Bad Boys

“You can do it, Kurt,” they said.

“Yeh, well, talking comes easy enough,” I said. “It’s putting stuff down on paper that’s the problem.”

We were in the old Queen Vic pub on the corner of Brick Street and Park Road and argued about it for a while. “You’re the literary genius, Kurt,” Kevin said. “At school you even beat Fu Manchu from the Golden Gate takeaway who reckoned he spoke like Prince Charles.”

“Kurt’s got hidden talents,” Walid said.

“And style,” Winston said.

“And he knows some real big words,” Cass said.

“And he’s just had a real cool haircut,” Kevin added.

“Yes, well, I admit to some superior features,” I said. “They flow through my veins. It’s my African genes. As for my vocabulary, it improved exponentially after I moved from the cess pit around here to north London.”

“See? I told you,” Cass said to the others. “You need long words like that to write a book.”

“You should all visit Edmonton,” I said. “It’s even more culturally and ethnically diverse than Brick Street and Park Road. We even allow Jews, Aussies, white South Africans and Mormons in. And there’s a whole street for those who still haven’t worked out who they are or where they came from. And as a change from attending the Park Street Mosque, you could always try the Ministry of Mountain, Fire, and Miracles run by Pastor Jerry.”

To further illustrate my claim of North London’s rich, cultural diversity, I told them about a guy from Vanuatu who’d taught me a whole lot of new phrases. I could tell no one had ever heard of Vanuatu but Walid was the only one who admitted it. I told him it was the island in the Pacific Ocean, where Robinson Crusoe got washed up. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it didn’t matter because they then wanted to know who Robinson Crusoe was. Of course, we then spent ten minutes discussing how the hell anyone could know anything since the Council shut the library. And you could only download stuff from Amazon with a credit card, and you couldn’t get a credit card because of a non-existent credit rating.

“Anyway, they’ve cancelled history,” Winston said. “Nothing good ever happened. It was all bad, so why depress people even more? It’s social engineering.”

“And white supremacists like Gordon and Roger,” Winston joked.

“Gordon’s not a supremacist,” Walid said defending his boss. “He’s never moved from Park Road, let alone been a slave trader.”

Of course, we then discussed slavery, exploitation, rape and pillage and decided that the new colonialists were the Chinese and that the Arabs in the Gulf used Bangladeshis and Pakistanis as slaves. All of which led to discussing how the Pakistanis around Park Road had enslaved Kevin, who was neither black, white, yellow, or brown but a sort of medium beige with long eyelashes. Luckily for Kevin, though, he’d been rescued by Roger, an old white truck driver who wore a funny hat and definitely wasn’t a supremacist.

We then agreed that it was Gordon who’d rescued Walid who is Syrian, that Willie our old maths teacher had rescued Winston who is Nigerian and that a Buddhist monk had put Cass, a reluctant Moslem, on the road to enlightenment. As for who rescued me, Kurt, - well, we’ll come to that. But going around in circles makes you so dizzy you don’t know where you’re heading, so I decided to revert back to Vanuatu.

“I reckon it’s where Bear Grylls learned how to light a fire with sticks,” I said, “And it’s got a real cool motto.”

“What has?” Winston asked.

“Vanuatu,” I said. “Keep up, man. They’ve got this high-profile black guy in a loin cloth and a spear called Long God Yumistanap.”

“Is that the guy who taught you how to speak?” Kevin asked.

“If he ever existed at all, then Long God Yumi’s long gone, Kev. No, I mean the guy I met in Edmonton. Now that you’ve got your freedom from homegrown slave owners you really need to get out more, Kev.”

“Go on then. Prove you can speak it,” Walid said.

“Speak what?” I asked.

“Vanuatooty or whatever,” Walid said.

“Proses fud mak causem plenty sik,” I said and, of course, the four dumbasses stared at me, as if I was making it up. “Processed food makes you sick,” I translated. “Don’t you understand any Vanuatu lingo?”

Winston was the only one who understood. Winston came from Lagos, you see, and he often talks pidgin. “Speaking Vanuatu pidgin so no one understands is a black guy’s privilege,” I said.

“I thought black Africans didn’t have any privileges because white supremacists stole everything,” Kevin said.

“Not true,” I said. “I got plenty of privileges. I’m not like you mixed-race heathens. I’m a pure-bred black with genuine African roots that go back to Voodoo days. It was us who invented religion by prancing around fires and waving sticks with ostrich feathers stuck in our curls and wearing more organic make-up than you find in Holland and Barrett’s. Life was simple then and more fun. Now look—everyone’s totally confused. Have you ever seen a more miserable bunch of untidy-looking wretches than those that emerge from Park Road Mosque on Fridays? They’re supposed to look happy and fulfilled, man. They’re supposed to emerge looking content and motivated and set up for the weekend with plans for shopping at Tesco and evenings watching Simon Cowell.”

Walid tried to explain. “They’re probably deep in thought, Kurt,” he said.

