In this extract from Red Laal, Kilo is on a plane to Pakistan and finds himself sat with three lads from Keighley who quietly impress him.
I found myself on a plane, sharing a centre aisle row with a trio from Keighley, a part of Bradford that thinks it’s not. Once in country, these boys would connect, feel heritage, trace roots. Good lads. Decent lads, honest and full of respect. Not what I was used to. I see kids who aspire but can’t be arsed, only living to get their deal on, only believing they’ve done something with their lives once they’re out there and living the dream – dealing slick and chatting quick, slapping their bitches up side their heads, showing more love for their rides than they did for their mothers. Look around and you see them. Maybe they’re kids, maybe they have no idea about nothing, and maybe it’s poverty and maybe it’s a shitty home life, bad role models, biased media. And maybe I don’t believe a word of it but let’s just say it is all that. If it is, then those three had me curious, wondering where and how they fit into the scheme of things, wondering how they escaped the world of the gangster even though it surrounded them.
Keighley, or K-Town as they called it, had a reputation. Always had been good for drugs and thugs, and it existed years before my time. Must have got off the bus early, these three, caught the train instead and were well on their way to good and honest living. Under twenty, single and, of all things, studying serious. One doing Economics, another Pharmacy and the third making a sound like Sport Psychology, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.
‘Whereabouts in Keighley?’
‘Just off Lawkholme Lane,’ said the would-be Pharmacist.
I passed through it a few times. One of those spots that’s more Pakistani than Pakistan and that’s no bad thing. Nicer than some parts of Bradford and friendlier, too. People still hang their washing out across the streets, doors stay unlocked all night without worry, not a whiff of that middle-class snobbery that people in Bradford are adopting faster than haggish celebrities can buy foreign kids. As working-class as flat caps, black puddings and whippets, the modern-day equivalents being Nikes, pizzas tasting like curries and Staffordshire pit bulls.
‘So which one of you three is getting hitched?’ I ventured.
As one, they burst out laughing.
‘Wouldn’t be surprised if it was all of you.’
They laid their knowledge on me, dropping science hot enough to burn a hole through my hands.
‘That thing, it might have happened in your day, but not now, Brother.’
My day? Hell, barely a decade older than them, if that. Shit, we couldn’t have been all that different.
‘I got married yesterday,’ I said.
Surprised and intrigued, the Sport Psychologist asked more.
‘You divorced before?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Widowed?’
‘Nope.’
The Economist in the making reckoned up a calculation.
‘Second wife, right, Bruv?’
The other two smiled with him. A reasonable guess, I suppose, plural marriage. Could have easily been the case for me had my old man’s plan run smooth. Married at eighteen, a wife who didn’t understand why I was such a fuck up, an absent father a year later despite any real connection with her indoors. For comfort, understanding and companionship, I’d take a second wife. One of my own choice, one I loved. My first wife, she’d hate me and so would my child. At least my way, getting out and staying single, I made sure the fuck ups were my own.
‘I’m what you might call a late developer.’
The flight attendant came around with peanuts and drinks. We settled on tiny cans of pop, unlike the bunch of young aapnay a few rows in front of us, already on their way to getting pissed, already the plane fools.
‘So where is she?’
‘She’s coming in a few days.’
‘Congratulations then, Bruv.’
High fives all round.
‘You lads, you got your own things going on? Your folks, they cool with you guys courting?’
‘It’s not like that,’ the Pharmacist said, taking off his glasses, breathing on a lens, giving it a wipe. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Not on, is it? Can’t be having no improper relations before marriage.’
The other two nodded like a pair of monks. These three, they weren’t just rare, they were unreal.
‘We connect with our parents. My dad, he speaks better English than me. He knows the score. He knows he can’t make me marry someone I don’t want to marry. You feel me?’
‘Oh yeah,’ I nodded. ‘I feel you alright.’
‘Easy to explain, Bruv,’ said the Economist.
‘Go for it.’
‘One, marriage without consent is invalid. Our parents, they know that because they seen it themselves. Two, in case they forego one, there’s no future in it, Bruv.’
It’s been hitting the fan a while, now, boys and girls from here hitched to boys and girls from there. Used to be a done deal with no way out. Shit happens. Used to happen. Now, it’s divorce left, right and centre. As the boy said, no damned future in it but as fucked up as it is, there’s still enough of the old guard preferring another time, another place and another way of doing things.
Most lads I know, they don’t really talk. They shout and yell and throw in a few curses for the hell of it. Not an ounce of civility. Just the rush, the urgency to speak and be heard even if it is meaningless, pointless and mostly annoying crap being spewed. With these guys, there wasn’t any of that. I enjoyed their company and the topics they discussed. Turns out it was the same kind of shit I’d been wondering about for years.
‘You know what I hate? I hate that they don’t trust us. White people, they’re on red alert and so are we,’ said the Sport Psychologist, not emotional, not worked up. Just tired.
‘I’m always ready,’ mused the Pharmacist. ‘If something happens, a bomb or something, I’m gonna be talking to white people, saying how bad it is, telling them how sorry I am.’
The Economist laughed.
‘Idiot.’
‘Being serious, guy. They want for us to prove that we’re not evil.’
‘But we’re not evil.’
‘Which is why they need to be told. Someone’s got to make the effort.’
‘How does acting like a bunch of pussies prove we’re not evil?’
The fear, of beard and burkha alike, it’s not gone away yet and maybe it never will. It’s not just the obvious ones to fear, it’s all of us. If we’re not white, we sure aint right. So this is where we’ll stay. Not quite human, incapable of being painted normal and we can’t be ignored. We have to be watched. All the time, like the Pharmacist pussy said, being asked to prove yourself as loyal, as safe and above all, as one of us, is reasonable. Are you sure you don’t want to blow yourself up? You sure you’re not on Jihad? You sure you don’t hate everyone who’s not like you? You sure you’re not the enemy within? You really sure about that? Some people, they got more trust for their dogs than they have for people who even look like the enemy. Inside every one of us there’s something dangerous and it freaks the fuck out of them. That kind of thinking isn’t so new and doesn’t go away on its own. That shit, it’s eternal or as good as.
‘When I first grew my beard, people I’d known all my life started to panic. I’m like, I’m no fanatic, I’m no suicide bomber. I’m just, you know, a normal lad.’
No lie, no hiding this truth. Shit, even to a blind man, they were as Yorkshire as Ilkla Moor, with or baht ’at. Normal. Just normal lads going about their normal lives. Food, football, family, work, life, death and all the little bits in between. No bomb-making factory, no death to the West routine. Clean living, smart thinking, law abiding and, let’s be fair, pretty fucking boring when all’s said and done. And there was me, thinking the species had been long extinct. There was me, thinking my old man was the last of them.
