In the Light of What We Know: A Novel

by Zia Haider Rahman

  Isn’t that the point? said Emily. Things are changing. How many deserving students can there be in Kensington?

  Here were the makings of the dainty champion of the downtrodden, the oppressed. Not just deserving students from outside Kensington but also the black races, I thought, or the poor or even the third world might get a shout.

  Britain can’t carry on protecting the privileged, continued Emily.

  I began then to perceive the complexity of Emily’s relationship with privilege, her hostility toward it not merely at an intellectual level, hostility that was not even a purely emotional blow against injustice but a force that gathered in the depths of rebellion.

  * * *

  It took six months before she invited me to go with her to a party. Six months of excuses while she went on her own. What? She thought I didn’t know? She never told me but she needn’t have: A day later I might see a party dress hanging on a chair, a pair of high heels outside the wardrobe, lying askew, waiting for the weekly housekeeper, and, on the dresser, lipstick uncapped. Is it prying if I don’t actually look for signs but can’t help noticing them? I’m a pattern seeker, and breaks in patterns scream for attention.

  So what did we do? We might have seen a movie or a play or gone out for dinner. Most of all we stayed in the bedroom. Or sat in the lounge, she working and I reading something. We went to her mother’s for supper every week. I arranged dinners with some of my acquaintances, but after she made her last-minute excuses twice and then failed to show on the third, I stopped doing so. We did things together but never with others.

  Maybe she feared what lay in wait for us. When the day arrived, the words came as a casual suggestion, muttered while her face was hidden behind the open door of the refrigerator, as if something sitting in the fridge had caused her to remember: Fiona’s having a party. Would you like to come?

  What I should have said was, Who the hell is Fiona? And how can you be so casual about it, just drop an invitation like that after six months of avoiding taking me to a single thing?

  And yet what do I do but agree meekly? I used to think that I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, when in fact there was nothing to give. My insecurity had destroyed the certainty I should have had in what was plain to see.

  Let’s go, I said.

  Before the party, I imagined that word must have got around that Emily was seeing someone, but no, not at all. None of her peers seemed to know. Or did they know something? Had they caught the waft of rumors? And did they think, because there was only gossip and never confirmation, that the relationship wasn’t serious? Maybe it’s just a passing fancy, a little exotica, a bit of rough (no surprise there—like mother, like daughter). After all, she hasn’t brought him out until now, has she?

  Fiona threw the party in a vast private room at a restaurant off Sloane Square. From the doors to the roof terrace, eddies of cool air softened the blows of perfume and cigarette smoke. They drank Bellinis as the waiting staff tiptoed about them daring to interrupt with canapés, and the young ladies shriveled their noses. Now what might that be? cried Gemma. A barely straightened forefinger seemed poised to motion the food away. Gemma worked in public relations and knew Fiona from Wycombe Abbey. Gemma wore jeans and an engagement ring with a rock the size of a minor African state, and she lived in a house she’d just bought in Fulham, around the corner from Brasserie Émile, she said, with a glance to see if I knew the place. A test? Oh, yes, I lied.

  It was all about networks, though they would never have said it themselves. Like apes knuckling down to a forest clearing to groom each other, they thronged to the drinks parties and dinner parties, the art openings and first nights. I could never feel myself present.

  I heard a confident male voice say, I should introduce you to my friend Richard Pembridge at the Foreign Office. He’s at the embassy in D.C., but I think he’s taking up an ambassadorship. Some hardship post in Asia. Pakistan or Bangladesh, I think. I glanced over and saw a young man, tall and handsome, speaking to Emily. His unkempt blond hair fell and rose in bluffs across his forehead, improbably fluttering over his brow. The flirting was transparent: the broad chest and robust chin pushed out, hands open, arms wide, inflated to make the beast appear bigger, never covering the body, the broken glances reattached, and the incessant rhythmic smiling. That subtle play of gestures to mark in-group familiarity; beneath it, the thrust of sexual advance.

