by Hafsa Zayyan
It was not a lie. I met Manish Mehta at a public house and had my first alcoholic beverage. To this day, I do not know why I did it. Yes, I was not working and was waiting to go back to Uganda, but no more so than I had been in Belgium. Yes, I resented my family, the lot of them, but I was also quietly proud of them all. Yes, I was with an old friend, a friend who was not a Muslim, but that did not differ from Kampala. Perhaps it happened because I had stopped praying. There is a Hadith that says that when a man asked the Prophet (peace be upon him) why we pray five times a day, the Prophet replied that if a man is near a stream and washes five times a day, is it possible for the man to remain dirty? Something about this country has dirtied me and now I cannot clean myself.
People here treat us as if we are no different from the karias: black, brown or yellow – as long as you are not white – there is no distinguishing between any of us: we are all ‘coloured’. I have been called a black bastard and a nigger, words shouted at me across the street as I walked home from the pub, words spat at me on the bus. When a shop sign reads: ‘No Blacks. No Irish. No dogs’ it means no Asians too.
Sometimes I think upon how we treated the karias back home with a tinge of guilt. Is this how they felt? Certainly – surely – we were not openly racist like they are towards us here. This country’s National Front has its headquarters in Leicester. There are certain areas of the city that we simply cannot visit. They gather and chant, protesting our presence in their city. The group is led by skinheads with grotesque-looking tattoos and the hardest eyes you have ever seen, but it is not only these types that participate in the marches; there are also otherwise average white people, in their thousands. What have we done to disturb these people? What is it that we have done, by coming here, that so offends them? We are the immigrants, but they are the ones who feel displaced, somehow uprooted by our arrival. I have seen a mother and a child cross the street to avoid us; I have walked into a barber shop to have people wrinkle their noses and say loudly: Can you smell a Paki? My children are being called monkey and nig-nog and wog. My children are coming home from schools where they are not wanted, bruised and bleeding because they have been attacked for no reason other than that they are brown. And there is nothing I can do to protect them.
Tell me: is this country so different from Amin’s Uganda? Is there nowhere that we might be safe?
23
Sameer leaves for London without seeing – let alone speaking to – his father. His mother takes him to the train station and the journey is conducted in a steely silence. She parks the car in the usual side road, eyes forward. Finally, still looking ahead, hands clenched on the steering wheel, she says: ‘Are you really handing in your notice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you thought about this properly? Everything you’ve worked so hard for, everything you’ve achieved and are about to achieve, you want to throw it all away now for some woman you just met?’
‘But, Mum,’ he begins, and then stops. This is confusing and contradictory; they wanted him to quit his job – better yet, they tried to do it for him; they didn’t see his career as an achievement, they saw it as a failure of his familial duties. But now they have seen how much worse it could be – the dilution of their blood – they would rather have him in a job that they hated than with her. He shakes his head. There is no point in trying to explain the internal struggles he had had with his career choices, the emptiness that came with it, the desperate longing to be needed, the stark reality of being bullied. ‘I’ve got to go – I’m going to miss my train.’ He gets out of the car and doesn’t look back.
As he walks through the station, his fingers find their way to Maryam’s name: Leaving Leicester now, didn’t speak to Dad. It was a new feeling, this desire to share with her the fragments of his days, and to want to know what was happening in hers – it made him feel connected, like she was always with him, and this made him feel better about things; it gave him a confidence he didn’t otherwise have. He had worried at first how he would tell her about his parents’ reaction but when they’d spoken briefly on the phone the night before, it had all poured out: he had forgotten how easy she made it to talk. ‘It’s OK,’ she’d said. ‘I’m not surprised. Your taata’s father died here in our house. He has never liked us, of course.’ She did not say the other reason, but he knew that they were both thinking it. He’d forced himself to be cheerful, told her that with time they’d come round, and she’d given him such an assured ‘Of course they will’ that he’d almost believed it himself.
Now that he’s on his way to London, he rereads the email he drafted the night before. He’d never done this before; he’d had to google what to say: Sameer Saeed – Notice of Resignation. It looks OK. He presses send.
