matted as branches and twigs in dark forest, too layered to be distinct.

  ‘It looks grim.’ Rashid Iqbal, man of letters, unperturbed. ‘But, friends, it isn’t. What can’t be stopped is progress. As surely as our ape ancestors developed large brains and delicate voice boxes, so Homo Religiens will become Homo Secularens.

  ‘The religious tell us that above us there is a divine law, a divine master to be obeyed. The master who, in his various guises, has commanded the Inquisition and the religious policemen of Saudi Arabia. Why should we obey such a cruel master, with so much blood on his heavenly hands? What have we done so wrong that we cannot trust ourselves?

  ‘Fear of freedom, my friends. The human being observes his own capacity for destruction and fears himself. To be precise, he fears the responsibility for the pain he creates. Better, he decides, to blame something superhuman for his pain. Us causing the pain? he asks. No, we are only following orders. And so he reconciles himself to his misery, and stays in its depths for centuries and millennia.

  ‘So where is the hope? The answer to misery is technology. Technology and wealth. Technology and wealth are enemies such as religion has never met before.’

  A piercing, speechifying voice called out from the back rows: ‘The white man developed tricknology when he got free of his debased tyrannical religion! But the Muslim got undeveloped when he let go of his true faith!’

  The audience, entertainment on its face, twisted towards the voice.

  ‘Our friend mentions the Muslims.’ Iqbal grew an inch in response to the challenge. ‘Islam once offered a theory of unity. And now it has been superseded by practical unity. A world linked like one body by the arteries of flight paths and the nerves of the internet, a world rushing inevitably to embrace itself, in one economy, one legal system, one entertainment industry. This is not a world destined to remain attached to dusty dreams.’

  Shouting blew and swirled in the corridor. And angry whispering inside the hall, repeated by Dr Schimmer, who was worrying at the narrow bridge of his nose, grunting, ‘Too, aa, simple!’

  ‘But won’t the Third World need its dreams? No, it’s false to think so. It could even be racism to think so. Those of us who think the dark-skinned and hairy have to remain in their delusion, for reasons of authenticity, they should look clearly at the world. The youth of Iran and India and Nigeria aspires to Hollywood and hip hop as much as our youth here does.’

  Iqbal raised a chubby finger.

  ‘Pause a moment here. Hollywood and hip hop. The providers of stories. These are the alternatives, and this is where I come in. The storyteller liberated from Islam. Islam, you see, is not a civilization of narrative. It’s rules, that’s all. Rules and hygiene. It’s washing. A religion of the bathroom.

  ‘So I present literature in opposition to religion. With the little wealth needed to teach people to read, and the little technology needed to connect to the internet, literature can become available to all. What if the mosque is across the street? The screen is in the bedroom. Doesn’t have to be the written word even. It can be films, or songs. This is my wide definition of literature. Instead of the dominant narrative, I offer a competition of narratives, a hubbub of voices, a Babel. Instead of the one Word, I offer infinite words. Histories, novels, characters, fantasies. I do not say we do not have spiritual needs. I say that we can fulfil these needs more profitably with literature. The imagination.’

  Having arrived at the nub, Iqbal leaned back to watch its reception. Mixed results. Ha-hums of comprehension from the fron
t. A bubbling drizzle of complaint at the periphery. Squalls of dissent rushing in the corridors.

  ‘Literature,’ he continued, ‘isn’t clean. Literature is impure, as blended and mixed and polluted, as transgressively tainted, as a curry, a spiced Bombay curry, into which all the influences of a continent have been poured.’

  Applause for this simile. The Daoud brother, meanwhile, was furiously scribbling, forehead red and crinkled, pointy nose and beard rising from the point of his pad like the tail of an exclamation. Scribbling about the spicy mix that was Islamic Spain. About the Greco-JudaicTndo-Persian masala of medieval Baghdad. About Qur’anic allusions to Alexander the Great. About syncretism and Sufi visions and Muslim travelogues.

  Now Iqbal addressed the front rows, the swishing academic eyelashes, the flashing jaws of cameras, at an intimately low volume.

  ‘Let us isolate some enemies from the darkness of belief, and shine our enlightening torch upon them. Let us start with what we have here in this city. To start with, African exorcism. Here in this metropolis, in this new millennium, witch doctors whipping and burning their victims in order to expel evil spirits. Here in London, today. Do you not feel the need to expel some of these evil spirits yourselves?’