“If they came out dancing, singing, and waving black flags and Kalashnikovs like the guys I met, you’d be worried,” Cass added.

Coming from Cass, who had recently survived Kalashnikovs and black flags in Turkey and Syria, that line of conversation stopped dead. We stared at him and went quiet for a few seconds but it was long enough for me to reflect on religion.

Cass had definitely got no moral guidance from the gun-waving fanatics he’d had the misfortune to get mixed up with, which explains why he kept mentioning the Buddhist monk he’d met in Thailand after he escaped.

As for me, I’d experienced some casual Christianity when I was about seven because my mother knew a lot of West Indian guys who liked wearing suits on Sundays. But when I read that the Archbishop of Canterbury had spouted some shit about God not being a celestial insurance policy, I began to wonder what’s the point of religion if it’s not to provide structure, moral guidance and direction in your life.

As for Kevin, well, he was totally messed up until Roger came on the scene. We all knew he’d missed a lot of school when he was a kid, but we didn’t know why and, being kids, we didn’t ask. It was Roger who, having taken Kevin under his wing, delved into the reasons behind Kevin’s problems and then exposed the sinister goings on around Park Road that the authorities had been turning a blind eye to for a generation. Whoever thought an old truck driver would turn out better than the Archbishop of Canterbury? The only similarity between them, as far as I can see, is that they both wear funny hats.

“I’ll never stick with one God,” I said to break the silence and lighten my dark thoughts. “Personally, I’ve always gone for pick ‘n match.”

“Yeh, like picking up Jessie after school and matching her assets against Aisha’s. That what you mean?” Winston said.

“Don’t be flippant,” I said. “I’m talking about picking and matching from the table of delights we call black magic. Get to choose your ideal witch doctor, ghost, or genuine spirit. Sort the wheat from the chaff and check out those you’ve never heard of before. Look at you and me,” I said. “Black as night and eyes that see. You know why, Winston? It’s because of our sun God. It’s not like we prostrate ourselves before him. We stand tall, stand firm, and salute like soldiers. Standing up shows genuine respect and he reciprocates by giving us a decent sun tan. He takes no notice of false sun worship from your average white Anglo-Saxon because he knows they’re not genuine. Anything that fades within a week can never be the genuine article, man.”

That caused more discussion, of course, because while Winston was as black as me, Cass and Walid were brown, and Kevin was, as I’ve mentioned, beige with long eyelashes.

“Cass is a lot blacker than he was,” Kevin said stroking Cass’s arm as if it might rub off.

That was true. When I saw Cass, who none of us had seen for two years, I barely recognised him. He was not only burned black by sun but thin and dirty and covered in blisters and insect bites. And he smelled terrible. As it happens, when I caught up with him, I was none too clean myself but we’ll come onto that.

Walid piped up to say that sun worshipping was pointless. Even if he changed from non-practicing Moslem to happy Voodoo sun worshipper, he’d not seen the sun around Park Road for months. “And it’s your fault I live in this rainswept slum pit, Kurt,” he said.

“Sorry about that, Walid,” I said because it was true. With Gordon around to offer him a job, things had worked out OK for Walid but it was definitely my fault he’d come here and got mixed up with everything.

I then paused and sniffed a bit because I don’t like discussing my mother with mates. The fact is it was her fault I moved away aged fifteen or sixteen or whatever I was. She’d never been the settling down sort, you see. We often moved house but it was never far. We rotated between Park Road, Brick Street and around the corner in Shipley Street where Cass lived so she could pursue her career of providing comfort and solace to various male acquaintances in order to pay Mr Khan who was everyone’s landlord. But one day, instead of dragging stuff along the street and around the corner we hired a van. Three hours later I got introduced to my latest uncle. This guy was no Rasta like most of the others but an alcoholic Libyan with a habit of arriving home the worse for wear and desperate for a fight with whoever opened the door. I quickly decided to move out.

The chance came when I met Coolie outside Burger King. “A bit of peace and quiet. Know what I mean?” was what I told Coolie I was looking for. Coolie said I could bed down at his place if things got too bad. It was an attractive offer because Coolie was highly respected in the area. Coolie was from Abuja and was nineteen so he had two years more life experience than me. He wore brown Nike Manoa boots and a belt with a brass buckle like a skull the size of a dinner plate, and whether it was raining or snowing, he’d top it off with a Superdry vest with Chinese writing and a medallion nearly the same size as his buckle. Coolie looked the part.

“I need no altercations and fuss. Know what I mean?” I said in explaining my need for a move. “I need some mutual toleration and no friction.”

“This is the place, man,” Coolie confirmed like he was selling some upmarket real estate. “Guaranteed tranquillity.”

