Enjoying the freshness of the autumn weather, Yasmina decided to walk to the British Library. She could not help thinking of Mark. She knew intuitively that this morning he was starting the most important chapter of his career. The significance of his experiments was all too obvious even for a layman. She wished him success. Yet somehow she could not suppress the feeling that there was an element of competition between them. Just the other day Mark had accused her, half teasingly, half seriously, of being jealous of his rapid progression on the academic ladder. Occasionally she resented that Mark regarded her as a solid platform, a support system for his advancement rather than an equal partner. This brought out the rebel in her and she was determined to make her reputation in modern history in her own right.
Passing in front of the houses of Chester Terrace, she banished these disturbing thoughts, and from the serenity of the park she resurfaced into the noise of the fast-flowing traffic of Albany Street. This was one of the many fault lines of London where two completely different worlds met: here the classical elegance and obvious, yet understated affluence of Regent’s Park collided with the tenements of a council estate. So near, yet so far: separated by only a few yards, these neighbours were living poles apart, inhabiting a different universe.
From a distance she could hear the demented barking of the siren of a police car speeding towards Euston with its light flashing. As she turned into Robert Street she came across young mothers who were accompanying their children to school. They were nearly all black or Asian. Hardly any white children. The atmosphere was sullen: no sign of camaraderie, no smiles and no friendly greetings. Several Muslim women wore headscarves; under a new law these were allowed but the burqua had been banned a long time ago for security reasons.
Crossing the road, she heard a child crying out. She slowed her steps and turned around. A few yards behind her a small girl of five or six was lying on the pavement. The wheels of her bicycle were still turning. Yasmina rushed to her and as she picked her up, the girl stopped crying and looked at her with wet uncomprehending eyes. She felt a surge of warmth and was about to ask whether she had hurt herself when the mother appeared on the scene, breathless. She was trailing a smaller boy behind her. An attractive Asian woman dressed in black, wearing a headscarf and heavily pregnant. Ignoring Yasmina, she turned to the little girl.
‘I did warn you – you should remain at my side! I turn away for a second and you cycle away like crazy. Don’t ever do it again!’ Her presence still unacknowledged, Yasmina wanted to compliment the mother on the beauty of her daughter but chose to remain silent. She felt rejection and even dislike emanating from this unknown woman whom she had never seen before. The stranger resented her, and the help she spontaneously offered was probably deemed to be an intrusion into her hermetic world. Lifting the bicycle, the woman finally said, barely looking at her: ‘Thank you,’ and ushered the girl away.
Walking in these streets Yasmina was seized by uncertainty. As a fully emancipated, well-educated woman she was firmly anchored to the Western system of moral values and social mores, yet the land of her father still held fascination for her. In her late teens she had succumbed to the seduction and spent six months travelling in India, trying to discover the ancestral home of her forefathers who had left Gujarat at the turn of the twentieth century.
She had been brought up as a Muslim, yet during summer vacations, visiting her mother’s parents in Prague, she had encountered a different faith. Her Czech grandparents were religious Catholics who, although agreeing to it at the time, could never completely accept their daughter’s conversion to Islam. It was Yasmina who demanded to be taken to their local church. She was overwhelmed by the harmony of the baroque architecture, the richness of the decorations, the smell of incense, the flickering candles, the pictures which spoke of both suffering and ecstasy, and the music, which she later learned was a Bach toccata, played by an unseen organist.
When she joined Mark to live with him in Cambridge Place, her father, Wahid, did not protest about his daughter setting up home with a non-Muslim, and her mother, Jana, could barely hide her satisfaction: life coming full circle. Yasmina lived on the cusp of two worlds, yet belonged to neither.
After passing Euston Station, the final leg of the walk took Yasmina towards the completely regenerated King’s Cross area. The British Library had been for a long time an isolated temple of culture in the neighbourhood of three railway termini, an area where people were in continuous transit.
She entered the portico gate from Euston Road and hurriedly crossed the piazza, glancing at the monumental bronze figure of Newton. Once inside the building she felt at home. Natural light, harmony of space, exquisite materials and attention to detail. The atmosphere of the library reminded her of her own contribution, although she did not have any illusion about her current research surviving for centuries. It was far too ephemeral; ‘glorified journalism’, she used to say in one of her deprecatory moods. But these were only fleeting moments, since she was convinced that the investigations of the role of Islamic extremism, as a contributing factor in creating a centralised state, were worth pursuing. She was determined to carve out a successful academic career in modern history. Deep down she inherited the will and enterprising spirit of her Indian grandfather who arrived dispossessed from Idi Amin’s Uganda in the early 1970s to become a successful businessman in catering.
The Humanities Reading Room, on all three floors, was unusually busy this morning. She entered the lowest level, a space flooded with light. Many desks were already occupied – students working on their degrees, trainee journalists checking facts, pensioners for whom books were their only company of the day. At the reception desk she was greeted by Rosemary, her favourite junior librarian. She had ebony skin, pleated hair and dazzling teeth. These came into their own during one of her infectious laughs, which she occasionally had to tone down as some of the readers, having been disturbed by the noise, looked up from their books, throwing disapproving glances at her.
‘Rosemary, when Mr Khan arrives, please send him straight to my office. Thanks.’
