Heaven's Promise by Paolo Hewitt Page B

placed the jacket under his arm and nodded his agreement.
    The Portobello Cafe is a small West Indian joint where it takes ages to get your order dealt up but once it arrives and you take a bite, your impatience suddenly disappears as the flavour flav of the food invades your mouth.
    As we strolled in, I heard a soft voice from one of the tables beside me, say, ‘ah ah,’ and knew that it could only be Daddy Cecil, a serious young dude whose mocking humour had been devised for no other purpose than to casually and purposefully wound you.
    â€˜Why, it’s the I Spy boys in the flesh,’ he said with an engaging grin for this was Daddy Cecil’s nickname for us and the only acquaintance we knew to make a song and dance about the fact that Brother P. and I carry different skin colours, a trait of Daddy Cecil’s that is derived from his ambition in life to become the first British black leader to lead his people into total separation from the white man.
    Daddy Cecil had adopted the Muslim faith many crescent moons ago and had put his all behind the teachings and guidance of Minister Louis Farrakhan, the leader of America’s Nation Of Isla m, whose audio and video tapes Daddy Cecil studied, examined and memorised, a member of his family in New York shipping over a new batch every three months or so.
    When the tapes arrived, Daddy Cecil would invite his posse over to his yard for study time and late into the night they would parlare about such items as the white man as the devil, how Ethiopia was the cradle of civilization and not Greece, the place of the black woman in society, the commercialisation of black music by the music industry, the representation of blacks within cinema, and a hundred other subjects, with constant reference being made to the works of people such as Marcus Garvey, Patrice Lamumba, Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X. and up to date cats such as the Reverend Al Sharpton. Daddy Cecil and the boys dressed downstyle but with a definite Afro-centric flavour, proudly sporting their African pendants, beads and Muslim hats to make their position in public loud and clear, and although there were few numbers in their team, Daddy Cecil’s undoubted charisma and passing resemblance to a young Muhammad Ali, marked him out as numero uno in his outfit.
    On the occasions that I had parlared with him, Daddy Cecil always adopted a patronising attitude, so I never gave him trust, nor did my closest companion, Brother P., who found his arguments on racism clear and correct but his proposed solution totally unrealistic and, in some ways, slightly humorous.
    He told me, ‘boy, us Caribbean people have enough trouble getting along with each other, let alone anybody else.’
    What the Brother P. had hit upon was truer than true and not just confined to his people. Many was the time that Papa, over a quick capo in the afternoon break, would lament about the Northern Italians who always dissed his people in the South, or, indeed, take this fair land with its North /South bickering running up and down its spine, and this amongst people of the same hue and complexion. All I knew is that it always suits someone somewhere to have the people at each other’s throats and exploit their tribal allegiances over the most dumbest of arguments and, on top of that, you can’t help but notice how people love to box up and label, like a birthday present, everything in this world just so that they can make sense of it all and know where they stand.
    â€˜So what’s up, I Spy boys?’
    â€˜Cool, man.’
    â€˜Safe.’
    â€˜Sit, have a drink. Tell me how things are,’ Daddy Cecil requested although he had addressed all his wordage to Brother P. and hardly glanced at me, although we knew each other from around the clubs.
    â€˜They allowing you to make a buck?’ he asked the Brother P. as we pulled out chairs to the table.
    â€˜I allow for myself,’ came the