  And to think that at the beginning I imagined me showing off her. I daydreamed about it, sitting on the bus going somewhere, I daydreamed about going to dinner parties with her. Have you met my girlfriend? I’d say. Who am I kidding? Have you met my wife? That’s what I said. And I watched as I grew in the estimation of the men and women. I saw myself swelling before them. What I didn’t count on was that my new milieu would consist of people who weren’t just familiar with Emily’s pedigree and status but were drawn from the same stock, and whose very association with her was part of that status, so that rather than finding myself in a position to brag about her, the question any idiot must have been asking—the question I was asking—was: What the dickens was she doing with him? It took me much longer even to begin asking myself what the dickens I was doing staying with her.

  I met a man called Hugh at the party. He was wearing a rugby shirt and in one hand he clenched two bottles of beer by their necks. Every party has a Hugh at the edges. His right arm craned up and down, over and over, so that his fat hand could parry away the inevitable locks of wavy hair that came tumbling over his forehead. Hugh and I exchanged names, and when he asked me whom I knew, I said that the host, Fiona, was a friend of my girlfriend.

  Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?

  I live in Brixton, I said.

  He let out a guffaw, gently nudging me on the shoulder, relishing what his drunken imagination took for mutual amusement. I acquiesced with a grin.

  No, I mean really, Zephyr. Where are you from?

  * * *

  When I was eight years old or so, the local authority’s social services had taken an interest in our family, and one summer at their suggestion and expense we took our first vacation, in Clacton-on-Sea. At the holiday camp, there were talent contests, games for children, darts tournaments for men, and a pub. I expect there were plenty of things to do besides, but I spent most of my time away from my parents playing pool by myself. I remember being fascinated by the motion of the balls on the table. My mother cooked pungent Bangladeshi food in the chalet—that’s what they called those terraces of two-room self-catering units—and the smell pervaded the entire camp.

  I made friends with Charlie, an eight-year-old from Manchester with a thick accent. Can I play, too? he asked, and that was enough to begin a friendship, my first. Charlie didn’t seem to show any hint of the wariness of the children at the virtually all-white school I attended in London. At the end of our first game, after maintaining a running commentary of every ball either of us played, and cheering me on with an enthusiasm that I instantly saw was genuine, he asked me my name.

  I don’t know why but I said it was George. George. George? How much more English can you get? I still don’t know why I did that. I can think of possible reasons, but I don’t know which one is most relevant. Shame? Or just that I didn’t want this boy who was nice to me to get my name wrong.

  One day, after I returned from practicing on the pool table by myself, my mother said, as she set down a plate of food in front of me, that three “white people,” a boy and his parents, had come by asking for George.

  Oh? I said. But I did not look up to meet her eye and we never spoke about it further. After that I was too ashamed to play with Charlie again and avoided him for the remaining few days of the vacation.

  * * *

  I let Hugh’s mispronunciation drop.

  I was born, I said, in Bangladesh, on the eastern side of India.

  Marvelous. Do you go back often?

  I’ve spent some years there.

  But your family�
�s moved here, has it?

  Yes.

  Political reasons? Let me guess—father’s a diplomat but the new regime was no longer friendly. Am I right?

  Politics is everywhere, I said, making as much sense as a drunk could stomach.

  Love India, said Hugh. Marvelous place. And I simply love curry. I’d curry everything if I could.

  Everything?

  Everything!

  Curry favor, too?

  What?

  Curry’s flavorful.

  Exactly!

  He exclaimed this as if I’d shared some terrific insight.

  What do you do here?

  I’m a lawyer.

  Immigration lawyer?

  I hesitated as a wicked thought tempted me.

  Yes, I said.* As a matter of fact, I’m back in India next week to give master classes on how to beat U.K. immigration controls. I don’t just do immigration, though. No, in two weeks, I’ll be in the High Court resisting an application from the Algerian government for the extradition of alleged terrorists from the U.K. Blew up a children’s hospital in Paris before bolting for Blighty. Guilty as sin, as far as I can tell. But we’re British, old chap, and they deserve a fair trial, don’t you think? Should be a lot of fun.

