The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureishi

‘Oh yes, I bet. Pull the other one, Karim.’

  ‘Allie’s here, isn’t he?’

  She turned away. ‘Allie’s a good boy, but he dresses up a lot, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, he was always one for the outré.’

  ‘He’s changing his clothes three times a day. It’s girlish.’

  ‘Very girlish.’

  ‘I think he plucks his eyebrows too,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Well, he’s hairy, Auntie Jean. That’s why they all call him Coconut at school.’

  ‘Men are supposed to be hairy, Karim. Hirsuteness is a characteristic of real men.’

  ‘You’ve been a big detective lately, haven’t you, Auntie Jean? Have you thought of applying for the police force?’ I said, as I went upstairs. Good old Allie, I thought to myself.

  I never bothered much about Allie, and most of the time I forgot I even had a brother. I didn’t know him very well and I despised him for being well behaved and creeping around telling stories about me. I kept away from him so the rest of the family wouldn’t find out what I was up to. But for once I was grateful he was around, both as company for Mum and as an irritant for Auntie Jean.

  I’m probably not compassionate or anything, I bet I’m a real bastard inside and don’t care for anyone, but I fucking hated treading up those stairs to Mum, especially with Jean at the bottom watching my every step. She probably had nothing else to do.

  ‘If you was down here,’ she said, ‘I’d bloody slap you for your cheek.’

  ‘What cheek?’

  ‘The bloody cheek you’ve got inside of you. All of it.’

  ‘Shut up, will you,’ I said.

  ‘Karim.’ She nearly strangled on her own anger. ‘Karim!’

  ‘Get lost, Auntie Jean,’ I said.

  ‘Buddhist bastard,’ she replied. ‘Buddhists, the lot of you.’

  I went in to Mum. I could hear Auntie Jean shouting at me but I couldn’t make out anything she was saying.

  Auntie Jean’s spare room, in which Mum lay curled up in her pink nightie, her hair unbrushed, had one entire wall made of mirrored cupboards which were stuffed with old but glittering evening dresses from the perfumed days. Beside the bed were Ted’s golf clubs and several pairs of dusty golfing shoes. They’d cleared nothing away for her. Allie told me on the phone that Ted fed her, coming in and saying,’ ‘Ere, Marge, have a nice bit of fish with some bread and butter.’ But he ended up eating it himself.

  I was reluctant to kiss my mother, afraid that somehow her weakness and unhappiness would infect me. Naturally I didn’t think for a minute that my life and spirit could stimulate her.

  We sat for a while, saying little, until I started into a description of Changez’s ‘specials’, his camp-bed and the bizarre spectacle of a man falling in love with his wife. But Mum soon lost interest. If other people’s unhappiness couldn’t cheer her up, nothing would. Her mind had turned to glass, and all life slid from its sheer aspect. I asked her to draw me.

  ‘No, Karim, not today,’ she sighed.

  I went on and on at her: draw me, draw me, draw me, Mummy! I railed against her. I was pretty angry and everything. I didn’t want her to give herself over to the view of life that underlay all this, the philosophy that pinned her to the shadow-corners of the world. For Mum, life was fundamentally hell. You went blind, you got raped, people forgot your birthday, Nixon got elected, your husband fled with a blonde from Beckenham, and then you got old, you couldn’t walk and you died. Nothing good could come of things here below. While this view could equally have generated stoicism, in Mum’s case it led to self-pity. So I was surprised when at last she started to draw me, her hand moving lightly over the page once more, her eyes flickering with some interest at last. I sat there as still as I could. When she pulled herself out of bed and went to the bathroom, instructing me not to look at the sketch, I got the chance to examine it.

  ‘Sit still,’ she moaned, when she’d returned and started again. ‘I can’t get your eyes right.’

  How could I make her understand? Maybe I should say nothing. But I was a rationalist.

  ‘Mum,’ I said. ‘You’ve been looking at me, your eldest son, Karim. But that picture – and if s a great picture, not too hairy – is of Dad, isn’t it? That’s his big nose and double chin. Those bags under his eyes are his suitcases – not mine. Mum, that’s just not anything like my face.’