There is no going back now; it zooms irretrievably out of his draft items and is done. Within minutes, there is an email from Deb setting up a meeting with Chris and his partner mentor later that afternoon. That’s it then. The time has come. He ponders, briefly, what has led him to this moment; how only a few short months ago he had seen the way his life was going to play out, endlessly reaching for the next goal, and now, it stretches ahead of him, empty – but, strangely, feels fuller than it ever did before. An old man takes a seat across from him, perhaps Mhota Papa’s age, perhaps older. There are so many lines in the man’s face and hands that it almost looks unnatural. Sameer watches as the man sets down a paper bag on the table and carefully retrieves a takeaway cup of tea, a small plastic spoon, sugar, milk. Each item is dealt with slowly and with great concentration: this is not the making of a cup of tea, but the delicate repair of a watch. Swollen fingers open a sachet of sugar, measure it out into a plastic spoon, and tip it in. Milk next: the foil lid is peeled back, gently, an amount is dribbled, trembling, into the dark liquid. The mixture is stirred thrice clockwise, and twice anticlockwise; the spoon is lifted and tapped softly and very carefully against the side of the cup. There is such dignity and vulnerability in the whole episode that Sameer has to look away.
It’s the first time he has been to the flat in over a month; he thought he would have missed it, but it feels like a stranger. His things, just the way he left them – Barker shoes, rudely sitting just behind the front door having not been tucked away neatly before he left; work pass, thrown onto the bed; cufflinks resting on the bedside table – untouched, but he feels like they belong to someone else. He studies himself in the full-length mirror – the suit he is wearing fits extremely well against his body, which is a deep, healthy shade of brown – but he does not recognise himself. His tie is tied too tightly; it is choking him.
In Bagel Express, the eyes of the man behind the counter light up. ‘Long time no see,’ he says.
Sameer smiles. ‘Hey – how much for a fresh orange juice?’
‘Four pounds fifty,’ the man says, picking up a couple of pale, sad-looking oranges as he moves towards the juicer. Sameer takes a fiver out of his wallet and thinks of the number of oranges it would buy in Uganda.
The man hands him the juice. ‘Where’ve you been then?’ This is the first time they have attempted conversation; Sameer is surprised. The man has clearly missed his regular customer – or, more likely, the steady income flow.
‘I’m actually moving.’
‘Oh, right. Where to?’
‘Uganda.’
‘Where’s that then, Africa?’
Sameer nods. There is a small queue of people behind him now waiting to be served.
‘Why you off to Africa for?’
‘Long story,’ Sameer says apologetically, gesturing towards the queue. ‘I better go.’
The man nods. ‘Hey – I never knew your name,’ he says before Sameer can leave. ‘I’m John.’
‘Sameer.’
‘Good luck to you, Sameer,’ John says, beaming.
It is an odd sensation going back to the office after having been away for so long. Sameer expects people to stop him, to say: Sam, welcome back – we’ve missed you! But people go
about their days; no one at the reception looks twice; it is as if he never left. Ryan is sitting hunched over his computer screen, half asleep, and Sameer clears his throat loudly when he enters.
‘You’re back,’ Ryan says, head jerking up. There are huge bags under his eyes. ‘How was it?’
‘Are you OK?’ Sameer asks.
‘All-nighter,’ Ryan supplies, waving a hand towards the paper strewn across his desk, three mugs of half-drunk coffee, brown ring stains. ‘Supposed to sign today though, so … hopefully.’
Sameer cannot remember the password to log into his PC. He sits and stares at the screen. His brain has already shut him out. ‘It’s weird to be back,’ he says.
‘Feels like you were barely gone – six weeks goes quicker than you think. Been on this fucking deal for six weeks and barely slept, you know?’
‘I’ve actually got some news,’ Sameer says, as he types an email to IT from his phone to ask for a password reset.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know, Singapore, what, next week? Two weeks?’
