So what do you do when you are only 12 years old in a foreign land faced with classmates who do not want to sit anywhere close to you, a “smelly Paki” with a horrible disease called BO? Be smart; approach the issue “rationally”. You know from TV commercials there is a soap called Lifebuoy that “kills the bacteria that cause BO”.
Lather and shower, lather and shower and there you go: smelling of a very British soap, no longer “smelly”!
I am running ahead of the story. Meet Imran Ahmad, read the story of his life, The Perfect Gentleman: A Muslim Boy Meets the West, chronologically. Imran knows all about corruption and injustice even before he is just a year old, still in Pakistan, losing the “Bonniest Baby” contest because of nepotism. Of course you don’t expect a one-year-old
to store this up. Fortunately,
the family is there to help you recall.
Though unrelated to the “gross injustice”, Imran moves with his parents to England soon after the incident. Yes, he does encounter racism from some of his classmates and a few teachers too. When it’s not racism, racial identity appears to be a hurdle. At the age of seven: “There’s a girl in my class called Patricia Bastin. I like her a lot. In fact, I am in love with her. This means I must marry her some day. I hope that my being a foreigner won’t be an issue.” It will be an issue, says his friend Andrew Baker: “He tells me that he (Andrew) and Patricia have decided to get married and have been discussing what church to get married in. I am heart-broken... I am different, a foreigner, and I don’t go to church.” How Imran wishes he was “normal” (white, English, Christian).
But there are happy memories too. From school right up to university, merit when he shows it is recognised and rewarded. Then there’s the school headmaster, Mr Campbell, in whom Imran finds his life-long moral compass: “Every morning in Assembly he tells us some profoundly moral story... I learn my basic morality from him: kindness, honesty, good deeds, helping others.” Mr Campbell’s style of leading prayers is different from that in the mosque but it doesn’t matter much for “Muslims also believe in God”. It doesn’t matter then, but soon it will.
God and girls are Imran’s main preoccupations as he grows up. Let’s take God first.
One day, when he is nine, he hears his father tell a family friend: “When one hears the name of God, one’s heart should tremble with fear.” So he takes God seriously but four
years later, he finds himself musing: “No one else (in his peer group) seems to be preoccupied with the critical issue of making sure that they go to Heaven and avoid Hell; instead they waste their energies on activities that seem irrelevant, and irreverent, to me: soccer, pop music, alcohol.”
As with Lifebuoy so also with God: Imran again takes the rational route to discover the “true religion” and then stick to it. Hinduism is out: too many gods. Buddhism, Judaism too
fail his “rationality test”. (Decades later, Imran would acknowledge his naiveté). But for the moment it’s a close race between Islam, the religion he is born in, and Christianity, the religion he is surrounded by. Islam is a clear winner but problems remain. The eager paradise seeker is aware that his is an “angry and jealous God” but some things don’t make rational sense. What if entertaining doubts themselves make God angry?
He keeps running into fervent evangelists who tell him that the Quran is not the word of God but that of the Devil who misled Prophet Mohammed into starting a false religion. How do you “rationally” settle this crucial point? What if he ends up in
Hell? Besides, isn’t a Christian Heaven so much easier to attain: just believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God who died to atone for all our sins and you are through?
The girls’ issue is even more tormenting. Young Imran may be a Muslim boy with Pakistani roots but when it comes to girls or women his fantasies are entirely Western. “I have a longing for this kind of persona: that of Simon Templar or James Bond. A handsome and brave adventurer loved by beautiful women and admired by all.” Underline beautiful women. At age seven, he fantasises about being a television hero, someone like Templar or Bond. But there’s a catch: “I would probably have to kiss women — on the lips! — and Pakistanis don’t do that.”
From his early years in school right through university, Imran serially falls in love with girls and young women. Each one of them is beauty and perfection personified. He does his best, projecting himself as the “perfect gentleman”, emulating Templar or Bond in his choice of dress, hair style, sun-glasses. He even stretches his finances to the limit to procure a sports car when in university.
What’s most enticing about Templar or Bond is that “they don’t have arranged marriages”; they simply “make love”. This is most tempting but a further hurdle is anticipated: “The white people... marry only for love... but people of the Indian subcontinent... marry for anything except love.” Will his parents approve of the white women whose intimacy he so desperately seeks? But that will come later. His first concern is that the women he is after are only open to friendship when all he wants is love. Imran does not complain of overt racism. But since white boys in his university have an enviable success rate with the opposite sex, is he a failure because he is not “normal” (white)?
At long last, Imran reluctantly places himself in the market for arranged marriage but here,
too, there does not seem to be a happy ending. Do not be
misled for a moment into thinking that The Perfect Gentleman is a tragic tale. In fact, Imran’s very first outing as a writer makes for a delightful, funny, multi-layered, evocative read. I, for one, would not be surprised if some white woman (women, maybe) reader of the book falls in love with Imran. Finally!