  ‘Well, dear, fathers and sons come to resemble each other, don’t they?’ And she gave me a significant look. ‘You both left me, didn’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t left you,’ I said. ‘I’m here whenever you need me. I’m studying, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you’re studying.’ It’s funny how often my family were sarcastic about me and the things I was doing. She said, ‘I’m all on my own. No one loves me.’

  ‘Yes they do.’

  ‘No, no one helps me. No one does anything to help me.’

  ‘Mum, I love you,’ I said. ‘Even if I don’t act like it all the time.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  I kissed her and held her and tried to get out of the house without saying goodbye to anyone. I crept downstairs and was outside and successfully making for the front gate when Ted sprinted around the side of the house and grabbed me. He must have been lurking, waiting.

  ‘Tell yer dad we all appreciate what ’e’s done. He’s done a big bucketful for me!’

  ‘All right, I’ll do that,’ I said, pulling away.

  ‘Don’t forget.’

  ‘No, no.’

  I almost ran back to South London, to Jamila’s place. I made myself a pot of mint tea and sat silently at the living-room table. My mind was in turmoil. I tried to distract myself by concentrating on Jamila. She sat at her desk as usual, her face illuminated by the cheap reading light beside her. A big jar of purple wild flowers and eucalyptus stood on the top of a pile of library books. When you think of the people you adore there are usually moments you can choose – afternoons, whole weeks, perhaps – when they are at their best, when youth and wisdom, beauty and poise combine perfectly. And as Jamila sat there humming and reading, absorbed, with Changez’s eyes also poring over her as he lay on his bed surrounded by ‘specials’ covered in fluff, with cricket magazines and half-eaten packets of biscuits around him, I felt this was Jamila’s ultimate moment of herselfness. I, too, could have sat there like a fan watching an actress, like a lover watching his beloved, content not to be thinking about Mum and what we could do about her. Is there anything you can do about anyone?

  Changez let me finish my tea; my anxiety dissipated a little. Then he looked at me.

  ‘OK?’ he said.

  ‘OK what?’

  Changez dragged his body from his camp-bed like someone trying to walk with five footballs under their arms. ‘Come on.’ He pulled me into the tiny kitchen.

  ‘Listen, Karim,’ he whispered. ‘I must go out this afternoon.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He tried to move his pompous features significantly. Whatever he did gave me pleasure. Irritating him was one of the guaranteed delights of my life. ‘Go out, then,’ I said. ‘There’s no guard stopping you, is there?’

  ‘Shhh. Out with my friend Shinko,’ he said confidentially. ‘She’s taking me to the Tower of London. Then there’s new positions I’ve been reading about, yaar. Pretty wild and all, with the woman on her knees. The man behind. So you stay here and keep Jamila distracted.’

  ‘Distract Jamila?’ I laughed. ‘Bubble, she doesn’t care if you’re here or not. She doesn’t care where you are.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why should she, Changez?’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said defensively, backing away. ‘I see.’

  I went on needling him. ‘Speaking of positions, Changez, Anwar has been in the asking-after-your-health-position recently.’ Fear and dismay came instantly into Changez’s face. It was heaven to see. This wasn’t his favourite subject. ‘You look shit-s
cared, Changez.’

  ‘That fucker, my father-in-law, will ruin my erection for the whole day,’ he said. ‘I better scoot.’

  But I secured him by his stump and went on. ‘I’m sick of him whining to me about you. You’ve got to do something about it.’

  ‘That bastard, what does he think I am, his servant? I’m not a shopkeeper. Business isn’t my best side, yaar, not my best. I’m the intellectual type, not one of those uneducated immigrant types who come here to slave all day and night and look dirty. Tell him to remember that.’

  ‘OK, I’ll tell him. But I warn you, he’s going to write to your father and brother and tell them what a completely fat lazy arse you are, Changez. I’m telling you this with authority because he’s made me typing monitor in the matter.’

  He grasped my arm. Alarm tightened his features. ‘For Christ’s sake, no! Steal the letter if you can. Please.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Changez, because I love you as a brother.’

  ‘Me too, eh?’ he said affectionately.