  Hugh looked shocked.

  More champagne, I said to him, raising my empty glass, and I walked off leaving him open-mouthed.

  For a while I stood against the bar, sipping my drink while viewing the crowd. More people arrived and I watched the women turn, almost as one, a ruffle across the room, to look at the newcomers. They only glanced at the males, but as they looked over the new females joining the herd, their eyes screwed into points and their brows tightened, each touching her own hair. Nothing bears as much severity, as much unsparing regard, as one woman’s appraisal of another.

  The man standing next to me at the bar turned to face me. It was the tall blond who had promised to introduce Emily to his friend at the Foreign Office.

  Funny, isn’t it? he said.

  What is? I replied.

  The way they size each other up. They can’t help it.

  Human, don’t you think?

  He extended his hand. The name’s Toby.

  Zafar.

  We shook.

  What do you do, Zafar?

  I looked at him and wondered how this might go. He’d pronounced the name correctly.

  Have a guess.

  He looked me up and down but returned to my face and lingered on it.

  A writer?

  A good guess, I said.

  Somehow I was flattered. It was pleasant to be regarded as a writer, and, I thought, something of an improvement on lawyer.

  Your turn, he said.

  Toby was wearing jeans, a white shirt with double cuffs, brown moccasins, and an expensive watch.

  I have no idea.

  You can do better than that.

  You don’t do anything.

  Toby laughed.

  That’s not far off the mark, he said.

  Then quickly changing the subject he said, You noticed the women?

  Don’t they want to be noticed?

  Again Toby chuckled.

  No, he continued, I meant you saw how they all looked at the women coming in.

  I was warming to Toby.

  Except one, he added.

  Oh, yes?

  Yes, that woman over there. He motioned with his head. She didn’t turn at all.

  He took a sip of his drink, a martini.

  Spoke to her earlier. She’s Emily Hampton-Wyvern, you know.

  Ah, I said. Apparently it was a name one was supposed to know.

  Huge flirt.

  Really?

  Yes, kept staring me in the eye. Funny she didn’t look at the other women.

  Why’s that?

  Well, you’d expect a flirt like that to size up the competition, wouldn’t you?

  Apparently, I thought, I was bound to know her name but not know her in person. Was I merely among them but not of them?

  I was conscious of race but as an awareness of difference, sometimes uneasiness, sometimes an irritation with others for their failure to see beyond it. In social situations, though, the ruling emotions had nothing to do with race and everything to do with things these people might not have noticed at all, but for those signs I leaked from every pore, the betrayal of my own doing. Race never undermined me from within; it was rather the invisible things coalescing that brought on a private humiliation. The invisible possessed my heart with shame.

  For a long time, I didn’t want to believe it to be true; I couldn’t bear the thought that it might have some objective reality, that there was something in the essence of my self that divided me from them. Either I was imagining it or I was behaving in a way that caused it—and of course, I thought, I could change my behavior, I will change my behavior. It wasn’t the lack of Jermyn Street shirts or the wrong haircut or anything so superficial that put the distance between me and them, I thought, but it was rather something else they saw. They saw the way my eyes moved, my eyes watched, they saw through the scholarship boy who’s always afraid he’s going to trip up so he grabs every piece of information around him, every gesture, and reads every sign—because reading is what he does. They saw that none of it came naturally to me but was arranged by an effective mind, and because it was arranged and considered, measured and oblique, they saw the workings of design, the sweat of labor, and not the effortless charm of superior origins.