‘No, actually. I’ve handed in my notice. I’m not going to Singapore any more.’
‘Wait, what?’ Ryan’s eyes snap up. ‘You’re serious?’
He nods.
‘You’re serious!’ The look of shock has been replaced by one of intrigue. ‘Hang on, who’s going in your place?’
‘No idea,’ Sameer says. Ryan has not asked him why he is leaving, what happened on his break, nothing; he’s interested in one thing only – whether he can use Sameer’s departure to benefit himself. But Sameer finds himself laughing inside. He really, truly, doesn’t care. He has let go of something – he doesn’t know what exactly – but he has let go and like a scrap of paper in the wind it has flown away.
The partners don’t let Sameer off as easily at the meeting later that afternoon. In fact, Chris is furious. ‘It’s a bit of a fucking joke,’ he says to Deb from human resources and Sameer’s partner mentor, David – a man he has spent approximately twenty minutes with in the last few years. Deb scratches her neck uncomfortably. ‘You can’t accept the Singapore gig, a position other associates would have killed for, telling us for months that you’re really up for it, and then turn round just before we’re due to send you and tell us you’ve decided not to go. It’s fucking out of order – you’ve completely left us in the lurch. And getting your parents to resign for you, then taking it back, and now resigning again – what exactly are you playing at, Sam?’
Sameer bites his lip. For some reason he doesn’t understand, he has to stifle the urge to laugh.
‘Well, he has the right, obviously, to leave,’ Deb says hastily, still scratching her neck.
‘The question is, why does he want to,’ David interjects softly. ‘We need to focus on what we can be doing to help you here, Sam, what we can do to make you stay. I think I can safely say that we would all be very sad to see you go.’ There is a snort from Chris. ‘Did you get a better offer elsewhere?’ David continues. ‘Why are you leaving, Sam?’
They all look at him.
He imagines trying to explain it to the group of people in front of him: Chris, a man who he is supposed to spend the next two years in Singapore with, but who has bullied him relentlessly for the past few months; David, a man assigned to be his ‘mentor’, but someone for whom he has never worked and to whom barely spoken, save for the perfunctory annual meeting to discuss his ‘progress and aspirations’; Deb, the pastoral intermediary, always there but hardly ever useful. He thinks about telling them how difficult it has been to work with Chris, a man who has treated him differently to the way he treated everyone else, who spat on him every chance he got, who has made him feel like an outsider. A man who has been, quite frankly, racist. He thinks about telling them how the job had left him unfulfilled, how gruelling he’d found the hours, how it couldn’t possibly be sustainable long term. But then he looks at their expectant faces and he remembers the number of colleagues he’s watched come and go. The firm had never changed and is never going to change, so what’s the point in wasting his energy? Pragmatism takes hold: why burn a bridge for no reason? And, still, at the back of his mind, it remains: the sliver of doubt that maybe there’s nothing wrong with Chris; maybe there was something wrong with him.
‘I’m leaving the law,’ Sameer finally says. ‘Going to do something completely different.’
There is a collective sigh of relief (even from Chris). It is always a relief to know that it is not us – we are not the reason he has chosen to leave – it’s more that he isn’t suited to the job itself. If he isn’t going to be a lawyer here, then he certainly can’t be a lawyer anywhere else.
Even then, this reaction is somehow disappointing. A part of him had wanted them to beg him to stay; he had wanted the chance to wield power over them for once; he had wanted to leave believing that he was part of the lifeblood of the firm. But the truth was that he was far from indispensable; he was just another fungible resource, like the paper in the printer, or the staples in the stapler, something that was needed and, if absent, would be inconvenient, but was ultimately replaceable. With this thought, he says: ‘I don’t really think it makes sense for me to work my full notice period, seeing as I was supposed to be going to Singapore in a couple of weeks? But I will do whatever is required, of course.’
There is a short discussion; the matter will need to be signed off by management, but they do not see any reason why he should be required to complete his notice period. Chris’s arms are folded, his face stern; they don’t leave the room when Sameer does and he knows that they will be talking about him afterwards.
