‘St Trinian’s’, he called it, or ‘the Kingdom of Pubescent Girls’. He made sure to warn Harry that he’d be envied – hated, he meant – for his gifts, charm and ease, as he got older, and that he should conceal but not suppress his virtues. Harry didn’t then understand what his father meant.
His father had a superb library: philosophy, psychology, fiction, art. That was that, for Harry; he developed himself there. Not that he didn’t miss his mother; he was still angry with her, to say the least, which was how she remained alive and active in his mind. What he didn’t want was her sitting at the end of his bed when he was alone in the country.
Now he sped through the dark winding lanes, and then ran from the car. Soon he was at the warm bar of a busy pub, and others were turning to him, the stranger, the curiosity that everyone seemed to know about. People gathered round. Apparently the locals – farmers and ageing rock stars who lived in the big houses, and their fans who lived in smaller places – were keen to hear about ‘the writer’.
Was it true Mamoon had no friends? Was he cruel to his wife, violent even? Was he a devil-worshipper? More importantly, was he really broke? And wasn’t it true that he had certainly made the most of the country which had welcomed him, and where his talent had been allowed to flourish? Hadn’t he complained too much? Had he ever been sufficiently grateful?
Nothing can be still while it lives in the minds of others, including, of course, a character and reputation. It didn’t take long, Harry saw, for a personality to enlarge and inflate, as the subject became what others preferred him to be. Like Harry’s mother, Mamoon had travelled beyond and above himself, a process Harry himself was now correcting but also abetting, in his own way. What was a person then, but a self which travelled between private fantasy and public creation?
Hadn’t Mamoon been in that place for Harry when he read and reread Mamoon’s interviews, profiles and essays in Playboy , Rolling Stone and Esquire as a young man? That Mamoon had willingly journeyed into the darkness of the contemporary world itself, and returned with testimony, witness and thought, revealed an intrepid man who was a conquistador, determined to expose and explain the harshest truths. Wasn’t he the first to track, in the dark cities of northern Britain, the change in the Muslim community from socialist anti-racism to a radicalism built around a new worldwide form, a reactionary idea of Islam? His essay ‘The Axe of Ideology’had been crucial. Didn’t his analysis then go further, as he followed the trajectory of Islam from a form of liberation theology to a death cult demanding sacrifice, built around obedience to the law of the Absolute father?
Where was Harry in this now? Like Mamoon, Harry couldn’t just hold up the mirror; he had to explain why he was there, and what this man meant. His words had to keep the writer alive in the history of literature, however much he might want to kill him personally.
Glad to be out of the house, and to have alcohol in him, Harry felt more buoyant. The less he said to the locals the more he’d enjoy his evening. He did make the mistake of suggesting, to the irritation of those around him, and at the risk of appearing superior, that a good way to make contact with a writer might be to pass one’s eyes over his sentences. After this faux pas he thought it best to settle himself in a secluded corner of the bar where he could keep a look out for the local interest: the ardent young wife of a farmer bored by dipping sheep in antiseptic, or dragging on the udders of recalcitrant animals; or perhaps the partner of a long-distance lorry driver eternally delayed by a French strike.
Then he looked up; it was dim in the pub, but he saw what he wanted. His instinct had been correct. The skin game was on. He finished his drink. Before fetching another one, he went into the toilet,
His father had a superb library: philosophy, psychology, fiction, art. That was that, for Harry; he developed himself there. Not that he didn’t miss his mother; he was still angry with her, to say the least, which was how she remained alive and active in his mind. What he didn’t want was her sitting at the end of his bed when he was alone in the country.
Now he sped through the dark winding lanes, and then ran from the car. Soon he was at the warm bar of a busy pub, and others were turning to him, the stranger, the curiosity that everyone seemed to know about. People gathered round. Apparently the locals – farmers and ageing rock stars who lived in the big houses, and their fans who lived in smaller places – were keen to hear about ‘the writer’.
Was it true Mamoon had no friends? Was he cruel to his wife, violent even? Was he a devil-worshipper? More importantly, was he really broke? And wasn’t it true that he had certainly made the most of the country which had welcomed him, and where his talent had been allowed to flourish? Hadn’t he complained too much? Had he ever been sufficiently grateful?
Nothing can be still while it lives in the minds of others, including, of course, a character and reputation. It didn’t take long, Harry saw, for a personality to enlarge and inflate, as the subject became what others preferred him to be. Like Harry’s mother, Mamoon had travelled beyond and above himself, a process Harry himself was now correcting but also abetting, in his own way. What was a person then, but a self which travelled between private fantasy and public creation?
Hadn’t Mamoon been in that place for Harry when he read and reread Mamoon’s interviews, profiles and essays in Playboy , Rolling Stone and Esquire as a young man? That Mamoon had willingly journeyed into the darkness of the contemporary world itself, and returned with testimony, witness and thought, revealed an intrepid man who was a conquistador, determined to expose and explain the harshest truths. Wasn’t he the first to track, in the dark cities of northern Britain, the change in the Muslim community from socialist anti-racism to a radicalism built around a new worldwide form, a reactionary idea of Islam? His essay ‘The Axe of Ideology’had been crucial. Didn’t his analysis then go further, as he followed the trajectory of Islam from a form of liberation theology to a death cult demanding sacrifice, built around obedience to the law of the Absolute father?
Where was Harry in this now? Like Mamoon, Harry couldn’t just hold up the mirror; he had to explain why he was there, and what this man meant. His words had to keep the writer alive in the history of literature, however much he might want to kill him personally.
Glad to be out of the house, and to have alcohol in him, Harry felt more buoyant. The less he said to the locals the more he’d enjoy his evening. He did make the mistake of suggesting, to the irritation of those around him, and at the risk of appearing superior, that a good way to make contact with a writer might be to pass one’s eyes over his sentences. After this faux pas he thought it best to settle himself in a secluded corner of the bar where he could keep a look out for the local interest: the ardent young wife of a farmer bored by dipping sheep in antiseptic, or dragging on the udders of recalcitrant animals; or perhaps the partner of a long-distance lorry driver eternally delayed by a French strike.
Then he looked up; it was dim in the pub, but he saw what he wanted. His instinct had been correct. The skin game was on. He finished his drink. Before fetching another one, he went into the toilet,
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