Ted Khan was Yasmina’s PhD student, a bright young man in his early twenties. He shone out amongst the dozen candidates who had applied for the PhD scholarship, and the interviewing panel unanimously agreed to offer the studentship to him. Even Barry Henshaw, Yasmina’s boss, who initially favoured one of the female applicants gave in and dropped his candidate in favour of Ted at the final round of discussions. Their meeting was scheduled to be in one of the offices at the back of the library, facing the side of St Pancras Station. It was a small room and shared by several colleagues who, like Yasmina, were seconded to the Library for their research projects. Here she did not need much space since her permanent office in which she kept most of her books and files was in University College across Euston Road.
Presently, there was a knock on the door and Ted Khan entered: a tall, lanky figure with long dark hair and dark brown eyes, only pockmarks on his face spoiling his fine features. He was wearing jeans, a light green corduroy shirt and a loose white sweater. Greeting Yasmina, he said without any introduction: ‘You heard about the shooting in the stadium.’ It was a statement rather than a question and Yasmina nodded; she had picked up fragments of conversations on her way to the office. However, she was disinclined to rake over yesterday’s events: she was rather looking forward to the planned discussion of Ted’s project.
‘Coffee?’ she asked. Without waiting for a reply, she prepared two mugs of coffee. ‘Did you have time to read the references I gave you last time?’ From their initial meetings she had been convinced that Ted would produce his own ideas and become one of those students who would propel his PhD work without much prodding, and whose supervision after a while would turn into a mutual exchange of ideas. And Ted did not need much prompting.
‘The Government used the most recent terrorist outrages to assume absolute power and to build up the Surveillance State that we now know. The chaos in the wake of the recent bombings was the final excuse, which was handed on a plate by the terrorists. Furthermore, one can’t exclude the possibility that the reason why the Government didn’t clamp down more drastically on extremist organisations and turned a blind eye to their activities was to allow terrorist attacks so horrifying that no one could object to the declaration of a State of Emergency. This transitory period after the bombings was exploited by the Government to acquire sweeping powers.’
‘Do you think we will be popular with this message? It will be delivered by a project sponsored by the government after all.’
‘I don’t think that Home Security will be much concerned about a PhD project.’
I wouldn’t be so sure, she mused. She did not tell Ted that all the higher degree theses together with all the publications on social and political sciences went on a central computer containing information on university staff. Mark had told her that, as from the beginning of the year, published results in the field of neuroscience, particularly those in higher cognitive function, behaviour, emotion and memory were now centrally recorded. Ted, not noticing Yasmina’s unease, continued: ‘The worst that can happen is that the results of my thesis won’t be published.’ If we are lucky, thought Yasmina, but she faced the challenge with excitement.
‘What is the timescale for reviewing Islamist extremism? From 7 July 2005? It would be a dramatic starting point.’
On that day, as even younger generations remembered, suicide bombers had killed fifty-two people travelling on underground trains and a double-decker bus. The most horrifying aspect was that the terrorists who brought mass murder and chaos into the centre of London were not foreign nationals but young Britons. An uncomprehending public was astonished when they realised that the hatred their fellow citizens harboured for them ran so deep that they were prepared to kill themselves in the attempt.
Ted hesitated for a few seconds: ‘Yes, this is a possibility but we could have an alternative. I think we might have a better date: 14 January 1989.’
Since Yasmina looked at him vacantly, he added just one word as if helping her memory in a quiz.
‘Bradford.’
Suddenly everything fell into place. For Yasmina remembered the Salman Rushdie business. The publication of a book, a seemingly insignificant everyday event in a country where tens of thousands of books flooded the shops every year, had exploded into a major international affair. The book caused worldwide demonstrations, scores of deaths around the world and Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran at the time, issued a fatwa to kill the author who was the citizen of another sovereign country, ignoring all subsequent diplomatic complications. In British society, the incident had created a hitherto novel type of social conflict. Already a well-known author at the time and himself a Muslim, Rushdie’s book, entitled The Satanic Verses, was deemed blasphemous by Muslims. In the ensuing mayhem a little remembered event occurred in the northern English town of Bradford. A chanting mob burnt the book, although few, if any, had read the allegedly offending text.
‘Or we could start with an even earlier date of 2 December 1988, when an estimated 7,000 Muslims demonstrated in Bolton and burnt the book, but somehow the events in Bradford created more publicity. One of these is a good date to start the review of the history of recent terrorism,’ added Ted. ‘Burning books has historical significance. The Nazis burnt the books of Jewish authors. And we know where that hatred led.’
Yasmina nodded in agreement. From her course on European fascism between the two world wars, she recalled a quotation from Heine and was happy to share it with Ted: ‘“Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people.”’
‘And people do nothing to prevent it. By the way, Yasmina, I should have mentioned it earlier that last week we had a visit from Home Security in the college. It was well advertised and the main auditorium was overflowing. I think their aim was to make the service attractive, and at the same time to counter what they see as the universities being the breeding ground of terrorism and anarchy.’
‘Interesting,’ said Yasmina, remembering a similar occasion when she was a student – they had tried to recruit her. Being a Muslim and half-Asian she was an ideal candidate. ‘Did they approach you after the meeting?’
‘No, they didn’t. But I must say that the officer who gave the talk was brilliant – crystal clear and sharp.’
‘Do you remember his name?’ When Ted recalled it, the name meant absolutely nothing to her.