  It was hot, and I lay naked on my back with Jamila beside me on the bed. I’d opened all the windows in the flat, drenching the atmosphere in car fumes and the uproar of the unemployed arguing in the street. Jamila asked me to touch her and I rubbed her between the legs with Vaseline according to her instructions, like ‘Harder’ and ‘More effort, please’ and ‘Yes, but you’re making love not cleaning your teeth.’ With my nose tickling her ear I asked, ‘Don’t you care for Changez at all?’

  I think she was surprised that such a question could occur to me. ‘He’s sweet, Changez, it’s true, the way he grunts with satisfaction as he reads, and bumbles around the place asking me if I want some keema. But I was compelled to marry him. I don’t want him here. I don’t see why I should care for him as well.’

  ‘What if he loves you, Jammie?’

  She sat up and looked at me. She thrust her hands at me and said passionately, ‘Karim, this world is full of people needing sympathy and care, oppressed people, like our people in this racist country, who face violence every day. It is them I sympathize with, not my husband. In fact, he irritates me intensely sometimes. Fire Eater, the man’s barely alive at all! It’s pathetic!’

  But as I painted her stomach and breasts in the little kisses I knew she loved, biting and nibbling her all over, trying to relax her, she was still pondering on Changez. She said, ‘Basically he’s just a parasitical, sexually frustrated man. That’s what I think of him when I think of him at all.’

  ‘Sexually frustrated? But that’s where he’s gone now. To see his regular whore! Shinko, she’s called.’

  ‘No! Really? Is it true?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell me, tell me!’

  So I told her about Changez’s patron saint, Harold Robbins, about Shinko, and about the positions problem. This made us want to try numerous positions ourselves, as Shinko and Changez were no doubt doing as we spoke. Later, as we held each other, she said, ‘But what about you, Karim? You’re sad, aren’t you?’

  I was sad, it was true. How could I not be when I thought of Mum lying there in that bed day after day, completely wrecked by Dad having run off with another woman? Would she ever recover? She had great qualities, Mum, of charm and kindness and general decency, but would anyone ever appreciate them and not hurt her?

  Then Jammie said, ‘What are you going to do with your life now you’ve stopped going to college?’

  ‘What? But I haven’t stopped going. I just don’t turn up for lectures that often. Let’s not talk about it, it makes me depressed. What will you do now?’

  She became fervent. ‘Oh me, but I’m not hanging around, though it may look like it. I’m really preparing for something. I just don’t know what it is yet. I just feel I have to know certain things and that one day they will be of great use to me in understanding the world.’

  We made love again, and we must have been tired, because it can’t have been less than two hours later that I woke up. I was shivering. Jamila was fast asleep with a sheet over her lower half. In a fog I crawled out of bed to pick up a blanket which had fallen on the floor, and as I did so I glanced through into the living room and made out, in the darkness, Changez lying on his camp-bed watching me. His face was expressionless; grave if anything, but mostly vacant. He looked as if he’d been lying there on his stomach for quite a while. I shut the bedroom door and dressed hurriedly, waking Jamila. I’d often wondered what I’d do in such a position, but it was simple. I scuttled out of the flat without looking at my friend, leaving husband and wife to each other and feeling I’d betrayed everyone – Changez, Mum and Dad, and myself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘You do nothing,’ said Dad. ‘You’re a bloody bum. You’re destroying yourself wantonly, d’you know that? It sickens my whole heart.’

  ‘Don’t shout at me, I can’t stand it.’

  ‘I’ve got to, boy, to get it into your thick head. How did you manage to fail all those exams? How is it possible to fail every single one?’

  ‘It’s easy. You don’t show up for any of them.’

  ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why, Karim, especially as you pretended to me you were going off to take the damn exams. You left the house so full of the confidence I gave you. Now I see why,’ he said bitterly. ‘How could you do it?’

  ‘Because I’m not in the right mood for studying. I’m too disturbed by all the stuff that’s happening. You leaving Mum and all. It’s a big deal. It affects my life.’

  ‘Don’t blame me if you’ve ruined your life,’ he said. But his eyes filled with tears. ‘Why? Why? Why? Don’t interfere, Eva,’ he said, as she came into the room, alarmed by our shouting. ‘This boy is a complete dead loss. So what will you do, eh?’