  ‘Indian!’ A proud African bellowed. ‘Don’t stereotype our traditions now!’

  ‘And further witcheries,’ Iqbal skipped on, louder, enjoying the temperature. ‘For instance, female circumcision, barbaric mutilation to give it its less polite name. A barbarism which must be stamped out! I call for compulsory hospital examination of African Muslim girls as a means of ensuring their genital rights!’

  ‘Get your hands off!’ someone male blasted from mid-hall.

  And another: ‘Hands off our women’s vaginas!’

  The audience swerved from side to side hunting for drama.

  ‘Your women?’ Iqbal rejoined. ‘They own themselves, my primitive friend. And the vagina, being hidden, is not your target. It is the vulvas you want! It is the visible vulvas that offend!’ Forgetting in the heat of combat to touch lower lip to teeth, Iqbal pronounced it ‘wulwas’. Wisible wulwas.

  ‘Oi! Leave our vulvas alone!’ One of the flappers there.

  And another, clearly also British-born, mocked, ‘You take our wul-was, Iqbal, but leave our vulvas alone!’

  Someone barked, ‘Female circumcision got nothing to do with Islam anyway!’

  Booing and hissing to that.

  ‘That’s not his business! That’s our business! That’s our discussion!’

  ‘But he’s pretending it’s part of Islam!’

  To which, a clamour of agreement.

  Two voices in concert urged, ‘Propaganda!’ It was unclear whether they opposed propaganda or wanted some, and who they thought the propagandist in question was.

  ‘He called us suicide bombers!’

  ‘Terrorists!’

  ‘Don’t insult our martyrs!’

  ‘Fucking murderer!’

  ‘Shut your faces!’

  ‘Fundamentalists!’

  The audience tossed like wind-pulled waves. Even the front rows lost their unity. Faces couldn’t agree which direction to turn. Unruly eyes and fingers splashed all ways like foam. People were standing up, which made others strain and stretch to better view the action. Shouts spattered like bursts of rain on foliage.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Iqbal made a preacher’s sweeping gesture over the mob, ‘I present my characters.’

  Iqbal had always liked rough and tumble. It was a long while since he’d written notes for his speeches; the confidence conferred by fame had made them unnecessary. He preferred to speak on his toes, feeding on nervous energy and on the responses of the crowd. Hecklers aided his improvisation, summoning sparks from him and electrifying the audience. Hecklers were welcome. Violence was welcome, so long as it was at a reasonable distance. He got a buzz out of it. Whenever he wanted a bolt of inspirational lightning he remembered the communal fighting of his youth. Mainly Sunni Shia in Lucknow, but Hindu Muslim in other cities. Or the street battles between language communities. The primitivism of it, the wild men roaring, the keening women beating their breasts. His headmaster called it ‘the human comedy’, those mornings when the dayboys from the inner neighbourhoods couldn’t come to school. ‘Smaller classes today, boys. The human comedy is in performance once again.’ Seen on television as arms and legs and teeth and police sticks, or with the rolling naked eye as purple smoke rising above the old town, it was enjoyable, it was colourful. Rough and tumble. Slap and tickle. Colour and trees and birds on the largest scale. Mother India. Monsoon leaves slapping against the windows. Illuminated dreams.

  ‘Mosques are taking over abandoned churches,’ he shouted. ‘Are we happy with this? Is this what we call progress?’

  The tempest met his voice. Sonic Iqbal and the hecklers struggled like clashing pressure fronts.

  He shouted, ‘Some of our young, excitable friends are taking offence. Well let them! Let obscurantism and demagoguery take offence! Let us fight if fighting is necessary! Proactively. Pre-emptively. Let us fight in defence of the right to offend!’

  With a transposition of atmospheric volumes, Iqbal was drowned out.

  From mid-hall: ‘Fuck your progress!’

  From the stage, behind Iqbal: ‘Please! Please!’

  General pleading from all around. Whimpers of distress. Chorused cursing not at anyone specific, but just because the world was bad. Combative chuckles and howling. Disruption, as a longbeard pushed through from the centre, jostling chairs: ‘Come down and fight, then!’ Photographers prowled between seats and stage, shooting at random.