He goes straight from the meeting room to the lift and exits the building. As he steps through the revolving doors, Sameer knows that he won’t be returning. The sun has appeared from behind a gap in the clouds and he sees a streak of startling blue backdropped against the grey structures of London. He never knew that this job had weighed so heavily upon him until he let it go; he had never understood.
While he waits for his working visa to come through, Sameer stays in London. There’s no one in London (and Jeremiah still hasn’t replied to Sameer’s last message, despite being seen online) but at least here he can spend his days working on the business and speaking to Maryam without being disturbed. He finds himself desperate to speak to her and worked up if he cannot: his loneliness breeds a neediness that surprises him and that he cannot suppress.
There is one other person with whom Sameer is in regular contact: Mr Shah, who is delighted to hear that Sameer will be returning to Kampala. ‘I’m going to help you to set up this juice business, son,’ he said over the phone. When Sameer told Mr Shah that his parents were not so happy about his decision, Mr Shah’s reaction was: ‘Well, I’m sure they’d be happier if they knew you were being well looked after – and at least that is something I can provide.’ He had been glad that Mr Shah could not see the colour rising to his face. He had not lied, but at the same time he had not told Mr Shah the entire truth. It didn’t seem like the right time to tell him about Maryam.
His mother called him once, begging him to reconsider. Sameer listened as she wailed down the phone. He had asked her not to cry, but he felt cold somehow, empty. Something between them had snapped irreversibly. His parents had lost their power over him.
When Jeremiah finally contacts him, it’s a relief: he thought that perhaps he’d been cast aside, that Jeremiah had moved on to cooler, better friends, but no: So sorry, bro, it’s been CRAY. Loads to tell u – drink? and they arrange to meet at a rooftop bar in London Bridge. Sameer looks forward to the evening with excited anticipation: he’s really missed his friend. But Jeremiah arrives at the bar with a woman on his arm, and Sameer has to force a smile to hide his disappointment that he did not come alone.
‘Sam, bro, it’s been ages,’ Jeremiah says, throwing an arm around Sameer’s shoulder. Sameer’s fingers touch the surface of Jeremiah’s jacket, a suede that is so soft it feels like fur. His eyes quickly scan Jeremiah head
to toe: new haircut, new watch, the latest Off-Whites. He looks so good – in fact, every time Sameer sees Jeremiah, he looks better. Is this just Jeremiah now: forever improving? He wonders what Jeremiah thinks of how he looks, but he doesn’t ask because the woman is there. ‘Sam, meet Angela,’ Jeremiah nudges the woman. ‘Sam is one of my day ones,’ he says to her.
‘So nice to meet you,’ Angela steps forward, embracing him with her bosom, which is tightly packed into a low-cut leopard-print top.
‘Good to finally meet you,’ he says, recognising her now from the Instagram page Jeremiah had shown him. ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ he adds, thinking that this is a nice thing to say.
They are seated with a view of the Thames snaking its way through the city beneath them, the panorama of London’s icons backlit and glowing with yellows and blues. Sameer smiles wistfully as he thinks that perhaps, a year or so ago, the three of them might have been him, Jeremiah and Rahool. He feels a pang of tenderness for his old life in London.
‘Shall we get a bottle?’ Jeremiah asks, flicking through the wine list.
‘I’m not drinking, actually,’ Sameer says.
‘Oh, really?’ Jeremiah looks up. ‘Why not?’
‘I’ve stopped.’
‘I’ve heard that one before,’ Jeremiah says, grinning. ‘But it’s not Ramadan again, right? I swear that was only a few months ago …’
‘Actually I think I’m stopping for good,’ Sameer says, surprising himself, as before this evening, he had not consciously decided that this was what he wanted to do. At this realisation, he repeats: ‘Yes, I’m stopping for good.’
‘You found God in Uganda, huh? Good for you, bro.’
And that is Jeremiah. No judgement, no questions – just acceptance. Sameer wonders if he will ever make a friend like Jeremiah in Uganda.