My liking for peace and tranquillity is something else I don’t normally discuss with mates. Noise was what I remember from when I was strapped in my stroller at age two. Despite the aggro at home, I did OK in school in Tottenham and at Woodlands School in Park Road though there were far too many women teachers. The one exception at Woodlands School was Willie Wilkins, the math teacher, Winston’s saviour. Willie was a bit special. Willie would divert from the set syllabus and we’d have a whole lesson on how long it would take to travel to Manchester and back if we took a train and a bus one way and walked all the way back or if the guy doing the walking was a paraplegic who could only crawl, a ninety-year-old David Beckham or Usain Bolt sprinting backwards dressed like Dame Edna Everage. I can still remember Willie’s joke about a one-legged hitchhiker. “What do you say to a one-legged hitchhiker? Hop in.”

On the other hand, I was thrown out of Ms. Edwards’s psychology lesson when I told her fourteen-year-old boys don’t fucking care whether psychology helps to understand social phenomena like gender dysphoria. I told her that just living out there did that. If she got out more, perhaps she’d understand that learning stuff like that was a load of crap and would one day turn a whole generation into rioting psychopaths.

Anyway, I was on one of my secret vigils to find some peace and tranquillity when I met Walid. He’d been sleeping on the grass in Pymmes Park in Edmonton. We got chatting, and I discovered he’d just arrived in London after hitching and walking all the way from Syria.

“Are you legal?” I asked him in a kind of whisper.

“I’m English, bro’” he said, though I could tell he was trying to enhance his London accent to impress. It wasn’t quite normal, but nonetheless, I was mightily impressed for an Arab-looking guy with a wispy stash and acne spots. “I started off in Catford, mate,” he added as if to impress me.

“You walked to Syria from Catford and back again?” I said, astonished. “Did you need the exercise?”

“Nah, nah,” he said without appearing to appreciate my wit. “I went out there with my mum. We stayed there a while and then she . . .”

And then he stopped so I guessed something had happened, but I didn’t like to pry. I now know what happened but we all have a few secrets. I certainly had a few that I wasn’t keen to talk about to a guy I’d just met in a park. But Walid seemed an OK sort of guy. He had a look in his eye that I put down to determination and when I spotted a curled-up copy of The Lord of the Rings in his backpack, I knew he had a brain.

So, Walid no longer needed a sun God or the mosque because Gordon had spotted something worth nurturing in Walid. Walid was on his way.

It was Roger who saw something in Kevin, gave him the confidence he so lacked and showed him the sun and the sky.

And it was Willie who opened up Winston. I remember Willie telling a group of us in school that a young man’s talents are, too often, stifled by the school system. They need to be recognised and nurtured not ignored he’d say. Willie is an unsung hero.

And Cass? Strangely enough, Cass says he’s a better man for having nearly died after spending two terrifying years in the hands of ISIL. “There is no darkness that cannot be erased by one small candle,” he told me. He’d never have said something like that when we were at Woodlands School so he’d obviously learned that from somewhere.

That night in the Queen’s Head, we decided we’d definitely record things for what Willie, Roger, and Gordon called posterity and took a vote on who should write it. Willie, Roger, and Gordon voted by phone. The result was unanimous. I, Courtney Lemar Delmont Learner, preferably known simply as Kurt, was to become an author.

***

Cass s problem started on one of those dull wet and windy days that seem to characterise everything about the area around Park Road.

Number 43, Shipley Street with its weed-strewn cobbles and council-owned trash bins had been Cass’s home for as long as he could remember. However, on that rainy Saturday afternoon two years ago, when he’d crept downstairs, opened the front door, and wandered away, it had changed his life forever.

When he turned the corner onto Brick Street, the only movement had been the dirty brown gutter water sweeping urban debris downstream. Plastic bags, cigarette ends, dead leaves, and other detritus from the maze of inner-city streets of Victorian brick terraces floated slowly past to gather in soggy piles at the first blocked drain. Strip lights shone inside the Cash for Clothes shop and behind the steamy front window of Osman’s Launderette. The dismal streets around Park Road were always like that.

If he’d found me, Winston, Mo, or Shaifiq sheltering like wet pigeons in the doorway of Raja’s Store or Hussein’s Money Exchange, it was unlikely he’d have stopped to chat. Cass had had enough of the stifling square mile of familiarity locally known as Park Road with its mosque, backstreets of broken pavements, boarded up properties and shabby corner shops like Mootalah’s that smelled of wet cardboard, overripe fruit, and wilting vegetables.

If he’d passed Bashir’s Asian Store and Kevin had happened to be outside stacking boxes of cucumbers for pocket money, things might have turned out differently. If he’d met Kevin, it’s likely Cass would never have stopped outside the shabby front window of Faisal World Travel on Park Road. But they hadn’t met, and so Cass had walked on and stopped, distracted by stickers advertising cheap flights to Dublin, Paris, and Amsterdam. Not only that but he’d gone inside and met the owner Mr. Khan.

It was Mr. Khan who’d then sold him a cheap air ticket to Turkey, which he bought in cash with savings from his part-time jobs. At the last minute, though, Khan had given him a parcel to give to his brother in Istanbul. The only other person who knew about the parcel was Kevin. It was Kevin who waved Cass off on the bus to the airport.