This Green and Pleasant Land Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Praise

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Six Months Later …

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  Translation of (see here)

  Questions For Your Reading Group

  Copyright

  Praise for

  ‘Witty, insightful, and shot through with pathos … this book is laugh-out-loud funny, but is so much more than that. It challenges our preconceptions and our prejudices about what it means to be British in today’s world … for me it’s the standout book of the year’

  ABIR MUKHERJEE

  ‘An intimate village dramedy and a study of the nature of grief, faith and belonging. This wonderful novel will make you laugh, make you cry and leave a mark on you long after you’ve finished reading it’

  SARAH SHAFFI

  ‘A witty meditation on race politics, what it means to be British, and the complexities of personal identity … With laugh-out-loud moments of absurdist comedy, poignant observations of human nature, and philosophical musings on the wisdom and nature of ‘fitting in’, this is Malik’s best work to date. Satirical, controversial, knowing and essential’

  VASEEM KHAN

  ‘A gorgeous, funny, smart, uplifting story about seeking unity during times of division. Wish I could prescribe it to the country’

  DAISY BUCHANAN

  ‘Simmers with tenderness, charm and warmth … a gorgeous, deeply relevant book that is bound to ruffle a fair few feathers, but the right feathers, and for the right reasons’

  CAROLINE O’DONOGHUE

  ‘An inquiry into faith, identity and the meaning of home’

  GUARDIAN

  ‘In her strongest novel to date, Ayisha Malik finds the humour and humanity in the interplay between faith and family’

  NIKESH SHUKLA

  ‘This Green and Pleasant Land is a clever and thoughtful novel about identity and belonging … the perfect novel for these Brexit-y times that we’re living in’

  RED MAGAZINE

  ‘Exploring identity, belonging and divided loyalties … this is a prescient novel in our uncertain Brexit times.’

  COSMOPOLITAN

  ‘Overflowing with warmth, humour and sharp-eyed observation’

  RUTH WARE

  Ayisha Malik is a writer and editor, living in South London. She holds a BA in English Literature and a First Class MA in Creative Writing. Her novels Sofia Khan is Not Obliged and The Other Half of Happiness, starring ‘the Muslim Bridget Jones’, were met with great critical acclaim, and Sofia Khan is Not Obliged was chosen as 2019’s Cityread’s book. Ayisha was a WHSmith Fresh Talent Pick, shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Award and Marie Claire’s Future Shapers Awards. Ayisha is also the ghost writer for The Great British Bake Off winner, Nadiya Hussain.

  @Ayisha_Malik

  www.AyishaMalik.com

  For my babies, Zayyan and Saffah Adam

  I hope the house of God lives in your heart wherever you go

  And for my great friend, Clara Nelson, who creates a community no matter where she is.

  … would you be able to understand your fellow countrymen if a majority of them – in order to assert their own rights – were one day to dispossess you?

  Questionnaire, Max Frisch

  SAKEENA HASHAM HAD THE ability to linger in a person’s psyche like a vaguely traumatic experience. For sixty-three years she’d been the rare combination of practicality and hopefulness, reality and dreams. Her dreams, unfortunately, hadn’t quite worked out. Real life had cast shadows over the rainbows she’d wanted to chase when she first left Rawalpindi, Pakistan, for Birmingham all those years ago.

  Now, she was lying in the ultimate shadow of death. She clutched her son, Bilal’s, hand with her own slight and withered one, squinting at him before raising her hand to his face.

  ‘Beta,’ she said. Her boy was in her home, once more, enclosed within the patterned walls, treading the green carpet she’d had for too many years. ‘Maybe grow a beard?’ she whispered hopefully.

  He took a deep breath, pursed his lips and nodded.

  Bilal looked too polished for this place. His wife, Mariam, sitting in the chair in the corner, clearly knew it, the way her sharp eyes darted around, taking in the surroundings. Well, to hell with her! What did Mariam know about struggle and sacrifice? What did even Bilal know?

  Rukhsana sat on her other side, wiping the tears from her eyes with her dupatta, and Sakeena wished, amongst many other things, that her younger sister wouldn’t give way to her tears so often.

  ‘Bilal has forgotten everything I taught him,’ whispered Sakeena to Rukhsana. ‘Who wears a suit to visit their dying mother?’

  Rukhsana burst into sobs.

  ‘You will look after your khala?’ said Sakeena to Bilal. ‘The way I have looked after her?’

  Bilal swallowed hard and glanced at his wife. ‘Yes, Ammi. Of course.’

  Next was the tricky part, but since when did trickiness bother Sakeena? She was about to give her son the task she knew would bring him back to the most important thing in life: faith. It was ridiculous the way he’d abandoned everything about it when he moved to that absurd village, Babbel’s End, eight years ago. He’d been determined to open up an accountancy firm. As if numbers were more important than God. Well, he might be successful now, but still. What a decision! Didn’t he think about the significance of living in a place that hinted at the end of something? She was no fatalist but even she had her limits.