  Daoud Jenkinson, wearing a magisterial frown, reached his feet and opened his mouth. At this rate, he would miss his chance to answer Iqbal.

  ‘Uncle fucking Tom!’ someone called, presumably at Iqbal.

  ‘House Nigga!’

  ‘Fuck your mother! Am I offending?’

  The gridmarked doors from the corridor wheezed open and shut and trickles of protesters forced their way through into the already brimming hall.

  ‘The headscarf,’ Iqbal persisted. ‘Why should a secular and modern society have to put up with it? It oppresses women and it oppresses those men who might wish to see women’s hair without being accused of perversity. Why should we allow this?’

  ‘If I may respond,’ mouthed Daoud. ‘If I may calm tempers by responding to this assault.’

  Too late to calm a cloudburst. Eschewing the guerrilla tactic of striking and ducking, people now stood on chairs and sloganized, attracting punters from the no-longer seated, milling crowd.

  ‘They weaken our culture so they can steal our land!’

  ‘There’s your multiculturalism! Chaos! It’s a Paki invasion!’

  ‘Imperialist!’

  ‘Imagine,’ screamed Iqbal. ‘Imagine the future. Freed from mind tyranny, free to design the heavens for ourselves. Freed of religious war, liberated by control of the material world, the only world we have. And then there will be no grieving. Freed to explore the imaginary realms. No grief will touch us.’

  A crumpled ball of paper bounced off his forehead. More followed, like Himalayan hailstones.

  ‘Traitor!’ was screamed at him.

  Sami, meanwhile, vague and amused, had risen from his seat into a quarter crouch. Debate had crossed a line and was becoming riot. As the first chairs were thrown he sensed the supernatural presence of ruptured normality, of danger. Unable to believe it, an ambiguous grin spread from one side of his heavy beard to the other.

  A knot of brothers occupying a section at the front were haranguing Daoud: ‘What colour are you? Sitting with the kuffar! He’s one of the kuffar!’

  Daoud responded with splutters, enraged: ‘What colour am I? Islam is above race!’

  A chant started: ‘Al-Jihad! Al-Jihad!’

  And another, more weakly: ‘Black and white / Unite and fight!’

  ‘Time’s coming to get you!’ threatened a voice wi
th time on its side.

  A pained, tormented voice: ‘Consultation, brothers! Seeking to come to terms!’

  Someone ordered, ‘Restore order!’

  And this was the last widely registered word. A dam burst followed. When Sami saw brawny white males in cheap suits and T-shirts and football colours pouring through the open doors he clutched his throat protectively. BNP, it looked like, restoring order with urgency and dedication. They hadn’t been represented at the stalls outside, but here they were. Here they were. Fists into ears, boots and neatly toed office shoes into balls and vulvas. Chairs not thrown but beaten against the floor until they could be recycled as batons and clubs. A screaming, and a thickening rain of blood drops.

  Mujahid unexpectedly wheeled into sight. ‘Brother Sami!’ he yelped, pulling at him in his panic.

  In the same moment the drunken man Sami had called his uncle ran unevenly past Sami’s right eye. ‘Devils!’ he proclaimed. ‘Possessed by demons!’ He’d either had a good wash since his police-cell sojourn, or fear had removed Sami’s sense of smell.

  Sami found himself gripping a metal bar, formerly chair leg, protecting Dr Schimmer’s eggshell skull. His hands stung. The ballhead facing him grappled back his weapon and swung at a frozen Mujahid. Sami’s hands connected again, stinging more. Sami and ballhead both expressionless. It was all too quick to be personal. Mujahid ball-eyed, quivering, understanding once more what he’d let himself in for with the floppy clothes and the beard.

  Now police flooded in to establish another brand of order, and added to the crowd. It was as packed as Carnival, as Haj. A lot of earnest, busy, unselfconscious noise. Sami looked round for Tom Field but didn’t find him. (Tom had slipped out when Iqbal made the headscarf comment.) Sami had decided to get out of the way himself when he realized the police were heavy truncheoning only the Muslims. Theblackbeards and hijabs and dark skin andskullcaps taking the brunt. Ballheads dropping their chair legs and strolling to the sides, and out. Sami gathered his beard in his fist.

  He heard a thundercrack. Not heard; felt. It was heart-shaking. He’d done a strobe dance of defensive contortions and turns before he told himself what the sound was. Gunshot.