  ‘I want to think.’

  ‘Think, you bloody fool! How can you think when you haven’t got any brains?’

  I knew this would happen; I was almost prepared for it. But this contempt was like a typhoon blowing away all my resources and possessions. I felt lower than I’d ever felt before. And then Dad ignored me. I couldn’t sleep at Jamila’s place any more for fear of having to face Changez. So I had to see Dad every day and have him deplore me. I don’t know why he took it so fucking personally. Why did it have to bother him so much? It was as if he saw us as having one life between us. I was the second half, an extension of him, and instead of complementing him I’d thrown shit all over him.

  So it was a big cheering surprise when I opened the front door of Eva’s house one day to find Uncle Ted standing there in his green overalls, a bag of tools hanging from his fist, smiling all over his chopped face. He strode into the hall and started to peer expertly at the walls and ceiling. Eva came out and greeted him as though he were an artist returning from barren exile, Rimbaud from Africa. She took his hands and they looked into each other’s eyes.

  Eva had heard from Dad what a poet among builders Ted was. How he’d changed and refused to go on and now was wasting his talent. This alerted Eva, and she arranged for them all to go out for supper. Later they went to a jazz club in the King’s Road – Uncle Ted had never seen black walls before – where Eva slyly said to Dad, ‘I think it’s about time we moved to London, don’t you?’

  ‘I like the quiet of Beckenham, where no one bothers your balls,’ said Dad, thinking that that was the end of the matter, as it would have been had he been talking to Mum.

  But business was going on. Between jazz sets Eva made Ted an offer: come and make my house beautiful, Ted, we’ll play swing records and drink margheritas at the same time. It won’t be like doing a job. Ted jumped at the chance to work with Eva and Dad, partly out of nosiness – to see what freedom had made of Dad, and could perhaps make of Ted – and partly out of the returning appetite for labour. But he still had to break the news to Auntie Jean. That was the difficult bit.

  Auntie Jean went into turmoil. Here was work, paid work, weeks of it, and Ted was
delighted to do it. He was ready to start, except that the employer was Jean’s enemy, a terrible, man-stealing, mutilated woman. Jean pondered on it for a day while we held our breath. Finally she solved the problem by agreeing to let Ted do it provided none of us told Mum and as long as Ted gave Jean a full report at the end of each day on what precisely was going on between Dad and Eva. We agreed to these conditions, and tried to think of salacious things for Ted to tell Jean.

  Eva knew what she wanted: she wanted the whole house transformed, every inch of it, and she wanted energetic, industrious people around her. We got down to it immediately. With relief, I abandoned any pretence at being clever and became a mystic assistant labourer. I did the carrying and loading and smashing, Eva did the thinking, and Ted ensured her instructions were carried out. Dad fastidiously avoided the whole muck of building, once spitting an Arab curse at us: ‘May you have the builders.’ Ted replied with an obscurity he thought would delight Dad. ‘Haroon, I’m kissing the joy as it flies,’ he said, laying into a wall with a hammer.

  The three of us worked together excellently, elated and playful. Eva had become eccentric: when a decision was needed Ted and I often had to wait while she retired upstairs and meditated on the exact shape of the conservatory or the dimensions of the kitchen. The way forward would emerge from her unconscious. This was not wildly different, I suppose, to what went on in a book I was reading, Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son, in which the father would pray before any crucial decision and await God’s direction.

  Before lunch Eva had us traipse out into the garden, where we bent and stretched, and sat with our backs straight, and breathed through alternate nostrils before we ate our salads and fruit. Ted went in for it all with great, childlike alacrity. He took to the Cobra position as if it had been designed for him. Unlike me, he seemed to enjoy appearing foolish, thinking he had become a new, open person. Eva encouraged us to play, but she was a shrewd boss too. We laboured for her because we liked her, but she tolerated no lazy work: she was a perfectionist and she had taste, insisting on only the best materials, which was unusual in the suburbs, where Victorian or Edwardian houses were generally smashed open and stripped bare, only to be filled with chipboard and Formica.