  She sighed inwardly – Bilal never did think about the important things like symbolism. To think she had cultivated forty years of her life with her son in this multi-coloured city. For him! She’d not have him be the only brown face for miles: as conspicuous as he was invisible. And she wasn’t illiberal – she’d made sure from the beginning that Bilal had a mix of friends, unlike other children who were encouraged to ‘keep to their kind’. No, she made cucumber sandwiches for his white friends and jerk chicken for the black ones. If he’d brought any Chinese or Japanese friends home then she’d have made noodles or sushi, or whatever it was they ate. She had noticed Bilal’s cheeks redden at her culturally presumptive ways, but she was his mother – she knew what he needed, even when he didn’t.

  When her husband had left her in the first year of their marriage she knew she would have to make sense of things on her own; to understand. Understanding, her local imam had told her, was the key to everything. Especially the afterlife. Which was puzzling because how could you understand something you’d never experienced?

  Sakeena stared at her son with a hint of wonder. ‘Who a
re you?’ she asked finally.

  Bilal looked stricken and glanced at Mariam again as if she would have the answer.

  ‘Ammi,’ said Mariam, stepping forward to hold her dying mother in-law’s hands. ‘He’s your son. Remember?’

  Sakeena waved at her as if swatting a fly. Then, straddling life and death, Sakeena’s vision became clouded by a black fuzz instead of the light she’d always anticipated.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said urgently.

  Bilal’s head jerked and she noticed his eyes settle on her locked cabinet. She found salvation in faith; her son found it in the medicine cabinet.

  ‘Remember the grave,’ she said.

  ‘She’s not making sense,’ said Bilal, looking at Mariam.

  He’d had that look when she’d first dug a grave-shaped hole in her backyard and then proceeded to lie in it every night. ‘How can you really live if you don’t think of dying?’ she had told him then.

  She’d steeled herself against the sense of claustrophobia, imagining the dirt being thrown over her, the inevitability of leaving things – leaving Bilal – behind, and how in death nothing would matter but the good she might have done in her life.

  ‘Ammi,’ Bilal had said, looking at her lying in the ground. ‘You could contemplate death without being six feet under. This isn’t method dying.’

  Hain? There was no method to dying. But she could concede that it was the penultimate act. Understanding. It could skip oceans and bloodlines.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said now, bringing herself back to the present, holding Bilal’s hand with all the strength she could muster. His hand felt so powerful in that moment she was heartbroken that she would never feel it again.

  This was the final hour we were all, one day, heading towards. Except she was catapulting and, quite frankly, it was making her sick. Namely because no-one was catapulting with her. She felt a pang of regret that she hadn’t lived in a way contrary to death.

  How had all these years passed her by?

  She had so much to say about so many things. Now that it was her last chance, why weren’t these thoughts manifesting into words?

  She glimpsed the faint outline of what could be a dark figure, looming in the doorway. This wasn’t the time to panic. Death was, quite literally, at her door and there was one last job she had as Bilal’s mother. She’d even forsake the time it took to say the first kalima prayer when dying. Because, yes, death is solitary but life shouldn’t be, because Bilal’s life wasn’t just his own – it was everyone’s he came in contact with. If he didn’t know who he was then how would others really know him? Understand him?

  ‘What have we done here?’ she said.

  Bilal leaned forward, a frown creasing his brow. If he would just lean in a little further, she could kiss the high forehead that had always given him a perpetual look of surprise. Sakeena blinked back the shadows only to have her vision hindered by spots of white light. She gripped Bilal’s arm, no longer able to see her baby boy properly.

  ‘Who will know and understand that we’re meant to make life better for each other?’

  ‘Ammi,’ said Bilal. ‘It’s okay, I’m here. Don’t panic.’

  His voice broke and she was relieved to see there were tears in his eyes. Perhaps he regretted not coming back home sooner? Maybe he was sorry that their last game of backgammon was probably over three years ago? Perhaps, watching her slip away, he’d understand why she’d chosen to lie in her own grave.

  ‘Build them a mosque, beta. Build them a mosque,’ she said.

  ‘Get the doctor, Mariam,’ Bilal said. ‘Quick.’

  Mariam rushed out of the room.

  ‘Ya Allah,’ came Rukhsana’s voice, who muttered prayers under her breath, blowing them over Sakeena.

  Bilal looked at his khala, agitated. ‘Can’t that wait?’

  ‘Show these people our Islam,’ Sakeena continued, urgently.

  ‘Sshh,’ he urged, tears now falling freely down his face.

  She hadn’t loved life in the way she’d seen others love it, she had simply made the most of what she had, but in this moment, looking at her son, she didn’t want to leave it.

  ‘This isn’t the time to shush,’ she said, her heart cracking, along with her voice. ‘This is the time to speak. You must guide yourself to goodness, beta. And everyone around you. Like those Christian missionaries,’ she said.

  ‘Missionaries?’ he replied, bewildered.

  She reached up to Bilal’s face, the boy for whom she could forsake saying the kalima because she’d die the way she’d lived: doing what was best for him.