  * * *

  I listened to Zafar attentively without interrupting him, much as I wanted to. I had no clear question but only a vague uneasiness with this unfamiliar face—or, rather, faces—this fluctuation from crystal clarity of exposition to a barely restrained fury. Anger is not an emotion I’ve had much truck with, not in family life and not even at work, where, contrary to the popular image, the trader and banker is more egghead than hothead. Anger makes me uncomfortable; anger, when it shakes off the authority of a human being and breaks out, is disturbing. And that is what the anger of my friend felt like to me, a man whom I had thought the model of self-possession. I had seen him angry, properly angry, only once before. We were riding the subway in New York, the uptown number 2 train, standing in the aisle. Zafar was looking down at a young man, dressed like a corporate lawyer or banker, who was reading from a wad of papers. Seated next to him was a young black man in baggy jeans and a loose-fitting bomber jacket. His frame stretched across two seats, though for all his sprawling recumbence he looked uncomfortable. Zafar was peering down at the papers of the lawyer type: the words Innocence Initiative were printed at the top of the page and below them Case Evaluation. Even I knew that Innocence Initiative was a nonprofit that took up cases of miscarriages of justice.

  Is that what I think it is? Zafar smiled at the man.

  The young man nodded and smiled back at Zafar.

  But Zafar’s face turned nasty.

  What the hell do you think you’re doing reading this in public, in full view of people on this train?

  Zafar was shouting and the whole carriage was looking.

  You shouldn’t be reading it here, you goddamn idiot. Do you know who I am? I’m a partner in a law firm* and you better hope my date this evening goes well because that’s just about the only thing that’ll make me forget to call your boss and have your silly little ass tomorrow. Do you understand?

  The poor man was visibly shaking.

  Now get off the train, said Zafar.

  The ferocity of the attack was frightening and, rather foolishly, I thought I might be next in the firing line.

  So who’s the date? I asked, attempting humor.

  Zafar gave me a look of disappointment.

  I admire your respect for confidentiality, I added meekly.

  You really think that’s what gets me, breach of fucking confidentiality?

  Isn’t it?

  I tell you who that guy is. He’s some new associate at a corporate law firm who gets to jack o
ff from doing a bit of pro bono work. If he’d been sitting there reviewing merger docs for Citibank, I wouldn’t have said a thing. But he wouldn’t have read Citibank docs in public. The case files of convicts, that’s different. He thinks so little of those sad bastards that he doesn’t care tuppence about their confidentiality and he thinks no one else does. That’s what gets me. Want to sit down?

  Zafar installed himself in the newly vacated seat. The young man in baggy jeans had shrunk to one space, freeing up another for me.

  * * *

  I looked at him now, discussing a party that sounded like any of a number of parties in West London I’ve attended over the years, agreeable enough though ultimately inconsequential, and I began to understand another Zafar, older than the one I had known, someone who had been emergent all the while.

  You were at that party, by the way, he remarked. You came in shortly before I left and introduced me to Crane Morton Forrester.

  Of course. Crane came in that morning, I said.

  I remembered it fairly well. I had thought that Crane would like Zafar, though had I been asked why, at the time, I might not have answered very convincingly. The two men, Zafar and Crane, had little obviously in common. But knowing what I now know, I wonder whether I had unconsciously perceived something that they both shared. Crane became a soldier, and a soldier, like my grandfather, is a man of violence, socialized and conditioned to be aggressive, but in his heart a man who might have been first in his tribe to venture onto the plains to hunt and first to defend the tribe at home. Though I might not have been able to put it into words, it seems likely that I sensed both men’s inclination toward survival.

  Crane joined the Marines, I said, remembering a conversation I had had with his father before he did so.

  He died in Afghanistan, I added. It was in the news—his father’s a senator.

  I know, said Zafar. I know.

  * * *

  In her mother’s drawing room, Emily was championing me because she knew the West London set intimately, she knew its ways, its connections, and she knew how it gathered into itself its own, sprinkling them with the blessings of privilege. And she knew how it could be otherwise. A year in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had opened her eyes, she said in not so many words. How could it not? How could anyone so British remain unaffected by the encounter with people who ate, drank, breathed, and swam in ideas. People did not flow to that city in some continuum of unthinking tradition—Eton and Oxford—but answered the summons of ideas and learning, a call to prayer for the honest, people who showed no deference to breeding, manners, or detachment. They didn’t care for detachment. Ideas and learning should excite, should make you angry or elated, and why not show that?