  ‘Babbel’s End,’ she said, unable to hide the contempt from her voice – remembering the village green and rolling hills, the bustling main street with its cobbled pavements and Victorian lamp posts, its two churches (how excessive!), the way the sun would glisten on the water as all those white, white people walked their dogs on the pebbled beach nearby in their wellies and big coats. What kind of people went to the beach in the middle of winter? Then she imagined a minaret, soaring in the midst of all of this, the call to prayer drowning out the noise of all the barking dogs, and the idea brought her that ever elusive sense of contentment (which, to Sakeena’s mind, was superior to happiness). She smiled, a tear in her eye, thinking of how sad endings could be but also of the hope you could leave behind.

  ‘Babbel’s End …’ she repeated, harnessing her last breath, ‘is your Africa.’

  And she was gone.

  ‘Inna lilla hai wa inna ilayhi raji’un,’ muttered Khala Rukhsana under her breath.

  We belong to God and to God we shall return.

  So, Bilal was left with his guilt and grief, and the Arabic prayer his mum had been unable to say was on his lips for the first time since he could remember.

  Because when something dies, you never know what else is coming to life.

  SIX MONTHS LATER …

  ‘SO, JENNY WILL EMAIL about the latrine in the lay-by, and Pankhurst, you’ll keep a tally of the cheese factory lorries driving up and down our roads,’ said Shelley Hawking with a deep sigh. ‘Make no difference to our village, indeed. Two years they’ve accosted us with their incessant noise.’

  There was a grumble of assent around the village hall. Bilal loosened his Paul Smith tie, undoing the top button of his now-damp white shirt. He looked around to see if there were any more windows they could open. The unusually hot August day, after three days of non-stop rain, was made only more oppressive by the length of the parish council meeting’s agenda. It almost made him impatient.

  Harry Marsh flicked Bilal’s arm with the agenda, which he’d put to use by fanning himself. ‘Armageddon,’ he whispered with a grin.

  ‘We’ve all agreed to Sunny Hill School’s bake sale and a participant’s fee for each pub quiz to raise more money to fix St Swithun’s church bell, yes? We’ve only £2,376 to go to meet our £10,000 target,’ added Shelley briskly.

  More assent.

  ‘And we’ll promise to adhere to the speed limits on all roads?’ she said, her eyes settling on Bilal, who looked away, rubbing his chest, his nausea making an appearance. ‘Until the next meeting then. Copperthwaite will follow up to confirm everyone’s duties.’

  George Copperthwaite grunted from the councillors’ table, his bald head looking particularly shiny, his Ascot tie (pale grey and maroon today), tucked into a white shirt under his houndstooth jacket. Shelley sat next to him, Jenny Ponsonby on the other side – the presiding council over the community. Jenny’s features and manners, Bilal had always observed, were as kempt as her sweat glands – even in the blistering sun she never seemed to need to wipe her brow.

  ‘You’ll be put in the stocks next time you go over the speed limit,’ said Harry to Bilal as they scraped back their plastic chairs and people began to disperse.

  Harry had left London several years ago to bring up his family here in the green and peaceful West Plimpington countryside, and so was in the enviable position of having lived
a life big enough to make fun of the village’s trivial preoccupations, while ignoring how much he benefited from them.

  ‘It’s the new car,’ replied Bilal in an excited whisper. They walked on to Skiffle Road, the moon visible before the sun had begun to set. ‘Incredible engine.’

  ‘It’s a thing of beauty. Meanwhile, the wife thinks we’ve got a poltergeist.’

  Bilal paused. ‘Why?’

  ‘The blueberries were moved from the kitchen counter.’

  ‘Right,’ replied Bilal.

  ‘I mean, they were right there, on the counter – but when we came back home they were in the fridge.’

  ‘Cleaner?’

  ‘She doesn’t come on Wednesdays.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Even now, years after moving to the village, the absurdity of its trials didn’t cease to surprise Bilal. ‘Well, don’t tell Mariam or Haaris won’t be allowed to come over and play with Sam.’

  ‘Bill,’ came Shelley’s unmistakable voice.

  ‘And I’m off,’ said Harry, jumping into his silver Land Rover.

  ‘Glad I caught up with you,’ said Shelley. ‘Have you spoken with Richard? I’ve left him several messages about Tom’s bush. I was hoping he’d come to the meeting.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Bilal, shuffling on his feet. His nausea was always heightened by conversation with Shelley. ‘Haven’t seen him this week. I’ll pass on the message if I do.’

  Bilal unlocked his car door as Shelley looked at the shiny black Lexus with delicately laced disapproval. Her eyes tended to linger on things – and the activity had lent itself to deeper crows’ feet than Shelley would’ve liked – a natural by-product of having been a headmistress for thirty years. She pressed her clipboard to her chest.

  ‘You’ve been very quiet at these meetings lately.’

  ‘Oh … well.’

  Bilal felt a lump in his throat so unexpected he wondered if he’d swallowed a fly. Shelley paused as people walked past, waving their goodbyes.

  ‘It was hard for me too, when my mother died,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry,’ said Bilal.